Who could ever match that, much less surpass it?
I had to talk to him.
I owed him an apology; more than that, I owed him the truth.
The idea froze me to my bones with fear: it meant going to where he was, which meant outing myself. It meant being recognized. It meant bringing my craziness into his world. Would he feel betrayed that I hadn't told him who I was? Would he want anything to do with me after I told him?
Would he want anything to do with me even before I explained?
I took off his T-shirt and folded it and hid it under my pillow, and then dressed in please-don't-recognize-me clothes: my favorite pair of fitted, faded blue jeans with the holes in the thighs and under the back pockets, a soft T-shirt that hugged my body, and a thick wool cardigan the hem of which hung to my knees, with an exaggerated collar and huge wooden buttons, and my favorite pair of flats. And, of course, my Dodgers cap and bug-eyed, mirrored aviator sunglasses.
Which was ridiculous, because it was now late at night, at least one in the morning--I'd spent countless hours researching and reading online. But yet, sunglasses at night were the norm in my world, and I felt more secure with them on, so I wore them despite the darkness of the night.
It only took a quick Google search to come up with an address for Badd's Bar and Grill, about a mile and a half away straight down the docks. Firming up my resolve to do what I could to fix the mess I'd made, I started walking, following the water.
It was dark, with heavy clouds blocking out the sky and a thick fog hanging low, sprinkling my face with cool mist as I walked. I was the only one out at this hour, and my footsteps echoed loudly on the wood of the docks, making my walk that much lonelier, somehow.
Halfway there, panic hit. What if his whole family was there? What if the bar was full of patrons and I got mobbed without security or a car or a driver or even Emily around to shield me?
What if Xavier didn't want to see me?
...and the way he'd taken off, that wouldn't surprise me.
God, I'd made a damn mess of things.
I stopped, a hand on a wooden pylon, equal parts fear and ridiculous hope warring within me. Fear that he'd turn me away, fear that I'd hurt him too much, that I'd pushed him away, fear that I'd get recognized. Hope that he might still want to talk to me, want to see me, or at least give me a chance to explain.
What I'd say, I had no idea.
On impulse, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it on--I'd snagged it on the way out, just in case. I dialed a number.
"Hello, Miss Grace," the pleasant male voice on the other end answered on the second ring despite the late hour. "How can I help you?"
"I need the crew back on the boat as soon as possible. I would like to move on." I swallowed hard. "As soon as possible."
"Certainly, ma'am. I will alert the crew. They'll be ready to cast off within twenty-four hours."
"Thank you."
"My pleasure, Miss Grace."
I hung up, switched the phone back off without checking emails or calls or messages or social media, and resumed my walk.
There.
Now the decision was made--I would say what I needed to say, and I would leave Xavier in peace. This whole thing had been stupid in the first place, and has all been my fault. He had a status quo before he met me, a life that, from everything he said, he was content with. I didn't fit into that. And he didn't fit into mine.
Within another few minutes, I saw it: a small, unassuming two-story brick building. A neon sign, red cursive lettering over the door, read Badd's Bar & Grill. The door was propped open by a chair, on which was sitting a truly mammoth individual--at least six-two, and built for raw, intimidating power, with the kind of muscles you see on Olympic powerlifters and the occasional pro wrestler turned movie star...pick whichever one you prefer. He had short, messy brown hair, and was kicked back in the chair, toes hooked around the legs of the chair propping open the door, a thick paperback book in his hands, the pages flipping rapidly.
He didn't look up until I was halfway through the door, at which point he peered at me over his book, scrutinizing me--probably to assess my age. When he saw me, his gaze narrowed and he set the book down open-face on his thigh.
"Do I know you?" he demanded.
This was one of Xavier's brothers--I tried to remember all the names and descriptions he'd given, but came up short. "Um." I shook my head and shrugged. "No. Never been here before."
The huge, burly man nodded. "Sorry. Thought I recognized you." He waved a hand. "Have fun, darlin'."
He called me darling dismissively, one of those guys who calls every female darling, regardless of age or interest; he struck me as the type who'd call Michelle Obama "darling" if he met her.
I entered the bar, looking around. It was low-ceilinged and dimly lit, strongly resembling the interior of a pub in the UK. The bar ran along the right-hand wall as you entered, with booths along the left and tables in between. There was a doorway leading to the kitchen at the back near the service end of the bar, and a booth right next to the open doorway leading to the kitchen. A TV over the bar played sports highlights. To the left of the kitchen, in the very back left corner of the bar, was a small nook with a slightly raised dais ringed by a wooden baluster, and there was a closed door at the very back of the bar between the bathrooms and the stage.
The bar wasn't as empty as I'd hoped, but everyone in it seemed to know everyone else--they were all clustered together around the service bar, passing around a stack of papers which they were discussing. There were two men behind the bar--both of them smoldering hot, in the tall, dark, and intimidatingly massive sort of way, with the dark hair and dark eyes that I was noticing these men all had in common--along with heart-palpitating good looks. Another man stood on the customer side of the bar, hands resting on the backs of two chairs, both of which were occupied by women, both on the shorter side, and blonde. Another man, younger than the others but perhaps older than Xavier, his long hair in a ponytail, also sat at the bar, and beside him a dark-skinned woman with thick black dreadlocks. There was a redhead, a woman with thick, loose, straight black hair, another man with longish, messy brown hair, his arm around yet another stunning blonde.
I stood in the middle of the bar--empty except for them--and realized this was Xavier's family. His brothers and their wives and girlfriends.
And they were all looking at me.
The tallest man, who also looked to be the oldest--making him Sebastian, I thought--waved at me. "Come on in and grab a chair. Don't mind us." He sidled away from the group as I approached the bar. "What can I getcha?"
I took a chair well away from the group, sitting down nervously, trying to figure out what to do next, now that I was here. "Um. White wine?"
He withdrew two bottles from a small cooler under the counter and thudded them in front of me at an angle, eying the labels. "We got Kendall Jackson, and...however the fuck you pronounce this French bullshit."
I smiled despite my nerves. "I'll take the French bullshit. Thank you."
He popped the cork, flipped a stem glass around a finger with a practiced flourish, and poured a generous amount. "There ya go. Pay now or start a tab?"
I swallowed hard. "I--actually...um..."
He frowned slightly, waiting, and then laughed when I came up empty. "Need a minute to decide? No worries. Just don't try and run off past Bax without paying. That big motherfucker is fast." He said this with a wink, moving back to the cluster of his family.
One of the women was looking at me hard--Claire, the diminutive, exhibitionist girlfriend of Xavier's brother Brock, who I recognized standing behind her. I'd met them both, sort of, when we'd borrowed their fishing gear. And now Claire was eying me.
She got up off her chair and took the one next to me. "Hi. You're Xavier's friend, aren't you? Low? We met the other day."
I nodded, keeping my eyes on my wine. "Yeah. That's me."
She wasn't very friendly, at the moment. "I don
't know with happened with you two, but he came back here at a dead run, half-naked, and acting more upset than I've ever seen him."
"I know." I took a fortifying sip of wine. "I...I'm actually here to--"
Someone else came up to stand between Claire and me--she was tall with platinum blonde hair done in a neat twist, wearing yoga pants cinched at the knee with an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, looking effortlessly elegant.
"Hey, I'm Aerie," she said, extending a hand to mine, which I shook without making more eye contact than necessary.
"Low," I offered, still hoping to make it out of this without a scene.
Claire was still staring hard at me. "Not to be rude or whatever, but would you mind taking off your sunglasses for a minute?"
I hedged. "I'd rather not."
She snorted. "You ashamed of yourself for hurting poor sweet innocent Xavier and can't look me in the eye?"
"Is he here?" I asked, my voice barely audible.
"I dunno," Claire said, her voice razor sharp. "That depends on why you're here...and what happened to upset him."
I breathed out shakily. "What happened is kind of between him and me, but just...I didn't mean to hurt him, and I just want to talk to him."
Aerie was now staring hard at me, but in a different way. "You look familiar."
I took another long drink. "You must be mistaken."
She shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I know you, somehow." Her eyes flicked over the explosion of curls springing out from the back of my cap. "I'm certain I've seen you, or met you somewhere."
"We've never met, I can guarantee you that." The truth, at least.
Why was I drawing this out? I was here to make peace with Xavier, wasn't I?
I sighed, realizing it would be better in the long run to just get it over with.
Slowly, I drew the hat off and removed the sunglasses, and shook my hair out. I didn't say my name--I didn't have to.
Aerie's breath caught. "Harlow Grace," she breathed.
Claire's jaw dropped. "You're Xavier's friend?"
I tossed the hat and sunglasses on the bar. "Yeah."
"Holy shit." She laughed, then. "He was hanging out with Harlow Grace and never told any of us?"
Brock, her boyfriend or husband or whatever, heard that. "Who was hanging out with Harlow Grace and didn't tell us?" he asked, pivoting to join the conversation; then, he saw me. "Holy shit, it's Harlow Grace. In our bar."
"Goddammit," I muttered under my breath. "Here we go."
Brock howled in laughter, as if something hysterical had happened which I'd missed. "Yo, Bast! Come get a load of this!"
The bartender, who was indeed Sebastian, the oldest, ambled over, eyeing me warily. "What?"
Brock gestured at me. "You know who she is?"
He frowned. "Seen you in a few movies I think, but..." The penny dropped, then. "Harlow Grace. That's you, yeah?
"Yes," I said, a little too loudly and with a little too much irritation--but these weren't random fans, these were Xavier's family. "I'm Harlow Grace."
"She's also the friend--" here, Claire sarcastically emphasized the word, "Xavier has been hanging out with lately."
Bast's intimidating gaze turned scary. "You're his friend? Low?"
I nodded. "Yeah."
"He showed up all freaked out a while ago. Care to explain that?" Bast demanded.
"We're all pretty protective of our boy, you see," I heard from behind me--Bax, the bouncer, had appeared.
"I--um. It was...a misunderstanding," I said.
Lucian, the long-haired brother, spoke for the first time. "Does he know that?"
I couldn't answer. I just kept my eyes on my wine.
"Oh hell no, bitch, you did not," Claire snapped; apparently she was the one with the fewest shits to give.
I jerked my head up to glare at her, my eyes blazing. "Now just hold on a damn minute--you don't know me, or our situation, and you certainly do not get sit there judging me and calling me names!"
Claire crossed her arms over her chest. "I sure as fuck do get to sit here judging and calling names, bitch--that's my brother-in-law we're talking about and he's...Xavier isn't the kind of person you can just go and fuck with his head and his heart and think he'll be okay with it. He's not like that."
I felt my eyes prickling and burning, a knot in my throat. "I know. I know that...now."
"Yeah, now...after you fucked with his head." This was from Aerie.
Bast, as they called him, had his arms crossed over his massive chest, thick forearms tensed and ropy, tattoos shifting, dark brown eyes glinting. "Like Bax said, we're all pretty protective of Xavier. He's...unique."
"You think I don't realize that? Why do you think I'm here? You think I'd risk my privacy and anonymity showing up at a bar when I'm on vacation and under the radar for just anyone?" I was standing up, gesturing angrily, my voice raising. "I fucking know he's unique, and I get exactly why you're protective of him, but I--"
"Carried on whatever you had going on with him, in secret, when he had no idea who you were, or what getting involved with you might mean for him," the redhead pointed out. "Which is kind of shitty."
"It wasn't secret," I protested. "I just...I value my privacy, okay? I doubt any of you would understand." I blanched as I realized how that sounded. "I don't mean that as an insult to any of you, I just...being famous can be hard, okay?"
"Oh poor you! Poor Harlow Grace," Claire snarked. "You can't just go fucking around with the hearts of sweet, innocent, precious local boys just because you're rich and famous."
This girl was gonna get smacked in a second.
"You need to back off. It's not like that." I stabbed a finger at her. "And you're all acting like Xavier is incapable of making decisions for himself, like he's some helpless child or something. He's not."
"I'm not sure you're in a position to make that judgment call," the redhead said. "He's our family, and you've known him for what, a matter of days?"
"Maybe that's exactly why I am in a position to make that call," I said. "Because I'm seeing him more objectively than you. You're protective of him, and I get that, but just because he's high-functioning autistic doesn't make him helpless. It just makes him different."
The silence following my pronouncement was icy and fragile.
"He's what?" Bast asked, leaning toward me, suddenly so scary-quiet I might've peed a little. "Repeat that."
I was confused; did his family not know? "High-functioning autistic with savant tendencies." I blinked, swallowed. "Did he...I thought--"
There was a deafening chorus of questions then, all shouted at me from a dozen different directions.
At that moment, I happened to glance to my left, where Xavier was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, paper baskets full of fried food in his hands, his eyes on me.
I shot out of my seat and pushed through the shouting crowd of his family, who went silent again when they saw him. I stopped a foot from Xavier, wanting to reach for him but not daring.
"Xavier, I--"
"You are here," he said, his face and voice giving nothing away of his emotions as he set the baskets on the service bar and returned to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, as if that felt like a safe space for him. "Why are you here?" This last part was flat, a question spoken as a statement.
"I'm--I hate how we left things, Xavier."
He glanced past me at his family. "I heard the last part of your conversation with my family. My autism is not something I speak of to anyone. None of them knew. I had hoped to keep it that way."
I blinked back tears. "Xavier, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry--I didn't know they didn't know. I didn't mean to betray your trust."
He breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, his gaze flicking to mine briefly and then away, then back, taking in my clothing. Once more, his eyes flitted past me, this time to Claire. "Claire."
The tiny but explosive blonde came over to stand by him, putting herself between me and Xavier. "Hi, Xavie
r."
"Hello, Claire." He spoke without quite looking at her directly; I had a feeling he was keeping his emotions, whatever they may have been, on total lockdown; his hands were at his side, fisted, as if it was taking every ounce of willpower not to pat them against his legs. "You said several things I do not understand."
"What's that?"
He looked at me, then at Claire. "You called her Harlow Grace. Who is Harlow Grace? Her name is Low." He held up one finger. "That is the first thing. Second, you said, quote, 'you can't just go around fucking with the hearts of sweet, innocent, precious local boys just because you're rich and famous,' end quote." He paused for almost a minute. "How is she fucking with my heart? Why am I a sweet and innocent and precious local boy? Those words make me sound like...like an anime character with wide, shimmering eyes. Like a boy. Like a child. Is that how you see me?" He paused again, and then continued, his voice still hard and flat. "The third item of my confusion is related the previously quoted statement--the word 'famous.' Rich I understand, given her ownership of a large yacht. But...famous? Please elucidate that claim."
His eyes went to me again, not looking at me directly, but rather looking at me as if trying to see me differently. His jaw was flexing, and his hands, fisted, were beginning to knock against his thighs, and he was staring at me without blinking, as if the whirlwind in his head was howling so loudly his control was shredding.
It took everything inside me to hold back the tears. "Xavier, I--"
"Allow Claire to answer, if you please," he interrupted.
Claire sighed. "Her name isn't Low, Xavier. That's a nickname. Her real name is Harlow Grace, and she's a movie star. Like, a really, really famous one. And...I don't know what's going on with the two of you, but the chances of her intentions regarding spending time with you being totally innocent are...practically nil. Which is what I meant about fucking with your heart. I've never seen you interested in a woman, Xavier, and I've always just kind of assumed you're a...well--a virgin, which makes you innocent. And you're sweet, and you're precious to me. I don't mean any of that as an insult, Xavier. You know I love you like a brother, right? I'm just trying to look out for you."
"You are a famous movie star?" he asked, his eyes shooting toward me, but not looking at me, like he sometimes did.
I sighed. "Yes, I am."
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