by Cara Bastone
“Smile!” Grace called and Seb was dimly aware of a camera flash. He was sharply aware of the warm woman simultaneously slipping and settling against him. Via looked up at him, straightening, and Seb had the strangest feeling that his life had just become an abstract painting. The light and lines blurred and pixelated around him; everything was fuzzy and bright at the same time. The world was made of strokes of concentrated color. Everything was a gift tonight. The music, the scent of flowers, the sheer, contagious joy of the brides. All the energy of it funneled and tornadoed around Seb and Via.
And then Grace shoved the Polaroid into Seb’s hand.
“It’s a beaut,” she crowed.
“Oh,” Via whispered, looking down at the picture that was just developing.
Seb stared at it as well, horror trickling through him like a drop of poison in an IV. He felt like the clothes on his back were slowly freezing, starting at his shoes and working all the way up to the collar of his shirt. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. He felt sick. And so fucking angry at himself.
Realizing that his hand was still on Via’s hip, he slid away from her, taking the picture with him. He shoved it into the pocket of his slacks. He didn’t want her to look at it anymore.
“Seb?” she asked.
Both she and Grace were looking at him like he’d just broken out in hives. Maybe he had. He felt hot and scratchy. Either his clothes were shrinking, or he’d just made a complete and utter fool out of himself. Via was looking at him, confused as hell, and she was so gorgeous there in her green dress that he was almost tugged back into their cloud of yum. But the picture pulsed in his pocket, and he was reminded of reality.
A familiar buzzing ring had Seb jolting. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Sorry, that’s Matty calling from Tyler’s phone.”
He flashed the phone toward the women and strode out of the hall. He took one back hallway and then another, striding up a set of back stairs that led toward the Botanical Garden gift shop. Everything was dark and quiet. Huge windows lined the hall, and the gardens were stark and spooky outside. There were no lights on in the hall, so Sebastian could just barely see his reflection in the glass.
Seb fell into a crouch and grabbed the back of his head for a second. He sighed and answered the phone. “Hey, buddy.”
“Hey, it’s Ty.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah, Matty’s just finishing up in the bath, and I wanted to see how the wedding was going before he got on the phone to say good night.”
“Great. It’s great.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line that let Seb know he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Then why do you sound like you’re about to go play in traffic? Did something happen with Via? I thought tonight was gonna be the night.”
Seb considered not answering. The Polaroid pulsed in his pocket again, and he pulled it out. “Things were good at the beginning. Like pretty clear that something was gonna happen, you know? We were all flirty and shit.” Seb sighed.
“Yeah? And then what?”
“And then my colleague took a fucking Polaroid picture of us.”
“Pervy.”
“Shut up,” Seb said, laughing despite himself. “They leave Polaroid cameras around for the guests so you can add your picture to the guestbook, I guess.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
Seb looked at the picture in his hand. The sight of it made his stomach curl. He could see now that he’d been totally swept away since that happy hour last week. He’d been surfing a wave of adrenaline and desire for her. The only things that had existed were the ideas of more and closer. Reality had fallen by the wayside. But now he had evidential proof of reality in the form of a Polaroid and it was bitter as hell.
“I look old enough to be her father in this picture.” The truth fell out of him like a dead fish onto a dock. “I’ve never really seen us together before, side by side like that. But she looks all young and fresh. She’s laughing and leaning on me. And I look like Hugh fucking Hefner.”
For months, he’d been slowly circling around the reason the age difference bothered him so much. And here was the answer, in convenient photograph form. He looked at this picture and he saw his own age. How much further down the walk of life he was than she. He knew exactly how it felt to bury a spouse. He’d lived through that excruciating hell. How could he ever allow himself to dump that possibility on someone else? He knew he was majorly getting ahead of himself, but if things worked out between them, he was pretty much guaranteeing that she’d be the one to put him in the ground someday. How could he ever do that to her? Especially knowing what she’d been through with her parents. It was reprehensible. Inexcusable.
“Seb, I’m sure that’s not true. Your age difference isn’t that extreme, and you’re not that old.”
“Well, I look decrepit in this photo. Old as shit. Half my fucking head is gray hairs? How come you didn’t think to mention that to me? Hey, Sebastian, just so you know, you look like it’s time to get your AARP card.”
“Seb, you’re being ridiculous. Maybe it’s just a bad photo. Because you don’t look that old in real life, and once again, forty-two is NOT OLD.”
“What was I thinking, Ty? I knew it from the beginning. I’m way too old for her. But then she broke up with her boyfriend, and I just started thinking what if? You know? And I got carried away. But the truth remains. There’s no way this is what she really wants. A boyfriend a decade and a half older than she is.”
“You don’t know what the hell she wants!” Ty yelled. “You’re at a wedding with a beautiful woman who obviously has the feels for you, and you’re spiraling out like a little bitch!”
“Ouch.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. Seb, you’ve been putting up obstacles for women for the last few years because you were still healing. And that’s fine. But now you’re putting up an obstacle for this woman, and it’s gonna hurt you more. I can’t take more Hurt Seb, okay? I reached the lifetime allotment. It kills me to see you sad, man.”
“Tyler.”
“But this time, happiness is an option, Sebastian. It’s an option, and you’re shitting on it. Why? Because you’ve done what everyone in this fucking world does and aged? Fuck you, man. Buy some hair dye if you have to, but don’t fuck this up. Don’t you dare trip at the finish line, you puss.”
“Wow.”
“The truth hurts.”
“Apparently. Jesus, Ty.” Seb scraped a hand over his face. His old-ass face. “Seems like you’ve been keeping that little speech on tap.”
“You can thank me later after you wet your whistle.”
“You’re disgusting. I can’t believe I let you babysit my kid.”
“Speaking of, you wanna talk to your dad?” He said the last part away from the phone.
Seb heard scrabbling as the cell was passed over, and he let his racing mind rest for just a second. The picture burned him. It was horrifying and embarrassing. He looked like a creepy uncle lusting over a high schooler. But maybe Ty was right. Maybe he was focusing too much on all the things that could go wrong instead of the things that could go right.
“Daddy?”
Seb smiled. Matty was breathing too hard into the phone as usual. “Hey, buddy.”
“Guess what Uncle Tyler let me watch on TV tonight?”
“What?” Seb leaned on the wall behind him, taking some of the pressure off his knees from the crouch he was still in. And he let his kid’s voice siphon some worry right off of him.
* * *
VIA STOOD AT the end of the hallway. Sebastian was twenty feet away talking into his cell and crouching. From the soft look on his face, he was talking to Matty.
Something had been wrong when he’d strode out of the main hall, and Via had no idea what it was. He’d been spooked, like a bear scenting a
forest fire on the air. She’d lingered for a few minutes before she’d followed him.
She figured she could hang back and say nothing and potentially watch this thing with him shrivel up and smoke away, or she could follow him and figure out what the hell was going on.
Via stood at the end of the hallway to give him a little privacy. She’d come up here intending to talk. But talking was the very last thing on her mind as she watched him smile into his phone, saying something soft and reassuring to his son.
An image of him dancing with Shelly traced through her mind. Shelly had been so pleased, so happy to be dancing. Seb had towered over her, confident and sure in his dance moves. And now he was talking to his son on the phone. Wishing him good night.
“I love you, too, little man. I’ll see you when you wake up, okay? Good night.”
Seb ended the call and needled the corner of his phone into his eyebrow for a second before he shoved it in the pocket of his suit pants. He rose up slowly and sighed, still leaning against the wall.
He had no idea that Via was down the hallway, burning for him. Her heart galloped in her chest as she realized what she was about to do.
Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she stepped forward.
Seb’s head flicked over and he looked surprised to see her. “Via,” he started.
But then he apparently took in the expression on her face, because he didn’t say another word as she rapidly closed the distance between them.
He looked torn. She couldn’t tell if she was about to make a humongous fool out of herself. But maybe that made it all that much better. Because who cared about being a fool? Fear of being foolish had kept her in a mediocre relationship with a man-child for two years. Fear of being foolish had kept her lonely for far longer than that. She didn’t care if he rejected her or rebuffed her. She didn’t care that when she was just five steps away his hands came up between them. She didn’t care that she couldn’t tell if he was going to grab her close or push her away.
There was just one pulsing word in Via’s head as she closed the distance between them, laced her fingers in his short hair and yanked his head down: this.
This was what she wanted.
The quick inhale that said he was holding his breath, too. The almost vulgar heat of his calloused hands as he—thank Christ—firmly slid them over her bare back. The demolition of space between them as she clamped herself to him. This. This. This.
She might have marched down the hallway to grab him, but he was the one who started the kiss. He dropped his head and pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were a firm, experienced slide, and there was no describing a flavor like that. Man and chocolate cake and dark hallway where the autumn gardens leaned in on every side. Everything was bathed in deep blue light, and Via knew they’d somehow found their way to the bottom of the ocean.
One of Seb’s hands lightninged up her back and tangled in her hair; he tipped her head back, and she realized again just how large he was. He surrounded her on almost every side. The new angle had her mouth slipping open, and Seb made a noise, tore his face to one side to breathe and came back to her. He dropped a gruff kiss to her bottom lip, pulled back and did it again. When he slouched, lifted her and landed his lips on hers, his tongue swept into her mouth.
Basically, Via attempted to climb the mountain of his body. She wanted the mountaintop. She wanted the crisp, terrifying summit. She thanked God that her dress had a slit up the side because it allowed her to hitch one of her flexible legs over his hip.
She was dizzy and could only think about tracing her tongue along his, which was why she was startled when her back was firmly pressed into a brick wall.
Her eyes fluttered open and she realized that he was caging her in, pressing her back and... This. Yes, one of his hands had reached back and touched at the strap of her high heel that was currently pressed into his ass. His hand traced up her calf and to her thigh then doubled back to the soft skin at the back of her knee.
Via gasped into his mouth as his fingers pressed into the hollow of her knee. He made a sound in response, and his hand slid higher up her thigh.
Then, suddenly, Seb was unhanding her and taking four quick steps away from her. Via sagged back against the wall.
“Fuck,” he muttered, pacing past her once, twice.
And then he was back. One hand in her hair and the other reaching down to toss her leg over his hip again. She was breathing his air, swallowing his low, frustrated noises.
She stroked her tongue against his and straight-up moaned when his hand pushed a few inches farther and stroked over the smooth, naked curve of her ass. His hand kept going until he hit her hip and apparently found what he was looking for. The delicate line of her G-string. He was saying something directly into her mouth, but either it wasn’t English or Via’s brain had better things to do. His fingers spread across her hip, tangling in her underwear.
Her fingers ached and she realized it was because she was white-knuckling the fabric of his coat.
This.
His mouth was hot and endless and everything she’d never known existed. It struck her like a slap in the face; she’d been surviving on Easy Mac when all along there’d been filet mignon. She sucked at his bottom lip, bruised it with her tongue. She could feel the rough scrape of his stubble just at the border of his lips, and it enflamed her. It was like he was scraping her clean with his roughness.
She clamped teeth down, and he made the noise a lion makes in the night when he spots prey. That hand of his was farther up her dress, and he pinned her to the wall with his hips.
Via felt the shocking hardness of him press into her stomach, and she wiggled against it.
“Gah, fuck, goddammit,” he growled against her lips. His hand slid out of her dress and clasped her over top of the heated silk. He pressed his forehead into hers. “We gotta slow down, baby.”
“I—” She stopped trying to speak and just forcibly dragged him back into the kiss. Even with the heels, she was still up on the tiptoes of the one foot she had on the ground, trembling and reaching for that motherfucking mountaintop. He cradled the back of her head, nipped her lips and dropped his mouth to her ear.
“We gotta slow down,” he repeated, his voice like chocolate gravel, a glass of red wine drip-drip-dropped from one lover’s mouth to another.
“Why?” was the only word that made its way to the surface of Via’s electrified, squirming ocean.
“Because you’re about to get yourself fucked in a coat closet, and that is not how I pictured this going.”
No one had ever said something like that to her before. She tightened and clung to him, her body stiff while her insides melted into the hottest honey. She was very aware of the fact that she’d soaked through her underwear.
“You’ve pictured this?” she asked with basically the very last bit of air in her lungs.
He laughed, kissing her lips, one eye, the skin just under her ear. “Jesus, yes. God. Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and their eyes clashed for the first time since she’d marched up to him. His eyes were storm gray in the dark hallway. There must have been a window open somewhere because she could smell the fresh earth of the gardens, the sharp, dying tang of autumn leaves. And Sebastian. She could smell Sebastian.
“We have to slow down,” he asserted, for the third time. But Via couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t unhanded her. His hands were on the outside of her dress now, sure, but he still had one hand on her ass as he pressed her into a brick wall.
She tested him, attempting to lower her leg, but he held her still, kept her wrapped around him.
“We don’t have to,” she said in a low voice, making sure to keep her eyes on him. “Slow down, I mean. We don’t have to. I won’t break.”
He sighed, equal parts pained and joyful. Leaning down, he planted one openmouthed kiss on her
neck. “You’re right, we don’t have to. But we’re going to.”
“Why?” she asked again, dizzy with heat for him, like she’d been dozing in a hot car. This time the word was much more desperate than the first time she’d asked it.
Slowly, he lowered her leg from around his waist and straightened her dress. He bent toward her, about to kiss her again, but instead he raked his hand over his face. The sound of stubble against his rough hand was loud in the quiet hallway. He pulled back and paced away.
Seb pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her. “What do you see when you look at that?”
Via felt shocked and soft, as she had the first time she’d looked at the Polaroid. She glanced up at him and saw that he was legitimately waiting for her to answer the question. She cleared her throat and was pretty surprised when her voice didn’t shake. “I see you, looking so handsome I can barely breathe. And you’re holding me. And I see me.” Unbidden, her eyes tightened with tears. She blinked them immediately back. “I look so happy that it makes me sad.”
“Makes you sad?”
She didn’t look up at him, instead kept her gaze on the Polaroid. “Because I haven’t seen myself look this happy in a really long time. And more than happy. I look like I belong. Look at that! I look like I got invited to this party and I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” She held the photo far away and then close again. “I haven’t looked this happy since I was a child.”
Since before my parents died.
The words were unspoken as she handed the precious Polaroid back to him. He studied her face for a second and then looked back at the picture. “That’s really what you see?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head to one side, wondering what he was trying to get at.
He shucked the Polaroid against the fingers of the opposite hand. “Via, I’m forty-two years old.”
“Okay.” What was he getting at?
“That doesn’t give you any sort of reaction?” His eyes were shadowed and inscrutable across the hallway.