by Kent, Julia
Arion disappears into his bedroom, returning with a loose shirt and a tight smile. I can’t help watching as he buttons it up, and I imagine taking it off him. When we used to flirt, things were so easy, so comfortable, and they still seem to be that way for him. But the last year has changed everything for me, except my attraction to him. That’s still very much there, even if I know I can’t give in to it.
We stop downstairs on the middle floor to move my clothes into the dryer then head out the side door. I can’t believe he washed my clothes for me. I also can’t believe it’s raining again, even harder than yesterday.
“Do you mind walking?” he asks as he opens an umbrella he snatched from the washroom. “It’s only about two blocks, but we can take the truck if you prefer.”
I glare at the drops of misery pelting down from heaven above, wincing as they splash against the pavement. “Does it always rain this much here?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Sometimes it snows.”
I shudder. “Is walking just a ploy to get me wet?” I arch an eyebrow at him, taunting him like I used to when I had two thousand miles to hide behind.
He rewards me with a grin that makes me forget the rain and everything I left behind.
“If I want to get you wet, Angel, it won’t take a ploy. Just maybe a dash or two of patience.”
It would be impossible for him to know just how right he is. “Lead away,” I say, dashing out of the safety of the doorway and clutching at him for dear life. As long as I stay pressed against him, the umbrella shields me from the worst of the cold droplets that continue to pour from the sky, but that leaves me exposed to the unavoidable heat radiating between us.
At last we step under a green-and-white striped awning, and I suddenly understand why dogs have the urge to shake after getting a bath. A neon sign blinks invitingly in the window, announcing ‘Del’s Deli.’ I do the best I can to brush the water from my sleeves, wipe my feet on the doormat, then let Arion lead me inside by the hand.
The waitress behind the counter waves at him, and I don’t think her smile could get any brighter if she swallowed a lightbulb. Maybe she should. My fingers tighten around Arion’s, causing him to glance back at me and smile. Miss Megawatt’s smile falters briefly as she follows us to a booth in the corner, but she plasters it back in place before Arion notices.
“What can I get you, honey?” she asks with eyes only for him.
“I’ll have coffee,” I speak up, and the waitress snaps her eyes to me then back to Arion as if tethered by a rubber band. Her smile grows in both size and insincerity as she scribbles on her pad.
“Water for me, and we’ll have two cheesesteaks.”
“Whiz wit for both?” Miss Megawatt’s smile switch-flicks from fake to fangirl as she talks to him.
Not only is she utterly fake, she’s talking nonsense, and I can barely contain my disgust.
Arion must mistake my glare for confusion. “‘Whiz wit’ means with Cheese Whiz, and it’s a necessity of a classic cheesesteak. Trust me. Do you like onions?”
I shake my head. Onions are like mornings, rain, and instant coffee. They should all be shoved in a barrel with presumptuous men who think they need to order for women and rolled down a hill, never to return.
“Widout on hers.”
As soon as the waitress is gone, I lean across the table. “I’m quite capable of ordering my own food, you know.”
“I had assumed you were.”
His easy smile only infuriates me more. “So why the show of chauvinism, then?”
Arion shrugs. “I promised you once that if you ever came to Philly, I’d buy you a real cheesesteak, not that imitation crap you get out West. Surely you haven’t forgotten?”
I had, but now he’s jogged the memory of him rambling on and on about there being a proper way to everything about cheesesteaks, starting with how they’re ordered. Whatever. “You still could have asked.”
He just smiles knowingly and leans back against the red leather booth while the waitress drops off our drinks. “Don’t worry, I have other questions.”
Remind me to add this to the miles-long list of times I should have kept my mouth shut. I’m saved, for the moment anyway, by Bartender Barbie striding furiously into the diner. Her friendly smile from last night is gone and so is her condescension. Now, she’s obviously a woman on the warpath, and I wonder who pissed her off.
She scans the room like a sniper seeking an insurgent. As soon as she sets her sights on me, I gulp because the disgust in her eyes means I don’t have to wonder who, just how. Given the speed with which she’s headed toward me, I won’t be left wondering long.
Nine
Angel
Arion slithers out of the booth, interposing himself protectively between me and her like a piece of bubble wrap. She slams her palm against his chest, and I’m not sure if the pop I hear is a direct result of her smacking him or if it’s my jaw hitting the floor.
“What the fuck, Axel?”
Her words echo my thoughts, except for the name. It’s so easy to forget and think of him as my Arion. But he isn’t.
Blondie doesn’t even pause to give him a chance to answer, she just keeps screeching, her voice as sharp as a barbed wire. “You said you had it under control. I told you to get rid of her.”
The last words are a hiss that work their way under my skin.
“Now’s not really a good time, Chelsea.” Arion’s voice stays remarkably calm, considering, but there is a definite edge to his tone. Guilt maybe?
“You’re damn right this is not a good time. I swear, you just can’t leave well enough alone.” She leans around his shoulder, fixing me with a glare that would freeze a volcano. “I don’t know what he told you, honey, but he’s unavailable. Just get on out of here and don’t come back. He doesn’t need some tramp screwing up everything we’ve worked on.”
My heart drops into my feet. Unavailable bothers me more than tramp. In that moment I realize how much I was hoping for a chance with him once I was ready. Maybe it’s better this way because I sure as hell don’t need a cheater in my life. I start to slide from the booth while wrestling my anger into something at least resembling submission. “You said you didn’t have a girlfriend!” And why did Bartender Barbie send me up to his room, anyway, if they’re together? I guess the answer is obvious. She didn’t think he’d give me the time of day and wanted a laugh at my expense.
Chelsea laughs as Arion turns toward me, begging me to stay with his eyes.
“It’s not what you think,” he says.
Who knows if he’s talking to her or me, but I don’t care either way. I’m done. Fuck this shit. I try to slide past him, but something in his gaze tethers me to the spot. I need to just walk away instead of punishing myself like this, but I can’t. I wish I could claim it’s because I’m not sure I have anywhere else to go and I don’t have any way to get wherever I’m going, but it’s not that. It’s him.
“You can’t keep doing this, Axel. It isn’t fair to anyone.” Chelsea sounds like she actually cares for him, and that makes me happy and furious at once. My emotional blender is whirring at high speed.
“Chelsea, go.” Arion doesn’t take his eyes off me, but he also doesn’t reach for me. The empty space between us is filled with the ghost of what might have been.
Chelsea crosses her arm and shakes her head. “Hell, no. If you won’t look out for yourself, I have to.” She faces me from beside him. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend. Lord knows I wish he did, but no. Instead, he picks up his flavor of the night, screws them, then tosses them aside.”
“It’s not like that,” Arion protests.
“Monica…Jessica…Gwen… Shall I keep going? You know I can. I think I know more of their names than you do, because I’m the one they cry to at the bar when you won’t let them in your place.” Sympathy creeps into her eyes as she watches me. “You should feel special, I guess. You’re the first to ever make it through the door. He’s got a rule abo
ut that, but I guess he breaks the rules now and then after all.”
Now I understand the look the waitress was giving me as she left Arion’s apartment when I showed up yesterday. I doubt her water was out; she just wanted bragging rights of being inside.
Arion is shaking his head, resignation filling his eyes. “Chelsea, you don’t understand.”
“No, I’m the only one who does understand. I understand because I’m the one you cry to afterward. See, honey, Axel doesn’t have a girlfriend because he’s still hung up on some chick from that stupid game he plays. She broke his heart, so now he breaks everyone else’s.”
Arion’s tortured expression confirms it. I sink backward into the booth, trying to process what I’m hearing.
Arion’s shoulders slump, and he looks like he wants to disappear into the floor. “Chelsea, meet Angel. The girl who broke my heart.”
Shock registers in her eyes as his words ricochet through me, churning my insides with fiery guilt.
OMG. Fuck.
I didn’t just screw up my life when I decided I needed a real life. I screwed up his, too.
All traces of pity have fled Chelsea’s glare. However annoyed she was with me when she thought I was some tramp shoving Arion off the sexcapades wagon pales in comparison with the look she’s giving me now that she knows I’m the tramp who put him on it.
Arion tries to guide Chelsea away from the table. “Please, now will you go? Angel and I have a lot to discuss.”
She huffs, still glaring at me. “Fine. But if you hurt him again, I’ll dig out your heart with a rusted spoon.” She jabs a perfectly manicured finger toward me, whirls, then leaves.
The waitress shows up with our food, and judging by how much her smile has dimmed, she heard everything. She drops our food baskets with a thunk, not saying a word.
Once she’s gone, I stare down at the sandwich before me. It doesn’t look like any cheesesteak I’ve had before, but the smell is heavenly. It’s coated in bright yellow cheese, unlike the white they always put on it at home, and the bread looks softer than most pillows. I take a bite, and I swear the roll melts in my mouth. When I look up again, Arion is quietly watching me.
“Don’t say sorry,” he says. “Please.”
I nod then wipe a bit of grease from the corner of my mouth. “So who was that, anyway?”
“My step-sister. My dad married her mom a few years ago, before I took over the bar from him. Chelsea’s mom was the bartender then.” He picks up his own sandwich.
Took over? Does that mean his dad owns the bar? Wow. “She seems protective of you. Aren’t step-siblings supposed to hate each other?” I can’t help the brief thought of Cruel Intentions that pops into my mind, and I feel the heat creep into my cheeks. I focus intently on my sandwich.
“What I wouldn’t give to know what you’re thinking.”
I laugh, because half the time even I don’t know what I’m thinking. “Let me know if you figure it out.”
“Chelsea isn’t as bad as she might seem. She was there for me when…”
We both know how his sentence ends. He doesn’t have to say it. She was there for him when I left. “Arion…”
“No. I get it. It was my own damn fault. I knew the game wasn’t enough for you. I was an idiot for not telling you how I felt. I just didn’t want things to change.”
“And I did.” I still shouldn’t have just disappeared. Breaking off our friendship without so much as a word of warning was a seriously shitty thing to do, no matter what my reasons were. I could make excuses and tell him the truth, and he’d probably forgive me out of pity, but I don’t deserve his forgiveness.
I hug my arms tightly around myself, uncomfortable at the heavy tone creeping into our conversation. My fingers absentmindedly trace the scar behind my elbow, one of the few outward ones I have. Most of the time, Nick was careful not to leave visible evidence; he liked to believe people were fooled into thinking he was a good, upstanding guy, and a bruised-up girlfriend might complicate that. Maybe they were fooled. I sure was. I don’t remember what I said that made him send me crashing through the glass coffee table, but I’ll never forget the bite of glass as it seared my flesh.
Arion pushes his empty plate away. “When I woke up and didn’t see you this morning, I thought I’d missed my chance again.” He looks at me from beneath thick lashes while his expression darkens to one of unnerving severity.
He takes a deep breath and the rise and fall of his chest is almost hypnotic, but the way he’s visibly steeling himself is a loud warning that I might not like what he’s about to say. I brace myself.
“I’m crazy about you, Angel.”
How am I supposed to even respond to that? He may be crazy about me and I could even be crazy about him, but it doesn’t change the fact that right now I’m too close to just plain crazy. “You don’t know what my life has been like the last year. What we had… Who I was… Things just aren’t the same.”
Arion shakes his head in a way that says he isn’t hearing a single word I’m saying. “They could be better, though. Because you’re here now.”
The eagerness he’s displaying so openly damn near kills me. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Judging by the way his jaw is set, I think he’s going to argue, but he surprises me. “Why’d you come here, Angel? Hell, how’d you find me?”
“The how is easier than the why. I kept the Christmas card you sent me from the guild’s card exchange the year before last.”
“You kept that?” His voice has lowered to a sexy purr that twists my insides and makes me almost forget that I can’t stay here with him.
Kept is an understatement. ‘Slept with it under my pillow for a week and memorized every arch of his jagged script’ would be more accurate. “Of course.”
“I’m glad.”
So am I but for different reasons. I never expected it to be a lifeline instead of a simple memento of a silly fantasy. “It isn’t that I don’t want to tell you why I came. I’m just not ready to talk about it.” I fight the urge to cast my eyes downward, hoping he’ll see how honest I’m being. How vulnerable I feel right now.
“Let’s start simple. Are you here for good, or are you going back?”
Ten
Arion
I don’t even want to know how much of a freak I look like. Fucking Chelsea, she just spilled all the pathetic details about how much Angel had me twisted up—to Angel, no less. But somehow, Angel didn’t run. Instead, I can see she blames herself. The guilt in her eyes is haunting, but now it’s morphing and she shivers before me. All I did was ask if she was gonna go home, but the change in her is profound. I’ve got to know what happened to her—and then I’ve got to fix it—but if I push, I think she’ll bolt.
“I can’t go back.” Her voice breaks, and her gorgeous brown eyes drop, circling my heart with sadness. The way she lifts her shoulder and turns her head, letting a curtain of her hair shield her, it looks like she’s trying to crawl within herself.
I’m backpedaling as fast as I can. Right now, I’ll say anything to make her feel better. “Hey, it’s okay. You can stay here with me as long as you like, no strings.”
She slowly lifts her eyes. Some of the fear has receded, but I can see she’s erecting walls between us. I’d do the same thing if I was half as smart as I like to think I am.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I need to get my head screwed back on right. I’ve got an aunt in Florida. I was thinking of going there.”
I latch onto the fact that she said ‘thinking of,’ rather than, ‘I am.’ There’s still hope. I work my jaw, searching for a response. I try to stay noncommittal. “At least it’s the same coast, I guess.”
Her face scrunches up. “The problem is, I might have to borrow enough money for a ticket. Once I get a job, I’ll pay you back.”
I have two choices, and both make me a loser. If I don’t give her the money, I get to keep her here with me a little longer, bu
t I care too much about her for that and it would definitely be a dick move. On the other hand, if I do give her the money, I lose her, maybe forever. If I say she can pay me back, at least I keep some contact with her, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.
“You don’t have to pay me back.” Stupid, stupid, stupid! I could kick myself. Nice guys don’t finish first.
“I can’t just take your money, Arion. Especially not after showing up like this.” Defiance fills her eyes, and I can’t help it, it turns me on. Not because I like that she’s a fighter—even though I do—but because she doesn’t want to use me. She’s not a gold digger, and that’s refreshing.
“I can afford it.” The money, anyway. What it’s going to do to me to lose her again is another story.
She cocks a skeptical eye in my direction, takes another bite of her sandwich, then pushes the basket away with her napkin on top. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…you manage a bar.”
“No, I own the bar. My old man gave it to me when I turned twenty-one, just as his father did for him. He believes men should learn to run a business and learn to read people, and he thinks a bar is a perfect place for that. You have to learn to manage women and waitresses who are trying to keep their head above water, which teaches compassion. You see people at their lowest, so you can learn from their mistakes without having to make them. And you see people celebrate, so you remember to focus on the things you want.”