Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  “Emergency trout stash!” She sounded delighted again.

  The problem was, there wasn’t very much of it. One medium-size fillet. He popped it in the microwave, and as it defrosted, he inspected the fridge again. Hmm. Did he have…Yes. There was still a hunk of gouda that had been part of a gift basket the Toronto douchebag had sent when they’d shipped the canoe.

  “I’ll go home tomorrow,” she said through a mouthful of cereal.

  “Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve,” he said, trying to project a casualness he did not feel. “Well, today, technically.”

  “It is? Man, I’ve totally lost track of time.”

  He had, too, which was why he was making trout melts at three in the morning. They’d been floating for who knew how long in a bubble of grief and sex and zombies.

  “Eve and Sawyer and Clara are having a big bash at the Mermaid,” he said.

  “Oh. That sounds…” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Horrible?”

  She laughed. “Yeah. I mean, I love them. I just don’t feel like a party.” She cocked her head. “I feel like the opposite of a party, actually. I’ll hide in my room, though.”

  He fired up the stove and plopped some butter into a frying pan. “You could just stay here.”

  He wanted to keep floating in the bubble a little longer, was the thing.

  “I think I’ve imposed on you long enough.”

  Nora had a certain way of talking. She always sounded confident. Decisive. Even, he had learned, when she wasn’t. Here, though, her I think I’ve imposed on you long enough was a little bit less resolute than the way she usually would have said it. You had to know her to hear it.

  He knew her.

  So he pushed back. Casually.

  He hoped, anyway. It occurred to him that if he could tell when there was a chink in her decisiveness armor, maybe she could tell when his casualness wasn’t 100 percent sincere.

  “I don’t want to go to that party any more than you do. Stay here. You can go back tomorrow. The clinic opens on the second, right?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking. He knew that. He and Eiko had already conspired to cover the whole day, receptionwise, since Clara was headed back to school.

  “Yeah. Back to the grind on the second.”

  “So stay. I’ll run out for food tomorrow. I’ll take Mick—he could use a walk. We’ll do New Year’s Eve here. Or not do it, more like. We’ll eat and watch movies and…”

  “See if that world’s-longest-orgasm thing was a fluke?”

  Yes. He had her. “Exactly.”

  She smiled as she nodded at the slices of bread he’d placed in the pan. “What are you making?”

  “Trout melts.”

  “Trout melts? Cheese on fish?”

  “It’s like tuna melts, but with trout. Just you wait.” She flashed him an affectionate smile and, figuring that he’d won her over to both the sandwiches and staying for New Year’s, he said, “Make a list of what you want, and I’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m parked behind your truck, so unless anyone happened by and recognized my car, no one knows I’m back in town. I’d like to keep it that way. I’m just…not ready for people.”

  “You got it.” He was secretly pleased that he apparently didn’t count as “people.” He worked in silence for a while, breaking up the fish, scattering it on the bread and grating cheese over the whole mess. He glanced at her, wrapped in his mother’s quilt. “You know what? We never decided what home base was.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you’re about to suggest that home base is multiple orgasms, don’t.”

  “No? ’Cause that was pretty damn impressive.”

  “No. A base has to be a thing you know about in advance and you consciously decide to hit.”

  Yeah, he could see that logic—assuming logic even applied to their absurd bases thing. But he could still tease her. “You didn’t consciously decide to do that?”

  “No, I did not. That was a total surprise.”

  He plated the open-faced sandwiches and slid them across the island. “So it’s not a superpower you were holding out on me.”

  “Nope.”

  “No idea how it happened?” he asked as he turned back to grab forks and napkins. He wasn’t trying to push the issue. He was just really, really interested in having it happen again.

  “If you’re trying to suggest that it was you and your magical dick…” He whirled, and she winked to show she was kidding.

  He made a face at her. “Not at all. My magical dick and I were just wondering if it was replicable.”

  They’d been teasing each other, but she turned thoughtful. “I honestly don’t know what was happening there, but my best guess is that it was a function of being really comfortable and really primed. Like, we’ve pretty much been having sex nonstop, so it’s kind of like there’s already a perpetual level of desire humming along, you know?”

  He knew.

  “And you know, I think this friends-with-benefits thing we have going”—she waved her hand back and forth between them—“really works in the sense that I’m never on edge. I don’t have all the usual crap going on in the back of my mind, like am I well enough groomed, is he going to think I’m too needy or too pushy or too slutty or too whatever.” She picked up her fork and took a bite of the sandwich. “Oh my God. This is so good. I am officially sold on trout melts.”

  He wanted to ask her more about “the usual crap,” and specifically what kinds of assholes inspired those kinds of fears, but she had moved on.

  “How’d you get that scar on your lip? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Fishhook.” She made a horrified noise, and he nodded his agreement. It had been pretty horrible. “I was ten. I was fishing with my dad and my brother—for fun, not on the boat. We were at the little beach. I’d run into town to get treats from the bakery, and my brother didn’t hear me coming up behind him. He cast just as I was running back up the pier, and his hook caught my lip.”

  She winced. “That’s like the worst pain I can imagine.”

  “Nah.” It had been horrifically painful. He still remembered the shock tearing through him along with the hook, the ghastly feeling of his flesh splitting. But she was wrong. “It hurt like hell, sure, but only until it didn’t. There are worse kinds of pain.”

  “Like what?”

  “The kind you’re feeling right now. The pain of absence. That kind of pain sticks around so long, it becomes part of you.”

  But enough. He was getting maudlin. He rolled his eyes at himself and smiled at her, hoping to lighten the mood.

  She smiled back. “You are too much, Jake. Extended orgasms and midnight snacks aren’t enough? You have to be the Yoda of grieving, too?” She put her fork down. “I’m about to say something, but I don’t want you to freak out.”

  Uh-oh. Whatever she was going to say, he had a bad feeling about it. Maybe he’d gone too far with the caretaking. He didn’t want anything to change. He had meant what he’d said to her all those months ago: he was not in this for romance or forever or any of that stuff. He couldn’t face it if she—

  “You’re my best friend, Jake.”

  Oh. Okay.

  That was not what he’d expected her to say.

  He was her best friend. That was a relief.

  Right?

  “I think that was what was happening with the world’s longest orgasm there. You’re my best friend—don’t let that freak you out. I know Sawyer and Law are your best friends. And I don’t mean it in the BFF, let’s-do-each-other’s-hair way—though I do love your hair. And it doesn’t have to be a mutual thing. Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean I have to be yours.”

  She was, though, he realized with a start. She was.

  She was right that Sawyer and Law were close friends. He loved them, in his way, and he’d do anything for them. But they went way back. They’d always just b
een there. They were more like family.

  But if you thought about friendship as the seeking out of people who weren’t your default people, Nora was his best friend. It was startling.

  “It’s just that I’m totally comfortable with you,” she went on. “You’ve seen all of me in a way no one else has. Like, all of me.” She let the quilt fall a bit and made a face like she was mugging for a camera but quickly turned serious. “But also all my junk, you know? Rufus, my grandma, the whole life reset—all of it. Some people know about pieces of it, but you’re the only one who knows about all of it.” She huffed a laugh. “I’m not really sure how that happened.”

  That made two of them. Because everything she was saying applied to him, too. She had had the megaorgasm earlier, but he had cried in front of her and he’d barely thought twice about it.

  She shrugged. “Anyway, my point is, you’ve seen all my junk and you’re still here. And you still seem to like me fine, so…”

  He grinned. He did like her fine.

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. It’s possible I’m overthinking this.”

  “Or it’s possible home base is best-friends sex that leads to endless orgasms.”

  “Nah. I’m sticking by my assertion that the bases must be clearly labeled in advance. They have to be aspirational. If anything, home base is sex followed by Lucky Charms and trout melts.”

  “But isn’t that too close to grilled trout and talking about sexual insecurities, aka second base?”

  “Touché.” She smiled at him, and it hurt his heart a little, which was stupid because didn’t he want her to smile? To feel better? She kept smiling through her next bite of food. “I guess home base will have to remain a mystery for now.”

  As Jake knocked on the door of Law’s apartment—he lived on Main Street above the bar—it occurred to him that this visit might not be in the spirit of keeping Nora’s presence in town a secret.

  This was going to be a tough sell. Well, not a tough sell in the sense that Law would refuse to give him what he wanted. But he would probably insist on knowing why, and that would lead to another interrogation.

  Still, it was worth it. And he was counting on Law keeping his mouth shut.

  When Law answered the door, Jake could tell he’d just woken up. Law’s eyes widened, and he stepped out into the hallway and shut his apartment door. “How’d you get in?” Jake had let himself in the bar’s back door—it opened onto a small vestibule that contained an ancient pay phone and a flight of stairs that led up to Law’s second-floor apartment.

  “You gave me a key when I was building your pizza oven.”

  “Right.” He ran a hand through his messed-up hair. Law slept late—part of being a bartender, Jake supposed—but it was ten thirty. The bar would open in ninety minutes—and it would be one of the biggest days of the year. “What can I do for you?”

  “I know this is going to sound weird, but can you make me a pizza? Like, an uncooked one that I can finish at home?”

  He braced himself for a tidal wave of questions, but Law just said, “Okay,” opened his door a crack, reached inside, and extracted a pair of boots. “Let’s go downstairs.” He shoved his bare feet into the boots and took off down the stairs.

  Huh. Was it possible Jake wasn’t the only one hiding something—or someone—in his place? Jake had no idea who someone might be in Law’s case. When he worked behind the bar, Law had no shortage of female attention, but he seemed more like a professional flirt than an actual player.

  “This looks great.” Jake looked around the small kitchen Law had carved out of one back corner of the bar. He’d seen it when it was under construction but not finished. Law’s pizzas had been such a success this past summer that even though he’d envisioned them as a seasonal thing—hence the outdoor, wood-burning oven—he’d decided to put in a small kitchen with a gas pizza oven.

  “Thanks.” He opened the freezer. “I don’t have any fresh dough, so a frozen crust will have to do.”

  “No problem. Thanks.”

  Law pulled containers out of the big industrial refrigerator that dominated the small space. “What do you want on it?”

  This was the part where he’d out himself. He hesitated. It wasn’t like she would care what kind of pizza he brought. He’d seen her eat pretty much all the varieties on the menu. Still, he sort of felt, as stupid as it was, like this was their thing. “Uh, can you make it Hawaiian?”

  Law paused in the middle of ladling sauce onto the crust and glanced up at Jake.

  Here it came. Jake braced himself.

  But Law just said, “Yep,” and started scattering cheese. He worked quickly, going back to the fridge for pineapple and prosciutto. At one point there was a thump from above them. It drew both their glances up to the ceiling.

  Ha. He did have someone up there. Jake smirked but said nothing. Law looked at him, and they held each other’s gaze for a long moment. It was like they were daring each other to ask. Or, when no one said anything, like they were agreeing to keep each other’s secret. For now, anyway, expediency was going to win out over curiosity.

  “There you go.” Law finished plastic-wrapping the pizza and transferred it to a box. He glanced up to the ceiling again. “Anything else?”

  “No. Thanks, man.”

  “Lock the door behind you, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Law was halfway up the stairs by the time Jake even reached the door.

  “Should we pause for a countdown?” Nora put down her pizza and picked up her phone to check the time—it was five minutes to midnight—and glanced at Jake. She was actually a little nervous about the whole New Year’s thing. Not staying another night at his house—she’d only protested for show when he’d first suggested she stay. But the actual passing of the year. The countdown. Were they supposed to kiss? She had nothing against kissing him—nothing at all—but kissing at midnight on New Year’s Eve was a very couple-y thing to do.

  So they probably shouldn’t do that.

  Which meant she shouldn’t have said anything, should have let Wonder Woman carry on saving the world—they were taking a break from zombies—and the year turn unmarked.

  But that had also seemed kind of weird, in a protesting-too-much kind of way.

  He sat up. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Outside?”

  “Yeah. Look at the lake. Breathe some fresh air. It’s finally stopped snowing, so we’ll be able to see the stars.”

  That sounded perfect. In addition to dodging the whole should-they-kiss-at-midnight question, it just felt…right.

  “But it’s probably too cold.”

  “Not for me!” She slid off the bed.

  “Everything’s too cold for you.”

  “I’ll man up. Woman up. Come on. We’ll go outside, and when we come back in, it will be a new year.” She wanted that now, so much.

  They woke Mick, and a few minutes later they were bundled up and trudging across the snowy beach to the edge of the water. The Great Lakes, Nora had learned, didn’t usually freeze—apparently that was a once-in-a-decade occurrence—but there were ice formations at the edge of the water and some floating chunks bobbing in the cove.

  It was too dark to see the horizon, but you could tell where the boundary between lake and sky was because of where the stars—they were indeed out in force—started. The Milky Way looked like a band of snow.

  There was no moon. That seemed right. It wasn’t a night for wishes.

  The air was cold and sharp and cauterizing. Breathing it hurt her lungs, but in a good way. Like maybe it could scour her clean.

  She looked at Jake, who was standing next to her but not touching her. Maybe it would work for him, too. Like she’d been a moment ago, he was staring at the sky. “Do you miss Jude more on holidays?”

  He cleared his throat and kept staring at the sky as he answered. “Not really. He died before his first Christmas. But really, I miss him—” He turned his head abruptly to
look at her.

  “You miss him all the time?” she asked gently.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the night, and the stars were so bright that she could see his face well enough to see that it was all crunched up. Like he was angry? Or maybe she didn’t have enough light to read his expression, because she wasn’t sure why he’d suddenly be angry.

  He looked away suddenly. “Yes,” he said with an odd sort of vehemence in his tone. “I miss him all the time.”

  They stood there silently. She wasn’t sure what to say. It felt like something weird had happened there; she just wasn’t sure what. Eventually enough time passed that she felt like it was safe to speak. “I bet it’s after midnight.”

  “Yeah.” His voice still sounded odd, but it was hard to say why. “Happy New Year, Nora.”

  “Happy New Year, Jake.”

  They didn’t kiss. They didn’t do anything. When they went back inside, he said he was tired and asked if she’d mind if he went to sleep. Of course she didn’t mind. But then…he didn’t go to sleep. She lay there in the dark next to him listening to his breathing. It never changed. Eventually she fell asleep, and when she woke up it was to a note that read “Happy New Year. I have a job this morning so I sneaked out. Didn’t want to wake you. Let yourself out—boots are by the front door. —Jake.”

  But what had she expected? Breakfast in bed? The kiss they hadn’t had at midnight? The orgasm-and-zombies bubble to last forever?

  No, she told herself firmly. No. She had not expected any of that.

  But if she was being honest, she had to admit it had been a close call.

  Maybe she needed to pull back a bit. Not entirely. But enough that she didn’t start expecting things from Jake that he wasn’t able to deliver.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nora threw herself into work after New Year’s. Because the clinic had been closed for two weeks, her schedule was jammed her first day back.

  “I should have driven to the walk-in clinic,” CJ Dyson said, presenting with chronic nosebleeds. “But I wanted to wait for you.”

  “You have a lot of broken vessels in there.” Nora set down her scope. “Once they get this bad, they don’t really heal. This cold weather, or even just jostling your nose, will set it off again. I recommend we cauterize it. I’ll paint some silver nitrate inside your nose, and it will seal the vessels and prompt the formation of scar tissue. It’ll hurt while I’m doing it, but then you’ll be done.”