Some Sort of Happy

by Melanie Harlow

  I shook my head. “I wish I could, but not only is that impossible for me, the more I try to do that, the worse it gets.”

  “God, Sebastian, I had no idea. That must be so hard to live with.”

  “It is.” It felt surprisingly easy to open up to her. The only other person I’d talked to like this in the last few years were therapists. I sure as hell hadn’t ever talked to a woman on a date this way. But it felt good. “You know that voice in your head that knows all your deepest fears and apprehensions, the one that knows exactly how to make you doubt yourself, the one that refuses to leave you alone until you feel so on edge that you can’t even function?”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I hate that voice.”

  I regarded her a moment. “What does yours say?”

  She sighed. “That I’m stupid. That I’m a failure. That I’m never going to be as successful as my sisters and I should just stop trying.”

  Her candor surprised me, as did her doubts about herself. On the outside, Skylar Nixon appeared to have everything going for her. But I knew better than anyone that you can never tell what demons someone is fighting. “And you know that’s not true. But it’s hard to ignore, isn’t it? For me, it’s impossible. I have to learn to accept it as part of me without being its victim, without sacrificing my entire life to it.” Or worse, someone else’s, I thought, hearing the sound of Diana’s anguished sobs behind a locked bedroom door.

  She tilted her head, her expression curious. “How do you do it? Medication?”

  I refocused on the woman in front of me. “That’s part of it, but the meds don’t cure it. I think the bigger help, for me anyway, is the therapy.” I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I have good days and bad. Today is good.”

  She smiled. “I think so too.”

  • • •

  It might have been a good day, but walking into a restaurant with Skylar still made me edgy. We were seated at a four-top table, and she sat adjacent to me, which put her closer than if she’d sat in the chair across from mine. People were staring at us, and they were probably wondering what a girl like her was doing with an eccentric like me. I wasn’t stupid—I knew rumors had gone around after I’d returned from New York, especially since one of my sisters-in-law has a big mouth, but I was used to not caring what people thought. Skylar, though, kept her head down, her hair hanging in her face. Was she ashamed to be seen with me? If so, then why had she suggested a drink? This was a mistake.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, her eyes concerned. “I’m sorry people are staring at us,” she said. “It’s my fault, and it’s probably making you feel weird.”

  “Your fault? I think it’s my fault.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Your fault? Why would it be your fault? I’m the one who made an ass of myself on national TV. My God, I drunk-rode a mechanical bull for seven seconds.”

  “Fuck,” I said with a straight face. “That’s a horrible number.”

  She looked confused, and then it registered. “Oh, ha ha ha.” She slapped my arm. “I’m glad my humiliation is so amusing.”

  Laughing a little at her red face, I assured her I had never heard of the show and couldn’t care less about it, nor did I care what other people in here might be whispering about her.

  “Thank you. I wish more people cared less. I keep getting the evil eye from all corners of the room.” We sat back as our server set two plates in front of us and warned us they were hot.

  “You know who you are,” I said once we were alone again. “Fuck them.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I wish I could have that attitude. I know I shouldn’t care about what people think, but easier said than done.”

  “Yeah. I know that feeling.”

  She gave me a sympathetic half-smile and picked up her cheeseburger. “So you had a good day today. Tell me about it.”

  While we ate, I told her about how I’d hung a hammock between two birches that morning and took a nap in it this afternoon.

  “I love naps,” she enthused, munching a french fry. “Any day with a nap in it is automatically better.”

  “Agreed.” For a moment, I indulged in a fantasy of the two of us in my hammock, Skylar lying on top of me, head on my chest, her bare feet tangled with mine, the leaves shading us from the afternoon sun. I’d play with her hair and she’d sigh softly, and I’d feel her body melt into mine. We could fall asleep to the sounds of the birds and and the wind, and the water, and—

  Fuck. I wish things were different.

  I picked up my beer and took a long pull. No sense in thinking like that. I was who I was. “So did you have a good day?”

  “I guess so. I worked this morning, and then I went shopping for something to wear to the reunion.”

  “What reunion?”

  “Ours. Our ten-year high school. It’s this Saturday. I was going to ask you if you were going.” She picked up her wine glass.

  “Uh, no. No fucking way.” I took another drink and shook my head as I set the bottle down. “There’s no one there I’d want to see.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell, which she tried to hide by taking a long sip of wine. Several long sips.

  “Let me rephrase that,” I said, sorry I’d hurt her feelings. “I’m looking at the only person I’d want to see.”

  Her eyes lit up, her cheeks blooming pink. “Thank you.”

  “But there’s no one there who’d care about seeing me.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, setting down her empty glass. “I’d care.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather fucking shoot myself than go to that thing.”

  She sighed. “That’s kind of how I feel about it now too. I know everyone there will just be talking shit about me, being pretend-nice to my face.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I don’t, everyone will talk shit about me.”

  My forehead wrinkled. “Wait, you just said they’d talk shit about you if you did go.”

  “Yeah, but it would be worse shit talk if I wasn’t there,” she said with some sort of baffling female logic. “So I have to go, and you should go too. In fact, we should go together.”

  I almost choked. “What?”

  “We should go together.” She braced her elbows on the table and leaned toward me, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Then we could give them something new to talk about.”

  I leaned in too. I couldn’t resist. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like this.”

  And without any warning whatsoever, she kissed me. Put those soft pink rose petal lips right over mine and left them there for a second, during which I was too stunned to move. My cock jumped, and I pulled away.

  Then she sat back, her expression horrified. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

  Holy shit. What did I just do?

  I kissed him. I kissed him.

  I kissed Sebastian Pryce.

  I tried to read his expression, but I couldn’t. Best I could tell, it was somewhere between Jesus Christ, why the hell did she do that? and Goddamn, let’s flip this table out of the way and go at it.

  An eternity passed. Several species of birds went extinct. Continents drifted.

  “Say something¸” I begged. “I feel horrible right now. I shouldn’t have done that. Can I blame the wine?” Yes. That was it. Pin the kiss on the Pinot.

  But had it been the wine? Maybe it was something else. I was no math expert, but this was an intoxicating equation: Hot Guy with Mysterious Past + Way With Pretty Words x Chivalry at Beach / His Aloofness at Coffee Shop (Immunity to My Face & Flirty Efforts) + Innuendo at Hardware Store x Honest Confession about OCD Struggles —> Curiosity + Arousal (Belly Flutters + Pulse Quickening)=ATTACKISS.

  Right?

  Or was I overthinking it? Maybe the plain, crazy truth was just that I was really attracted to Sebastian Pryce. But he was probably one of those quiet, tortured geniuses that didn’t go for girls like me. He went t
o law school, for heaven’s sake! He wrote poetry!

  His lips tipped up slightly, those warm lips that had felt so good against mine. “Ah. Sure. It’s fine. Don’t feel horrible, really. You just surprised me.” He shifted in his chair.

  “I can tell.” I reached for my wine glass but it was empty. Frantically, I looked around for our server. Waiter! This is an emergency!

  “Hey.” He put his fingers over my wrist. “It’s OK.”

  “Are you sure?”

  His sea glass green eyes were clear and his voice gentle. “I’m sure. I don’t want you to feel bad.”

  “OK.” Since he’d been pretty forthcoming about everything tonight, I was sort of hoping he’d elaborate on his feelings, but that’s all he said.

  For the rest of the night.

  I mean he totally shut down.

  Not in an angry way or anything, but he just stopped talking. No more jokes, no more smiles, no more stories. Was he anxious? Angry? Confused? Scared? In any case, I was so embarrassed and flustered I talked about anything and everything just to fill the silence.

  We finished our meals—I decided against the second glass of wine, especially since he just had the one beer—and he drove me back to my car. I chirped like a bird on crank about random nonsense the entire ride back, and as we pulled into the hardware store lot, I looked over and saw him laughing a little.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You. Do you ever stop talking?”

  I slapped my hands over my face. “No. I mean yes, but no. Not when I’m nervous.” Beneath my palms, my face was hot.

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “Because! I made an ass of myself by kissing you in the restaurant! And you’re all smart and silent and mysterious and I’m just…” I threw my hands in the air. “Obvious and silly.”

  “Is that what you think?” He put the truck in park and shifted on the seat to face me.

  “Yes.” I turned toward him. “Because before I did that, everything seemed fine. And then afterward, you kind of just…shut down.”

  Nodding slowly, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  “Why? Are you mad?”

  He looked at me strangely. “Why would I be mad?”

  “I don’t know! I can usually read people pretty well but your face was like totally impassive. Fucking stonehenge. And you weren’t talking either, so I felt crazy awkward and tried to talk for the both of us.”

  He cracked a smile. “You did it well.”

  I stared helplessly at him, finally out of words.

  “OK, look.” He put an elbow on the back of the seat and propped his head on his fingers. His expression was more relaxed, amused even. “I’m sorry I shut down. I was trying to process some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you did it.”

  “I did it because I felt like it. How’d you feel about it? Be honest.”

  He smiled lazily, and I had the insane desire to trace his lips with my tongue. “Good.”

  I gaped at him. “That’s it? Good? You’ve been silent for an entire hour and a half and that’s all I get? Good?”

  “Uh huh.” His eyes glittered in the dark, and I hoped he was undressing me with them.

  “Oh, that is so mean.”

  “Sorry. I’m a man of few words.”

  “How can a lawyer be a man of a few words?”

  A beat went by. “Did I tell you I was a lawyer?”

  Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “Um, you must have, right?”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  He didn’t seem angry, exactly, but there was an edge to his tone that hadn’t been there before, a wariness, maybe. I decided to come clean. If we were going to be friends, I felt like I owed him the truth about what I’d heard. After all, he’d been more than honest with me tonight.

  Plus the silence was killing me.

  “OK, don’t be mad. Natalie mentioned that she’d heard some women talking in the shop about you. She told me she overheard you were a lawyer in New York.”

  “Anything else?” His voice was tight.

  I took a breath. “Yes. There was something about you having some sort of…mental breakdown last year.” I decided to skip the fiancée part.

  He nodded slowly, a reaction I was starting to recognize as his I need to take this in so don’t ask right now gesture. But I was me, so I asked.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. OK.” At a loss for what to say and worried I’d pushed too far, I slung my bag over my shoulder and reached for the door handle. “I should get going anyway. Thanks for dinner. I had fun.” I opened the door, and he grabbed my arm.

  “Hey.”

  I looked back at him.

  “Come here.” He tugged me toward him, and I shut the door. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about that stuff right now.”

  “It’s fine,” I said with a shrug. “Your past is none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked about it.”

  “Skylar.” Taking my hand in his, he gently rubbed his thumb across the tops of my fingers. “I’ve said more to you tonight than I’ve said to anyone but my therapist in the last year. And I don’t even remember the last time someone kissed me by surprise.”

  My heart raced with pleasure—not desire or lust or sympathy, just pleasure. It meant something to me that he’d opened up a little tonight, especially since he’d built such protective walls around himself. Not that I blamed him. The more I thought about what school must have been like for him, the worse I felt. How horrible to live like that, to be so alone.

  “I’m glad you did,” I said softly. “I like listening to you, and talking to you. And kissing you.” I lifted my shoulders. “I like you, Sebastian. I want to know you better.”

  His eyes dropped to our hands. “I’m not an easy person to get to know.”

  I tipped his chin up, forcing him to look me in the eye. “I’m willing to try.”

  She got out of the truck and shut the door without another word. I watched her open up her car, get in, and drive off, wishing I’d have had the nerve to kiss her.

  Of the two of us, she’s the brave one. Brave enough to ask me for a drink, brave enough to trust me alone with her, brave enough to kiss me just because she felt like it. That actually made me smile. I did it because I felt like it. I could still hear her voice, guileless and sweet. And I could still see the look in her eye as she leaned toward me, daring and sexy. Then her lips on mine… I groaned aloud and put the truck in drive.

  She had no idea what she did to me. Of course I couldn’t talk after that. I was too busy trying to adjust my boxers and not think about my dick. But of course, since I was trying not to think about it, it was all I could think about. Couldn’t she tell?

  Maybe not, since she thought I might be mad that she’d kissed me. Mad, for fuck’s sake. The only thing that made me mad about it was that I hadn’t kissed her back. I hadn’t told her how much I liked it, how much I’d wanted to do it again before she got out of the truck, how many times I’d imagined kissing her back when she barely knew I existed—and how much better the real thing was. It had taken some serious fortitude not to yell “CHECK, PLEASE,” grab her by the hand, and run out of there so I could take her back to the cabin and kiss her properly. Lavishly. Thoroughly.

  How long had it been since I’d had a woman stretched out beneath me, moaning with pleasure while I devoured every inch of her skin? And Skylar’s skin looked so delicious. I bet it would feel like satin under my tongue. Taste like cherries and vanilla ice cream.

  Fuck, I was hard again.

  And she knew things about me. She knew about New York, or at least the bare bones of it, and she’d still asked me out.

  As I drove the long, dark highway up the center of the peninsula, her SUV ahead of me, I found myself wishing again that things were different. No, that I was different. That I had something to offer her. Sure, there would be good days, like this o
ne. And for a while, maybe the good days would outweigh the bad, or maybe she’d find the good days worth the bad. But that wouldn’t last.

  So when Skylar turned off 37 onto the road leading to her parents’ farm, I didn’t follow her like I wanted to. I didn’t pull up next to her in the dark, get out of the truck and wait for her to ask me what I was doing there. I didn’t grab her and crush my mouth to hers without saying a word. I didn’t hold her body close to mine and fiercely whisper how much it meant that she was willing to try.

  But I wanted to.

  So badly it hurt.

  • • •

  When I got home, the cabin seemed particularly dark and empty. I didn’t feel like mindless television, and the internet would only depress me, so I picked up a book my dad had given me recently, sat on the couch and tried to read. But I couldn’t focus on the story—the silence was smothering me tonight. Throwing my jacket on, I walked outside and unloaded the Adirondack chairs from the back of my truck. But once I’d lugged the boxes over to the patio, I didn’t feel like putting them together. Instead, I left them there and wandered down to the dock, grateful for the nighttime noise of the crickets and owls, the water lapping softly against the rocky shore.

  What was Skylar doing right now? Sleeping? Watching TV? Or did she like to read at night like I did? Maybe she’d felt industrious when she got home and was attaching her bin pulls to the kitchen cupboards. I wish I was there to help her. I should have offered. I didn’t even have her number to call her again. Why hadn’t I asked her for it?

  After a few minutes, I went back inside and sank onto the couch, feeling so lonely and sad I did something I hadn’t done in months. I picked up my phone and called Diana.

  As always, it went to voicemail.

  “This is Diana. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  “Hey…it’s me.” I closed my eyes. “I know it’s been a while. But I was thinking about you and thought I’d try to reach out. I guess you’re still not ready to talk to me, and that’s OK. I just wanted to let you know that you were on my mind and I hope you’re doing well. And…I’m sorry. I know I’ve said that a million times, but I am. I wish I could go back and do it all differently. Anyway. Goodnight.”