Give Love a Chai (Common Threads Book 2)

by Smartypants Romance

  Feigning seriousness, she tapped a finger to her chin. “Hmm, The Bachelorette. I like the idea of women having the upper hand. Or maybe Bachelor in Paradise where anything goes and tacos are aplenty.”

  “Definitely that, then.” I nodded solemnly.

  “How did you find this place? All these blankets, pillows, and this basket?” she said, pointing to everything before plopping down on the mattress.

  “The blankets and pillows I borrowed from my hotel room. The basket, that was tricky. I had to steal it from a family in the park.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “What?”

  The warmth that was ballooning within me ever since she had let me hold her hand deflated. “It was a joke. I convinced a bakery to sell me this from their window display.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you—that you … I’m sorry,” apologized Tia, her cheeks flushing.

  Shrugging slightly, I tried to hide my hurt. I was used to people judging me and had learned to easily brush it off, but damn it, I cared about what she thought. “It’s not an illogical assumption. I mean, my dad did go to jail for identify theft and stealing. Don’t worry about it.”

  Silence cast a pallor over the rooftop, even as the sun continued to cover us with brightness. Tia started haltingly, “I wasn’t comparing you to your dad. From everything I’ve heard about him and from everything I know about you, you are not your dad’s son except via biology. You’ve always been … you. And being you is pretty great.”

  The passion in her voice caught me off guard, as my heartbeat slowed in an effort to freeze this snapshot. When we were younger, her belief in me had scared me as much as it had pulled me to her. Whatever mess was our past, I was grateful for and touched by her confidence in me.

  Now looking extra awkward, she wrinkled her nose. “I was just surprised that you joked about stealing. You wouldn’t have poked fun at yourself before. It threw me for a loop. Not for a minute did I think you stole this basket.”

  And… I was an idiot. “I guess I’m still a little sensitive about being compared to Brandon. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

  “You’re forgiven as long as you feed me,” she said, a genuine smile peeking out.

  I was relieved that this hadn’t turned into a blow-out fight, as so many of our minor miscommunications had in the past. For fuck’s sake, she had once asked if I wanted to sneak snacks into the movie theater to avoid paying for twenty-dollar popcorn, and I had accused her of associating me with criminal activities. Instead of enjoying date night, we had argued about finances, and I had ended up sleeping on the couch. Yeah, not my best moment. There were unfortunately a lot of not-my-best-moments in our marriage.

  Out of the basket, I pulled out jars of crunchy peanut butter, smooth peanut butter, the gross organic kind that was basically peanut butter liquid, almond butter, sunflower butter, cashew butter, Nutella, hemp seed butter, and even a jar of Vegemite. “I wasn’t sure what you preferred, so I have some options.”

  Laughing in surprise, Tia opened up the jar of Vegemite. Her sniff turned into a gag, as she waved a hand in front of her nose and held the jar far away from her. “Ew! Next, please.”

  “It’s not that bad actually,” I said, taking the jar from her and opening up the hemp seed butter for her to smell. “I tried it in Australia last year.”

  “You left the country? I didn’t think I would ever see the day. You never seemed interested in traveling. Not bad,” she exclaimed, taking a whiff.

  “I’m full of surprises. Here.” I spooned some of the hemp seed butter for her to try. Big mistake. Her pink tongue swirled around the spoon, licking it clean. Her eyes briefly closed, as she focused on the taste. Immediately my brain was filled with lurid images of what else her tongue and mouth could taste. My hand squeezed the jar so hard that the top popped off, the sound startling both of us.

  I stared straight at her, willing myself not to hide my thoughts, needing her to see the raw hunger she stirred in me.

  Clearing her throat, she brushed the invitation aside and said huskily, “I might go for a little bit of each.”

  With meticulous attention to detail, she spread strawberry jam on a piece of bread, cut another piece into four squares and spread crunchy peanut butter, Nutella, hemp seed butter, and Vegemite onto each of the squares.

  I watched in hunger. Not for food, for I had years of ignoring hunger pains under my belt, but for her. For her laughter and wide smiles, for her scrunched-up face when she was thinking, even for her innocent moves that were tortuously sensual.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” She held out one of her perfectly made sandwich squares.

  “Starving,” I whispered, taking a bite from her hand.

  She gulped, realizing too late where my mind was living. “The Vegemite isn’t too bad,” she remarked, trying to move the conversation to safer ground.

  I humored her, banking the hunger for her within me temporarily. “It’s definitely an acquired taste. It kind of tastes like kombucha or beer.”

  “Look at you—traveling the globe, eating all sorts of things. Though, it seems some things don’t change.” She smiled as she watched me pile a mountain of chips inside my peanut butter and jam sandwich.

  “It’s the best way.” I crunched down, enjoying the crackle as I chewed, making me deaf to all sounds except the crush of chips against my teeth. This had been my dinner for years when I was a kid—easy enough for a kid to make, and loud enough to drown out my dad slinging insults.

  Going back to her earlier comment, I asked, “What’s so different about me?”

  “Besides the obvious.” She gestured, her hand waving circles in front of me.

  “What’s the obvious?” I looked down at me. Was it my clothes? Yeah, they were nicer and cleaner than before. That was to be expected. We weren’t nine-year-old kids running around the woods behind her house with dirt on our knees anymore.

  “You know.”

  “No, I actually don’t.” I looked at my hands and touched my hair. My hair was still the same black, my eyes still this lame gray color, and as far as I knew, I was still six-two, same as ten years ago.

  Sighing dramatically but still not articulating an answer, Tia waved off the question. Under her breath, I thought I heard her mutter something to the effects of, “Clearly, you don’t own a mirror.” That couldn’t have been correct, as she had been inside my house and most likely saw the mirror in my bathroom.

  “What’s the nonobvious?” I asked, hoping it would be clearer.

  Eyes narrowed and face scrunched in concentration, she looked at me with her head tilted to the side. After a moment, she responded, “You seem more comfortable with yourself,

  yet more willing to be uncomfortable.”

  Okay, that made no sense. I sniffed the Vegemite jar. Had I bought an expired jar, causing Tia’s loopiness?

  Nope, smelled fine. Or rather, smelled like Vegemite. “I give up. What’s the answer to your riddle?”

  Her smile widened, showing off her very straight teeth. “I don’t know. You don’t slouch anymore, your voice is louder. You feel less angsty. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. You still feel a little angsty, but there’s a sort of … gravity? Gravitas? Presence? Something around you, as if you’re more in control. You’re going to places like Australia and trying foods that you would have scoffed at years ago. You seem more worldly, which I would have never guessed, especially with how stubbornly stuck in your ways you were.”

  “A far cry from the kid who claimed that he would never leave Colorado. Actually, traveling to exotic places never seemed attainable as a kid, so I never thought much about it back then.” I didn’t add that a lot of the changes that she had just described were a direct result of her leaving me. It gave me a push to be different. No, not different, because I was still me. No, just … more. And better.

  We ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, enjoying the sunshine and view of the river. When Tia shivered in the chilly ai
r, I wrapped a big blanket around her legs. She kept stealing glances at me, as if not quite believing that we were here, ten years later, and not throwing things at each other. To tell the truth, I couldn’t believe it either and certainly had never expected to see her again.

  I could tell there was something on her mind. Instinct told me that she would be unable to keep the thought to herself. Unlike me, she had never been the type to bottle her feelings.

  After rearranging her blanket around her legs, then around her shoulders, back to her legs, tucking them around her this way and that, smoothing out some imaginary wrinkle, she asked in a too offhanded way, “Why didn’t you sign the papers this time? You couldn’t have been pining for me all these years, so why not sign them and move on with your life?”

  Despite her casual tone, the weight of her question made me pause. I didn’t have answers for myself, never mind for her. Deliberating my words, I admitted, “I don’t know. Even though it sucked that our marriage didn’t work the first time, I’ve moved on.”

  “Wouldn’t signing the papers help you stay ‘moved on’?” she asked, leaning forward a little.

  “What if I don’t want to? Seeing you again, I felt a spark. It felt like a second chance.”

  “When you found out about Clayton, why did you stay?” probed Tia, leaning even farther forward until our heads were nearly touching. I became distracted by the black and brown flecks in her eyes, lightened by the glow of the sun around us.

  Pushing away the distraction of her eyes and tamping down the sense of discomfort at her questions, I focused on her words. Ever since I knew her, she had asked a lot of questions: What do you like? What don’t you like? What would you do in this situation? And way too often, why did you do that and how do you feel now?

  Feeling defensive yet trying not to raise up walls unnecessarily, I forced myself to continue, “I couldn’t tell how serious you were about each other.”

  “What does that mean? We were engaged. How much more serious could you be?” she retorted.

  “Married,” I said, not fully able to keep the sarcasm out of my tone.

  Her burst of laughter was a surprise to both of us, loud peals that faded in the open air and turned into giggles, as she eventually collapsed against the blankets in front of her. Mirth still evident in her crinkly eyes, she looked up at me from her pile of blankets. “Oh, Andrew, what a mess we’re in. How do we get out of it?”

  Unable to resist any longer, I reached out to play with the strands of hair peeking out from her hat. Teasingly, I replied, trying not to scare her, “We go on lots of dates for the next couple of weeks, find out that we hate each other and go along our merry ways.”

  “Or leave as friends,” she whispered dubiously, clearly not convinced by the idea.

  I nodded, even though I couldn’t imagine the prospect of having her in my life only as a friend. Even if I wasn’t worthy of Tia, my heart squeezed at the thought of watching her go back to Clayton or start to date someone else. No, I’d much rather be called a sore loser than pretend to be okay.

  Before I could overthink it, I threw in, “Besides, if there was no chance for me, you and Clayton wouldn’t have broken up so easily. Neither of you fought very hard for each other.”

  Outside of the slight widening of her eyes and the sudden stillness of her constantly-in-motion hands, there were no outbursts, no throwing plates, or leaving. Instead, she sat silently, staring off into the scenic view behind me. I could sense her mind treading water, turning over information and filtering what words to say aloud. Making no sudden movements, I waited, matching my breaths to her slow and controlled ones, as if that adjustment could tie us together.

  Great going, dumbass. You couldn’t just stick to stupid jokes for the first day. My first reaction was to soothe her, even as another part of me needed to know the depth of her relationship with Clayton. It had been a question that was tickling at the back of my mind ever since I saw them in her office.

  Shut up, I told that part of me. This is not the time. Don’t disturb the peace.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Tia,” I said.

  “No, no, no.” Her eyes cleared and sharpened. “Don’t brush it off. You asked for both of us to be fully in this ‘arrangement’ or whatever this thing is. That means talking and asking questions, and actually answering them, which we were pretty bad at before.”

  As if taking a big mental breath, she continued, “Your comment struck a nerve with me. Maybe I read too many Scottish Highlands and Regency novels and have unrealistic ideas of what love is… When Clayton and I started dating, we had our careers squared away, and our lives in order. It felt like the right next step to be in a serious relationship. Now, I can’t help wondering if Clayton and I rushed into a relationship because we were convenient.”

  Right! I wanted to shout. Well aware of the emotional spikes below me, I stepped carefully onto the metaphorical thin tightrope. “I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t happy that you two broke up. Looking back on our relationship, I wish I would have fought harder for us. It’s the biggest regret that I have.”

  “Do you regret Charlie?” Tia asked suddenly.

  “I don’t want to talk about her. She’s not going to be an issue for us.”

  “She was an issue ten years ago,” Tia insisted, her voice rising with hurt frustration. “She wasn’t the only issue and not even the biggest, but …” Her voice trailed off, as her shoulders drooped.

  “But what?”

  “It’s hard for me to even consider whatever this is between us, when I keep wondering what your relationship is with Charlie or if you’re on Tinder sending dick pics, or sliding into someone’s DMs or whatever people do on TikTok.”

  “I promise you, there are no nudes of me out there. I am fully focused on you.” I didn’t know how else I could make that clear to her. “Do you want to check my phone?”

  “No, I don’t want to be that kind of partner. I want to trust you. I know I’m being hypocritical, since we almost kissed while I was still engaged to Clayton. I already feel rotten about it. I can tell myself that it was because I was overwhelmed, surprised—”

  “Or maybe you almost kissed me because you knew that Clayton wasn’t the right person,” I said.

  “So if you thought I was the right person when we got married, why did you still bring Charlie back to our apartment?”

  “I never cheated.”

  “Let’s call it a difference of opinions about the definition of cheating, then,” she said in a pacifying voice, even as her eyebrows rose sardonically.

  “No, not a difference of opinions. I’m pretty sure our definitions are the exact same. The answer is still no. No cheating, no bases, no home runs, nothing,” I insisted, frustration bubbling up inside of me. I didn’t want her to think the worst of me, to distrust me, not then and certainly not now.

  Looking unconvinced, she took a deep breath. “Fine, at least an omission of the whole truth, then.”

  That silenced me, for she was right. For months after we broke up, I had thought about picking up the phone to tell her the full story. Each time, I stopped myself, because what was the point? This had been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back but the load had been too heavy to start with.

  My palms out in a gesture of peace, I tried to shove my frustrations aside. “I don’t want to fight with you, not today. All I know is that I think there might be something between us still. Maybe we just need closure, maybe there’s something here. We can’t not try. Remember our agreement?”

  I hated that I was using the divorce papers to get Tia to spend time with me, but I was desperate. It was risky, since she could still have her lawyer file without my signature. It would make the proceedings harder, but if she wanted to, she could still force our divorce through the courts. And I would lose whatever time I had with her.

  “Andrew, if you want a real chance, then you can’t hide. I’m taking a risk now. Take this risk with me,” she plead
ed urgently.

  I remembered the tears and hurt on Tia’s face when she stormed out years ago. As I looked into her face now, I could see the tears that she was trying valiantly to fight back. There was no hope for us if she couldn’t get over her distrust of me. And I desperately, more desperately than I was expecting, wanted that hope for us.

  My mind made up, I watched Tia’s face closely. “Charlie is my sister.”

  A beat passed before Tia’s face scrunched up in surprised. “What? She looks nothing like you.”

  “She’s technically my younger, half sister—we have the same sperm donor. I look like Brandon unfortunately, whereas Charlie looks like her mother.”

  Now that the confession was out, I realized how stupid it had been for me to withhold this. Now that I had started telling the story, the rest was easy. “After we got married, I got this call out of the blue from someone. She was rambling about our dad, and that she was my sister. I thought it was a prank call. A day later, she showed up at our apartment.”

  Horror and guilt shone on Tia’s face as she dropped her face in her hands.

  Reaching out hesitantly, I took her face in my hands, even as my heart constricted with regret. “I’m so sorry, Tia. I should have told you when you asked.”

  Shaking her head, she whispered, her words spoken in bursts, “I think I should be the one apologizing for running away and filing for divorce before you could explain.”

  “It looked bad, I admit. That evening, Charlie showed up after our fight, and I was shocked as hell when she told me the story. She was a mess, crying, soaked from a rainstorm. I think she had driven all the way from Chicago. It was no secret that my dad cheated on my mom regularly before he went to jail. It was very plausible that he could have fathered more kids. Charlie had a DNA test, documents that her private detective had found. It sounded crazy, but I believed her. So I let her shower and gave her some old sweats to warm up. That’s the situation you walked in on.”