“Lay-Me, like I was an easy lay,” I explained furiously. “They acted like I was a whore. I never told you, because your opinion of me was bad enough already. I was miserable every single day of high school because of people like her.” I pointed at Scarlett.
She looked at the floor. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“I don’t believe you. Of course you knew! Are you saying that you didn’t notice when someone dumped out my backpack off the second-floor balcony into the reflecting pool in the quad right before midterms, so all my books and notes got ruined? Or you didn’t see me running through the parking lot on that fun day in my junior year when everyone had saved their grapes from lunch to throw at me? I know you did, because I remember you there, laughing. You laughed at me, along with everyone else.”
Scarlett still didn’t look at me, but my mom gasped, “Lanie!”
“How could you have acted like that?” I asked Scarlett. “You knew what I was really like, and you must have known that nothing really happened between me and Brooks at that party. But you just played right along with Coco. You never did anything to help me at that stupid school.” Damn, I wished I hadn’t thrown the Kleenex at her. I really needed it.
Now Scarlett flushed. “I’ve heard enough about you and Starhurst and what a bad person I am from my brother, so stuff it, Lanie, ok? Where is Brooks?”
“Probably out screwing another woman, if this day continues the way it has been!” I yelled.
My mom’s mouth dropped open. “‘Another woman?’ Are you saying—”
“Not another word!” I told my mom, my hand up to stop her. “I’ve had about enough of all of this!”
“Lanie, what has come over you?” my mom asked.
“You know, I’m finally just telling all of you what’s on my mind. Scarlett, I don’t know where Brooks is, but that’s what a phone is for. Use it. You don’t have any right to barge in here and I don’t really want to see you very much after you made that guy pity-dance with me at your engagement party. Oh.” I stopped, thinking about what I had just said. “I really am sorry about your engagement.”
“Thank you,” she said, very stiffly.
I turned to my mother on the couch. “Mom, as much as I now think Brooks sucks for colluding with you to trick me, I also think it’s terrible that you took away his funding after you promised it to him. You haven’t noticed that I’ve been angry and I haven’t been talking to you, so now I’m telling you. I think that it’s awful that you backed out like that. It sucks.” I dragged my sleeve over my face, because I had continued crying the entire time I had been yelling at them both. In fact, I wanted to curl up in bed and sob for the rest of the day.
And then, as the icing on the cake, Maisie jumped up and started barking and twirling in happy circles, and that meant only one thing. Brooks walked in a moment later and stopped dead when he saw my face.
“Peanut, what the hell is going on in here? Scarlett, why is your car parked on the lawn?”
“Not you, too,” I told him. “Just go back to your meeting!”
“They texted while I was on my way to the ferry. It got postponed,” he said, crossing to me and reaching out his arms. “Why are you crying?”
I stepped away. “No, don’t touch me, Brooks! Now I’m mad at you, too.”
“What did I do?” he was smiling at me a little, kind of puzzled.
“My mom let me know about your business arrangement about me,” I informed him, and his arms dropped.
“Lanie, it’s not what you think.”
“It’s exactly what she thinks,” my mom put in. “You asked her to move in here as part of our agreement.”
“Juliette, one of your problems is that you never listen to a word anyone says. If you had, you would have heard my mom say not to rush into anything, and you wouldn’t have married Kristian. The guy currently making waves on every social media site, in very clear pictures as he drives his Scemo through a busy intersection with his eyes closed, while getting a blow job. Someone has posted them everywhere.”
My mom closed her eyes again, too. “Oh, no. Ava.”
“I went to meet with you about investing in my business,” Brooks said. “You mentioned to me that Lanie was moving out.” He looked over at me. “That you wanted to get her to move out. You told me that you wanted my help to find her a place to live.”
I rolled my eyes. Awesome. I was like someone’s unwanted pet, getting passed around.
“Yes,” my mom said, her voice tightening. “And we decided that you would show her Scarlett’s house, and that I would become your first investor.”
“Those two things were unrelated, at least in my mind. I specifically told you that I wasn’t going to use Lanie as a negotiating chip, that whatever happened between me and her, it was separate from the business relationship that you and I were forming. Do you remember that part?”
“So you’re saying that it was just some happy coincidence that you two moved in together?” Scarlett asked, gesturing around at the house and sounding very doubtful.
“Scarlett, no one asked for your opinion,” Brooks said, just as I told her, “Thank you!”
He looked furious and turned back to me. “It wasn’t a coincidence, because she told me you needed a place to go.”
“Like I was an unwanted kitten!” I burst out.
“You were just like the little cuckoo bird,” my mom said, “who needed a little push to leave the nest.”
“So you shoved me at Brooks. And cuckoos don’t have their own nests! Don’t use bird analogies that you don’t understand!” I fumed at her. Brooks reached out for my hand and he held it tightly, even when I tried to pull away.
“That’s what happened,” he told me. “Lanie, I swear. I wasn’t trying to trick you, and I wasn’t using you to get my company off the ground.” He turned back to my mom. “Did you tell her the other part?”
My mom didn’t answer.
“She kept pushing me to start something with you,” he said to me. “I kept telling her to leave it alone. To leave you alone. After a while, I told her that we couldn’t continue to work together if she was trying to control my relationship with you. Do you remember the day you came home early and your mom was here? We had been arguing about it.”
“I don’t know, Brooks,” Scarlett said. “To me, it sounds like a quid pro quo.”
“No one asked you, brat!”
Hold the phone. “That’s why my mom took back her money?” I asked him.
“I gave back the money and told her that I was terminating our contract,” Brooks explained. “I’d had enough of her trying to push us together. When she suggested that I love the one I was with, I…” He stopped and shook his head. “I was also very, very tired of how she treated you, all the times she told you that you weren’t good enough.”
“That’s not what I do!” my mom protested.
“We had words,” Brooks continued, “and eventually I realized that we were not going to be able to separate out our personal lives and our business dealings. I said that enough was enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I asked him, and he reached for my other hand.
“I knew how it would sound to you. Just like Scarlett said, that it was a quid pro quo for me to get some money. And I thought it would hurt your feelings that your mom would try to bribe me to…” He stopped. Yes, it did hurt. Quite a bit. “Hearing that you were moving out did plant the seed, Peanut, but not in the way you think. When your mom told me that you needed to leave her guest house, I thought how fun it would be for us to live together, how much I liked you. We always got along so well. And I thought, maybe, I could do you a favor. After I had hurt you so much in high school, I thought I could at least be a good roommate for you. And help you take care of your dog child.” We both looked at Maisie, who had settled herself in a chair with the help of some steps Brooks had previously built for her out of books. She was watching us all like a tennis match.
“Wel
l, I guess that does sound reasonable to me,” Scarlett said. “Your whole life you’ve been jumping in to save Lanie.”
“I don’t need saving!”
“Tell me again why you’re here, Scarlett,” Brooks said.
“I came to talk to Lanie after I heard she got fired.”
“I didn’t get fired!” I said again, but she still ignored that.
“After all the shit you’ve been giving me,” she told her brother, “I felt a little…I don’t want to say ‘sorry,’ but I thought a little about how things were when we were kids, and I thought maybe you had a little point. He’s been carping at me for weeks about how I done you wrong, like some terrible country song,” Scarlett explained to me. “Anyway, I just thought about it more and I decided to do something. It pissed me off that they fired you over Coco because she’s such a bitch.”
“For the last time, I was not fired—”
“I sent an email to all the members of the board of directors of the school and told them that I knew about Coco screwing the PE teacher. Or the other way around, whatever. I had seen them together in his car, like Kristian and that woman,” she explained, and nodded at my mom, who now covered her face with her hands. “And then I sent a copy of that email to the editor of the newspaper and I let her know that the school has been stonewalling and suspended a teacher, Lanie, for telling the truth.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked faintly.
“Everyone in the school knew about Coco and that dirty old man. There should be a hundred witnesses coming forward, not just two. Anyway, some reporter called me and wanted to meet in person this morning so I drove out here. They’re going to using my interview as support for an article they were already running. Another employee of the school had already stepped forward with some really damning information about the administration and the board. Gretchen Rose.”
“Rosse? Gretchen Rosse?” As in, my kindergarten assistant? I had to sit down, pushing Maisie out of the way with my butt. As Shirley had always said, Gretchen had seen it all. And now, maybe she was telling it all. “You really did that, Scarlett?”
She shrugged off-handedly. “I love having my name in the paper. And whatever, it was just stupid that they were blaming you for telling the truth.”
“Thank you.” When she shrugged again, I repeated it. “No, thank you. That means a lot to me that you would back me up.”
“It’s about time,” Brooks told her, and if looks could have killed, she would have taken him out on the spot. He knelt in front of me. “What about the two of us? Lanie, do you believe what I said?”
I looked into his blue eyes. “Even if it is true, and this isn’t a reciprocity thing for my mom to invest with you, I don’t know if we ended up together for the right reasons. I don’t even know if we ended up together.”
“We are together. Definitely.”
I was clenching and unclenching my jaw. “Is it just what my mom said? Is it just ‘love the one you’re with?’”
“I hope it is. I hope that you do,” he said.
“Is it pity, or habit, or convenience?” I pressed him.
“Lanie, don’t be an idiot,” Scarlett advised. “Obviously, my brother is in love with you. He didn’t yell at me for hours on end about someone he doesn’t care about.”
“Lanie, remember what they say about a gift horse…” my mom added.
Without looking away from me, Brooks said, “Time for you two to go. Lanie and I need to be alone. We’ll be in touch.”
Scarlett muttered something and my mom was very reluctant to leave, but finally the door closed behind them both.
“Well?” I bit my lip, waiting.
Brooks leaned up and kissed me. “I do love the one I’m with, Peanut. But the deal is, I would love you if you lived on the other side of the country. The other side of the world. I don’t love you because of proximity or convenience. I love you, just because. Because you’re Lanie, the funniest, sweetest, bravest, best little peanut around.”
“I’m not little.”
“You are to me. Did you hear what I said?”
“The thing how you love me?” I asked.
“Yes, the thing how I love you,” he answered. He raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
“I heard it. What about if you really were on the other side of the country? My mom mentioned that you were leaving California. Is that true? Are you actually moving?”
“I may have to, to get this business going. But that wouldn’t mean that I’d be leaving you.”
“You mean, you’d want me to come?” I asked.
“Yes, but if you don’t want to, we would work it out. We can do the long-distance thing.”
I’d loved him from a distance for a long time, but I that wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. “You said you have a habit about things in your life, that you keep your head down and stay on the path, even when you’re heading straight for a wall.” I kept looking into his eyes. “Is that what you’re doing now? Sticking to a path just because you’re on it?”
He leaned up again and kissed me gently. “I’m sticking to this path because I hope you’re on it with me. That wouldn’t mean I was heading for a wall, because with you, I can pick up my head and see my whole future.” He kissed me again. “Our whole future.”
I kissed him back. I looked at him again, at his handsome face, but really, I didn’t see his looks so much anymore. Mostly I saw the guy who made me coffee every morning and stuck notes in my planning book just to say hello, the one who had jumped out of his car and forgot to put it in park and turn it off, because he was running over to me after my spider-induced car crash. The person who had adopted my dog as his own, even though she was a cranky little thing who ate his shoes when she got angry at him and had started hiding her leash under the couch so he couldn’t make her exercise.
I kissed him again, sucking his bottom lip into my mouth. I stopped and he pressed forward, back to me. “Did you really give back that money, for me?” I asked.
He nosed my cheeks, nipping my lips. “Yes.”
I pulled back to look at him. “That might mean you won’t be able to get your company started.”
“I’ll do it, another way.”
“It may mean you having to leave, though. I don’t know if it’s worth—”
Now he stopped trying to kiss me and looked at me, too. “Don’t say that it’s not worth it, that you’re not worth it. Lanie, you’re more important than anything else.”
I kissed him again, hard, gripping his shirt. He ran his hands through my hair and kissed me back. “I meant what I said,” he told me. “I love you.”
I pushed him onto his back on the ground, and my fingers scrabbled at the buttons of his shirt. I wanted him naked. I needed to see his skin, to feel it against mine. I straddled his hips, already feeling him getting hard beneath me.
“Take this out,” he said, tugging on my ponytail, and I pulled the elastic from my hair, leaving it to spring free and curly and wild. Brooks smiled up at me and I pulled off my shirt, too, before I bent down to his mouth. My nipples brushed against his chest so I moved my shoulders to feel it again, and I got so involved in the pleasure of it that I forgot to kiss Brooks and just hovered with my lips barely touching his. I looked up to see his eyes on me, blazing bright.
“Do that, do that again,” he whispered. “I want to watch you.”
I blushed, but I rubbed myself against him more. He brought his hands to my breasts, cupping them. “Show me.”
I sat up and moved his hands in circles, then squeezed his fingers around my breasts. Oh, God, that felt good. I made him take my nipples in his fingers and squeeze a little there, then a little more, then pull.
“Do you want my mouth?” he asked, and I nodded. Brooks sat up, abs rippling, and covered my ribcage with his big hands to hold me in place. His tongue lapped at one side, then the other. “Harder?” I pushed toward him and he suckled, letting go of each side with a little pop that made me laugh and jump and pres
s my hips against his.
I reached down and undid his pants. I reached inside, watching his face. His mouth slackened, eyes fluttered as my fingers quested and rubbed. “Show me,” I repeated. We yanked his clothes off and I got rid of mine before I crawled up the length of his body. “Show me.”
He took my hands and put them around his hard length, and moved them gently up and down. I felt him grow bigger, even harder, and watched as tiny, pearly drops appeared at the tip. I reached out my tongue and hesitantly licked and his whole body shook. I licked again, tickling my tongue around the ridge. “Underneath,” he directed me, and I fluttered my tongue again until he groaned, “There. Oh, fuck…”
I kept moving my mouth but I took my breasts and rubbed them against him too, pinching my own nipples in my fingers. I opened my eyes and Brooks was watching me. “Don’t stop,” he gasped, and I kept my eyes on him as I took him deeper. It wasn’t long before he groaned again and came, and came.
I lay between his legs and rested my head on his stomach, which heaved up and down. His fingers tangled in my hair. I felt so powerful, somehow. Also, I felt like I wanted him, really, really wanted him, and maybe I should have stopped before it had gone quite so far. I glanced up at the chair above us, and two protuberant brown eyes stared balefully down at me.
“The dog is looking at us,” I whispered.
Brooks’ stomach flexed as he picked up his head. “It’s kind of weird,” he whispered back. “I feel like she just saw something inappropriate.”
“She did! I forgot she was there. Do you think she’ll feel differently about us now?”
All his muscles now flexed as Brooks got to his feet, lifting me up with him. “Stand in front of me,” he said. “She never saw me naked before.”
I turned and threw my arms around his neck. He laughed. “Don’t tell me she’s never seen you, either, Peanut.”
“It’s not that,” I said, my face pressed against the slight stubble of his neck. “I didn’t tell you yet.”
“Tell me what?” His arms tightened around me.
“I love you, too.”
“I thought so, maybe,” he said.
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