by Ray, Marika
He snorted. “Yeah, well, good luck with that one. You’ll tire of her shortly.”
Now see, he could have insulted me again and I still would have walked away feeling good about things. But insult Gabby? Insult the woman I loved? Oh, hell no.
I placed my fists on the desk and leaned in close so he’d hear every word. “Gabby was way too much woman for you. I know it. And you know it. You didn’t get bored of her. She outgrew you and you left before she could. That must be a hell of a fragile ego you have there behind your evil machinations and fancy suits.”
He narrowed his eyes, but I didn’t wait for him to spew more bullshit. Hewitt was the kind of guy who’d defend himself with his dying breath. There was nothing he could say that would make things better, so I might as well close the door on that relationship.
“Goodbye, Hewitt. Take care of yourself.” I rapped my knuckles on the desk and headed out of his office. I really did mean it. I hoped he took a long hard look in the mirror one day and changed.
As I closed the door behind me, a loud bang reverberated on the other side of the door.
I winked at the secretary, cringing at her desk.
“Might want to steer clear for an hour or so.”
* * *
“Gabby?” I called out as I strode through our front door. “Gabby, you here?”
A head popped out around the corner. Not Gabby.
“Oh hello, dear. She went out for a bit. Have a seat and talk with me.” Lavender waved her hand to the couch. She had on so many gauzy layers of clothing, I wasn’t sure if she was getting ready for Halloween or what. She always looked like those mummies we used to make in elementary school, wrapped in rolls of toilet paper. Lavender was sweet, with a side of creepy.
“Uh, okay. Sure.” I sat, a little unclear what she was doing in my house—or rather, Gabby’s house. It already felt like home to me. Everything important to me was here. Or would be if Gabby ever got home.
“So, last night was a bit of an emotional shock, am I right?” Lavender put on the little smile all psychologists are trained for their first day of psychology school. She turned fully toward me, her elbow on the back of the couch and her head resting on her palm.
“Well, yeah, you could say that.” The camera guy walked closer and I sat a little straighter.
She cocked her head to the side. “We could all see how shocking it was to be confronted by your brother. Do you two not get along?”
“Uh. He’s my half-brother. We share the same father. But no, we’ve never been close.” I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to share. With Lavender or the television audience.
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, I could see that. The way he ignored you looked very deliberate. I sensed a very dark aura around that man. Very different from yours, by the way. Often when people are hurting, they tend to enjoy hurting other people. Almost like they need everyone else to hurt as much as they do in order to feel better. I find that stopping that downward negativity spiral with a love spiral in the opposite direction is exactly what’s needed to balance the scales. You with me?”
“Y-yes?” What the hell was she talking about?
“So, let’s start the love spiral with some hugging. Free of charge. Come here.” She held her arms out to me, expecting me to jump right in there. I mean, yo, it was a free hug, right?
I was about to come up with some lame excuse to get out of it, when I caught her eye. Hers were sparkling and clear, like a fresh water pond on a sunny morning. She smiled and this time, the smile made me miss my grandma’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Her face got all blurry and to my shock, I found tears welling in my eyes. What the fuck was going on here?
“Oh, poor dear,” she murmured as I went into her arms, a willing participant.
The hug was soft but all-encompassing. Like floating on a cloud. Or bathing in a tub of cotton balls. I wasn’t sure if I’d entered heaven or smoked some of the really good weed that one guy in college always had. The how or the why didn’t matter. All I cared about was staying right there for all eternity. Or maybe just until Gabby got home. Or better yet, I’d invite Gabby to join this hug session and really live out my dreams.
No wonder Lavender made a good living off these hugs. She was the Olympic gold medalist of hugging. The Guinness Book of World Records holder for best hug ever given.
She stroked my back and I swear I purred. A hand went into my hair to tug on the strands and massage my scalp. My eyes rolled back in my head and I barely cared that my arm was falling asleep underneath me as I lay on the couch at an awkward angle, Lavender half on me, half on the couch.
Just when I was wondering what to do with the drool that was slowly seeping out the side of my mouth, a loud noise interrupted my free hug session.
I popped my head up from somewhere in the vicinity of Lavender’s bosom to see Gabby standing just inside the living room, a huge box tipped onto the floor at her feet, John behind her, trying to keep hold of his end of the box.
Her gaze took in the length of my body there on the couch before coming back to my face. Her wide eyes held a thousand emotions all at once, finally settling on hurt. Those brown eyes I loved so much filled with tears before she spun around and ran out, John lumbering after her, trying to call her back.
What was going on? Why did she take one look at me and run away like I’d just killed her cat had she had one? I looked at Lavender and she glanced from me to the now empty doorway.
“Oh dear.” She shook her head.
“What?” I asked, bewildered.
“I think poor Gabby misunderstood the love spiral.” Lavender released me from her magical arms, sitting up and disentangling herself from me.
“Wait. You think she—what? Thought you and I…?” I couldn’t even complete the damn sentence. Did Gabby actually think I was messing around with Lavender? I mean, she was a lovely woman, but she was old enough to be my mom. She was a professional hugger, for fuck’s sake! Huggers hug. That’s literally what they do all day long.
I hung my head. Everything in the last twenty-four hours had become such a cluster. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.” Lavender pressed her lips together, slowly shaking her head.
Hearing the most serene woman I knew swear was pretty funny, though, which was what I needed to jolt me out of my momentary depression.
I had to go find Gabby. We needed to talk. ASAP.
27
Gabby
I saw red for a brief second, then everything turned a horrifying gray tone, as if all the color in the world had been sucked out the minute I saw Rhett with another woman. A woman I’d thought was my friend. Someone I’d invited into my home.
I made it the two blocks to the ocean in a blur, sitting on a bench the city had set up for overwrought people like myself who needed to sit and stare at the ocean to come to terms with their shit show life.
Twice. I’d been cheated on twice? What the hell was wrong with me? Why did I keep choosing losers who thought it was okay to treat another human being like that? Then again, the two losers both had the same last name, so maybe it was some familial gene they were missing.
“Jesus, woman. You’re fast for someone with those short legs.” John huffed as he plopped down next to me.
I scooted over so he wouldn’t be sitting so close to me. I really couldn’t be held liable for any bodily harm since he was a male and every male was currently on my shit list.
“Didn’t ask you to come after me,” I muttered, crossing my arms.
“Now calm down—”
I spun on him, the red haze flaring again. “Don’t you freaking tell me to calm down right now, John Herrington!”
He nodded, hands held up in surrender. “Sorry ’bout that. Lavender doesn’t take kindly to that phrase either.” He put his hands back down. “What I meant to say was, you got the wrong idea back there. Lavender was just doing her job.”
I narrowed my eyes, not quite understanding. “Rhett hired Lavender?�
�
“Well, no. But when I told Lavender the fan you’d ordered had come in and I was heading over to drop it off, she wanted to come with to talk to you two about last night. You see, she got into the hug business because of her big heart. She sees people in pain and she wants to help.”
The scene I’d witnessed replayed in my head in slow motion. Oh shit. Rhett hadn’t been kissing her. He’d been mostly just lying there while she had her hand in his hair. I mean, they were more horizontal than vertical on that couch, but could they have just been hugging? I’d never seen a professional hugger in action to inform my conclusion. Was that what it looked like?
“So, what you’re saying is that they were just hugging there on the couch? Professionally? That’s normal?”
John pursed his lips and nodded. “Yep. Business as usual. Though I doubt she’d charge Rhett. Hugs for friends have always been free. That’s Lavender’s number two rule.”
Despite the cluster I lived in at the moment, I got curious and leaned in. “What’s her number one rule?”
He scratched his chin. “Always hug with clothes on.”
I nodded, the color around me already coming back. The ocean sparkled dark blue. “Right. Because otherwise, that would just be…”
“Cheating,” he supplied.
“Right.” Oh God, so that meant Rhett didn’t cheat on me. He wasn’t a bastard with a missing gene. He was just my sweet and funny Rhett who was hurting because I’d shut down on him last night and now I’d just run away from him again.
I slapped my hand on my forehead. “Ow.”
John patted me on the back. “Loving another person isn’t easy and it’s never perfect. But if you love them, it’s worth fighting for. I never thought I’d fall in love with a woman who spoons people for a living, but life is funny that way. I’ll let you two figure this out. Good luck, young lady.”
As I stared at the ocean waves hitting the sand and receding, I saw John get up and leave out of the corner of my eye. I needed to figure out how to talk to Rhett. How to apologize for being so stupid. How to get things back on track.
I needed Lily-Marie to Dr. Phil me. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and hit her contact.
“Well, did you talk to him?”
“I can babysit two nights a week for a year.” She had to take me up on that bribe, right?
“Jesus.” She huffed and sighed. “Why didn’t you talk to him?”
“I was going to, but I couldn’t find him. Then I did find him, but he was in the middle of his hug session and I misinterpreted things.”
“What the hell’s a hug session? Wait. Never mind. Don’t care. So what’s the problem now?”
I tilted my head back, watching a seagull swoop over my head and land on the sand to scrounge for food left by careless humans. “I just don’t know what to say to him to apologize. To prove I’m over Hew.”
“Maybe you’re not over him,” Lily-Marie said almost in a whisper, like saying it out loud was taboo.
“I’m not still in love with Hew,” I nearly spat the words, despising the way they tasted and hating she thought for even one second I wasn’t over him.
“It’s not about being in love with him. It’s about still giving him a part of you. You can’t go into this with Rhett for reals if a part of you is still doing it to get back at Hew. Wasn’t that your whole reason for going on the reality show? Rhett deserves one hundred percent of you, not ninety-five, not even ninety-nine.” Lily-Marie, the voice of reason, probably with a newborn baby in her arms and operating on two hours of sleep.
“But Rhett is my ex’s brother. It just seems so wrong, like I’m breaking some ancient bro code that’ll sic karma on my ass for all eternity.”
I could practically hear the eye roll through the phone. “You love who you love. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, then it’s all good.”
I hemmed and hawed, not ready to let it go quite yet. “Um, I’m pretty sure I’m hurting Hew. You should have seen the way he charged in there last night. He was clearly hurt by me dating Rhett.”
There was a pause.
“Was he, Gabby? Was he actually hurt? Or was his pride hurt?”
I shrugged, which I realized she couldn’t see. Didn’t matter anyway because she went on.
“He didn’t want you, didn’t love you, that much is clear, right? He wouldn’t have cheated on you if he did. So, that means he can’t possibly be hurt over you dating Rhett. His pride simply took a hit when he saw the little brother he hates with the woman he deep-down knows he shouldn’t have let get away. There’s a difference. Don’t purposely confuse the two because you’re scared to give your heart to someone and fully trust again.”
My jaw dropped. “Damn, girl. You Dr. Phil better than Dr. Phil.”
Lily-Marie sniffed. “I seem to remember a similar conversation when I was pushing away Jameson. My bestie saw through my shit and set me straight. So. You’re welcome.”
“You know I love you, right?” My eyes misted over again. I wanted to reach through the phone and hug the crap out of her, Lavender style.
“I know. And I love you right back,” she said softly.
I giggled, my voice thick with emotion. “I never thought the guy who broke my heart would also have broken the heart of my fake boyfriend who now holds my heart.”
“Girl, that’s some next level crazy…” Lily-Marie muttered. “I expected nothing less from you. Now go talk to your man!”
“Okay, thank you.” We hung up and I slipped the phone in my back pocket. The breeze tossed my hair in my face, momentarily blocking out my view of the beach.
“Hey.”
I’d recognize that rumble anywhere. My stomach dropped, but my heart soared.
“Rhett.” My voice was reverent, his presence what I hoped and prayed for made real.
Seeing his rumpled T-shirt and board shorts felt like seeing home for the first time in days. He sat down on the bench, his elbows on his knees. He looked down at his hands, the lack of a smile on his face my fault. There were smudges of darkness under his eyes that even the smattering of freckles couldn’t hide. A sense of urgency rushed through me. I needed to make this right.
“I’m—”
“Gabby—”
His head rose and he finally looked at me. His hand gestured for me to go first. I rushed to start, wanting to keep his eyes trained on mine so he could see the sincerity.
“I’m so sorry, Rhett. For last night, for this morning. Everything’s such a mess, but mostly because of how I reacted. I-I was shocked by Hew barging in and I handled it horribly. The whole reason I was on the show was to show him how happy I am now that he and I were not together. But then I didn’t count on you. I didn’t count on developing feelings for you or how that would change my intentions for this show. I hadn’t even really come to terms with dating my ex’s brother. And it all hit me in the face when I saw Hew and the cameras were catching everything.” Something wet hit my cheek and I swiped at it, realizing belatedly it was a tear. “I should have come to you immediately and talked it out, but I was afraid.” The last part came out in a whisper. Funny how shame can grab you by the throat and stop the words that need to be said the most.
Rhett sat back, the weight of his body slumping against the backrest, jostling me on the tiny wooden bench. He was back to looking at anything besides me.
“Gabby…” he muttered. My heart quit soaring and joined my stomach on the ground. He wasn’t going to accept my apology. I’d barely had him and I’d already lost him.
Then he turned toward me, tucking his leg under his body, his arm on the backrest, his gaze fully on me like I was the only person in the whole wide world. I tamped down my heart’s insistence on flying again. We had miles to go and hours of conversation before I could reach a verdict on how things would pan out for Rhett and me.
“Why were you afraid?”
He hadn’t touched me yet and I ached for it. My skin had gotten used to him already, the way he�
�d brush his thumb against my shoulder back and forth while his arm was over me or how he’d find a way to touch my back if we were standing, or my thigh if we were sitting. His question made me nervous and his touch would have helped.
But I didn’t deserve his help. I had to flay myself open, reveal the remaining worms left over from Hew, and rid myself of them. Me. I had to do it. Not Lily-Marie. Not Rhett. Me.
Best to do it like a Band-Aid, right? Let it rip.
“I was scared to come to you because it would require me being totally honest with myself, first of all. And then you’d see me. Like really see me, worms and all. I didn’t like myself very much so how could I show that to you?”
“Why didn’t you like yourself?” His face gave away no emotion.
I paused, wanting to really dig deep to find the answer. Not the flimsy excuses I’d given myself for years, but the true essence of me and why I did what I did.
“I allowed Hew to make me feel not worthy of love all those years. And then when he cheated on me, it said my love wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. And I believed that lie. My stupid idea to go on that show was my crazy attempt to make myself feel better. So stupid…” I shook my head. “When he came in and said those horrible things, I had this huge realization that I was still hung up on him.”
I felt Rhett stiffen next to me. Rushing to set him straight, I said, “I’m not still in love with him. But I was still stuck on proving him wrong, when he wasn’t the one I needed to prove it to. I needed to prove it to myself that I was worthy of love, that I’m enough. He has nothing to do with that. So why was I still bending over backward trying to shove something in his face? It wasn’t the betrayal that hurt, it was what I decided it meant about myself. And I’ve decided it only means Hew is an asshole. Full stop.”
I looked back up at Rhett to see the stone face gone, replaced by a softening in his blue eyes.
“And the fact he and I are half-brothers. Does that still bother you?”