A stroll down memory lane can be dangerous.
If you only go down the paths with good memories, it’s too easy to get lost there, to want to take a trip back there. I can’t let myself fall into that trap. I have to remember the bad roads. That’s the problem with Knox and me. There really weren’t any bad roads until the major detour that derailed us. Mostly, things were great between us. I would never tell him this, but I often wonder if I overreacted, if that’s what led to our breakup. If I’d been a little older, a little more mature, but I guess the same is true for him, too. Truthfully, we both could’ve handled things better, but that was a long time ago.
Then why is he hanging out in my front yard?
And why are my panties wet, even though I changed clothes after sitting in the rain hours ago?
*
It was another night where I barely slept. Sleepless nights with Knox used to be more fun than this. Last night, when I wasn’t tossing and turning, I was checking to see if he was gone or still waiting for me outside. I’m not sure when he finally gave up and left, but I wouldn’t put it past him to show up again.
This morning, I opened my front door with more caution than I’ve ever exercised in my whole life. I’ve had snakes in my driveway, lizards on the railings. I even saw a bear once, but none of that scared me more than the thought that I’d find Knox waiting on my front porch.
Lucky for me, the coast is clear. I still don’t know why he’s back in Haven’s Point, or what he could possibly want. Everly and Gigi have been calling and texting me nonstop. I answered the first few times, but ultimately turned off my phone. If I know Gigi, she’s about ready to call in the National Guard, so I’m headed to her house this morning to assure her that my chastity belt is locked up tight.
Reaching for the handle on my car door, I hear a horn. The car is inconspicuous enough, but the driver is not. Knox pulls in right behind me, blocking my car. He hops out, holding a large Styrofoam cup. His hair is slightly messy, and the stubble on his face makes my heart pound a little harder. I love a man with stubble. “Brought you your favorite.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” I say with sass. He doesn’t even remember the simplest things about me.
“I know,” he says. “It’s just the whipped cream.”
Okay, so he remembers that. That’s a pretty memorable detail about a person. Reaching for the cup, I say, “I was just leaving.”
“I’ll give you a lift.”
“You don’t know where I’m going. I could be going all the way into Denver or . . .”
He grins. “Okay, where are you going?”
Thinking fast, I say, “Boyfriend.”
His eyes slowly scan up and down my body. My jean skirt and vintage Van Halen t-shirt could be casual date attire.
“It’s a little early for a date,” he says.
“Mornings are my favorite,” I say taunting him, wondering if he remembers that little detail about me—morning sex is my favorite.
His jaw tenses. “I know you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“How do you know that?”
“Timothy told me yesterday,” he says, opening his passenger door for me.
“Timothy doesn’t know everything about me,” I say, taking a seat. He simply smiles at me, slamming the door shut, and for the first time, I realize I’ve gotten in the car with him. I literally argued my way into his car. Crap!
He hops in, starting the car. “Where to?” he asks. “Since we know it’s not a boyfriend’s place.”
Damn him! Of all the times to be single! I’ve actually been single for awhile. I don’t see the point in dating someone if I don’t see the possibility of a future. It took me a long time to date after Knox, and for a while, I just dated guys for fun, to have a good time. I didn’t want anything serious. Eventually things changed, and there were a few guys I dated for a while, but there was always something missing. On paper, we’d look like a good match. One guy even told me he loved me, but I couldn’t say it back. Things ended pretty quickly after that.
“Fine, I’m going to Gigi’s house,” I say, as he pulls away. “And why do you care whether I have a boyfriend or not?”
“Mae, why do you think I’m here?”
“To give me a ride to Gigi’s house?” I tease. “Honestly, I have no idea.”
He glances over at me. “It’s not obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“I miss you,” he says.
My heart stings at his honesty. “Five years will do that to a person, I guess.”
“Mae,” he says, a bite to his voice, then he takes a deep breath.
We drive in silence for a few minutes. We never used to lack for conversation, and in the quiet moments, it was never like this—stressed and uncomfortable.
“Can we just catch up?” he asks. “How are your parents? Where are they stationed . . .”
“Dad’s in France,” I say, looking out to the water. “Mom died last year.”
“Oh, Mae. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No reason you would,” I say with attitude.
“Mae, you helped me through losing both my parents. I . . .”
This is the last thing I want to talk about, so I quickly change the topic.
“Where’d you stay last night?” I ask, unsure why I care.
“Crashed at a hotel,” he says. “Tipped the manager to not let anyone know I was there.”
“It worked?”
“Yeah, I went in through a back entrance, so none of the other staff or guests saw me. Pretty simple.” We turn onto my grandmother’s street, and he says, “I have to fly back to L.A. today. Something went wrong with a poster I shot, and they have to redo it before the movie comes out, but . . .”
“Okay,” I say, cutting him off.
“I’d like to call you,” he says.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“You going to make me go back to sending you cassette tapes in the mail?” he asks with a smirk.
He stops the car in front of Gigi’s house. Her house is home. She always has a wreath on her door. Her garden is always impeccable. The wraparound porch is white with beautiful wooden moldings that accent the pink color of the two-story Victorian house. The winters can be harsh in Colorado, but Gigi always keeps her house freshly painted, her landscape freshly maintained. It’s beautiful. My bedroom was on the second floor, overlooking the side yard of the house. I used to stick my head out and wave to Knox, whose bedroom window was in the front of his house.
I look out the windshield, at the empty lot across the street where his house used to be. “I was here, you know,” I say. “The day it burned down.”
Lightning struck a pole, and the current just followed the path into the house. The whole thing went up in flames. Luckily, it was empty at the time.
“It was just a house,” he says.
“You grew up there.”
“I grew up with you,” he says, his hand landing on top of mine.
I look down at him touching me. God, it feels the same, like his skin belongs on mine. “Knox . . .”
“You want to know why I’m here?” he asks, and I nod. “All I know is, I’ve run into ex-girlfriends before, talked to them, and I never felt a damn thing—nothing. But when I heard you on the radio, it wasn’t like that.” His blue eyes hold mine. He doesn’t move closer, just stares at me like I’m a puzzle to figure out. “There’s something, even after all this time. There’s something.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Knox
It’s almost sixteen hours by car from Los Angeles to Haven’s Point. It’s about two and a half hours by plane from L.A. to Denver, then the forty-five-minute drive to Haven’s Point. But no matter which way you slice it, I’m over one thousand miles away from Mae.
And the way this week is going, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to make a dent in that distance. The reshoot for the poster took two days. Then there was some mix up with my schedule, so I ended up having to do some
interviews for print magazines. It’s been nonstop for days and days. Now my brother is in town for a concert and is crashing at my house in Malibu for the night. We don’t see each other much, so I couldn’t bail and go back to Haven’s Point.
I didn’t spend more than twenty minutes in Mae’s presence the entire time I was back in Colorado, but those twenty minutes told me everything I need to know. I want her in my life.
See, that’s the whole problem with falling for your best friend. When the love ends, so does the friendship.
But there’s something still between us. I know for sure we could be friends again. I know for sure I’d like more than that, but convincing Mae of that isn’t going to be easy. She wouldn’t even give me her phone number. Before I left, I wrote mine down on a sheet of paper and slipped it under her door. She hasn’t used it.
I haven’t had to work for a woman’s attention in years. Before the fame, there was only Mae. I wouldn’t have considered myself a player, far from it. I was a one-woman guy all the way. Mae and I were easy, most of the time. Maybe it’s because we were young. We were together from the summer before our senior year in high school until we were both about twenty-one. Of course, we’d been friends since we were six.
The past five years without her have been the loneliest of my life. I’m surrounded by people most of the time. Movie sets are busy places, and paparazzi follow me. I can have any woman I want. It would seem I’m never really alone, but I am.
And I hate the fact that Mae went through losing her mother without me by her side. I should have been there for her, like she was there for me.
“Why were you back in Haven’s Point?” Ryder asks, plopping down on my sofa.
It’s late, or should I say early? I’m tired from his concert. I stayed backstage in his dressing room and watched on the monitor then waited for him in the car. He’s a country music star. I’m an actor. We can’t be seen together in public without causing total chaos. People think of us as the American Hemsworth brothers—only slightly less wholesome.
This is probably my favorite house of the ones I own. It sits on a little cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Hedges on both sides provide privacy, and the front is guarded by a gate. You have to go down stairs to get to the beach, but being elevated maximizes the view. The entire back part of the house is lined with floor to ceiling windows. I live alone, so the six bedrooms and seven bathrooms are a bit excessive, but I didn’t buy it for the space. I bought it for the view, the privacy, and its proximity to L.A. without having to actually live in L.A.
“How’d you know I was in Haven’s Point?” I ask.
I managed to sneak in and out of Colorado without causing too much of a ruckus. I flew on a private plane, so there wasn’t much fuss at the airport. I don’t think it made any of the tabloid sites, so how my big brother knew is beyond me.
“Maggie,” he says simply.
Maggie is his . . . Well, I’m not sure what she is. Technically, I guess you’d call her his publicist, but she’s more than that to him. She used to teach music at the high school in Haven’s Point. She’s the one who got Ryder into guitar and singing.
“She got an email from a friend who still lives there. Said it was all over town that you were there,” he says, looking at me like only a big brother can. With both our parents gone, we’re all each other has in terms of family, and Ryder is a loner. “So either you were there dealing with something about the land, or you were there dealing with something about a woman?”
“Speaking of women,” I say, dodging, “thanks for taking the night off. Really didn’t feel like stumbling upon an orgy in my living room.”
He chuckles. “I don’t do orgies.”
“Multiple women at the same time,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
I’m not a Boy Scout, so I’m not passing judgment, but a younger brother has to rag his big brother. It’s in the rules.
He just shrugs. That’s Ryder. Nothing fazes him. I guess when you’ve had the past he has, you figure you’ve lived through the worst. “So work or woman?” he asks again.
“Woman,” I admit, placing my feet up on my coffee table to stretch out.
He shakes his head. It’s not that he disapproves of Mae, or even that he doesn’t like her. He disapproves of love in general. “Mae?”
“Don’t start, Ryder.”
“Didn’t say a word,” he says, then tosses a pillow, hitting me right in the face. God, are we eight years old again? “How’d she look?” he asks. A simple grin from me lets him know. “That good, huh? Better than that model you dated last year?”
Affectionately, I flip him the bird. “Better!”
He shakes his head. “What’s she up to these days? Can’t believe she still lives in Haven’s Point. What’s the town like?”
“Bigger than when we lived there,” I say. “Saw where the house used to be.”
“Did you go to the cemetery?” he asks.
“No.”
Ryder looks up at the ceiling, soaring above us. Being older, he has more memories of Mom than I do. He and our dad had a very strained relationship. Ryder and Haven’s Point, well, that relationship is even more complicated. Some bad shit went down there for Ryder. We don’t ever discuss it.
“So Mae?” he asks. “How is she besides hotter than a model?”
I shoot him a warning glance. We both live our lives in the limelight, but we don’t ever go for the same women. That’s sick as fuck to even think about. We are brothers, so we’re naturally competitive—not for money or anything like that. More like, who has the better Madden game. Who has the better dunk shot, that sort of thing. But we never go after the same woman, ever. Still, I don’t like him referring to Mae as hot or sexy, or any of that.
“I didn’t spend that much time with her,” I say, wondering if I should tell him what she does for a living.
“Douche,” he calls me. For brothers: douchebag, asshole, moron, jackass, and twat are all terms of endearment.
“She wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me, okay?”
He sits up slightly. “You plan on trying to see her again, or was that a one-time visit?” One look at my face, and he knows what a dumb question that was. “Want some advice from your big brother?”
“On women?” I ask. “No, thanks. I know how you feel about love and relationships.”
“You know how I feel about love and relationships for me,” he says. “You’re not me.”
“Okay,” I say, “but this advice best be better than the sex advice you gave me.”
He busts out laughing. He doesn’t laugh often. It’s good to see my brother like this. “Hey, that was solid advice.”
“Virgin ass is the best ass was not solid advice!” I laugh at him. “And the bulk size box of condoms you sent to my dorm room? Mae didn’t appreciate that.”
“Mae loves me,” he says with confidence.
He’s right. She does.
He gets to his feet. “I’m going to bed. Thanks for letting me crash here.”
“Wait,” I say, stopping him. “What’s the big advice about Mae?”
“Don’t fuck it up.”
*
The clock beside my bed reads four in the morning. Between being amped up after my brother’s concert, and his “advice,” I haven’t slept at all. I wish I could say I was up thinking about something profound, but I’m not. Normally when people can’t sleep, they are worried about something. Not me. The cause of my insomnia—being horny as hell.
This usually isn’t a problem. Women have been plentiful in my life. I could send one text and have a woman here within a few minutes, but the only woman I want now isn’t even in the state.
Thinking about Ryder sending me those condoms brings back memories of my first time with Mae. We were a couple for almost two years before I got in her pants. Two fucking years, and we’d known each other forever. It didn’t happen until the end of our freshman year in college. Of course, I started trying almost as soon as she got to Ha
ven’s Point the summer before our senior year of high school. Looking back, it was probably too soon. Not by my standards today, but for seventeen-year-olds. Mae was the smart one. I was thinking with another organ.
It was stupid to think I’d get lucky after only a month of dating, but, again, I was seventeen. My dad was working late, and we were on my bed, making out. I started to inch my hand up her thigh, and she stopped me. “I know you’re a virgin, but . . .” I said.
She sat up so fast, I thought she’d hurt herself.
“Why do you say it like that?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s an affliction, and you’re the cure?”
That was our first fight, one of the only ones we ever had. She stormed out of my room, and I found a cassette in my mailbox the next day. There were only a few times that we sent cassettes after she returned to Haven’s Point, and this was one of them.
*
Cassette
Mae to Knox
Age Seventeen
Knox, I can’t have this conversation looking you in the eye. That’s one reason why I know I’m not ready to take the next step. If I can’t even talk to you in person about it, then we shouldn’t be doing it.
I didn’t like what I saw in your eyes yesterday. Suddenly, it looked like I was a challenge. I don’t want taking my virginity to become some sort of mission. I’m more than my hymen!
Seriously, do boys keep track of how many girls they deflower? Do they get bonus notches on their headboards or something?
I’m only seventeen, it’s not like I’m the oldest living virgin or anything. Take Lisa Kudrow, she reportedly waited until she was married to have sex, and she was in her thirties. If Phoebe can wait, why can’t I?
It’s like I’m an endangered species. One of the last virgins left on the planet.
I’m not a mythical creature. And I don’t appreciate guys looking at me like they’re ready to snatch my v-card.
And just because I haven’t slept with anyone doesn’t make me a religious zealot, either.
Knox (A Merrick Brothers Novel) Page 5