Carpentry and Cocktails

by Smartypants Romance

  "Pretty much."

  Joss lifted her head and stared at me, her eyes were curious and careful. "You really wanted to kiss me that badly?"

  I spoke on a laugh. "Yeah. I've wanted to kiss you that badly since the day I met you."

  Her face fell. "You're joking."

  "Why would I joke about that?" I asked.

  "You've … you … for five years?" She gasped. "There's no way."

  My eyebrows popped up. "Trust me, I'm not lying to gain brownie points right now."

  She shook her head. "Levi, you're my best friend," she said, like it was all the explanation necessary.

  Something dark and huge opened in my stomach. The worst-case scenario I always worried about, like a weed sprouting up between us. "I know. And you're mine. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Joss."

  She laughed unsteadily and pushed backward on the seat, adding space between us. "Come on, be serious."

  "I am being serious." My voice was firm because I wanted her to know how real and true this was for me, but inside, inside, I felt the cold brush of panic at her reaction.

  If there was one thing I knew about her, knew about this woman who I loved so desperately, it was that she could burrow into her safety net and mute the feelings that would only serve to make her feel worse. Her kiss told me everything I needed to know, that she felt exactly what I wanted her to feel, but I knew how capable her brain was at shutting off the feelings that scared her.

  With a flick of her wrist, she'd slide the lock into place, and that had my brain whirring furiously at how I should handle this.

  Her breathing picked up again, quick and panicky and furiously paced. "There's no way," she said again. "There's no way you've been sitting back for five years. There’s no way you'd want to deal with what this would do to your life."

  As she said it, she looked down at her legs, then back up again. I damn well knew what she meant, and given how well she knew me, it was a bullshit excuse.

  It was the most convenient thing she could grasp at, and that alone stoked the tiny flames of frustration inside me.

  I leaned in until we were practically nose to nose. "Ask me, Joss."

  She pinched her eyes shut. "I'm scared to."

  All the times I worried about not pushing too hard, Sylvia's question about whether I tiptoed around her feelings because of what happened to her, they all thundered ominously in my head, and I knew, I knew this was no time to back down.

  "Ask me how long I've felt like this," I pleaded, my hands itching to pull her into my arms again.

  "I can't," she whispered and frantically fumbled for the door handle behind her.

  Chapter 17

  Jocelyn

  If I stopped to think about what I was doing, I would've moved more slowly. Been more thoughtful about my foot placement, or the fact that I was wearing heels.

  "Jocelyn," he called out when I gripped the handle on the roof of his truck and swung my legs over.

  Out. I had to get out.

  I couldn't ask, because if I asked, I'd know. And if I knew, it might make me think back on the five years through a lens that all of this was a giant, huge fake.

  Levi was already opening his door when I slid down the seat, which was what made me look over my shoulder at him. I didn't pay attention to where my foot was landing until my ankle slipped to the side, and my other foot caught on the step up into the truck.

  I cried out, my hand gripping the handle as tight as I could manage as my legs slid out from under me. My other hand came up to grasp blindly at the door handle.

  "Shit, Joss, hang on," he yelled as he sprinted around the truck to me.

  I felt awkward and weak and pathetic, my legs dangling helplessly, twisted up like a pretzel. And I felt irrational. Manipulated. Lied to. Like everything we'd been through was fake. Contrived.

  Even though I tried to breathe myself out of the tight, snapping squeeze of panic wrapping around my lungs, I couldn't.

  I felt his hands on my back, and I tensed up.

  "Don't," I snapped. "Please don't help me right now."

  My forehead pressed against my forearm, and any tears I'd held back before hit my cheeks with hot strikes, little lashes of the most acute embarrassment. My hands tightened, and I pulled up as hard as my arms could manage in their awkward placement.

  With a quick glance down at my legs, I straightened them as well as I could, quads and glutes shaking. I heard the bounce of wheels hit the ground, and my chair appeared behind me. Silently, Levi clicked the locks into place.

  I took a deep breath and lifted my head, trying to ignore the wetness on my cheeks. When I felt like my feet were straight and my ankles steady, I dropped the hand on the handle and brought it down to my chair.

  Relief almost had me falling backward because if this entire thing had ended with me literally curled up on the ground, I'd never, ever be able to face Levi again.

  My other hand gripped the armrest, and I lowered my body into the chair. I was shaking when I set my feet onto the footplate.

  He'd stayed silent the entire time, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he had one hand covering his mouth and the other propped on his hip.

  I couldn't bear it. My own reaction, not even factoring in what happened after, had me sinking my face into my hands so I could just … hide for a second.

  Kissing Levi. Oh, my heart could hardly think about it without triggering a fresh wave of tears.

  "Joss," he pleaded. "Talk to me."

  I took a second, quick swipe of my fingers under my eyes to clear the tears before I unlocked my chair.

  Stay, stay, stay, a voice screamed in my head. I felt jittery and frantic, the desire to flee so overwhelming that my body couldn't even risk listening to my head.

  "I-I can't be out in my driveway for this."

  Okay, that made about zero sense, and even as it came out of my mouth, I heard the screaming illogic of it.

  But where that desire came from, I damn well knew. If this was the one sliver of control I could regain over this situation, then I'd lift my chin and go back into the house like it made all the sense in the world.

  Levi breathed in and out, loud and frustrated, but he came after me, closing the passenger side door when I was clear of it. His quiet was almost as frustrating as if he was pestering me with questions or demanding I stay and talk to him.

  The quiet was patience.

  The quiet was persistence.

  The quiet was constancy. Humility. A composure that one of us was severely lacking.

  The quiet was absolutely fucking terrifying.

  I felt my nose tingle as I got to the top of the ramp and dug my keys out of my purse. My hand was shaking so hard that I could hardly fit it into the lock.

  Levi gently took the keys from my hand and slipped the key in. I stared straight ahead, but I could see the tension tight in his jaw.

  Nero greeted us happily, and his massive, wiggling body brought a tiny smile to my face as I scratched his head.

  "Back up, Nero," Levi said, and my dog complied instantly. I pushed forward until I was by the couch. Levi closed the door, locking it behind him.

  Nero's excitement faded instantly because he could sense the tension in me. His snout shoved underneath my hands, and he lifted up, whining loudly. "It's okay, bud," I whispered. "I'm okay."

  Levi stood by the couch, hands still on his hips. "Want me to put him outside?"

  My hand trembled over the ridge at the back of Nero's skull. He felt like a suit of armor I desperately wanted to wrap around me, but I nodded.

  Levi whistled, and Nero hesitated for a moment, licking my hand furiously before I told him to go. He bounded toward the slider, which opened and closed immediately.

  Before Levi joined me in the room, I stared at the couch, trying to decide if I would feel more comfortable there, but the decision was made for me when he came back in, long sure strides in my direction. Levi sat on the couch directly in front of me, where I'd have no
choice but to look at his face.

  I couldn't read it. Couldn't decipher it. The face I would've sworn, just one short hour ago, held no secrets from me, suddenly felt unfamiliar.

  "Talk to me," he begged quietly, firmly. Now I could see something I recognized in the set of his jaw. The flames in his eyes trained on me with no wavering, no indecision. I wouldn't be able to run away from this today; I wouldn't be able to hide from what he was handing me with both hands. "Tell me what scares you, Sonic."

  My eyes watered until his face got blurry and unfocused.

  "Please. I'll make it go away if you just tell me."

  I inhaled shakily, not trying to stop the tears. "I-I feel like if I ask you how long you've felt this way, I'll look at our whole friendship differently. Like, like it wasn't real if I know the truth."

  "No," he said immediately, leaning toward me and clasping my hands in his while shaking his head. "No, Joss. It was real. You know me better than anyone in this entire world, and you know I'd never put up with someone this long if I didn't mean it. Whether I wanted to kiss you or not is completely irrelevant."

  My laugh was watery. I wiped at my face until Levi took pity, leaned over to the end table, and plucked a tissue out of the box. His eyes were soft, so understanding, that I couldn't hold them for very long.

  Because he knew.

  The thought that someone might have been manipulating me—that showing anyone the sides of me that I kept tucked behind the thickest pieces of metal could've somehow been used against me—was the first thing that would have me come out swinging.

  Levi, of anyone on this earth, knew what the softest, most vulnerable part of my underbelly looked like. And now it felt like he could wield that knowledge against me. Hold it in his hand like a sword or aim it like a gun.

  So yes, he knew me. I knew him. But not really as well as I'd thought. That had my head lifting and my hands retracting slowly out from under his. Gently, so it didn't seem like a rejection.

  It wasn't rejection—it was protection.

  "So it was like, an experiment or something? Kissing me?" I asked quietly. Please, let it be an experiment.

  His jaw flexed as he stared at me. "No."

  I shook my head.

  "You don't believe me?" he asked, voice raising a touch. Frustration was clear in his tone, the set of his eyes, and the way he held his hands. "You think I'd lie to you about this? When have I ever lied to you, Joss?"

  "I don't know, Levi. That's my point. You keep saying I know you best of everyone, but that's obviously not true!"

  "Give me a break. That doesn't mean you were some game to win or challenge to conquer. It just means that I have feelings and have had feelings that go a hell of a lot further than the desire to kiss you. And because I'm being honest with you at a time that finally feels right, you think I'm a liar."

  And that had my voice raising, the little hairs lifting on the back of my neck as they did when I felt an irrational need to defend myself. "I think you can't possibly have wanted to date me this entire time, Levi. I think maybe everything in your life has come so easily to you that I've felt like some weird challenge you had to overcome because there's no freaking way you want to take all this on in your life. Not really."

  His mouth dropped open, and he leaned forward. "Take on all of this …" he repeated slowly, head shaking.

  I shifted in my seat, face hot and heart pounding, hands shaking and the desire to flee so strong that I almost unlocked my chair just to back away from the way he was looking at me. "You know what I mean. You can date anybody, and you have. All the single women in Green Valley under the age of forty would fall prostrate if you looked in their direction."

  "Good for them," he said. "I'm not interested. You tell me one person I've dated seriously in the past five years. One."

  "I—" My mouth snapped shut, and I looked over his shoulder at the wall. Because I couldn't.

  "Exactly. You can't name anyone beyond a couple of dates because I didn't want to date anyone other than you, but you weren't ready. You never saw me that way, and the moment I felt something change …" He leaned in again, staring down at my lips when he did. "The exact moment I knew you were feeling something different, I knew it was time to redefine."

  "Redefine?"

  "Us," he said simply. "Redefine the way we spend all our time together. Redefine being best friends who can now make out whenever the hell we feel like it. That I can hold your hand. Take you out. Feed you grapes or Twizzlers or cupcakes or whatever the hell you want to be fed. Sleep in a bed with you."

  The flames under my skin roared to a dangerous level. It felt too big for my skin, too much for my mortal flesh and bones to contain, to withstand any longer.

  "And you're going to turn me at night? Make sure I have blankets between my knees so I don't get sores? Deal with the fact I haven't gotten a solid night’s sleep in seven years? You're going to stand by when people look at me the way they do? Be rude when they meet me? Assume I'm helpless?"

  His face was implacable. "Hell yes, I'll deal with it. It's not about dealing with it, Joss, it's your truth, and I know what the reality of your life looks like."

  I laughed under my breath, and it helped cool the flames, inch by inch, beat by beat, until I felt like I could breathe again.

  "No, you don't," I told him. "You know parts of it. And you know the parts that you've seen. But you're not ready for this. This isn't what you want."

  Even as the words came out, I knew how unfair they were. Everything I'd heard from him, and everything he hadn't said yet, but what I could see in his eyes, I wanted to hide from. In my head, the words were a bulletproof vest, unbreakable and unyielding.

  Levi breathed in and out, his eyes trained firmly on my face. He then ripped that vest apart like it was cardboard.

  "Bullshit," he whispered.

  "What?"

  He slid forward on the couch and grabbed the wheels on my chair so I couldn't move, his face inches away from mine. Air slid harsh and fast from my nose as I struggled to breathe.

  "I call bullshit. My best friend is not a coward, and right now, you're acting like one. You're using this flimsy piece of metal and rubber as an excuse, and it's bullshit."

  There were no words that I could spit at him, nothing that I could hide behind, because he knew, and I knew he was right. But there were no words falling off my tongue to tell him that. They were stuck down my throat, in my stomach, somewhere hidden and coated in sticky, thorny pride.

  Levi nodded slowly because, damn him, he saw it.

  "I hate you right now," I whispered unevenly, tears burning hot in my throat and nose and eyes.

  "You don't hate me." He matched my tone. "You may not like me right now, but you don't hate me, Jocelyn Abernathy. It scares the hell out of you that your wheelchair doesn’t bother me, that I don't care that you're the prickliest woman I've ever met in my life, and that I’m not running off because your legs don't work the way you want them to."

  One tear fell over the edge of my lashes, and he swept it away with his thumb. There was no lingering this time, nothing romantic in the way he touched my cheek.

  I cursed my stupid pride. My stubbornness. Because there was this tiny spark, this sliver of light that made me want to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him again, but I couldn't. I couldn't.

  He didn't mean it.

  He couldn't mean it.

  That he'd been in front of me this entire time, and never said a word, never hinted, I just couldn't force my head to move past that. Not with him sitting in front me saying everything that I should want to hear, but everything that terrified me the most.

  "I—" I started but stopped again, shaking my head. "I can't do this right now."

  Levi didn't move for a few seconds, searching my face with those bright golden eyes. Then he nodded slowly.

  "Of all the times I imagined this date," he said sadly, "I never imagined it would end with you crying before I could even take you out to dinner.
I should've done this better. Handled it better."

  He stood fast, and I exhaled a rough breath, a hand coming up to my chest. Yup, my heart was still there.

  "Call me when you're ready to talk, okay?" he asked.

  I nodded.

  Then he leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of my head, which had me tightening the hand on my chest. Before he left, he opened the slider for Nero, who bounded over to me and burrowed his head on my lap.

  I risked a glance at Levi, and on his face was a sad little smile.

  "I told you that you look beautiful, right?" he said.

  Another tear slid down my cheek unchecked, and I nodded. He was turning to go when I found my voice again, just enough to give him something. Something other than my fears.

  "I promise I'll call soon," I told him.

  He paused with his hand on the door, and I saw his shoulders relax.

  When the door closed behind him, I wrapped my arms around my dog's neck, unleashed my sobs, and soaked his fur down to the skin because nobody was there to see it.

  Chapter 18

  Jocelyn

  "Joss, honey, how long has it been since you've done … well … anything to your hair?"

  The frosting spatula didn't so much as waver while I spread lemon buttercream over the four-layer raspberry cake as I turned it on the lazy Susan.

  "Are you trying to tell me something, Joy?"

  She cleared her throat, and I kept my eyes straight ahead.

  Oh, I'd been a real peach the past four days. When I did talk, it came out like a snarl. Because if I tried to sound pleasant, or like I was okay, I'd probably lose my shit.

  "No, no," she hurried to say, "just curious. If it's a new trend, I always like to know. Maybe … maybe unkempt is the new thing, you know? If anyone can pull it off, it's you. You look really wild. Kinda like you were raised by wolves or …"

  Now I lifted my eyes to her. Her skin was pale.

  "Wolves?"

  Joy's face fell. "N-no! I just …" She licked her lips, darting her eyes around the kitchen like someone might rescue her. Mikey held his hands up and ran back out to the register. One of the other part-timers watched us like we were the Real Housewives of Green Valley. I almost offered to make her popcorn. "I just want to make sure you're okay," Joy finished softly.