by Jen Doyle
Okay then. He watched as she walked into the café next door, spoke to the woman at the counter, and then determinedly straightened her shoulders as she waited for something. Two minutes later, she was back outside with a set of keys in her hand. Keeping her distance, she stopped a few feet away from him. “This is the first time I’ve been here since he died and I’m not even close to okay. It will probably be emotional in a majorly ugly cry kind of way. So if you were exaggerating with that ‘somewhere close to you’ statement, this would be the time to make an excuse and go.” Then she bit her lip and looked down for a moment. “But if you actually meant it, having you here actually feels kind of….” She kicked at the ground before looking back up at him. “Comforting.”
There was a hint of shock in her voice, right along with a touch of challenge. As if she had no idea why she was saying those particular words. Like she was almost daring him to bail. Or, oddly, stay. He was a bit baffled himself. He was pretty sure the safest thing for him to do, in fact, was to take the out she was giving him and pretend this had never happened.
They weren’t a couple. They’d never had so much as a meal together. They hooked up, period. Over and over again for, now, their fourteenth year.
And it wasn’t like they knew each other beyond that. They’d met two times each week during senior year, but it had been all about the math. The first non-math-related conversation they’d ever had was the night he’d taken her virginity. She’d come up to him—walked right up to him while he was standing with his buddy, Reid—and taken two fistfuls of his shirt in order to pull him down into the hottest kiss he’d ever experienced. Then she’d whispered into his ear, “I’m leaving for college in two days and I want you to be my first.”
If he had uttered anything in response, all it would have been was, “Hell, yes.” The deepest conversation they’d had since was whether it was his job to bring the condoms or hers to have them on hand.
Yet he could read her emotions the way he could read her reactions to every move he’d ever made, and the vulnerability he saw there cut him deep.
Yes. Going inside that bookstore with her would change everything.
But, hell—that was what he’d wanted, right? To not be stashed away in the dark of the night? Maybe this was the start of something; maybe she just needed a friend. Who knew?
He stood up straight and moved his hands from his front pockets to the ones in back. “I have a condition,” he said, moving right up close to her. So close, she had to crane her neck to look into his eyes. Not shying away one bit, she was clearly steeling herself for what it was.
“Under no circumstances,” he said as solemnly as he could manage, “will I accept any sexual favors while we’re in your uncle’s bookstore. Because that would be weird.”
There was a longer-than-expected pause during which he realized that, because of that part about having had very little conversation over the course of the last fourteen years, and all of that being related to sex, maybe she didn’t know he was joking. That wouldn’t just be weird, it would add on the factor of awkward embarrassment.
Except then she gave a little snort of laughter and smiled up at him. “Noted.”
Thank God. He stepped back again and gestured to the store. “Lead the way.”
5
If Maggie weren’t so bewildered to have Alejandro here at the bookstore, she would have been… Well, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t quite know how to react to him following her. A little angry? Weirded out? Ashamed to have been caught driving away from her family during harvest-time rather than towards them?
She had no idea. They only thing she did know was that if it weren’t for Alejandro she definitely would have collapsed into tears by now. She’d dreaded this day with as much dread as could be gathered up in the world. After putting it off for months, she’d only finally booked her ticket because of her horrendous last couple of weeks at work and realizing that wasn’t what she wanted her life to be. Realizing that the only way she could even think about what she had to do during the day was to know she’d have Alejandro to escape to each night. At no point had she expected to be smiling the whole way here from Santa Christa thanks to an exchange in a parking lot. Or to have someone at her back, for that matter, much less Alejandro. Yet here he was, his presence strong and unwavering, as she unlocked the door and went in to…
Chaos. As Maggie knew she would.
On the surface she and her uncle were nothing alike. It made absolutely no sense to anyone outside of the two of them that they were so close. He was messy and loud and argumentative, whereas her specialties were quiet, order and calm. She’d been referred to as the Ice Queen on more than one occasion, the most recent being Monday of last week when she’d had to sit at the conference table and tell thirty-two people, many of whom she’d considered friends, they’d been laid off. It had been the worst day of her entire life.
She’d kept her composure throughout, so stone-faced and cool that the new CEO had told her he wanted her at his side for whenever he needed to deliver bad news. She’d immediately thereafter gone into her office, had promptly thrown up, and then she’d gone home and cried for hours. She’d turned in her resignation the next day.
Her uncle hid nothing. Everything from his hatred of people who didn’t take care of their pets to the unconditional love he felt for both his all-American, sports star/student body president nephew and freakishly smart/socially awkward niece was worn on his sleeve. Under his sleeve, actually, where the tattoos of both her and Drew’s names were shown off with pride, even though her name was surrounded by a pink unicorn because she’d been all of four when he’d told them each to pick out a picture for him to use.
And his bookstore was so vividly him—all craziness and clutter and love—that she wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor the moment she stepped inside. She turned on the lights, feeling her uncle’s presence so strongly it was as if he were just in the other room.
For all their differences, her uncle was the only one who’d ever tried to understand her. The only person she’d never felt a need to apologize to for being who she was. Despite its appearance being the complete opposite of the way Maggie lived her life, the dusty, cluttered bookstore was the only place she’d ever truly felt at home. And that was before he’d carved out a corner in the back just for her, keeping it clean and clear, despite it being completely outside of his norm.
As if he could sense how close to the edge she was, Alejandro put his arms around her and pulled her to him. She clutched his arm and turned her head into it, grateful for the privacy he allowed her by keeping her back to his front and not demanding one single thing. Not asking her how she was or telling her it would be okay or any of the other things people had said and done in the weeks after her uncle died.
The shock of that first step over, Maggie gave a quick squeeze to Alejandro’s arm, letting him know she was okay, even though the last thing she wanted was for him to let her go. He gave a quick kiss to the top of her head—which was almost overwhelmingly sweet and completely unexpected—before releasing her. Both grateful for his wordless understanding and sad at the sudden absence of his heat, Maggie walked forward into the store.
Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she’d visited. Everything.
“Oh, Uncle J,” she murmured, walking around the counter and picking up the coffee cup sitting to the right of the cash register. She held it up to Alejandro. “This mug is exactly where I left it when I was here in March.”
It was covered in six months’ worth of dust but otherwise clean since she’d rinsed it out after using it that last time, knowing her uncle would refuse to let her put it away because he’d “find a place.” But she’d also known the “place” would most likely have been on the top of a stack of magazines rather than in an actual cabinet, for example, which made absolutely no sense to her. It had been an ongoing argument for years. Uncle J said the clutter and unorganized piles were an invitation for someone to sit and
explore; Maggie said it was a damn good thing he’d had a knack for tracking down rare books, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to survive in a business where new and shiny, not to mention online, was the norm.
“March, huh?” Alejandro murmured, his attention on a bookshelf he was wandering past.
There was an edge to his voice, though, something to catch enough of Maggie’s attention for her to look up. When he looked up, too, she felt the force of his gaze so strongly she found herself taking a step back.
Just in case he was asking because maybe he thought about seeing her more often as much as she did, however, some clarification might be useful. “I only come to Santa Christa during Crush. But I visit Santa Rosa a few times a year.”
Alejandro held her gaze for another moment, not giving a hint as to what he was thinking as he leaned back against one of the shelves. Not minding the dust one bit, he asked, “To visit your uncle?”
It sounded casual, but the set of his jaw gave her no doubt there was more to it than that.
She didn’t want to read too much into it, yet she could feel something shift deep inside of her no matter how much she told herself she needed to carefully keep the distance between them. Still processing the fact that he even knew about her uncle’s funeral, much less might have come to it if she had asked, she wasn’t ready to bring herself to ask how he would feel about, say, her moving back home. At any other time in her life she could have handled his answer, even if it was a big, fat good for you, but I hope you’re not expecting anything else from me. These last few months had been too hard, though. She still had a little while to go before all her shields were resurrected and back in place.
But she could at least answer the man’s question. “Yes. Just him.”
Did he understand what she was saying? That there wasn’t anyone else? No other men to keep her company, no one else who even held her interest?
And, well, yes. Maybe he did. Although Alejandro didn’t make a move to come any closer, it seemed as though something had shifted within him as well. And all of that shifting had her heart suddenly pounding so hard she couldn’t quite take a breath.
“Good to know,” he finally said, the rasp back in his voice. After a few seconds he moved further into the store, in the other direction than from where she was standing. He paused for a minute and looked down at the floor before turning back to her. “In case you were wondering, I haven’t had much in terms of visitors in a while myself.” Then, as if he were focusing on some clarification himself, he added, “Just you.”
Oh.
My.
Everything that had gone shifty suddenly launched into overdrive. The fact that she managed to breathe was a miracle in itself.
Had he just said to her there was no one else in his life? It wasn’t a question she’d ever felt she had the right to ask—otherwise there was no way in hell she would have kept herself in Santa Rosa during those visits west. “A while? As in… Um… Months?” She was suddenly feeling a little dizzy. She backed up a bit, comforted by the weight of the four copies of National Geographic’s Atlas of the World, 10th Edition, at her spine.
“As in a year,” Alejandro said, sounding as surprised as she was feeling. He straightened up, his expression leaving no doubt he couldn’t quite believe they were having this conversation, either. “The better part of two.”
Two years? Only her? “Me, too,” she said, the words coming out in barely a whisper.
He came towards her, stopping at the counter across from her. Being Alejandro, who, unlike her, never left anything to chance, he rested his hands on the surface and leaned in close. “Just to be clear,” he said, “there’s been no one else in your life for…”
“Almost three years,” she said. “No one else but you.”
He stared at her for a minute, his gaze dropping down to her mouth.
“Are you saying…?” she asked, wanting so badly to kiss him right now. “Do you mean…?”
“That we’re two of the most sex-starved adults in the history of creation?” His hand went to the back of her neck and he pulled her close enough to see the twinkle in his eye.
“Maybe just in the history of Santa Christa,” she answered. She licked her suddenly very dry lips. Leaned up a bit so she could nip at his. “If only you hadn’t made me swear not to provide any sexual favors while we’re here.”
There was the slightest of pauses and then he laughed. A big, bark of a laugh that had less to do with what she’d said, she was sure, than the headiness of the moment. He seemed as surprised they were having this conversation as she was. Then his hands came around to frame her face. “Mi reina,” he whispered just before pulling her the rest of the way to him and kissing her. “Mi bella reina.”
It wasn’t the kind of kiss they usually shared. Those were greedy and hungry and frantic. This was long and languid. As if he were drinking her in.
It felt strange to be doing this here in her uncle’s bookstore, especially on the day she’d come to begin a chore she’d dreaded so much. Yet, at the same time there was something so fundamentally right. Although they’d barely had so much of a conversation since high school, these moments alone showed he could read her in a way very few others could. Even now, after a majorly game-changing moment, he wasn’t pushing for more from her, for something she couldn’t give. Instead, he pulled away, pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, and then wordlessly turned and left her to do what she’d come here to do.
As she watched him disappear into the shelves it struck her that Alejandro was possibly the one person she’d never hidden any part of her true self from. That he might know her better than anyone else in the world now that her uncle was gone. Not by choice—when it came to her personal life, she’d never been that bold. With Alejandro, it was purely because of nerves. That had been the case ever since their first tutoring session. The second she’d looked up to see the boy she’d crushed on since ninth grade walk through the library doors, her heart had begun to beat erratically, and her breathing had gone shallow enough to feel lightheaded.
Determined not to let her nervousness show, she’d failed miserably by fidgeting the whole time, adjusting the papers just so, and lining up her books. The only thing that had kept her from going catatonic was the math itself, the advanced calculations just what she’d needed in order to maintain something resembling human behavior. As they’d neared the end of the session, however, he’d moved in to take a closer look at something she’d written and his shoulder brushed hers. She’d been so far gone by then that it startled her, and, to her complete mortification, she’d knocked over her books, making a huge sound and causing several tables worth of beautiful people to snicker and snort with laughter as they’d looked her way.
She’d been too flustered to be able to put everything back straight. Rather than tease her about it or even so much as call attention to it, he’d just reached over, realigned it all into a neat pile, and then moved on to the next problem in the book.
Even her brother—who she loved dearly—had never understood how much she needed the things around her to be in place or how much she hated to have anyone so much as look her way, much less actually watch her doing something. Her parents had merely wavered between being bewildered and irritated. In that moment, though, Alejandro had made her feel normal. As though she weren’t the biggest freak show ever.
If she hadn’t already been a little bit in love with him, she would have fallen completely right then.
Not that she was in love with him now, of course. You didn’t fall in love with someone you saw for all of three nights a year, not even if they told you they’d stopped seeing other people almost two years ago. You opened the door a little wider, maybe. Dipped your toe in just enough to get wet. But you certainly didn’t jump all the way in.
Then again, getting wet with Alejandro was one of her favorite things.
With a smile on her face, and, yes, maybe a slight flush to her cheeks, Maggie turned to the file cabinets
underneath the counter and dug in.
6
Wandering through the shelves, Alejandro’s attention kept turning back to Maggie as she sat at the counter and leafed through files. Living in a town like Santa Christa, you almost had to work at not knowing everything about everyone—and Maggie had been turning his head since the first day of ninth grade when he’d walked into his new homeroom.
He’d been wearing a chip on his shoulder big time, practically begging for someone to tell him he didn’t belong at St. Catherine’s because he wasn’t smart enough or rich enough or—just put it out there—white enough. As for the rich and white, nope, not even close on either of those counts. He was damn smart, though, ready to tell anyone who dared challenge him he could outargue them in two languages, not to mention whip their asses in football, baseball, and boxing. Being the new kid, everyone’s eyes had turned to him when he first walked into the room. Only Maggie’s had immediately turned away.
He’d had a hard-on for her ever since.
He hadn’t needed tutoring in math, not really. Between football and his grades, he was pretty sure he could take his pick of colleges. But when his mother said she wanted A+s his senior year rather than As, he’d figured, why the hell not, especially when he found out Maggie was one of the tutors.
It had been torture to sit next to her and not make so much as a move, but his grandmother had instilled the fear of God in him about dating ‘those’ girls, meaning the rich, white ones. And she was his grandmother so he’d done exactly as told, not dating anyone from Santa Christa at all, no matter how many chances he’d had. Not until that night at Reid Romano’s end-of-summer bash, when Maggie had come up to him and kissed him and blown his world. To this day, Maggie was the only woman from Santa Christa Alejandro had ever been with. And, yeah, he thought about her a lot.