“I’m not going on a date with her,” he said gruffly, almost challengingly.
She shrugged, as if nothing mattered to her. Nothing at all. “Your choice.”
And then she disappeared into the black hallway, back to her room.
It was then, and only then, that Rook realized that the fingers of one of his hands had dug hard into the wood of the doorjamb.
CHAPTER TEN
May refused to avoid him.
It was the principle of the thing.
Who cared if they still had enough electricity between them to power North America? Who cared if they were suddenly communicating more effectively than they ever had when they were married? And who cared if she had to endure watching him play ping pong with their daughter, jog the track in the atrium while they chatted, flip pancakes side by side.
The fact of the matter was that it simply didn’t matter if it made her ovaries swoon to watch him do anything at all. It simply didn’t matter if she’d wobbled away from the weight room on jelly legs after she’d watched him lift his T-shirt to wipe his sweaty forehead after executing a few dozen pull-ups. So what if he was freakishly hot? He’d always been freakishly hot.
And the biggest who-cares of all? That idiotic kiss from the other night. He’d been trying to shut her up. She deeply resented the fact that it had worked. Almost as much as she resented the fact that her nipples had been able to cut glass pretty much since that exact moment.
It wasn’t news that the man could kiss. He’d been kissing her into a puddle since they were sixteen years old.
She gritted her teeth as she ripped the bottom out of a cardboard box and flattened it neatly into a pile with the others.
She wasn’t avoiding him. But if she happened to need a few minutes to herself, sorting the recycling in the back pantry was as good a place to be as any.
With no more cardboard left to break down, May started sorting the cans with a vicious ferocity. Next she turned out all the labels on the soup cans and sauce jars. Then, finding she had no more reason to continue hiding in the pantry, she took a deep breath and stepped back out into the kitchen.
And straight into a very broad chest.
“Cedric!”
“Sorry!” Two hands came up to her shoulders as he steadied her. “I was just investigating what all the noise in the pantry was.”
“That would be me.”
“I was worried there was a rat in there.”
“Nope. Just a middle-aged woman at loose ends.”
Cedric stepped back from her and looked uncomfortably skeptical. “May, I don’t usually argue with women about stuff like this, but you’re not even thirty-three yet.”
She shrugged and stepped around him, washing her hands at the sink and eyeing the cookie jar that Sequence had stopped by yesterday to fill. “Do me a favor and take those salted caramel cookies with you when you go. Apparently metabolism retires around the age of thirty.”
“No can do,” he grinned, patting his stomach. “I’ve got a tux to fit into in about a two weeks.”
“That’s right!” May said wiping her hands off on a hand towel. “God, I’ve been such a bad friend. I’ve been so caught up in my own shit that I’ve totally forgotten to check in with Elena. How’s she holding up?”
Cedric frowned. He gave her a long, thoughtful look. “May, everyone understands that this has been a hard time for you. Elena’s not the type to hold a grudge, either.”
“I know.”
“But she’s good. Eerily good. We both are. Her mother’s a nervous, balding wreck, however. But she brought it on herself when she invited half of Queens to the wedding.”
That made May smile, but mostly in sympathy. She knew what it was like to plan a huge New York wedding and then have to make good on it when the day rolled around. “And you? How are you holding up?”
The big, kind-faced man slipped his hands in his pockets and surveyed her. “You really wanna know?” he asked slowly.
“Why wouldn’t I?” May said, trying for breezy. She picked up the lid of the cookie jar, frowned at the delicious smelling contents and chose a bright green apple from the bowl instead.
“Maybe because… you don’t like me?” Cedric tried.
May’s mouth fell open, apple and all. “I don’t not like you!”
“But you don’t like me either,” he pointed out. His hands were still in his pockets but his eyes were glinting with something friendly and amused.
May searched for a way around telling the truth on this particular matter and didn’t really see a way. “You make me nervous, Cedric. You’re best friends with my ex-husband.” She resisted the urge to pick at the stem of the apple. “I can’t imagine you’d have the nicest things to say about me if pressed.”
Cedric was quiet for a long minute. When he spoke it was in a measured, even way. He was the kind of guy who thought through every aspect of what he was about to say before he said it. “May, I’m not sure what you’re implying, but I think it’s important for me to tell you that Rook has never had a harsh word for you. Not to me, and I’m pretty sure, not to anyone.”
“Oh.” Could that be true? After the divorce she’d dragged him through he hadn’t once vented his frustrations to Cedric? She had questions about that. Lots of questions. She opened her mouth to ask some but instead took a huge bite of apple when Rook suddenly popped his head into the kitchen.
“Everything all right in here?”
May held Rook’s gaze, as she had every time she’d run into him in the days since their kiss. But when he finally looked away to Cedric she had to bite back her breath of relief. As usual when technically on-duty, Rook was wearing a white button-up and black suit trousers. He looked freaking amazing and May was tempted to duck back into the pantry, if she could have played it off.
“Yup. Just looking for May in the pantry,” Cedric replied.
May resisted the urge to stab him with eye-lasers. She could not believe he’d blown up her spot like that!
“You were in the pantry?” Rook asked in confusion.
“I was organizing the recycling,” she said primly, choosing to omit the part where she was just trying to get an hour to herself in the bunker where she wouldn’t risk running into her hot-as-hell ex whose kiss she couldn’t stop fantasizing about.
“May, we do that on our own here. You’re not an employee. You don’t have to work.”
“I’m bored, Javi. There’s nothing for me to do here. You won’t let me go to work.”
Apparently choosing to ignore the argument she was trying to start, Rook squinted at Cedric. “Why were you looking for her?”
“Oh.” Cedric coughed into his hand and looked back and forth between May and Rook. He scratched the back of his neck. “Elena texted you, May, but I guess you didn’t have your phone on you today. Apparently her mom needs the name of your, ah, plus one.”
You could have heard a pin drop ten miles away for how quiet the kitchen suddenly was. Rook’s arms were crossed over his chest and his eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline. The look on his face was basically, I can’t believe you gave me shit for going on a date when you’re the one bringing a plus one to my best friend’s wedding.
May drew herself up to her full height and tried not to speak frantically. “It’s Ricky!”
Whoops. Maybe her voice didn’t need to be quite that loud. She cleared her throat.
“The envelope was addressed to me and Ricky, but the invitation itself just had my name on it. So I RSVPd plus one.”
“Oh. Great. I’ll let her know. Bye.” For a rather slow-speaking man, Cedric sure could move fast. He was out of the kitchen at mach speed, leaving May and Rook alone, blinking at one another.
May ducked around Rook. “I’m gonna find Ricky.”
She didn’t look back.
***
“Ricks, why don’t you invite your mom to play with us?” Rook requested as he shuffled the cards. He knew it was shameless to use their daughter as a go-between,
and maybe his daughter knew it too because she shoved a cookie in her mouth and eyed him.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Jesus, Crumbs McGee.” Rook swiped the cookie crumbs that had flown from her mouth into the trashcan and started dealing cards. “If I ask her she’s gonna say no. If you ask her, she’ll probably say yes.”
Ricky swallowed. “Mom hates cards. Why would we subject her to that?”
“First of all, she told me she was bored earlier today and I want to give her something to do. Second of all, your mother does not hate cards.”
“How do you know?”
“I know because she’s fleeced me out of more money than Atlantic City has.”
“Mom plays poker?”
“Don’t act so surprised, kid,” May said from the empty doorway behind them. “Your mother used to be cool.”
Rook turned in his chair. “We were just talking about inviting you to play with us.”
She made a non-committal noise and skirted the card table in favor of the gigantic couch that sat in an L shape in front of the TV. “Seriously, what is it with men and humongous furniture?” she groused. “It’s embarrassing.”
Rook was just about to respond when Ricky’s cellphone dinged and his attention was diverted by his daughter’s beet-red face.
Ricky quasi-casually turned to one side and pecked out a quick response, letting out a surreptitious breath before she sent the message. She slid her phone in her pocket and looked up at her dad. “My turn?”
“Don’t you my turn us,” May said from the couch, leaning over the back of it with a teasing smile on her face. “What the hell was that text you just sent?”
Ricky looked momentarily embarrassed, but then her inner-May kicked in and she rolled her eyes. “None of your beeswax.”
May laughed in delight and intrigue. “It was from a boy, wasn’t it?”
“Mom!”
“So,” Rook said, pressing his tongue into his cheek. “You and Jake Bastille have upgraded to texting, huh? That’s a big step in a relationship.”
Ricky went ash-white. She slowly rose from her seat and steepled her fingers on the table top like a mob boss. Inwardly, Rook was quite impressed. Outwardly, he merely raised his eyebrows.
“How the heck do you know who Jake is?” Her voice was menacingly low.
He shrugged. “I’m your father. I know these things.”
“Dad, I swear to god, if you’ve been spying on me—”
“Oh, relax, you ball of hormones,” May called from the couch where she’d started flipping through a magazine as if she weren’t enjoying the show with every molecule of her being. “I told him who Jake was a couple of weeks ago. Your dad wouldn’t spy on you.”
Ricky turned her death-stare onto her mother. “And how the heck do you know who Jake is?”
May tossed her magazine aside. “Kid, you talk about him all the time.”
“He’s my friend!”
“Something you learn when you’re older,” Rook said, shuffling the cards again, “is that no one ever casually brings up their friends all the time. If you’re talking about someone over and over, just to say their name, you have a crush on them.”
Ricky glared back and forth between her parents, her expression steely. “You guys suck when you’re on the same team.”
Both her parents burst out laughing.
Ricky sighed and dropped back in her seat, crossing her arms. “Is this Jake thing gonna be a problem?”
Rook narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “Define Jake thing and then I’ll tell you if it’s a problem or not.”
May tossed her magazine aside. “It’s not gonna be a problem as long as you don’t get knocked up when you’re still in your teens.”
“Mom!” Ricky went bright red and covered her ears.
“I love you, kid,” May said, coming around the side of the couch and plunking into the seat next to Ricky at the card table. “But you stole my youth. Wait until your thirties to procreate. What are we playing?”
“Let’s teach her how to play poker,” Rook decided, dealing out cards again.
“I’m not— we’re not— we haven’t even—” Ricky hid her face in her hands for a second before taking a deep breath and glaring at her parents as if they’d just beaten the truth out of her. “I’m not sexually active.”
Rook choked on nothing but air and his own horror. He took a long swig out of his water glass, his eyes watering. “I should freaking hope not, considering you’re fifteen years old.”
Ricky shrugged. “Well, a lot of kids at my school already are… so I thought I should clarify that I’m not.”
“Thank you for telling us that, Ricks,” May said, squeezing her daughter’s elbow. “And just to clarify something for you? All those kids who say they’re having sex? Well, at least half of them are lying about it in the first place.”
“And the other half are having really shitty sex,” Rook cut in.
“How do you know that?” Ricky demanded.
Rook shrugged. “High school sex is generally shitty.”
Ricky got a sly, devilish smile on her face. “So you and Mom had shitty sex in high school?”
“Don’t say shitty,” Rook said, mostly to stall for time. He and May made eye contact. He could see that she was waging the same internal battle that he was. Do they lie to their daughter? Or tell her the truth and risk encouraging her to have sex too early?
“Your father and I were an exception.” May cleared her throat.
“And we were seventeen when we… first did that.” Rook felt a little hot around the collar.
May smirked at him from across the table and he couldn’t help but remember how he’d been the one to hold out on her for almost a year.
“Well,” Ricky said as she fiddled with her cards. “What makes you two the exception?”
She was grumbling and the question was as argumentative as it was genuine. Rook was uncomfortable with this conversation, but he fully dreaded the day that Ricky stopped asking questions. His own father had not been the kind of man one asked questions of. He’d been a brick wall of figure it out yourself. Which was probably why Rook had ended up getting a girl pregnant in high school. But he was not going to be like that with his own kid. As far as Rook was concerned, no matter how uncomfortable the situation was, if Ricky was asking, he was answering.
May sighed. “Because we were actually in love, Ricks. Not that there’s anything wrong with a high school crush. Those can be really potent and really real. But your dad and I… we just…”
“Clicked,” Rook finished in a rough sort of voice. He felt like he was putting his emotions through a cheese grater right now, but in sort of a good way. He hadn’t talked with anyone about this in so long, it felt really nice to take his feelings out of the treasure chest where he’d been storing them for years. And to do it alongside May? When they weren’t fighting? And their separate recollections lined up so perfectly? Well, that was really something. “I had a crush on your mom, sure. I thought she was hot, she gave me butterflies, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was really comfortable with her too. She felt like home. I trusted her completely. And I did everything I could to make sure she trusted me too.”
Ricky was bright red and staring at her cards, but Rook could tell she was listening. And he didn’t need to look at May to know she was listening too. Normally, mentions of the past had her clamming up. But right now? Her walls were just kind of… down. Maybe it was because their daughter was right there? Or maybe it was because they were starting a new phase of their divorce? Where they got along better and could reminisce about the past? That thought was as depressing as it was buoying. He didn’t let himself hope that perhaps their kiss the other night had made her feel soft for him again.
“I’m sure this is TMI and will scar you for life,” May said dryly. “But by the time your dad and I actually had sex, we were completely comfortable with each other in that way. There
was a lot of heat of the moment, but there wasn’t really self-consciousness. We took each other as we were. And that… is really rare.”
“I think it’s rare your whole life, Ricks. But especially in high school.”
Ricky sank down in her chair until just her red forehead was showing. “For the love of god, can this be over?”
Rook laughed. “Yes. It can.”
Ricky jolted as her phone vibrated in her pocket. She whipped it out and laughed in a surprisingly girlish way at whatever the text said. Absently, almost dreamily, she rose from the card table and wandered over to the couch where she plunked down and started texting back.
“Flirting is so fun,” May said, her chin on one hand as she watched her daughter from across the room.
“I guess she’s done playing cards.”
“Who wants to play cards with their parents when they could be texting a cute boy?”
“I don’t get the whole flirt-texting thing.”
May side-eyed him. “What do you mean? It’s not rocket science.”
“No,” he shrugged. “But you and I are dinosaurs and we didn’t have cellphones until after we got married.”
He realized a beat too late that he was admitting to never having texted with a woman since they’d broken up. But whatever. It was the truth.
He braced for her to school him on flirting through text and thus for him to want to stab his eardrums out. He did not care to hear May talking about flirting with other men.
“I guess I don’t really get it either,” she admitted, shrugging one shoulder.
“Really.”
“Well, it’s not like I haven’t tried!” That was her pride kicking in. “But in my experience, it’s a real dick pic minefield out there.”
Rook realized too late that he’d crumpled his hand of cards. They were now all perfectly creased down the middle. He set the cards down and frowned. “Are you telling me that men have been sending you dick pics?”
He hadn’t meant for his voice to sound quite so grim-reaperish but here they were.
She shrugged again. “Turns out Tinder is kind of the worst.”
“Unsolicited dick pics?” he tried again. He desperately needed the clarification, even if it felt like a thousand paper cuts all over his body to ask.
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