Tonic

by Staci Hart

  Her hand flexed, and she smiled. “Thank you for that. And thank you again for your help with this.” She let me go and gestured to the stacks.

  “You’re welcome. I’m just glad I have something to offer in the way of help.”

  “That you do. 2012.”

  I smiled and labeled it.

  We dug into the work, spending several hours getting everything sorted and organized, working through the ledgers together, absorbed in the work until Annika was yawning with every sentence she spoke.

  I stacked up the book we were pouring over — 2015 — and pushed back from the table.

  “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  She sighed, looking over the books with an air of defeat, something I was unaccustomed to from her. “It’s just so much. I wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

  I knelt down next to her chair and cupped her face, turning it to mine. Her hand hung on my forearm as she looked down at me.

  “You haven’t. We’ll get it done.”

  Her face softened at that, and she leaned into my hand.

  “Now, come to bed,” I said softly, and she turned her face to press a kiss into my palm.

  Snow was cold, fire was hot, and I couldn’t walk away from Annika like I’d promised her I would. The facts were as black and white as math, with no room for debate.

  I wondered fleetingly if we would ruin each other. If my fire would melt her ice until it evaporated. If her ice would snuff my fire out of existence.

  I pushed all of that down, deep down into my chest, and I kissed her. Because I had that moment. Later would figure itself out.

  When I broke away, I took her hand, and she followed me wordlessly through the apartment. I flicked off the lights on the way through the apartment and guided her to my bed. I reached for the lamp, throwing us into darkness, and we slipped silently under the covers, into each other’s arms. The weight of her, the warmth of her, familiar and foreign. I found comfort in her after a thousand nights alone. Because I’d been alone, even though I hadn’t, not really, only finding momentary reprieve in women who I would never hold through the night. Women who I never considered keeping for more than the moment. It was easier that way.

  With Annika in my arms, I realized just how easy it had been, how smart it had been to close my heart. Because when you opened your heart, you put it on the line. And my heart was most definitely on the line, exposed, raw against the touch of unfamiliar air.

  It was stupid and reckless, and I didn’t care. One day, I probably would. But until then, I’d revel in the feeling, the exhilaration of her.

  This was my last cognizant thought, and I sealed it with a kiss in the dark. It was ownership without expectation, submission without consequence. It was her skin against mine, her heart and my own, our bodies together. It was a moment that stretched to an hour and into a night. And I knew I was lost, and she could never know just how lost I was.

  Morning came too soon.

  It was still dark when her phone chimed to wake her. I’d been awake, still and quiet, holding her in the dark, thinking. Thinking too much. But as soon as she opened her sleepy eyes, I smiled like I didn’t have a thought in my brain past that very second.

  We dressed for the day, chatting and smiling, eating bagels and drinking coffee around the stacks of books on my kitchen table. I leaned on the doorframe of my bathroom while she put on her makeup, watching fascinated under the guise of conversation as she leaned toward the mirror and darkened her long lashes. My eyes followed the angle of her body, the comical ‘o’ of her lips, even more enthralled as she twisted a tube of red lipstick and pressed the creamy pigment to her lips.

  She was art. I wanted to draw her. My fingers itched to.

  I had a flash of clarity — I realized just how deep the shit I found myself in went. And it went really, really deep.

  I left first, scoping out the scene. The stairwell was empty, as was the shop, and even upstairs seemed more quiet than it did once things got going. So we parted before she left with a simple kiss before she walked down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, toward the coffee shop and away from me.

  The distance felt like a chasm, and I was afraid of heights.

  I closed the door with a snick and looked around my apartment. Ledgers on the table. Two coffee cups in the sink. Her makeup bag on my bathroom counter and clothes in my room. My bed rumpled, sheets still smelling of her.

  “Fuck,” I said to myself, raking a hand through my hair. And then I picked up my phone.

  Tell me you’re awake, I texted my brother.

  Little dots bounced as he typed, and a breath, heavy with relief, slipped past my lips. I am now.

  Good. I need to talk to you.

  What did I do?

  Nothing. It’s what I did.

  A pause. What did you do?

  I ran a hand over my mouth. Annika.

  That’s not news, dude.

  Just get up and come home.

  No response.

  I huffed as my fingers banged out a single word. Please?

  Bouncing dots and a hallelujah chorus. All right, all right. Be there in a bit.

  So I paced for a minute. Then I made my bed, erasing any visible remains of the night before. I did the dishes, putting our cups across from each other on the rack, like I could keep her out of my heart just as easily. But it was too late. I already knew that.

  I’d never wanted anyone so viscerally before. That was the perfect word. Visceral. Animal. Deep and instinctive, beyond my ability to control. It wasn’t love. Not yet, anyway. But if I didn’t stop it right now, that’s exactly where it would go. I could feel the allure of it pulling at my insides, twisting and squeezing to get my attention. As if I could ignore it.

  God, how I wanted her. All day, every day, insatiably, selfishly — I wanted her. And more than anything, that scared me.

  Years of convincing myself that I was fine. Years of loneliness. Fourteen long years of believing that love was too complicated, too rare to be real. Too rare to be mine. And then Annika walked through the doors of my shop and took a sledgehammer to everything I thought I knew.

  Shep walked in looking sleepy and disheveled, closing the door behind him. He took a seat at the table and made to move a stack of ledgers.

  “Whoa, don’t touch those,” I snapped, and he glared at me, lips frowning behind his beard.

  “You really are wound up. Tell me there’s coffee,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest.

  “There’s coffee.” I turned to pour him a cup and collect my thoughts. He let me have the silence, probably too tired to pry the truth out of me. I handed the mug over, and he grunted his thanks.

  He watched me for a second, and I leaned against the counter, my turn to cross my arms.

  “I’m not gonna beg for it, Joel.” He took a sip and cursed when he burned his lip.

  I chuckled. “That’s what you get for being a smartass.”

  His glare sharpened.

  I sighed. “Thanks for coming home. I just needed to talk.”

  “Then talk already.” He took another, more tentative, sip.

  “I’m in deep shit.”

  “How deep?”

  “Bottomless.”

  He frowned. “Explain.”

  “I’m not really sure how to. That’s part of the problem.”

  He kicked the chair across from him out a foot. “Sit and give it a shot.”

  I took the seat and propped my elbows on the table, slipping my hands into my hair. “I don’t know how to explain it. She’s under my skin, in my head, and I don’t know what’s happening or how to shake it. I don’t know if I want to shake it.”

  Shep watched me, his mug in one hand, assessing me. “She’s enough that you’re willing to entertain the idea of actually being in a relationship?”

  “Yes.” The word stung coming out, like it held the power to set me on fire.

  “And on the Liz scale?”

  “Doesn�
�t even register. Annika is a scale of her own, and it’s stratospheric.”

  He thought about that for a second, though his face gave nothing away. “And what does she think of all this?”

  “Haven’t told her.”

  “So, what are you two doing?”

  “Nothing, so far as we’ve said out loud. We’re keeping it a secret — her boss thinks it’s a bad idea. Laney’s worried about me clouding Annika’s judgment.”

  “I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

  “That’s part of the problem.”

  “And what’s the rest?”

  I chewed my bottom lip for a second. “I told her not to think about me. To just do her job, do what she had to. That I wouldn’t hold it against her. And that when it was over, we’d part ways like it never happened.”

  He sighed. “So, you lied.”

  I sighed in echo. “I lied.”

  “You’re right. You are in deep shit.”

  “Deeper now that I’m realizing how much I care about her.”

  Shep rested his boots on the seat of the chair next to him. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, man. That’s why I needed to talk to you about it.”

  His jaw was set as he leaned back in his seat, propping his elbows on the arms of the chair, cupping his mug over his stomach with both hands. “Well, the way I see it, you have two options. Be with her or don’t.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Deep, Shep.”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Do you see a third option?”

  “No, but it’s not that simple. I don’t want to put her job at risk, but I don’t want her to lie to me. I want to trust her, but I don’t know if I can or should. I don’t know whether or not my blessing to treat me like a puppet was setting myself up to get hurt or a test to see if she’d hurt me.”

  “Probably both.”

  I let out a breath. “Probably both.” I looked down at the surface of the table, and my eyes slipped out of focus. “What do I do?”

  “Be with her or don’t.”

  “It’s not so black and white.”

  He shifted, setting his feet back on the ground as he leaned on the table toward me. “Sure it is. Do you want to be with her or don’t you?”

  I met his eyes, which were hard on mine. “You know I do.”

  “Then there’s your answer.”

  “And what about the risk?”

  “You’ve never been cautious before when you want something.”

  “But this is different. The fate of the shop is tied up in this. My heart is tied up in this, and so is hers. And what about the logistics? What if I can’t deal with her or she hates me after it’s all said and done? How do we keep working?”

  “Man, fuck logistics. You like her. Like really like her, after years of being emotionally crippled.” He shrugged again. “No pain, no gain. Right? No risk, no reward.”

  Pain surged in my chest. “And if she ruins me?”

  Shep’s eyes were sad. “Then that’s the price you pay for knowing. And if she doesn’t, then maybe you have a chance to find happiness. A chance to not be alone.”

  I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Well, then I don’t really have a choice. Because now that I’ve had her, I want to keep her. I need to.”

  He smirked at me from across the table like he’d already known what I’d say and answered, “Well, then go get her.”

  GOOP

  Annika

  I FOUND MYSELF SMILING ALL damn day.

  A cameraman screwed up a shot, and I didn’t care. Laney was up my ass about Joel and Liz and Hal, and I just smiled. Joel watched me all day like I was a Michelangelo, and someone could have tarred and feathered me without being able to touch my mood.

  Joel.

  Joel, Joel, Joel.

  Everything about him felt good. The way he looked at me. The way he touched me. The words that passed his lips and hit me in all the right places. I briefly thought back to the time when I thought he and I were nothing alike, had nothing in common. When I thought he was wrong for me.

  I’d chuckled to myself at the idea, garnering a look from a PA. I didn’t care about that either. Because Joel existed and wanted me, and it felt good. I felt good. Better than ever. Like a million bucks laid out on a mattress for me to roll around on.

  Once the day was done, I met him in his apartment for ‘work’ on the ledgers, which we did. Eventually. But first, there was naked Joel and naked me and lots of smiling. My cheeks hurt, out of practice. A whole day of smiling. It was wrecking my Resting Bitch Face.

  Didn’t care about that either.

  I laughed to myself again, and Joel smirked at me from across his kitchen table. I closed the ledger in front of me with a thump and sighed, sitting back in my chair with a yawn.

  “It’s late.”

  He closed his ledger too. “It is. Let’s go to bed.”

  I smiled again. “Not tonight, Joel.”

  He honest to God pouted, that lush bottom lip of his sticking out comically.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ve got to go home and shower.”

  He stood and walked around to sit on the table just in front of me. “I have a shower. A perfectly great shower with a massaging head.”

  “I’m sure it’s divine, and I’d love to give it a shot, but I really do have to go home,” I said lightly and stood. He pulled me into him, sliding his hands around my waist and down, coming to a stop on my ass.

  “Why?” He nipped at my still-smiling lips, and I sighed, laying my hands on his chest.

  “Because I need a change of clothes at least. I can’t wear the same thing I wore yesterday to work or Laney will know.”

  He sighed.

  “Plus, my little lady needs a rest.”

  “I thought you said not to call it that?”

  I shrugged. “Well, it’s mine, so I can call it whatever I want.”

  He smirked. “Kiss it and make it better?”

  I giggled — I actually giggled like a teenager, and in the back of my mind, the ice queen slugged the teenager in the face. I gave Joel a peck on the smirk. “Tomorrow.”

  “There’s no changing your mind?”

  “Nope. But I’ll stay tomorrow, if you’ll have me.”

  He flexed his hands, effectively squeezing my ass with enough gusto to make my thighs clench. “Oh, I’ll have you all right.”

  I rolled my eyes, not at all annoyed, kissing him on the cheek before attempting to pull away. But he pulled me back just as I stepped back, tugging me back into his chest for a kiss, a real one. A really real one, one that wavered my determination. But when I broke away, I found it again.

  “Tomorrow.”

  He sighed again. “Tomorrow.”

  I made my way around the apartment, gathering my things, packing them away and more than a little disappointed about it. I didn’t want to leave any more than he wanted me to, and I chased the fleeting thought that it should feel weirder than it did, the attachment to him. But it didn’t feel weird at all. In fact, it felt perfectly natural.

  It’s like my mental alarm system was offline, leaving my heart ripe for burglary.

  He’d followed me around, looking morose, leaning on door frames like James Dean, talking to me about nothing and everything, keeping me laughing as I packed, and when I finished up, I turned to where he stood, blocking me from leaving his room with a smirk on his face.

  “Troll toll. Pay up,” he said and leaned in for a kiss.

  I happily obliged, leaning right back.

  He broke away and took my hand, walking me to the door. “Let me know you made it home okay.”

  “I will.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, stopping us at the door before he opened it. And then he laid a kiss on my lips that seared through my body.

  I broke away after a long, hot minute. “How do you do that?” I mumbled.

  “Do what?”

  “That. Turn me into goop.”

  He shrugged
. “It’s not hard. You’re goopier than you think you are.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling still. Maybe permanently. “Goodnight, Joel.”

  “Goodnight, Annika.”

  He opened the door and leaned on the doorframe again as I walked away, and I didn’t hear the door close until I’d hit the bottom landing.

  Part of me wanted to run back up the stairs, but that would end up with me staying for hours, and I was dead on my feet. So I climbed into the car waiting for me and trained my eyes out the window, smiling silently at the city as we drove the distance between the Upper West and Park Slope.

  When I unlocked my door and stepped inside, I was surprised to find Roxy still awake, sitting on the couch sketching. She glanced up, looking tired, but she smiled when she saw me.

  “Hey. Didn’t expect to see you tonight,” she said.

  I closed the door behind me and set my bag next to the stairs. “I didn’t think I’d see you either.”

  “How’s Hairy?”

  “He’s great. Just great.” I sat next to her sideways and leaned on the back of the couch, kicking off my shoes before tucking my legs under me.

  “Looks like it.” She smiled as she assessed me. “How’s it going with the ledgers?”

  “It’s going well. We’ve got half of the books translated by totals per month and should have the rest finished tomorrow, I hope. Then he’ll start working on charting those while I dig deeper into the months themselves.”

  “That sounds terribly boring.”

  I chuckled. “Joel makes it more fun than it would be otherwise. What are you working on?” I asked, nodding toward her notepad.

  She sighed and looked over her drawing. “Just gearing up for our next show. I’m not happy with some of the pieces in the collection and have been racking my brain to fix them. But I’m tired of that subject. That subject has consumed my brain for weeks. I’d much rather hear about Hairy.” She leaned to lay her sketchbook on the coffee table and tucked in her legs, mirroring me.

  I found myself grinning again. “God, Roxy. Look at me. He’s turned me into a fool.”

  “I think he’s just turned you on.”

  I laughed. “That too.”

  “So you slept over there last night?”