Right.
“I think the bigger thing is the way she’s making you doubt what’s between you and Trent. What if you just think about that—forget about Trudy for a minute. What do you really feel about him? Is this all really as casual as you say it is?”
As if on cue, my phone chimed again. I’d been answering Trent in brief texts, not engaging in the flirty conversation we usually exchanged, and I knew he was worried. I did what Amber suggested, closed my eyes and just let myself feel everything inside me that was wrapped up in Trent. I saw his deep, dark eyes, that ever-present, full-lipped smile, and his strong, sturdy shoulders. More than that, thinking of Trent enveloped me in a sense of calm assuredness, a feeling of security that related to nothing specific but surrounded me when I thought about him.
“Your face completely changed,” Amber said, causing me to whip my eyes open. “I can see how you feel about the guy. And it’s good.” She leaned forward. “What are you worried about?”
What am I not worried about? “School. Studying. Money. Dani. Where to live…”
“I mean with Trent.”
“I can barely find brain space for Trent,” I said, knowing I was just throwing up a smoke screen. “I’ve got too much other shit going on.”
“When does your month end?”
“One more week.”
“So you just let it end, right? Easy peasy.” She lifted a shoulder and brushed her hands together. The words were simple, but I could tell from the look she was giving me that she was waiting for me to step up, to own the feelings that were completely overwhelming, the ones I was afraid to claim.
“Right. Easy peasy.”
“Okay,” Amber said, her voice brightening with false cheer. “Show me the list for school real quick.”
I pulled out the medical school list, and Amber began crossing out most of the items. “You seriously don’t need to buy most of this shit. I have a stethoscope I’ll give you, so don’t spend money on that…and don’t buy these books. I have some of them, and you can get most of them from the library or from classmates—you’d rather have a searchable PDF than the book anyway.” She circled one or two items on the equipment list. “You might need these during clinical training. Check with classmates once you start.” She handed the list back to me, having just eliminated most of what I’d been planning to buy.
“You’re sure?”
She winked. “Trust me. I’m not going to let you sink, Amy. It’s okay to rely on someone else, and when it comes to med school, you can trust me. It wasn’t that long ago for me. I’m going to get you through this.” She stood and looked around. “Now open a couple windows and air this place out. And take a shower.”
I knew she was right. I needed to pull myself back together and move forward. I realized I’d already decided that when the month was up, so was my time with Trent—regardless of any silly romanticized hope I might have had for something more. We were totally incompatible, and we had an expiration date anyway.
When he showed up at my door that night, I had resolved to suggest we cut things short early—his parents didn’t need to know when exactly it ended.
But when he stepped inside and wrapped me in his arms, I changed my mind.
We said a month. I’d enjoy the month.
And then I’d let him go.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Trent
I probably shouldn’t have just shown up at Amy’s door, but I had to see her. Something uncomfortable had crept between us at the end of our time in the desert. I guess I couldn’t really say “something” like I didn’t know exactly what. My lie about my family, my discomfort with showing Amy who I really was. Suddenly, I was reexamining everything about the way I grew up. All of that was coming between us, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I couldn’t change where I’d come from any more than Amy could change her past. Still, part of me wondered if that was just an excuse for Amy—maybe it was easier to target something I couldn’t change than to have to change herself. I suspected she was afraid of what might happen if she let herself be with me.
“Hey,” I said, smiling.
“Hey,” she said back, looking tired and sad.
I’d taken her in my arms the second I arrived, kicking the door closed behind me with my foot as I’d kissed her. We’d fallen onto the couch, lips locked and our bodies bolted together, and each of us had held onto the other, pulling at clothes and zippers and buttons like our lives depended on it. The heat between us had only increased since the time we’d spent in Palm Springs, and the sex we had now was desperate and frantic, urgent and hot as hell.
Afterward, we’d pulled our clothes back on and watched a few episodes of some Netflix show Amy liked, snuggled together on her couch, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Finally, Amy jostled me awake and lifted the remote to shut off the television.
“You’re working really hard,” she said. It wasn’t exactly a question, but I lifted a shoulder in response.
“There’s a steep learning curve.” I wasn’t sure how much Amy really wanted to hear, but her eyes were locked on mine, and her expression was interested, so I continued, not realizing how much I actually wanted to tell her about everything that had changed for me at work in such a short time. “It’s a lot of juggling,” I said. “There was that at the station, too, but over there it was kind of a dramatic difference between downtime and the way things were when calls came in. This job doesn’t really include the same adrenaline surge, but there’s always some low-level emergency erupting at one of the properties we manage.”
“Do you miss firefighting?”
“I do, but not as much as I expected to.” Part of me felt some relief, even, which surprised me. “I guess in a way, it’s nice not to have the idea lurking in the back of your mind that you could die today as you head in to work.” Amy put a hand on my arm when I said this, as if she didn’t like thinking about that. It was comforting, to think she might feel protective toward me. “There’s some excitement at my new job too, though.”
“Like what?” Amy asked, settling into the curve of my arm over the back of the couch. I lifted a tress of her hair, running the silky lock through my fingers.
“Like the new restaurant chain up in Orange County,” I said. “They’ve had a lot of turnover, and part of it was because Rebecca was overseeing management, and she…well, she tends to use email and text instead of actually talking to people.”
Amy’s eyebrows rose as she turned to look at me with a half smile. “And?”
I sensed that she liked hearing about a way in which Rebecca might not be perfect. “The manager we hired up there was pretty sensitive, and Rebecca’s communications were coming off really terse. She’s very businesslike, by the book, and not super empathetic. So I went up there in person to talk to the woman, and she had basically gotten her feelings hurt by something she’d misinterpreted, and she was about to quit. I talked to her for a while—took her out to lunch, and she told me that the managers at the two other restaurants who’d left had done so for similar reasons.”
“Did you talk to Rebecca about it?”
I dropped Amy’s hair and wrapped my arm around her shoulder, as if holding her close could keep her from being irritated by talk of my ex. “I took her to lunch, too,” I said. “And she told me she already knew that people management was her weak point.”
“So are you moving in for the kill then? Isn’t that what your dad wants, for you to take over?”
“It is, but I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.”
Amy eyed me skeptically.
“Rebecca isn’t great with people,” I explained. “Because she thinks in numbers and is kind of black-and-white about things. And I’m the total opposite. I do well with people, but I’m not good with negotiating because I end up sympathizing with the other side. Closing isn’t my strong point.”
“But it is Rebecca’s,” Amy said, her voice revealing her understanding.
“It is. So we a
ctually work pretty well together.”
Amy didn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t resist letting my fingers trail up the curve between her shoulder and her jaw. She shivered in my arms, and my blood warmed as I continued tracing light lines along the column of her throat. She didn’t say anything, but her breath was coming faster, and my own body was starting to move from sleepy and warm to something else entirely as Amy turned to face me, moving closer on the couch. I dropped my mouth to hers and was met with her soft welcoming lips, her teasing little tongue darting out to meet mine.
I slid my hands to her waist and lifted her to straddle me, and I couldn’t help smiling when her warm body met mine and she actually whimpered against my mouth. I loved kissing Amy. I loved touching her, making her writhe and moan in my arms. She was still such a mystery to me sometimes, but I’d found there was nothing mysterious about the way her body reacted to mine, and in the moments where we pressed ourselves together, I was happy. In those moments, I knew her, I understood this thing we shared, and I did everything in my power to hold onto it.
Amy’s hands dropped to my jeans, and within a few minutes we were both shedding our clothes again, and then she climbed back onto my lap, facing me with nothing between us. As she lowered herself onto me, I held my breath. I watched her, her eyes warm and glowing and her chest heaving as the light from the paused television lit the side of her face. She gasped as her thighs met mine, and I tried to memorize the moment—Amy’s eyes on mine, full of trust and something that looked a lot like love.
My heart filled as we moved, and I lifted her gently up and down as she tilted her hips back to increase the friction between us, arching her back and making her perfect breasts stand erect.
As we both reached our climax, there was no doubt in my mind that I was in deep with this girl, and I wanted to tell her so. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care about anything else, that I would do whatever it took to make her happy, to keep her close. But I was afraid that the mysterious unknowable part of her would keep her from returning my feelings, and even in my certainty over my own feelings, I wasn’t willing to risk being wrong about hers. Instead, I wrapped her in my arms and whispered muffled secrets against her hair as she lay against me, hoping soon I’d hear her voice say the words I wanted to hear.
The next morning we both got ready in her small bathroom, moving around each other at the sink and occasionally bumping into each other as we navigated the small space.
“I thought you were a lady of leisure for another week or two,” I said, eyeing her professional attire.
“I have to go talk to the realtor this morning to get things moving forward with the house. It should be listed by next week.” Her voice was a little bit flat, and I turned to face her.
“You okay with that?”
“It makes sense. It’s a business decision, not an emotional one.”
“I think it’s probably both,” I said.
She held my gaze for a long minute and then stepped in close to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. “It is,” she said. “But if I think too much about it, I won’t do it.”
I held her tight. “I understand,” I said, and I did. When she’d stepped back and wiped her eyes, I kissed her forehead and then released her to make a last sweep of the bedroom, picking up my discarded flip-flops and shoving them in my overnight bag. “We still on for tomorrow?”
Amy didn’t answer at first, and my heart sped up with worry. She stepped back, staring at the ground between us, her brows furrowing.
“I don’t know, Trent. I’m starting to wonder if it wouldn’t make more sense to just end things now. We’re almost at a month anyway.” Her voice was thin, and she wouldn’t look at me until the words were out.
Shit. No, no, no. “Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing’s wrong, it’s just that things are starting to get busy, and we both have so much going on…” Amy trailed off.
She can’t end things. Not now. The reality of what I’d already agreed to slammed into me. Even if I could convince her not to cut things short, our month was up next week. I placed my hands on her shoulders. “We said a month.”
“I know,” she shrugged. “But it’s almost a month, and—”
My heart was in my mouth as I said, “A month. If you really want off the hook, you’ve got only one more week to wait.” I leaned in, brushing her neck with my lips. She sucked in a breath. She could push me away all she wanted, but it didn’t change that there was something here. Her body confirmed it. “Give me one more week to make you happy.” I bit gently at her earlobe, and she arched her back, pressing those perfect breasts into my chest. “Let’s go out tomorrow. I’ll plan something amazing.”
“One more week,” she agreed, her voice a whisper.
I had one week to make her admit we could be more—that she wanted us to be more.
I do. I want so much more.
…
I kissed Amy goodbye at her house Thursday morning and went to work feeling like things were beginning to unravel. My mind churned over thoughts of her—I saw her sweet smile inside my head, her long hair falling across her shoulders, her expressive face scrunching into some adorable pout or grin. If I let myself daydream, leaning back in the leather chair behind my desk with my eyes shut, I could feel the curve of her hip beneath my hands, the silken glide of her skin under my fingers.
“You really care about her, don’t you?” Rebecca asked me Friday morning as we were chatting about our weekend plans after spending several hours on strategy for a new acquisition. She looked almost sad as she asked the question, and I wasn’t sure if this was a conversation we should be having. But my heart spun at a chance to talk about Amy—even with Rebecca.
“I do.” I willed myself to keep my voice steady. I asked the question I shouldn’t have asked. “Does it bother you? I mean…you and me, and—”
Rebecca had the grace to interrupt me before I embarrassed either of us. “No. I mean, not like that.” She put her pen down and leaned over her elbows on the table, her posture more casual and relaxed than I ever saw at work. “I was interested when your mother suggested you might be free and looking to go out again.” She met my eye, not a hint of embarrassment in her wide blue orbs. “But it was easy to see you weren’t available. The only thing that bothers me, if you want to put it that way, is that I don’t have something similar in my own life.” Her mouth lifted on one side, and she dropped her gaze, the first expression I’d seen from her that wasn’t fierce, almost confrontational. Rebecca freaked people out in meetings with her straightforward approach to everything—this was the first time I’d seen that veneer slide.
“Maybe I’ve gone about it wrong.” She waved a hand to indicate her face and hair. “The men I date don’t see past the shell. I’m built to be a trophy for some middle-aged asshole, I guess. No one else ever even tries.”
I shook my head. “They’re probably scared. You’re pretty fucking intimidating.”
She looked up at me under her lashes and smiled. “Self-defense, really.”
“What kind of guy are you looking for?” I leaned back in my chair, my vision of this woman rearranging itself in my head.
She placed her hands atop each other on the table and stared at them before answering, then she looked up and smiled a soft smile. “Someone real. Someone who doesn’t care about all the stuff, the money, the whole Southern California plastic thing…” She trailed off, and I tried to hide the surprise on my face. She was right. The shell she’d constructed was bound to attract the wrong kind of guy if she was looking for what she’d just described. She sighed.
“Let me set you up.” I was thinking of Chad at the firehouse. “Unless you’re opposed to dating a fireman?”
She grinned. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I have someone in mind. After this weekend, okay? Drinks next week maybe? You can come out with Amy and me, and I’ll introduce you.” It would be one of my last dates with Amy if I
didn’t figure out a way to extend our time together. Our month was up next Friday.
Rebecca was nodding, a slow smile spreading on her face. She gathered up her laptop and the notepad she’d been writing on during the meeting and stood. “Thanks,” she said. “And I hope you and Amy have a great weekend.”
I’d told her about my plans to take Amy out tonight, and about the hot-air balloon ride I’d planned in the morning. She’d mentioned one before, one she didn’t get to go on, so I hoped it was something she’d love. I was going to tell her how I felt—in a place where she couldn’t run away. I hoped if I had the time to talk to her with no distractions, she might admit she felt the same way.
I thanked Rebecca for listening and headed home to change for the night.
…
Amy looked amazing, as she always did. Her hair was piled high on her head in some kind of messy twist that looked complicated and complex. I couldn’t wait to pull it down, but I kept my hands on her shoulders for the time being, kissing her gently on the cheek at her doorstep and taking her overnight bag from her hand.
“How did the realtor meeting go?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “Someone had called, asking me to call them before listing it officially. The realtor said she thought he wanted to make a preemptive offer.”
“You’re kidding.” I turned and stared at her. “A good offer?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t super conventional. The guy wants to talk to me before making the offer officially. I’m still thinking about it. I didn’t think I’d have to move so quickly, and it seems kind of weird.”
I had an inkling Amy’s offer might be linked to my call to Mateo yesterday, but I didn’t say anything. I settled her in the car, and I walked around to my own side, tucking Amy’s bag in the back. “Worth a call,” I said. “How long would you have?”
“I don’t know yet.” She sighed and looked at me with shining dark eyes. “Dani hates me now. She’s barely had time to get used to the idea. If the house sells fast, she’ll probably never talk to me again.”
Without Promises (Under the Pier) Page 15