It’s wonderful, but guilt weighs heavily on my heart with every step I take because instead of preparing to share in the celebration I’m more focused on Luke.
I’ve prepped for this moment right from the minute I knew he’d be here, and still my damn body, and heart is betraying me.
Physically, I don’t look like the poor sap of a woman I was last year when Luke told me he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to be together. I look stronger.
I know for a fact I look like the strong woman I became over the last year, touring Europe with Vogue as one of the senior editors. I checked the mirror not even two minutes ago when Shauna and I got out of the car, and when I looked back at my reflection I looked like her.
Right now, however, I don’t feel like her.
I feel like Ben’s little sister as I stare ahead of me at Luke talking it up with Ben by the long stained glass windows.
Looking at them together takes me right back to my childhood days.
They’ve always been best friends. Luke lived down the road from us and he went to school with Ben. They were so similar people often mistook them for brothers, and me, their little sister in tow.
Not now though, there’s a noticeable difference between the two.
Ben kept his lean marathon runner appearance and grew his dark locks a little longer so it has that messy, just got out of bed look his wife loves. Luke on the other hand is solid muscle he got from his service as a lieutenant in the army. His hair is sharp and cut into a neat faux hawk which accentuates the angles and planes of his face.
When I get to the center of the hall, Ben crouches down to dig through a box by his feet and Luke turns to see me. Our eyes lock in the moment. It’s a few seconds that seem like forever and in his stare I see the same thing I always do when I look at him.
Desire…
I’m not stupid and I’m not the kind of woman to make up what she wants to see. I know what I see and call it like it is, even if he can’t.
We’re possibly twenty feet away from each other but I see it as clear as if he was standing right next to me.
It always starts with a spark. A twinkle right in the depths of his silver gray eyes and then the emotion spreads.
Since the look still confuses the hell out of me I look away and focus on going to my parents who have now spotted me and Shauna.
Mom’s the first to rush up to us. Shauna releases me as Mom gives us the usual bear hug she still insists on giving no matter how old we get.
“Girls,” Mom bubbles.
I give her another quick hug because it’s been a month since I last saw her. I was living and working in Paris for close to ten months. It’s a complete contrast to where we live San Francisco. I’ve been extremely busy since I got back with work and sorting out my new apartment.
“Hey Mom,” I say. Dad walks up to us and I hug him too. “Happy anniversary.”
Dad plants a kiss on my forehead. “Thank you my dear, did you two get here okay?”
“Yes, it was smooth. There was traffic on the country roads but we missed it.”
“Good, some of the waiting staff got caught in it and they’re going to be delayed, so we’re just setting up as best as we can.”
That sounds like my ticket to distraction.
“What can we do to help?” I ask.
“Oh sweetie, at least get settled in first. Go see the boys, they’ve been dying to see you.”
Dad still calls Ben and Luke boys even though they’re both thirty-five. And no thanks, I definitely don’t want to go see the boys.
Ben hasn’t seen me yet and if he does, I’m sure he’ll want me to go bond with Katherine. I’m glad he found such a nice woman to marry and they work together as doctors but I have nothing in common with her. She’s a coroner and talks about autopsies so much more than I can stomach.
My next option if I did go over to talk to the boys, is Luke, and I haven’t spoken to him since the morning after our very wild night at Ben’s wedding.
“Dad, I can settle in and see the boys later. Let me help. Shauna and I will gladly help.” I glance at Shauna who gives me a tight lipped smile.
“Sure,” she agrees.
“Okay, if you insist,” Dad says with a little chuckle and a run of his hand over his salt and pepper beard. “I won’t turn away help, especially when I’m starting to panic. The guests will start arriving in two hours and that’s the last thing left. We just need help bringing the wine up from the cellar. There’s a few people down there already. I’m sure they’ll be grateful for the assistance.”
“Great, we’ll take care of it,” I answer.
The corridor leading down to the cellar is just to the left of us. There’s another entrance across the hall where the guys are. I’m happy to take the closest one.
At least Shauna waits until we turn the corner and we’re out of earshot before she starts bitching at me.
“Amy, are you seriously going to avoid Luke for the whole weekend? Not even a hello?” she begins.
I don’t want to talk about anything to do with Luke. What happened between me and him would have remained secret if I wasn’t so much in need of my best friend’s comfort at the time.
She pulls me back to a stop as I try to speed up past her.
“What do you want me to do Shauna?” I glare at her knowing for certain that if it was her she would be playing the same moves. “The man spent the night with me and dumped me in the morning. What should I do? Go greet him?”
She slumps her shoulders and pouts. “It’s just weird seeing you two not talking or anything. I still think he was lying with that answer he gave you last year. I saw him looking at you as we walked in and the look he gave you wasn’t the sort you’d give a woman if you didn’t want her.”
Oh my God. I can’t deal with this from her, and not when my brain was telling me the same thing.
“Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s as simple as that.”
“But you’ve loved him your whole life,” she points out as if I didn’t know that. “Last year was the first you had any inkling as to how he might feel about you. And may I point out that he never said he didn’t feel the same way about you, he just said it wasn’t a good idea.”
I just stare at her, not knowing what the hell to say. I don’t know what she expects me to do.
Before last year I always thought Luke didn’t want to be with me because he was ten years older, then I got to a certain age and that stopped mattering. Then I thought it was because of Ben, but Ben started teasing me from my eighteenth birthday and calling me Mrs. Montgomery in front of him.
I honestly think he would be okay with me being with Luke.
It’s Luke who doesn’t want to be with me. So, how I’ve felt about him since forever doesn’t matter.
“Shauna, I’m here to enjoy my parents anniversary. Thanks for trying but I don’t want to go down that road this weekend. I just need to close the door on this.”
She bites the inside of her lip and tenses. “Okay… Fine, I won’t mention it again.”
“Thank you.”
I start walking again down the wide hallway and she follows.
This place still feels as big as it did to me when I was a child.
I was nine when my parents first came here. Mom loved the place. We used to rent it every summer for a week. Sometimes we’d bring other family and friends.
I’m well versed in the passage to the cellar because Ben and I used to play hide and seek all along the rooms here. There’s two other halls and a dining room with a long mahogany table that seats about fifty people. The hall that the party will be in later holds up to six hundred people.
The cellar is deep underground and holds wine of various assortments right back to the eighteenth century.
Shauna and I get down there and see a team of six men filling crates to take up the stairs.
We start helping to pack and thankfully she changes the subject to work. While I decided to write about fashion,
her writing is dating advice for Women’s Daily.
She was in the middle of telling me about a letter that came in yesterday from a woman who is head over heels for her boss, when footsteps sounded behind me.
It was her that looked up first and the wide eyed look that filled her face made me turn to see Luke approaching us.
Approaching and looking directly at me.
“Ladies,” he says with that bad boy edge and that cocky smile all women swoon over.
“Lieutenant, look at you,” Shauna beams, being the charmer that she is. “Great to see you.”
“And you,” he answers.
I bite the inside of my lip and try to keep up my nonchalant façade.
“I came to help.” He looks from me to her.
“Wonderful, I have to call my Mom so I’ll be back in a little while,” Shauna says reaching for her phone like the devil she is and moving away before I can even process what she just did.
That little minx. She already spoke to her mom before we got here. Shauna wouldn’t be calling her again so soon.
I’m left open mouthed, staring after her with Luke standing next to me.
Feeling his gaze on me I turn to him. He’s already looking at me and it’s with the same desire. The same desire I’m going to ignore even if it kills me.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hello.”
“I figured you’d avoid me for the weekend so I should be the one to try to talk to you,” he states bluntly. Always and ever straight to the point, that’s him.
My lips part and I stare on at him in anticipation.
2
Luke
I’m not sure which type of idiot I am today.
The asshole who told Amy he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to be together, or is it the literal idiot who decided he wanted the girl and doesn’t know what to do to get her back.
She’s looking at me now, standing before me with her lips parted and bright green eyes trained on me with expectancy. I’ve always thought her green eyes looked like emeralds against her platinum blonde hair.
Every time I see this girl she looks more beautiful than the last and it’s torture. Last time was torture because I finally satisfied my curiosity and saw it was more than a fantasy to be with her. This time is worse because I fucked up. I freaked out and fucked up and I’m still plagued by the same reason I ended it with her before we really began.
I still think she can do better than me.
I still think it and I’m not sure if me chasing her is selfish.
I opened the floor to talk in maybe the worst place possible, with people around us and now, I don’t know what to say.
“So what if I wanted to avoid you?” she throws back after what feels like eons of silence. She sets her hands on her hips and looks me up and down from head to toe.
Her stance has gotten the attention of one of the guys who’s packing the wine. Not because he’s intrigued by our conversation he probably can’t hear, but because of that body of hers that can get a man in trouble.
Curves in all the right places is what she has. The perfect shape that could give Marilyn Monroe a serious run for her money. Add the long white strands of hair and the woman looks like she just stepped out of some kind of dream.
I’m very aware that I’m just staring at her, but I’m trying to move past the image of her and the thoughts that are racing through my mind.
“What if I don’t want you to?” I ask, deciding to go with a charm of sorts, but it doesn’t work. She rolls her eyes at me and moves down the aisle with the red wine. She has a crate she was packing with Shauna that still needs filling.
I follow her.
“How was Paris?” I ask and she glances over her shoulder at me.
“Fine.” She grabs a bottle of wine and it reminds me of how that night last year started.
It all began with a bottle of white Chardonnay. Actually it was a glass. I noticed her drinking by herself at the bar. She’d gone through the day with a face I knew was some show, not really talking to anyone. She just pretended to be happy for Ben on his big day.
I saw her at the bar and joined her. Maybe that was my first mistake.
By the time we went back to my hotel room, claiming we’d be drinking as friends, I knew the minute she stepped through the door in that low cut dress that I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her.
We weren’t drunk when we slept together the first time that night, maybe by the sixth time though we might have been.
She continues to ignore me, busying herself with arranging the bottles in the crate neatly.
“How is work?” I ask and she turns to face me. “Ben says you’re doing really well. Senior editor at Vogue. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get that promotion at Fashion Now?”
That was what was wrong with her at Ben’s wedding. She didn’t get the position she worked so hard for. Someone else got it and I told her to leave and do better. The same way I thought she could do better than me.
“Yes, it turned out you were right. It’s been a good year. Are you just back for the usual week?”
I bite the inside of my lip, glad no one told her what happened to me. Glad that everyone respected my wishes when I told them I’d tell her myself. I think it was because I thought she hated me after what I did. What felt worse to me than the injury that ruined my career was the fear that she wouldn’t care. Not when I think I probably only made it out of enemy territory because of my thoughts of seeing her again.
“Actually, I’m back… for good,” I confess and that piques her interest. That doesn’t surprise me since she knew that like my father and my brothers I planned to be in the military for life.
“For good? You’re back in San Francisco for good?” she clarifies.
“Yeah.”
“What happened?” At least she looks a little more interested. “When last I checked, you said you had your career to focus on.”
I only said that to add more to the excuse I was giving her.
“I did.”
“Well, plenty of officers serving have girlfriends or wives.”
I search her eyes and see the wealth of hurt still lurking in them. It’s in my nature to see a little deeper than what’s being thrown at me.
That comment of hers, however, has my attention and I decide to try to lighten the tension between us.
“Is that what you wanted? To be my girl?” The question throws her off kilter and I can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of my mouth.
She’s about to answer me and probably hand me my ass with the way her beautiful face scrunches up, but the guy who was busy looking at her chooses that moment to interrupt us.
He comes up to us, eyes on her, bold enough to act like I’m not standing right there, even though it’s very clear that we’re in some deep discussion. I’m sure too that this time he heard what I said.
“We’re pretty much done here,” he begins. He’s supposed to be talking to the two of us but his eyes are glued to Amy. “We’ve gathered enough drinks for the party but you can continue on this aisle and take these up as reserves.”
“Thanks I think I’ll continue and come up in a little while,” Amy answers him.
“Cool, I can help you if you like.” The guy says and I glower at him.
“She’s got help. We don’t need anymore,” I say cutting him off before he can continue with whatever shit plan he seems to have brewing to get close to her. It’s now that he looks at me and the look I counter him with tells him to back the fuck away.
“Alright then,” he says, having the good sense to heed my silent warning.
He leaves us and I return my attention to Amy who’s narrowed her eyes at me.
“I think you were going to answer my question,” I put in with a slow easy smile.
She shakes her head at me in dismay. “No Luke, I wasn’t. I don’t know what your angle is or what game you’re playing with me, but I want no part of it.”
“It’s just a question.”
“What kind of question is that? What is wrong with you? Do I look like some kind of idiot to you?”
“No… that’s not why I’m asking.”
“So why? Why would you ask me such shit after a year? Why would the answer be so important to you when you made your feelings very clear to me that you didn’t want to be with me.”
“I didn’t say that,” I state quickly and she flashes me a fiery look of indignation.
We’re alone now and the floor is open again for me to state my intentions and maybe save the valuable parts of the past we share.
“I can’t figure you out and I don’t want to.” Again she shakes her head at me, but she’s walking away. If she leaves I know it will be hard to get her alone like this again. She’ll do everything in her power to avoid me for the rest of the weekend and we’ll leave this place without talking properly.
She’s near the stairs now. I rush up to her and catch her arm, stopping her in her flight.
“Amy, I’m sorry.” There, that’s the first thing I actually needed to tell her. An apology.
“What are you sorry for?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing and… now I see it … wasn’t.” That part though is where I’m conflicted. I promised myself however that if I survived the hell I went through back in Afghanistan I’d do this. I’d tell her the truth about how I feel. How I’ve always felt about her, even when I shouldn’t have.
“What do you mean?” her face softens and I take that as a good sign. I seem to be reaching her on some level.
I release her arm and draw in a deep breath. “I mean, I don’t think telling you it was a good idea for us to be together was the right thing.”
As I look at the fire that flickers in those eyes of hers I’m not sure now which way this will go. She’s not the woman she was last year when she was a few months shy of her twenty-fourth birthday. Amy is twenty-five now and I can see she’s changed. I can see what I did changed her.
“So, you’ve decided that you were wrong and think you can throw me away when you want, and pick me up whenever you decide the time is right?”
LOVE IN LOCKDOWN: A Charity Anthology Page 22