Love Me Like You Do: Books That Keep You In Bed

by Fields, MJ

  Holding the ball, I leaned up and took a shot. It went in.

  “I did it!” I jumped up in the air and spun around, landing me face-to-face with Adam.

  My heart began to race, my skin igniting. It was the closest we’d ever been.

  Looking up, I saw his dark eyes peering down on mine. We were standing close, so close, his breath on my skin. My chest rose and brushed against his.

  Adam licked his lips, leaning forward just a touch. I braced myself for contact when, suddenly, he backed away.

  He grabbed the ball from the ground and started dribbling it around me. “Come on, best three out of five.”

  “Three out of five what?” I stood motionless.

  “You want to play basketball. Let’s play.” He dribbled up to the net and took a shot, making it in perfectly. Retrieving the ball, he bounced it again.

  “I don’t want to play. I have to play. Mr. Ruggers made it my intramural requirement for gym. I have to learn the rules of the game, or I’ll fail.”

  “Basketball is your gym requirement?” Adam said, shocked. Too shocked.

  Clearly, he thought I wasn’t athletic enough to play a sport.

  I put my hands on my hips. “For your information, I like basketball.”

  “No, you don’t. You like dance. You should be taking impressionist movement with Mrs. Lauer.”

  He was right. I should be.

  “It was full. And, personally, I think Mr. Ruggers is just punishing me for the ruckus I caused at the basketball championship game last year.”

  With a laugh, Adam leaned back. “Oh, yeah. That’s probably right. You had the entire stadium on their feet, chanting, ‘Howl at the foul.’” Shaking his head and smiling, he said, “You caused a huge brawl. They had to stop the game to clear the players from fighting.”

  I looked down and shuffled my feet. “Okay, it wasn’t my finest moment. Sue said it was a ridiculous call, and I got a little carried away. I didn’t mean for anyone to fight.”

  Adam dribbled the ball in between his legs and around in a circle. “You were right though. That ref missed the call. I was one of the people chanting along with you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Now, I have to do drills, learn different shots, and play in order to pass the class.”

  “Why isn’t your boyfriend out here teaching you?”

  “Brad got a call and took off. I don’t know where he went.”

  “He just left you here?” Adam took another shot, and the ball went in. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”

  I did a double take. “You’re gonna teach me basketball? Now? What about Nina?”

  Adam shrugged. “She can wait. Now, come here, and show me what you’ve got.”

  We played almost every day for five months. When the weather got nice, we would move our lesson to the schoolyard, and then we started meeting in his driveway. We spent those nights talking about everything—school, friends, movies, life. He was getting ready to graduate and go away to school to become an architect. I was just a wide-eyed sophomore who was settling into a deep Matthew McConaughey obsession. We laughed, and we played, but mostly, we talked.

  A slight breeze brushes the hair from my face. It feels nice and peaceful after a morning of manual labor. I’m about to fall asleep, but the breeze stops.

  I open my eyes and see jean-clad legs standing in front of me, blocking my wind. I look up, and Adam is standing above me, holding two brown paper bags in one hand and two Cokes in the other. He holds out his hand with the bags.

  I don’t move or say a word.

  He raises his head to the sun and takes a deep breath that puffs out his chest. When he looks back down, he closes his eyes, shakes his head, and then takes a seat on the ground next to me.

  He places a bag on my lap and props a Coke on the side of my hip. He proceeds to open his bag, taking out an apricot, a sandwich, and a cookie.

  I look in my bag and see that I have the same.

  “Is this some sort of peace offering?” I ask.

  Adam takes a bite of his sandwich.

  I open my sack and start with the cookie. “Who made the lunches?”

  With a mouthful of sandwich, he replies, “Me.”

  I turn my head to him in surprise. “You made lunch for the whole crew?”

  “No.” He pops open his soda and takes a sip. “You still eat your dessert first?”

  “Yes,” I answer. Then, I swallow my cookie. “Wait, what do you mean by still?”

  The side of his mouth rises just barely, as if he’s recalling a memory. “When you used to come to my house, you always asked for a piece of pie before dinner. I remember my mom saying it would spoil your appetite, and your reply was, ‘What if I choke and die during dinner? Do you really want me to die, not having dessert on my last day of life?’”

  Adam laughs lightly. I, on the other hand, am dumbstruck that he remembers this. I didn’t think Adam remembered anything about those days.

  When he looks back at me, the slight rise of his lip is gone. Maybe it’s because I’m staring at him with the most confused expression.

  I shake off the oddness of the moment and say, “Well, you know, a branch from this tree could fall on my head and knock me unconscious. Do you really want me to die, not having devoured that delicious cookie?”

  Adam looks out into the field and says, “No. We wouldn’t want that.”

  We sit in silence and eat our lunches. Our feet are stretched out before us, and the breeze is back to whistling in the trees.

  “Must suck, huh?” I say, the first to break the silence, talking into the open air. “Having to give up your Sunday to babysit me?”

  “No. I’d have been here anyway.”

  I raise a brow. “You volunteer here a lot?”

  “Three times a week. I work a four-day shift, and I’m here the other three.” His words are nonchalant, like every twenty-five-year-old guy gives up his days off to build houses in the heat for people he doesn’t know. “If you want to come Tuesday, you can knock off a few more hours before your night shift.”

  I have a lot of questions but don’t know which one I want to ask first.

  I don’t get a chance to ask any because Adam opens his mouth and says, “I take it, Bob Paige taught his kids how to do construction?”

  I laugh at the absurdity of his comment. “My dad? Use a tool? If by tool, you mean, a KitchenAid mixer, then, yes, he taught us everything he knows. If you mean a hammer and drill, the answer is no.”

  He looks at my hands clasped around a ham sandwich. “Who taught you?”

  “What? You think a girl with an ass as fine as mine, who makes the best Long Island iced tea in town, can’t hang a wall?”

  He shrugs. “Kinda. Yeah.”

  I shake my head at his assumption. I should be a bitch and argue with him, but instead, I tell him the God’s honest truth. “You know how boys sign up for the dance elective in high school to meet girls? Well, I signed up for shop to meet boys.”

  Adam lets out a low laugh, but I can’t tell if he’s laughing at me or because he actually thinks what I said is funny.

  “How’d that go for you?”

  “It’s how I met Brad.”

  The mention of his dead best friend changes the aura around him. The light laughter in his voice falls, as does the carefree expression on his face. In its place is a look that turns serious.

  “That’s right. I forgot.” The wall he momentarily let down is back up.

  I take a bite of my sandwich and chew. I swallow and carry-on, “Turns out, I like working with my hands. There are a lot of things I’m good at that no one gives me credit for.”

  The muscles in his forearms tighten and release. His mouth opens and closes just barely. For a man whose every movement is precise and calculated, he seems to have a hard time with deciding what action he wants to present at this moment.

  “Leah, what you said earlier.” He pauses for a moment. Those onyx eyes look at me the same way they did last n
ight. “I’m the asshole. But you’re not the idiot.”

  Not expecting an apology of sorts, I just stare back at him and wait for the rest of it—the part where he reprimands me or says something demeaning about my career, my bar, my dress, my personality.

  Instead, he says nothing.

  In silence, I accept his words for what they are, and we finish our lunch, sitting under the tree. When it is time to head back, I know I should say something. He’s about to walk toward the house when I place my hand on his forearm and pull him back.

  He turns to me, and I suddenly feel awkward.

  I’ve never been shy with words, but something about the way his arm has gone stiff underneath the pads of my fingers and how his pecs rise without an exhale makes me freeze. My mouth is without sound.

  Adam looks down at my hand on his arm and stares at my skin touching his. His face forms a frown, and I’m dying to know what he’s thinking.

  But I’ll never know because he jerks away.

  “Don’t touch me,” he says.

  I stand and watch his back as he walks away.

  Five

  “What a jerk,” Suzanne says from her spot on an upside-down crate in the stockroom of The Bucking Bronco.

  “I know, right?” I’m counting the cases of Absolut.

  The room is small and windowless, lined with metal shelves. It’s strictly known as the liquor room and where we keep the booze. There’s a room under the bar where the beer is stored and another in the back near the kitchen for the food.

  “You get arrested, and he comes in and makes this deal with you to keep you out of trouble?”

  I mark the number of cases on the paper in front of me. “It’s like he wouldn’t even listen to me when I said that I was not behind the goddamn wheel.” I look up from the clipboard and move over to the Grey Goose.

  “Well, that other officer, sure, he should have listened to you, but how dare that awful Adam Reingold act like some knight in shining armor by saving your ass and your dreams of owning a bar.”

  There’s a dramatic air to her speech that causes me to stop what I’m doing as I swivel my head.

  I point my pen at her. “You’re being facetious.”

  She pushes her glasses up her slim nose and shrugs one shoulder up to her ear. “And we haven’t even touched on him rescuing you from being attacked by Nico.”

  “Rescued? I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I could sue the town for that.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because…” I try to think of a reason. Not coming up with one, I tap my foot in frustration and toss her a frustrated glare. “Shove it.”

  Suzanne laughs, her shiny pink lipstick spread across her widened grin. “Even though Adam’s kind of a dick, he should know you by now. Your reputation precedes you. Hell, you’ve made me drive some way-too-tipsy girls you were concerned about home because you were short-staffed and couldn’t leave.”

  I shake my head. My eyes focus on the laces of my sneakers. “I don’t think he pays attention.”

  “No, I suppose he doesn’t,” she says.

  There’s a moment of silence as I move on to the bottles of rum and make notes on my clipboard.

  “You never talk about Brad.”

  My pen stops moving on the paper. “What’s there to talk about?”

  “Nothing. Everything. It’s kind of nice that you and Adam are working together. I think you need to hash that out.”

  “You want us to talk about how someone we were both incredibly close to had a heroin addiction that we were so damn blind to that he died as soon as it started?” I close my eyes and bite the inside of my cheek hard. “Speaking of which, did you have any clue Victoria did drugs?”

  Suzanne’s hands quickly rise in defense. “Absolutely not.” She lets out a huff in disbelief. “And no one’s heard from her since Saturday night. I’ve asked around. She made some random post yesterday about her new leggings, so I know she’s alive. Where exactly is the question.”

  This town is going to hell.

  Emma says she’ll never return. She wants to live in a city, any city. Cedar Ridge is just too small for her.

  Dad always says to her, “Big city, big problems.”

  The opposite isn’t the same for small towns. Our issues seem to become magnified under the microscope we put each other under. Brad died seven years ago, and here we are, still trying to keep the bad stuff away. Doesn’t seem to be working.

  “You don’t think Victoria took her hit inside my bar, do you?” I ask as soon as the thought pops in my head.

  Suzanne ponders that for a second. “I never saw her leave.”

  I kick the shelf in front of me, making it sway, and rub my hand over my face. If anyone is dealing in my bar, I am going to have huge problems, and I won’t be the only one paying for them.

  Shaking my legs and then my arms, I do a McConaughey shimmy-shake dance and get the bad vibes out. Knowing there’s a problem is the biggest part of the battle. I’ll have Juice and Ron, our other bouncer, screen everyone who comes in. The staff will be vigilant. I’ll talk to Paulie and find out what else we can do.

  “Let’s talk about something else. How was your night with Rory?”

  She blushes rosy red but reels it in and gives me a nonchalant, “It was cool.”

  I nod my head and act disinterested in her response as I tally up the bottles of Bacardi. “Sounds good. So, you’re not gonna give him another shot, right?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  I can’t help but smile. Suzanne is the worst when she falls for a guy. She thinks, if she says it out loud, she’ll jinx it.

  “What about you?” she asks. “Ready to give someone a chance?”

  “No,” I answer with an exaggerated O. I note on my paper that we need more Captain Morgan.

  She stretches her legs out. Her black Converse sneakers almost reach my feet. “You are the biggest prude-slut I’ve ever met.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  Flipping her curls behind her shoulder, she says, “Sure it does. You’re the world’s biggest tease. You’re kinda sexy and slutty, but as soon as a guy approaches, you give him the cold shoulder.”

  I lower my clipboard. “I might be kinda slutty, but that’s just an act. However, for the record, I am a whole lot of sexy.” I emphasize with a hand wave up and down my body. “Maybe if I were approached by a guy who had more than a hey-baby line, I’d give him the time of day. I want the cheeseburger, you know?”

  “I don’t, but I know you’ll enlighten me.”

  “The man who invented the hamburger was smart. The man who invented the cheeseburger—”

  “Was a genius,” she finishes for me. “I don’t think McConaughey was referring to his love life when he said that.”

  “I don’t want just any guy. I want the guy. A man who stands out in a crowd. He doesn’t care what others think and isn’t afraid to be funny or cry. He’s also daring. Maybe even a little dangerous.”

  “Your cheeseburger?”

  “My cheeseburger.” I let out a dreamy sigh. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

  “It’s not McConaughey’s yet…”

  “We’re down to weeks now. McConaughey’s is the love of my life, so there is just no room for a guy right now.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “It’s called commitment.”

  “You need to commit some time to those roots.” Using her pointer finger, she makes a swirling motion toward the top of my head.

  “You’ve got some sort of ombre thing going on without even trying.”

  “Ombre’s still in, right? Some people pay big bucks to purposely have dark roots and lightened ends.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’ve got a little more time until you go from chic to shabby.”

  I pick up a couple of strands and look at my split ends. “The budget is low these days.”

  “Good thing your best frien
d is a hairstylist.” She’s referring to herself. Suzanne works at a salon on Main Street. “We need to touch that up. Pronto.”

  “What are we touching up?” A male voice is heard as a figure pops in the doorway, making us jump.

  My hand flies to my chest and then swats my brother in his. “Way to scare a girl!”

  Luke rubs his chest. “Damn, woman, not a nice way to greet your date.”

  Suzanne rises from the crate. “You won’t go out with anyone in town, but you’ll date your brother?”

  Luke makes a face of disgust, and I roll my eyes at her.

  “Baby brother is taking me to lunch.”

  Suzanne folds her arms in front of her. “Really? Where?”

  I turn to Luke. “Yeah, where are we going?”

  He leans against the doorframe and smiles. “There’s this really great place in town. Serves awesome wings, and we can watch the game from the table while they serve us free beer.”

  My shoulders fall. “We’re eating here, aren’t we?”

  “Why would we possibly go anywhere we’d have to spend money when you literally have a bar at your disposal?” he asks.

  “Just because I work here doesn’t mean you get to eat and drink everything in stock.”

  Luke is freaking Pac-Man. The guy will put me in bankruptcy before I even get the new sign up.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says as he backs away and walks into the bar.

  It’s Monday, so the place is relatively quiet for the lunch crowd. We get a lot of action during football season but not as much in the summer. Candace, our other bartender, is behind the bar, and Noreen is wiping down a four-top in the back. Tonight, the place will be packed for Monday Mayhem. It’s only during the summer when the college crowd is home.

  Behind the bar, I pour two Cokes from the fountain. When I hand them to Luke, he makes a disappointed face.

  “Seriously?” he says.

  “You’re not twenty-one,” I say. Then, I walk back around to take a seat next to him.

  He hangs his head. I give him a sympathetic pat and take a sip of my soda. I’m about to ask him how many wings he wants me to order when the telltale blue lights of a police car pour in through the front window of the bar.