by Marie Harte
Then he laughed. “Longer? Okay, Lois. Next time we’ll try it your way. I’m off ’til Tuesday. Text me when you want to get together again.” He chortled. “Longer. Ha.” He disconnected.
She took her phone away from her ear and frowned. Lois? Who’s Lois? So she texted him. Who the hell is Lois?
And got a Superman GIF followed by Lois Lane, doofus. Next time, wear glasses. You’re hot in them.
She just stared at her cell phone, shocked at the pleasure she derived from Brad wanting more of a relationship—whatever that might entail.
Avery smiled, so much her cheeks hurt. But she couldn’t stop.
Not even when Gerty arrived home later that night and demanded the full truth and nothing but the truth.
“Gerty, really?” Avery asked as her dorky roommate insisted she swear on top of Gerty’s bible—a script she’d purchased at auction years ago, signed by Captain Mal from the science fiction television series Firefly.
Gerty glared. “Say it, Avery.”
Avery rolled her eyes. “Do I have to?”
“Say. It.”
“I promise to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth.” My edited version, at least. She paused for effect. “So help me Warcraft.”
“Amen.”
Chapter Eleven
Brad didn’t know how he got through exercising at the station with the guys that afternoon. Reggie and Tex had given him a few side-glances but didn’t say anything. Mack, who had ditched Vella in favor of his friends, apparently, seemed oblivious…until the gym started to fill up. Then he approached Brad with a wrapped present.
“What’s this?” Brad asked, taking it. Waiting for it to explode.
“Something from a bunch of us. To thank you for being you.” Mack gave him a wide grin. “I’m just screwing with you. It’s an early birthday present.”
Brad would be celebrating his thirty-second next week, so the answer had some credibility. Yet the intense interest around him warned him to proceed with caution.
He eyed Mack warily. “Thanks. I think.”
“Go on, Brad. Open it.” Reggie nodded, smiling.
Knowing he might as well get it over with, Brad ripped through the paper and stared.
“See?” Mack helpfully pointed out. “It’s got a neutral palette with some fun nighttime shades for your eyes.”
“It’s the sunset desire pack,” Reggie added.
Everyone around them grinned, stifling laughter.
“Come on, Hollywood. Put it on.” One of the D shift dicks said. “You’re looking washed out.”
“What? No lipstick? The guy needs to pucker for the camera.” Freaking Hernandez.
Brad glared at the crowd. “Fuck all of you.”
The laughter rang out, causing others in the station to swing by to see what the fuss was about. Tex made sure to explain in his slow drawl, instilling more laughter.
Lieutenant Sue happened by and stopped. “Hey, is that makeup?” Which generated more laughter.
Brad took it in stride, knowing he’d have piled it on had it been someone else getting all the attention.
One of the female firefighters sauntered up to him and asked to borrow his blush. Which had Tex in hysterics.
Brad handed her the kit. “Please, keep it.”
“You sure you don’t need it?” Nat asked with a smirk.
Brad snarled, “It’s not that funny.”
“No, it is. It so is.” Tex grinned at her, and she walked away, the proud new owner of a sunset desire makeup collection.
“Thanks for your kind thoughts, dickheads,” Brad said to the group. “It’s not my fault I’m so pretty and manly.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m happy to take that gorgeous reporter off your hands,” one of the A shift guys said. Like Brad, a lot of the other firefighters spent their spare time in the station gym.
“I’m sure your girlfriend would love that.” His buddy sighed. “Keep it in your pants, Joe.”
“Oh? Well, let’s talk about you and Marsha…and her mom.”
“You really want to go there?”
“Oh, it’s on,” mock-whispered Mack.
“Sure thing.” Joe grinned. “My girlfriend loves a real man.”
“Then what’s she doing with you?” Sue said, and not all that quietly.
Everyone started laughing.
“Lew, let me tell you about my girl…”
A collective groan went up, and Brad silently thanked Joe for taking the attention from him.
After Joe left, Brad took the ragging he was due, insisted he wasn’t going soft for not making more of an ass of himself on the Friday morning spot with Avery, and pouted since no one would run with him, claiming they all had better things to do. Like sleep since many of them had just pulled a rough twenty-four hours.
“Even you, Reggie? Come on, man. You have no life.”
Reggie said something less than complimentary and left behind Mack and Tex.
Feeling a spark he hadn’t felt in a long time, Brad went home and used his excess energy to run five miles, clean his apartment from top to bottom, and do the laundry he’d been putting off. But since he’d started so damn early that morning, the hour had just reached seven in the evening, and he had nothing to do but think.
Thoughts of his upcoming birthday gave him hives, a celebration of life mingled with the death of his best friend. So no, not going there.
Avery Dearborn. A much more pleasant way to pass the time.
The woman was like a drug. She would no doubt be bad for him in the long run—a reporter, one who’d once pried into his life—but she’d addicted him from the first. Sure, he’d been thinking about what sex with her would be like. And he’d imagined some pretty spectacular fireworks. But his imagination hadn’t come close to what being with her had actually been like.
He’d never have expected her to be so responsive, so damn open in bed. She hadn’t masked anything. Just an honest chemistry between them that made every kiss and caress a magnified blast of pleasure.
He wished he could say he’d had better. Because then he could forget her. But she’d burned a place in his brain, and he couldn’t stop seeing her in his mind’s eye, naked and splayed out in his bed, waiting. Eager.
Damn. He was hard and hungry and wishing he hadn’t been so stupid as to suggest they were done. He’d amended it, but too late. Now she’d be wondering why the hell she’d want to be with a guy who was satisfied by a few romps in bed.
Panicked by how much he hadn’t wanted her to go, he’d made that stupid pronouncement. “Done and friends.” How stupid could he be?
He wondered if he should just take care of his needs or hold out and hope to see Avery again. So soon? He sat on the couch and held his head in his hands, wondering where his legendary cool had gone. He groaned, recalling how he’d babbled on the phone with her. “I, ah, I want to do this again. With you. This morning, I mean. Hang out, get together, you know.” Could he have been any more idiotic? Hang out, get together? Hell, he wasn’t a kid and had no problem calling it what it was. Sex. Period.
But with Avery, it hadn’t just been sex. And that worried him.
Unsure of what to do, he kept himself busy by adding another, shorter run to his routine, followed by some grocery shopping he didn’t really need to do but would cut down on his chores for next week.
He somehow managed to finish the night by turning in by nine and was up early on Saturday with no clear agenda in mind. Until he realized he still hadn’t talked to his brother about what Oscar had been doing with Avery last weekend.
After doing some arm curls, push-ups, and sit-ups, he skipped the run, feeling it in his legs after yesterday, and ate a quick breakfast before heading out to his mom’s. Typically, he limited his visits to twice a month max, but this new development with Avery needed atten
tion.
Oscar would no doubt still be asleep, though his mother and Rochelle woke by seven, even on Rochelle’s days off. He was just leaving his brother’s favorite donut shop with a box of sugar-filled goodness when he realized going home today might not be such a smart idea.
The anniversary of Dana’s death was in a few days, the day after his birthday. Having lived a few doors down from Brad’s mother’s house while Dana had been alive, the Crawfords had since moved and sold the house to their nephew. But following their daughter’s death, they made an annual pilgrimage back to remember her. They’d skipped last year, finally giving him a break from their yearly displeasure. But he couldn’t count on that happening again.
He sat in his car and put the donuts on the seat, staring without seeing through the window. Hadn’t he paid enough? Did he really have to consider avoiding his family, the home he’d grown up in, because the Crawfords might be there? Grieving, angry, and always wanting to point fingers, Dana’s parents had made his life a living hell after her death, as if by placing the blame, they could come to grips with their loss.
Brad knew it didn’t work that way. He’d lost friends fighting for an ideal not shared by many. He’d borne the brunt of scorn, hatred, and tears, condemned for all the ills of American values while trying to save innocent—and some not-so-innocent—lives. But that had been the job, and he’d done it well. He’d come home burdened but not scarred, healing in the care of his fellow Marines in Camp Pendleton. They knew, they understood, and they would never turn him away.
He hadn’t been in the best place, mentally or emotionally, upon his separation from the military, so he’d been in no shape to deal with Dana, his best friend who constantly wrestled with her own monsters—namely, her parents. But he’d done his best to still be there for her, and they’d reconnected as if he’d never been gone.
But way too briefly.
Six months later, she’d died, and her parents had blamed him.
Truth be told, as much as he tried not to, as much as he’d heard what Rochelle and his brother had told him, he still blamed himself.
A horn beeped outside, taking Brad from his secret pain, and he buried it deep, trying to forget something he’d never wanted in the first place. Dana’s face looked fuzzy in his memory, and he wondered if that was because he’d finally come to understand that he knew her so well she’d fractured in his thoughts—as she had in life—over time.
“Fuck this.” He started the car, angry with himself for giving into the emotional cesspool he’d been doing his damnedest to ignore. I guess I’m more like Mom than I wanted to think I am.
He had only himself to blame. The time of year wasn’t the best, and this thing—whatever it was—with Avery churned up emotions better left untouched. His last ex hadn’t been wrong when she’d called him closed off and distant, but then, he’d never felt a need to go any deeper than fun and sex with Bella. Pretty, successful, and fun to be around, she’d been like the other girls he’d dated since Dana had died. Nothing too serious.
Just like Avery, he told himself as he drove to his mother’s house. She’s just a woman I have to work with and amazing in bed. We have fun. It’s not a thing.
A thing? He had to stop talking to himself because even his subconscious told him he made little sense.
Fortunately, he closed a lid on thoughts of Avery as he pulled into his mother’s driveway. He walked around to the back door, expecting to see his mother and Rochelle sharing coffee on the back porch. The porch remained empty, so he let himself inside and found them sitting and talking quietly at the kitchen table.
“I brought donuts,” he announced as he joined them.
“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d swing by,” his mother said, her eyes crinkled in a smile. She made no mention of Dana, and he let out the tension he’d been holding. A smarter man would avoid home at this time of year, coming back to the place where he and Dana had spent so much of their teen years, stirring more memories. But Brad visited on purpose, so as not to forget. And, as Rochelle had once told him, likely to punish himself for a death he hadn’t prevented.
Uncomfortable at the sudden realization Rochelle was likely right, he forced a smile. “You’re always happy in the morning, Mom. I wish you’d passed that trait onto me.”
“Rochelle calls me cute and chipper but annoying.” Vivienne laughed.
Rochelle nodded. “I do. And she is.” Rochelle dragged him forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Go get your brother up, would you?”
“Why me?”
“Because we shouldn’t have to,” Vivienne said, a sparkle in her eye. “We’ve done our time getting cranky boys to wake up.”
“You were the worst,” Rochelle agreed and sipped her coffee. “Now let’s see what you brought us. Oh, warm glazed. My favorite!”
Going with the flow, he bottled the past in the past—and how often have I been saying that lately and not doing it?—and woke up his brother.
“Yo, numbnuts, get up,” he yelled.
Oscar lay half on, half off the bed, his head under his pillow. The sheets sat around his waist, exposing his broad back. He muttered something Brad couldn’t make out.
Knowing how this worked, Brad left to grab a cup of cold water. “You have ten seconds. Then this water is all over you. Ten. Nine. Eight…”
When he got to three, his brother rolled over and tossed the pillow at him. “I’m up,” he grumbled, his hair sticking up, and covered his eyes with his forearm.
“Jesus, I can smell your breath from here. Use a toothbrush once in a while.”
“Go away.”
“The countdown is still going. Three. Two…”
Oscar jackknifed to a sitting position. “I hate you.”
“I brought donuts.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Brad turned away and drank the water while his brother stumbled out of bed. He didn’t smell of alcohol, thank God. “Go shower and I’ll save you a cream-filled.”
“Two.”
“Whatever. Hurry up.”
Brad returned to see his mom and Rochelle laughing and planning their weekend as if it were any other weekend. He started to think maybe he was the one holding onto this tragedy. His mother had a right to her grief over his father. But Dana had been his…until she hadn’t been.
He didn’t like feeling so overemotional, especially after his time yesterday with Avery. She’d been so full of life, so genuine. Being with her made his time with Dana feel like it had happened to someone else. So strange.
“Brad, help me in the garage for a minute, would you?” Rochelle asked as she stood. “While you’re here, there’s a large box I’ve been wanting to get down. It has some gardening supplies you were looking for last week, Viv.”
“Oh, right. My gloves.”
Rochelle and Brad went into the garage, and Rochelle pointed out a box she easily could have reached. He didn’t question her though. Rochelle was getting older, and it wouldn’t sit well with the capable woman to admit to growing weaker or more tired.
“Talk, Brad,” she said.
He set the box at her feet. “Huh?”
“You always have that look on your face when you’re troubled. And we all know what time of year this is.”
He shrugged. “I’m good.”
She just stared at him.
He looked around the garage, noting a few things Oscar should have taken care of, like the sagging shelving by the back corner.
“I’m waiting.”
Brad returned his gaze to hers and blew out a breath. “I feel weird. I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“I met this girl. Avery. She’s different than I thought. We hit it off, kind of.” We had hot sex I can’t get off my mind. And I like her a lot more than I thought I would. “But then I’m back here, and the thing with Avery feels like it
didn’t happen. And I keep thinking about Dana even though I don’t mean to. It’s been five years. I shouldn’t be so weird, right?”
“Honey, give yourself a break. Suicide hits those who survive the hardest. Dana had real problems, problems her parents wanted to lay on you.” She grimaced. “You do the blame game well enough as it is. Let it go. Dana was not your fault. She was a sweet girl who made a mistake. She loved you, Brad. Dana never would have ended her life if she’d been thinking straight.”
He wasn’t so sure. “She was…troubled.” Her parents had been awful. Overly loving, smothering. Nothing they did could ever point to them as being abusive or neglectful because they’d love her. Too much.
“Yes, she was. Shit happens, and we have to deal with it.” Rochelle sighed. “I work with plenty of people with mental health problems. Depression is a mental illness, and those who have it can’t help it. Dana couldn’t help her depression. Her turning to drugs didn’t help either. She was your best friend, Brad. You know this.”
“Yeah. But I should have been there for her.”
“How? Brad, you were friends with that girl forever, even through that brief period where you dated, and Lord knows it’s tough to hold on to friendships when you involve a romance. Still, you two were always tight. In all that time, did you ever see her parents let the poor girl just be?”
Only the fact that the Crawfords had known him since he and Dana had played together as children and grown up together under their supervision when at their house had made him an acceptable boyfriend for the brief time he and Dana had dated. But he remembered how pleased they’d been when he and Dana had gone back to just being friends.
He sighed, recalling the many times they’d controlled her. He’d be waiting for Dana to go out, standing by while her mother picked out her clothes. He’d often overhear her father lecture her about the fear she’d be throwing her life away if she continued to bring home an A– instead of an A. Seeing her sadness when she’d try her best only to come up short—but always loved—by her understanding parents.