by Brent, Cora
Kellan seemed amused by my dinner plans. “So it’s a full scale dinner party? I didn’t even know you liked to cook.”
“What do you mean? Don’t you remember last week when you came home and I was in the kitchen frying up grilled cheese? I made you a sandwich.”
“I remember last week when you handed me a savagely burned concoction that you claimed was a grilled cheese sandwich, so yes.”
I balled up a dishtowel and threw it at his head.
More than two weeks had passed since I stumbled out of the darkness and landed at the Gentrys’ apartment door. We’d established a nice little domestic pattern. Thomas basically only returned to the apartment to sleep and invent his newest health food concoctions. When he wasn’t at class or jogging through the streets of Tempe, he was working at Dream Fields to train future generations of young baseball talent.
Kellan was also busy between school and work and putting in time at the gym. Often I had the apartment to myself in the evenings. Sometimes I stopped by Esposito’s when he was working and sometimes we met for lunch and sometimes we didn’t see each other all day until he came home and then we’d talk for a little while before he retired to his bedroom. Then I would stare at the living room ceiling and quietly deal with the throbbing between my legs that resulted from being close to him for a few minutes.
As for Kellan, he seemed immune to such impulses. Every now and then I’d catch him glancing at my boobs or something but then he’d immediately look away so I just chalked it up to reflex.
We walked a fine line. I valued his friendship immensely. I was also ridiculously attracted to him. I found myself becoming jealous of the idea that at some point he’d probably want to go socialize with other girls, which he had every right to do. Kellan surely had throngs of fans and I really had no claim on him. No claim at all.
But I want one.
My resolve to shove romance to the back burner and keep it there indefinitely crumbled a little more every day.
“Taylor.” Kellan waved a hand in front of my face. “You in there?”
I blinked. “Huh? I’m right here. Why?”
He was amused. “Because you were gazing at the refrigerator and blushing.”
“No, I wasn’t. Was I?”
“And you kept rubbing your fingertip over your lips.”
Yes, I had done that. I’d been trying to remember all the details about the way he kissed. I wouldn’t mind a refresher course.
I dropped my hand away from my mouth and gave him a dazzling smile. “I was just planning the breathtaking meal I’m going to serve tonight. I believe I’ll make pasta with pesto sauce and cherry tomatoes. Everyone likes pasta, right? I’m very good at boiling water.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to be bad at boiling water.” Kellan reached around me to place his coffee mug in the sink. He always wore a chunky silver watch, a high school graduation gift from his parents. I’d never once seen him glance down to check the time so he must wear it for sentimental reasons. The brief proximity of his very masculine arm, coupled with the warm soapy smell of his skin did embarrassing things to my body.
I shifted and crossed one ankle over the other. Kellan pulled back and his eyes strayed down. An ancient souvenir t-shirt purchased years ago at the Santa Monica pier covered my denim cutoffs and my skinny giraffe-like legs were taking up half the kitchen.
He didn’t check me out for longer than a second, though. He picked up his wallet off the counter and stowed it in his back pocket.
“Should I get some wine?” I wondered. “Something extremely classy like that stuff that comes in a box and is sold in gas stations. Or I could just grab some six packs of beer.”
He snorted out a laugh. “Don’t pick up any on my account. And, well, I told you about Derek, right?”
I’d forgotten his brother was an alcoholic. He’d been sober for over a year but it might come across as a dick move if I was pushing boxed wine and beers on everyone who walked through the door. I certainly didn’t want to be seen as a dick, especially not by Kellan.
“I’ll just stick with sodas,” I said. “Sound good?”
“Sure.” He paused right in front of me and tucked in his polo shirt, which I knew he didn’t like doing but had to because that was the dress code at Esposito’s.
My heart sped up. I was almost horny and daring enough to lean over and kiss him. Almost.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said when he was done messing with his clothes.
“Yes?”
Why yes, I would take off my shirt.
Why yes, I would drop my shorts.
Why yes, I would get on my knees right here, right now, and eagerly become your bitch.
Apparently I’d been alone for too long. I was becoming kind of a sick person inside my head.
Kellan must have no clue. I would have been the recipient of some gloating sarcasm if he knew. He was very perceptive so I must be really good at masking my fantasies.
He smiled at me.
My knees shuddered.
“Can you get off next Saturday?” he asked.
“I can get off anytime you want.”
Oh, that sounded bad.
That sounded so very bad.
I could almost hear the BOW-CHICKA-WOW-WOW music in the background.
“I can get off anytime you want, big boy. Here, let me show you what I mean…”
“From work,” I blurted, trying to save the day. “I can get off from work anytime as long as I can make arrangements with one of the other girls. Anyway, what happens next Saturday?”
“My cousin Cadence is getting married down in Emblem.” He leaned forward and I braced myself for a close encounter but he just wanted to shut a gaping cabinet. “You’re invited to come along with me and Thomas.”
“Really?” I was amazed.
I’d heard Kellan reference his cousin’s upcoming wedding in the small town about an hour away from here but I had never expected to be invited.
“Sure. The family is curious about you. They’d like to meet you. Cadence’s mom, my Aunt Saylor, called me herself to make sure I followed through with extending the invitation.”
A family event. I hadn’t been to one of those in years. My own extended family was small and far flung. They’d made themselves scarce following my father’s scandal. I hadn’t seen my cousins or my aunts since the funeral. And the gatherings of my immediate family usually ended in some kind of screeching fiasco. I did miss seeing my brother’s children, my nieces. I hoped someday I could see them again.
“You don’t have to say yes,” Kellan said, mistaking my hesitation for dread.
“Oh, but I’d love to. Really, I would.”
This felt like a big deal. Kellan’s family was large and close knit. I wanted to make a good impression.
He was pleased. “Good. We’ll have fun.”
“Totally. I’m looking forward to watching you do the Cupid Shuffle.”
“Is that what they do at weddings?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t been to a wedding in years.”
“Let’s find out together.”
We stared at each other. Usually our conversation fired back and forth like bullets and the sudden silence in the room seemed deafening.
The left collar of his polo shirt was dented up. I reached out and fixed it, allowing my fingertips to trail over his hard shoulder muscles. He filled the shirt out well and he didn’t stop me from exploring, running my hand over his chest until I found the rapid thud of his heart.
“Taylor.” His voice was thick with a strong undercurrent.
“I know.” My other hand was now exploring his chest, all that male toughness just beneath the scratchy fabric. I tugged his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans, ruining his careful tuck job. “You have to go to work.”
“Yeah, I have to go to work,” he growled, inhaling sharply when my fingers reached beneath the hem and touched the muscled skin of his belly. He had amazing abs. His hands
closed around my waist and lifted me up to the counter, immediately pushing his way between my knees. This was escalating so quickly I could hardly keep up. My legs opened for him while my hands hastily yanked his shirt up higher because I needed to feel more of him. All of him. Everything.
But he stopped me. He caught both of my wrists in his right hand and pinned them between us while his left hand snatched a big fistful of my hair and pulled until we were eye to eye.
“Do you know why I have to go to work, Taylor?”
“No, I don’t know,” I moaned, overtaken by so many sensations at once I couldn’t think straight. I squeezed my legs around him, trying to pull his body closer. I knew nothing, nothing at all, except that I would scream if he didn’t ravish me soon.
“Because if I don’t go right now then I’m going to put my mouth all over you. I’m going to strip your clothes off and fuck you like a beast right here in the kitchen. And once I start I don’t think I’d ever be able to fucking stop.”
He released me. He tucked his shirt in again and smoothed his hair back. All while I remained awkwardly perched on the counter and trying to process the way my skin hummed in a dozen different places. The throbbing between my legs was overpowering.
I could see how hard he was, straining to break free of his jeans. He probably wouldn’t be able to walk straight with that kind of tension. It was a safety issue, really. I could help him with that. I really wanted to help him with that.
But Kellan didn’t want my help. He checked to make sure his wallet and phone were in his back pockets and moved towards the door without even looking at me.
“Did you say seven o’clock for dinner?” he asked in a perfectly even voice, as if he hadn’t just been squeezed between my legs and now sported a Texas-sized rocket in his pants as evidence.
As for me, I was still struggling to breathe normally.
I slid off the counter and flattened my t-shirt, which had somehow become bunched underneath my bra. I briefly combed my fingers through my hair and attempted to reclaim my dignity.
I cleared my throat. “Seven o’clock.” If he could put on a good act then so could I. “I was thinking about preparing chocolate mousse for dessert. It’s my mother’s recipe, the one gourmet dish I can competently make.”
He opened the door and glanced over his shoulder with no visible trace of lustful desire in his face. “I’m looking forward to it. See you later.”
So that’s how it would be. We were going to pretend that moment of weakness never happened. Fine. I could do that.
“You have a nice day, Kellan.”
“Same to you.”
He shut the door.
I groaned and sank into a nearby chair.
I wondered how much of a fool I’d just made of myself in front of the last person I wanted to be foolish in front of.
I wondered if Kellan’s epic ‘fuck you like a beast’ line would play in my head every day until the end of time.
I wondered if the boys kept any bittersweet chocolate on hand or if I’d have to buy some at the store to make the chocolate mousse.
Since the last topic was the only one I could do anything about at the moment I started hunting through the cabinets. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find what I was looking for. There was cereal and potato chips and Thomas’s protein power and granola bars, but nothing resembling what I’d need to make chocolate mousse.
That was fine. I planned to make a run to the grocery store anyway. Now that I had money in my bank account once more, I was eager to contribute to the household. After nearly two long weeks of voicemails and unfriendly personal visits to Al Albertson, the bank had decided to unfuck itself and restored my funds. Al Albertson himself called me with the news, issued a rather lackluster apology about technical errors and then offered to waive my checking account fees for six months. I hung up on him. Then I marched down to the bank, withdrew every penny and carried the check across to street to a competing bank. I hoped my sister didn’t have connections there as well.
With the university now in session there was a lack of affordable apartments available to rent. I didn’t wish to stray too far away from the campus because next semester I planned to be back in school and my car wasn’t the most reliable machine on the planet. I couldn’t afford another one so I’d need to be within walking distance of work and my classes. Kellan and Thomas had insisted that I remain here until I found something. When I tried to give them enough to chip in for rent they acted like any money I offered was tainted.
Fine. If they wouldn’t accept rent money then I’d buy the groceries and cook dinner whenever I had the chance. If they objected then I’d argue that food stores didn’t accept returns and if they didn’t eat it then everything would spoil.
I searched for pen and paper, finally locating both in Kellan’s room on a tiny desk that I’d never seen him use. Typically his method of studying involved scrolling through a tablet while going about other tasks. Kellan’s room was tidy, the bed neatly made. Neither of the Gentry brothers were slobs. They must have always been taught to pick up after themselves. The queen sized bed took up a considerable amount of space in the small room and I paused to run my fingers over the gray and blue plaid comforter that was neatly spread over the surface. He had two photos on a pressed wood nightstand beside his bed. One was a photo of his parents that must have been taken some years ago because his dad looked closer to his age than the age of the man I remembered from The Outpost. His mother was pretty, with wild blonde curls that framed her delicate face. They were sitting at a table holding hands while some celebration carried on in the background and they looked very happy.
The other photo captured three young boys standing beside a lake in their swim trunks. Thomas, the youngest, proudly held up a recently caught fish. Kellan was in the middle and appeared to be trying to elbow the ribs of his big brother Derek, who glared at him with exasperation. It was a nice picture. I didn’t have any photos of the family vacations taken when I was a kid. If anyone had kept the old albums carefully created by my mother it would have been Aiden. I would have liked to have some pictures of my mother. And my father too. Even after everything. I would like to have more than his mug shot on the internet and the horrifying memory of his final moments.
Being among Kellan’s things, close to his bed, aggravated the fire in my belly.
“And once I start I don’t think I’d ever be able to fucking stop.”
I shivered for a reason other than cold and ran out of the room so I’d stop dwelling on near-sex experiences.
While I wrote out a careful grocery list at the kitchen table my phone buzzed. The number was unknown and I didn’t answer. When I received a replacement phone I’d also requested a new number. It meant severing the final tie to my old life. I’d always meant to back up my phone and had never gotten around to it so everything had been lost. All my photos. All my contacts.
Perhaps that was a blessing.
I’d been reluctant to shed that last remaining lifeline to the old me. Even if all I was getting out of that link were occasional abusive phone calls from rotten family members.
Since I got my new number, things had been quiet on the Briggs family front. My sister had not resurfaced for any more unseemly confrontations at Closet Exchange or anywhere else. I’d learned to think of Sierra’s intimidation attempts as cold sores. Every once in a while one appears and is super annoying but eventually it vanishes. Perhaps they’d all finally accepted that I knew nothing about any money.
But then there were times like this when those unknown numbers flashed on my screen. I became uneasy over the possibilities of who might be on the other end.
I finished my shopping list and folded it in half. This would be fun. It was a treat to be able to visit the bright, overstocked aisles of the food store and get what I needed. That was a thought that never would have occurred to me if I hadn’t endured tough times. I didn’t expect that everything would be rainbows and unicorns from here on out but I’d
survived so far, thanks to a little help from good friends. I’d keep surviving.
On my way out of the apartment I checked to see if the caller had left a voicemail but there was none.
I felt ridiculously cheerful as I locked the door and headed to my car. The day was bright and sunny and I no longer felt mortified about trying to dig my way into Kellan’s pants.
He’d felt it too.
He wanted me too.
And sooner or later Kellan Gentry and I would need to have a talk about things.
Chapter Eighteen
Kellan
“What the hell are you training for?” Thomas wanted to know when I came off the weight machine after a grueling set. “Can’t remember the last time I saw you push yourself so hard.”
He tossed me a towel from his seat on the bench. I wiped the machine down and then mopped the sweat from my forehead. My arms felt like gelatin and my little brother seemed amused to witness my aggression with the weights.
“I might as well put in the full effort,” I said, rising and tossing the towel over my right shoulder. “Otherwise there’s not much point to it all.”
Thomas shook his head. “That’s not a very Kellan response.”
“A what?”
“A Kellan response. You know, full of wit and sarcasm, not sincerity and depth.”
I started walking. “Well, you can stay here and sort that out. I’m going to shower off the stink in the meantime.”
Thomas followed me into the locker room. I spent a few minutes under the most punishingly cold blast of water I could stand and emerged to find Thomas had already showered, laced his sneakers and acquired a drink from the gym’s juice bar. He offered me a sip while I pulled one of my Esposito’s shirts over my head. I had to be at work in an hour.
“What the hell are you drinking?” I asked, eyeing the bright green concoction.
“Wheat grass with a ginger shot.”
“Fuck no. Let’s go get some cheese fries from Gary’s Grill.”