by Amy Pine
“Can we talk about this later?” she asked, then squirmed, her knee knocking against his as she remembered why they were on the couch like this in the first place.
“Freckles.” His tone was teasing. “Are you trying to evade the issue by seducing me?”
She unbuttoned his jeans, then pulled the zipper down, her thumb skimming his hard length as she did so.
Matthew hissed in a breath.
“Yes. Yes I am.” She palmed him between the legs, giving him a soft squeeze.
He let loose a small growl. “I guess I can’t argue with your priorities.” Then, because her pants were already in a ball on the floor, he skipped the teasing he’d been doing before and dipped his fingers beneath the band of her briefs, not stopping until one slid deep inside her, and her whole body went limp as she cried out.
“This doesn’t mean anything.” She whimpered as he moved inside her. “It’s…Just…Sex.”
He kissed her, his tongue sweeping against hers, his teeth tugging softly at her bottom lip.
“Just sex, Freckles. I got it.”
And then she let go, letting herself get lost in his touch and his kiss and the way he seemed to know her body almost better than she did.
Just sex, she reminded herself. Because expecting anything more from Matthew Bloom meant nothing but disappointment, and Alissa wouldn’t go through that kind of heartbreak again. She couldn’t. Falling for Matt again would ruin her.
Good thing she was in complete control—of her emotions, at least. Her body, though, and only her body, was at Matthew Bloom’s mercy for one last time.
This was it.
After today, they would set boundaries.
Okay, after a pint of Halo Top and then doing it one more time.
And then a shower together with that amazing showerhead she installed a few months ago.
And right before he left in the morning.
That would be it. Done. Finished. Kaput. Friends only from there on out.
* * *
We forgot to talk about Gabi and what we should tell her, he texted the following evening. My parents want to have everyone over for dinner Thursday night after they get home. Ethan’s family too. Maybe I could swing by to pick you up ahead of time and we can talk?
Alissa laughed as she typed out her message. You are staying at your parents’ place, aren’t you? Isn’t it counterintuitive to pick me up?
She watched the three dots and waited for his response.
Yes. It is.
She waited for more dots, but he didn’t say anything else.
Okay, she typed back. But we are JUST talking.
He didn’t respond after that.
Good. They were both on the same page.
Believing their own lies.
Chapter Twelve
So.” Miriam ran her fingers across the bottles of grocery store Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. “What kind of wine says, Welcome home from your vacation and I’d like to introduce you to the stranger I met in Europe who I’m now going to marry? Also, will you please donate to the wedding fund?”
Gabi huffed out a laugh. “My grandparents don’t need to pay for the wedding. I’m sure my parents have money put away for something like this.” Sure, her mom had just sunk her savings into opening her own bakery, but it was doing well. And her dad? He was this really smart scientist guy. The jobs that took him all over the world must have paid well, right? “And I don’t want a big wedding anyway. Just me, Ethan, and the people we love most. That’s all I need.”
“Ethan wants a small wedding too?” Miriam asked, eyes still focused on the rows of wine.
“Of course.” At least, Gabi assumed. They hadn’t really discussed it. Gabi still felt like she was walking on eggshells after breakfast at the bakery, with Miriam blurting that Gabi had never wanted to get married.
“I overreacted,” Ethan had said when she’d found him outside Take the Cake. “It’s not a big deal.” Then he’d kissed her, and Gabi had wanted to believe it wasn’t a big deal. So she’d let it go.
Miriam pulled a six-dollar bottle off the shelf and held it up, brows raised. “Huh? Says I’m a college grad, but I don’t yet have a job. Will this do?”
Gabi wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “We can do better. Besides, I have my résumé out to several portrait studios throughout the Lakeshore suburbs and the city. In fact, I have my first interview on Monday morning.”
Miriam’s eyes widened. “That’s fantastic! Where? One of those boutique-y type places that does family photo shoots in front of old barns or in pine forests? I swear I am nowhere near ready for marriage or family or any of that stuff, but every time my mom shows me a post of someone’s family portrait on Facebook, I get a little tug on the old heartstrings.”
Gabi winced. “Well, this place does do family portraits but no location shoots. Everything is on-site. And there are a lot of great restaurants nearby for lunch breaks and stuff—even a Cinnabon.”
“No,” Miriam said. “Oh, Bloom. Please tell me you’re not working at one of those chains at the mall.”
“Of course not,” Gabi said, grabbing a bottle of wine from the shelf and studying it intently. “It’s just an interview. They have to offer the job before I actually work there.”
Miriam snagged the bottle of wine from Gabi’s hands and set it gingerly back on the shelf. Then she placed her hands on Gabi’s shoulders, forcing Gabi to make eye contact.
“It’s not that bad,” Gabi said. “It’s a start, my foot in the door, you know? It pays above minimum wage, and who cares if the manager sounded like she was a junior in high school. All jobs are important.”
So far, Say Cheese! was the only business that had responded to her résumé. Granted Gabi hadn’t even been home a week, but this was it. She was a college graduate and a soon-to-be-married woman. The plan was always to graduate, find a steady and stable job that would offer her the steady and stable life she knew would bring her happiness. Even if she couldn’t bring herself to utter the cheesy name of the mall chain out loud.
“I know,” Miriam said, her tone gentler this time. “But you said it yourself. You’re likely going to be reporting to a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t know the first thing about a camera other than to point and shoot with one predetermined setting.”
Gabi cringed.
“And backdrops of fake locations,” Miriam added. “Did you earn your BFA and then travel Europe taking photos inside places like the Sistine Chapel so you could come home and use location backdrops?”
“It’s actually illegal to take photos inside the Sistine Chapel.”
Miriam waved her off. “Fine. Bad example. But you know what I mean, right? You will be miserable at the mall. So how about this? I know it might not be what you had in mind since it’s a more corporate gig, but my design firm is looking to hire a photographer. It would be photographing products, and sometimes people holding products, but there might be wiggle room for some creativity and even some travel—just to places around the city. I have zero influence since I’m brand new there, but I could at least make sure your résumé makes it to the top of the pile. I know portraits and people are your thing, but this might put your name out there a bit better than the mall.”
Gabi mirrored her best friend by grabbing Miriam by the shoulders as well. “I love that you would do that for me—and I might take you up on it if no one else calls me other than the mall—but I’m going to figure this out. Now that I have Ethan, it’s more important to me than ever to plant my professional roots here in Chicago. If it has to start in a mall, so be it. At least it’s a start.”
Gabi forced a smile, hoping her friend wouldn’t see through her—wouldn’t see the inexplicable twist in her gut when Gabi thought about staying put from here on out.
You are not your father, she reminded herself. Because as much as she loved him, she never wanted to be him, not if it meant chasing a dream that didn’t include the people she loved.
“Hey,” Miriam sa
id, dropping her hands from Gabi’s shoulders and pivoting back toward the shelves of wine. “Why are you even bringing vino? Don’t your grandparents prefer something more along the lines of edibles?”
Gabi snorted and backhanded her friend on the shoulder, grateful for the change of subject. “Shh. Someone might hear you!”
“Oh no!” Miriam slapped the sides of her face like she was Kevin McCallister just realizing he’d been left home alone. “What will happen if I talk about a legal substance right here in the grocery aisle full of other legal substances?”
“I know,” Gabi whispered, her cheeks flushing. “But the whole grocery store doesn’t need to know that my grandparents may or may not dabble in edibles. This has never been confirmed or denied.”
Miriam laughed. “Tell me Dreamboat’s first impression of Gigi and Gramps. That’ll be enough confirmation for me. Also, do we still not know Gigi and Gramps’s real names?”
Gabi groaned. “We do not. They still insist that names are relative and that I should call them whatever I want. I’m sure Gigi was my attempt at Grandma, and I’ve graduated from Gamps to Gramps. That should make tonight interesting. And in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t need things to get any more interesting than they already are. The whole me-getting-married thing hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing since I announced the big news. I made my mom faint, I almost killed Ethan’s dad, and now I have to introduce Ethan to my dad’s parents—with everyone else there. I just want everything to go perfectly. I want our families to click, you know?”
Miriam grabbed her hand and pulled her to the end of the aisle before snagging a twenty-dollar bottle of sparkling rosé and holding it out for Gabi to inspect.
“It’s summer. You can’t go wrong with a rosé. And everyone loves a bit of bubbles.”
Gabi opened her mouth to protest, but Miriam cut her off.
“It’s a screw top,” she added, reading Gabi’s mind. “No one is getting shot in the jugular tonight.”
Gabi let out a relieved breath as she grabbed the bottle and set it in the basket hanging from her elbow.
Miriam cleared her throat. “I’ve really missed you, Bloom. I’ve missed us.”
Gabi smiled at her pink-haired companion. “I’ve missed us too. And I want to know about…I want you to tell me…I missed a lot this summer,” she admitted.
Miriam shrugged. “So did I. Did you think I would have tried to talk you out of it if you’d told me about Ethan?”
“No,” Gabi said defensively. “The proposal didn’t even happen until the ride from the airport to my mom’s house.” She sighed. “Okay. Maybe I did think that, a little bit at least. We make sweeping declarations when we’re young—when our parents disappoint us and we swear we’ll never make the same mistakes they did. But then you meet someone who blows all your theories out of the water and—I don’t know. I guess for two months I didn’t want to be the girl who was so sure that falling for someone meant I had to get my heart broken. I just wanted to ride the wave and see where it took me.” She let out a soft laugh. “Everything seemed so easy until the second we stepped out of that car and onto my mom’s driveway.”
“And now?” Miriam asked.
“Now it’s been less than a week filled with one misstep after the other.”
Miriam sidled up against her and rested her head on Gabi’s shoulder. “And I went and got all competitive for your attention like that time in second grade when you went on the tire swing with Dana Lewis instead of me.”
Gabi grimaced. “She spun me so hard I threw up.”
“That’ll teach you to forget about your best friend.”
Gabi straightened and looked at her. “I didn’t forget you. I was just scared to cross the bridge between fantasy and reality. I should have done better, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”
Miriam kissed her on the cheek. “Forgiven.”
Good. Not that Gabi had ever doubted her best friend would be fully in her corner, but it was still a comfort to hear.
“Now, are you going to do the big reveal, or what?” Gabi asked. “Was it a guy? A girl? Someone nonbinary because I don’t want to assume? Are you in love? Experimenting? Do your parents know? Tell. Me. Everything.”
* * *
Ethan was picking up his parents and sister on his way from the city to Gabi’s grandparents’ house, and since Gabi needed some mental prep time before facing them again, she’d had Miriam drop her off at home, figuring she and her mom could head over together.
“Hello?” Gabi called out when she walked through the front door. “Mom?”
Weird. Her mom’s car was in the driveway.
She shrugged, figuring her mom was in the shower, and made her way into the kitchen so she could let the rosé chill in the refrigerator.
Then she contemplated the other item in her hand, the impulse gift Miriam had purchased for her at the register.
A bridal magazine.
“Have you even looked at dresses yet?” Miriam had asked.
“Dresses?” Gabi countered. “Don’t we need a date or a venue or—I don’t know—a ring I can’t ingest?”
It wasn’t that she truly cared about the ring. She didn’t need anything fancy or expensive. But the impermanence of the original pretzel engagement ring made everything feel a bit precarious. Or maybe it had been all the volatile family gatherings. Perhaps tonight they could go for a hat trick.
She moved to the kitchen island and set the magazine down, flipping open its heavy glossed pages. Everything inside was so beautiful and elegant, from the taffeta and tulle to the willowy models who donned the dresses, from the hotel grand ballrooms to a DIY wedding in a backyard decked out in lanterns and fairy lights. It was all so gorgeous…
It was all so overwhelming.
What if Ethan regretted his whim of a proposal? What if despite taking the leap and falling for him, she’d been right all along—that love only ended in heartache?
She slammed the magazine shut. Tonight’s family dinner was going to be stressful enough without adding fuel to the fire by spiraling into What ifs.
Gabi marched into her room and stopped short just inside the doorway. The sage-green walls were the same as they’d always been, the paint having held up well since sixth grade. Her mom had finally had enough for a down payment on their own place and suddenly, they were no longer sharing a room at Grandma Ev’s and Papa Mike’s.
She crawled onto her bed and studied the laminated world map on the wall above her headboard, running her fingers over the few pushpins that marked the places she’d been in the United States, smiling at the photos she’d chosen to accompany each.
There was a picture of Gabi and Miriam standing in front of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis from their eighth-grade class trip. Another of Gabi zooming off the edge of a waterslide from the first “vacation” Alissa had taken her on alone to the Wisconsin Dells, soon after they’d moved into the house. But it was the one stuck beneath the pin from Myrtle Beach on which she paused—Gabi showing off the pink cast on her left arm—her throat tightening at the memory.
Gabi had been ten. Her dad’s parents had taken her on a trip to Myrtle Beach. It was her first experience away from her mom for any length of time, and she’d been nervous. But her mom was taking a two-week intensive course at the French Pastry School in Chicago, and because it was summer, Gigi and Gramps had offered to take her on a road trip to their summer rental in South Carolina. They’d promised Gabi a surprise when they arrived. Said surprise was sitting on the beach house’s porch swing when they pulled up the drive—Gabi’s dad, whom she hadn’t seen in months.
It had been one of the best summers she could remember—her dad in one spot for two whole weeks, all to herself. The only thing missing was her mom. But Gabi knew how important school was to her. She also knew that two weeks under the same roof—all five of them—would likely not have gone as smoothly. So even though she missed her mom, Gabi dove headfirst into time with the father she’d missed for month
s.
Everything about the trip was a dream until Gabi jumped off the swings at a nearby park and broke her arm. Alissa had been so worried that she’d driven nonstop from Chicago to be there when Gabi got her pink plaster cast. Gabi didn’t know it then, but her mom had dropped out of the course as no absences were allowed.
She remembered the time in the hospital as bittersweet—she and her parents all in one place, both of them doting on her and not snipping at each other. She was sure an argument must have followed, but if it had, it wasn’t when she’d been around.
She’d been home so little since returning from Europe that she hadn’t even added the new pins.
She loaded her 1990s Brit Pop playlist on her phone—her musical taste heavily influenced by her mother’s simply because Gabi was forced to listen to whatever Alissa listened to when she was younger—put it on shuffle and hit PLAY. Elastica’s “Connection” filled the room, and Gabi dug her container of pushpins out of one of the cluttered drawers in her desk. Soon she’d have photo prints to add as well.
“Gabi?” She heard her name as she crawled back onto her bed. She spun to see both of her parents standing in her bedroom doorway.
“Dad? What are you doing here?”
“Turn down the music?” her mom yelled.
“What?” Gabi asked, then pressed PAUSE on her phone.
“Turn down the—” Her mom quickly dropped her volume when she realized the music had stopped. She whispered, “Music!”
They all laughed, and then Gabi’s brows furrowed.
“Dad…aren’t you staying at your parents’ place?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Your mom made a cake for tonight, and I told her I’d pick it up so she didn’t have to worry about it in the car.” He spoke so matter-of-factly it was as if it was rehearsed. But Gabi shook off the strangeness and simply nodded.