“Easie.”
Chastised again. “Sorry. Look, I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t. But I wouldn’t have judged him. I wouldn’t have . . . I mean, I don’t even know. What is it that he was afraid I would do?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a question for him, don’t you?”
“You know, Ashley, I’m not sure I’m liking all of this fucking wisdom from you. It’s starting to freak me out.”
“We’ve established this. I’ve always been the smarter one. Just accept it and move on.”
“Mom and dad seemed to think I was pretty smart,” I mumbled.
She laughed. “Hah! They think I’m smarter too.”
“Nuh uh!”
“Would you like to call them? Ask their opinion?”
I glared. “You know I don’t.”
She shook her head. “That’s another one of your issues. But it’s one to tackle on a different day.”
She was definitely right about that. Man issues today. Mommy and Daddy issues . . . well, not now.
Decision made, I stood up quickly, ignoring the crumbs that fell from my shirt to the carpet below.
“I’m going over there. Right now.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Ashley rushed out in a panic. “Not like this.”
“What? He sent me these letters,” I said, shaking them, “He obviously wants me to show him I’m ready to talk about it. So I’m going over there.”
“No,” she clarified. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Well, then what do you mean?” I demanded to know, my impatience seeping through me like the ooze of syrup through bread.
“I mean you can’t go over there like that. You look horrendous and you smell even worse. Trust me on this. This is not the kind of look you want to be sporting should make up sex become an option.”
“I’m not going over there to sleep with him,” I argued. We had issues to fix.
She rolled her long-lashed eyes. “No one ever goes over there intending to fuck in situations like this. It just happens.”
“It just happens?”
“Yes.”
“What? Somehow we’re both naked, he trips, and his penis lands straight in my vagina?”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked a hip. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
I shook my head, but heeded her advice, talking as I shoved past her and headed down the hall to take the world’s quickest shower.
“Ignoring your questionable knowledge on the subject, let’s just pretend you know what you’re talking about.”
She walked along behind me, and when I looked over my shoulder to check on her progress, she raised scrunched her forehead and inclined her head toward her right ear to indicate she was waiting.
“Everything you know about what’s happened here, the obvious lying, the complete disillusion between who he is and who he thinks he should be . . . the fact that he’s shown no sign that he’d actually be willing to choose me as his number one priority ever . . . what about all of that makes you think that we’ll be able to make up at all, much less be jumping each others’ bones in a showing of angry and aggressive sex?”
A snort-like giggle choked in her throat and a grin brought the corner of her mouth toward her eye. The line of her neck shortened with one cute shrug of her shoulder.
“Simple. You love each other.” My hands fell to my sides and my lungs expanded at the realization. I may not have been the one to say it aloud, but I sure as hell admitted it to myself.
“And love conquers all.”
FROM THE VERY MOMENT Easie left my apartment, I didn’t. I hadn’t gone out to train, I hadn’t gone out to surf, and I hadn’t gone to work at El Loco. In an interesting turn of events, Tammy was covering my shifts for a change. And the brief taste of freedom had me craving another.
I knew all of the decisions wouldn’t come so painlessly, but the one to quit working at the restaurant did. It didn’t have any value to me or Evan and overcrowded an already bursting schedule. And now that I’d gotten paid for the first few episodes of Quirks and Kinks, I didn’t immediately need the money.
The next time I left my apartment, it would be to give my notice. Or to go to Easie if I got too impatient while I was waiting for her to come to me.
Based on that, I figured I’d be here for at least another five minutes.
Roughing my hands through the scruff of my hair, I jumped up from the couch and then scrubbed a palm down the front of my face. Christ, it was hard waiting to know what would happen—if I’d ever get a chance to see if Easie could fall in love with the real me. Whoever that was.
My stomach hadn’t calmed down, so I’d avoided food. I didn’t want to chance getting sick again. The humiliation from the first time was more than enough.
Three paces back and forth down the length of the coffee table was all I managed before giving in and storming to the kitchen counter to grab my keys. The metal felt cool but damp in my sweaty palms, and the edges of each key dug into the skin of my palm because of the tension in my grip.
Forcing my fingers to relax, my open hand gave way to several imprints of keys. Each ridge and dent mocked me, the small sliver of skin covered by my ring the only thing untouched, for the distance between Easie and I didn’t even require a drive.
I stormed the door, angry footsteps pounding the old hardwood floors of my apartment and slapping an echo into the otherwise stagnant air. The door came flying as I ripped it from its hinges.
And revealed a completely startled, wet-haired Easie in its wake. Bags pulled at the darkened skin underneath her eyes, and her makeup free cheeks flashed red with exertion.
Once she’d decided to come, she’d done so quickly.
“Easie,” I breathed, her name weighty and mined straight from my chest.
“That is my name,” she said, her words sharpening right along with her eyes. I’m pretty well convinced her eyes would have started in that position had I not surprised her by opening the door before she could knock. “Is Anderson yours?”
My chin jerked back, surprised, but she didn’t make me wonder for long.
“It’s just that there have been so many lies, I figured we better start from the very beginning.”
Ouch.
Clearing my throat, I forced myself to nod. “That’s fair.”
“You bet your tight ass it is.”
A small, disbelieving puff of air shot from my nose. At least she still liked my ass.
“So,” she prompted, sticking out her tiny hand. “Easie Reynolds.”
Clarity hit me like a ton of bricks.
Fuck, this was not going to go well.
“Anderson Evans,” I replied, grasping her hand and holding on tighter than normal. I knew when I said the rest, she’d be tempted to let go. I visibly winced. “Though, technically, I’m also Anderson Aranda.” Her face started to shutter, closing down and pulling back, but I charged on, speaking a truth I scarcely even admitted to myself. “I changed my legal last name after Evan died. Aranda is the name my father gave to me by blood.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but ended up floundering and closing it again. She repeated the process several times before a syllable successfully escaped her lush lips. Throughout it all, I held tight to her hand.
“Well, I guess that goes better with your appearance. I wondered briefly how a guy who looks like you ended up with a last name like Evans.”
“A guy who looks like me?”
“You know you have a hispanic flare.”
I did. And it probably wasn’t the best time to mess with her, but old habits die hard. “My father is Honduran-American. My mother is a southern California blond of Irish descent.”
She nodded briskly before blurting, “And I’m sorry to hear about your brother.”
My thumb stroked the skin on the back of her hand. “Thank you.” She started to pull back again, so I further tightened my grip. “Come in.”
She looked to the empty h
all behind her and then back to me. Indecision was ripe in the air all around her.
“Please,” I whispered, scared to say everything I had to say, but wanting the chance to say it more than anything.
“Alright,” she agreed, making me notice the envelope tucked under her arm for the first time by tightening it to her chest. All I’d been able to see up until then was her face.
“Thanks for bringing my letters back,” I murmured, ushering her inside with a hand at the small of her back. My other hand still held onto hers.
She nodded slightly, noting, “They’re well worn.”
I laughed a hollow, self-deprecating chuckle, staring at the floor in front of me as we headed for the couch. “I’ve read them every night for almost six years now.” Turning her to help her take a seat, still holding on to her hand, I met her eyes with my own. “I’d say they’ve held up pretty well.”
“Will you start at the beginning? Tell me everything?”
“Of course I will.”
“Good. Not telling me before means you’re stupid. Refusing to tell me now would have made you an asshole.”
“I’m not rejecting you, I promise. You deserve answers. Honestly, you deserved answers a long time ago.”
“No kidding.”
“Easie—”
She wrestled her hand out of mine and put its clammy remains over the line of my mouth. “It’s done. Just tell me now.”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in through my nose and blew it out my mouth.
“Evan always had trouble breathing. At first, my parents just thought it was asthma. That because I was seven years older than him, he was just trying too hard to keep up with me.”
She gripped my hand now, rubbing at the edge of my ring.
“But his symptoms didn’t plateau. In fact, they kept getting worse no matter how much they relegated him to the sidelines—which he hated, by the way. He was really spunky. A lot like you.”
One tear pooled in the inside corner of her eye and slid down, leaving a glistening path down the line of her cheek and hanging precariously off the edge of her jaw. At the same time, a tiny smirk pulled at the opposite corner of her mouth.
“It took months of doctors visits and several examinations to diagnose him with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. Scar tissue grows and builds up on the inside of the lungs and robs you of the ability to breathe. Apparently, some people get worse slowly, while other unlucky ones degenerate extremely fast. Evan was in the second category.”
“My parents tried to tell me several times how bad it was, but I never believed them. You see, Evan, he was always so upbeat. Such a goddamn dreamer. And it all happened so fast. I thought, at the very least, I had more time.”
“You weren’t there,” she asked, but she said it like a statement. She already knew.
I shook my head, covered my mouth with a shaking hand. I fought the tears, rubbed at my eyes furiously. But I couldn’t seem to stop them. Like flooded lakes, both eyes overflowed, forming tiny streams down my cheeks, curving through the forest of day old stubble that lived there.
“That picture you saw?”
She nodded. There was no questioning which picture I meant.
“He died that night.”
“Anderson.”
“His last letter came the next day.”
She covered her mouth with one hand and squeezed my fingers with the other. My ring cut into my skin, but I welcomed the pain.
“I took it as a sign, you know? Like he was telling me what to do, how to turn it all around. I obviously didn’t want to be the person I was anymore.” I shook my head, ran a ragged hand through the back of my hair. “God, being out partying like that—smoking a fucking cigarette? Even if I didn’t realize how bad it was, I knew I had healthy lungs and he didn’t. I may as well have spit in his fucking face.”
“So that’s how you felt about me smoking. Like I was spitting in it too,” she incorrectly surmised.
“No,” I corrected, wiping a fresh tear from her cheek with the back of my knuckles. “It was me disrespecting him again.”
“What? How do you figure that?”
“You didn’t have all the information when you were making that choice. I knew exactly where I’d come from, what Evan had been through, where I’d been when he died, and I still made the choice to find you irresistible.”
She laughed a little, gave me a mischievous but still sad eye. “Well, come on. You really had no choice. I am irresistible.”
“And unwaveringly humble.”
“That too. I’m all the good things.”
I smiled and brushed my thumb across the apple of her cheek. “That much I know.”
She grabbed my hand from her face and pulled it away. Disappointment bloomed in my chest, but leveled off when she didn’t let it go.
“What’s the ring?” she asked, running her fingers along the ostentatious outline of it. “You never take it off.”
“Ha,” I laughed. “It was his.” I shook my head. “He loved flashy shit.”
She smirked. “You don’t?”
“Not so much,” I confirmed honestly before dropping the volume of my voice to a murmur. “But I like things that remind me of him. I took it when he died . . . had it engraved.”
Slipping it slowly from my finger, I revealed the obvious tan line and turned it over so that she could read the inside.
“Live Free, Breathe Easy,” she whispered aloud as she did.
“He wanted that more than anything.”
“For him . . . or for you?” she questioned insightfully.
“I don’t know. I guess both of us.”
She grabbed my hand. Slid the ring back on my finger.
“So you’ve spent all your time achieving all of the things he didn’t get to.”
“Silly, huh?”
She shook her head, looked down at her lap, and twisted the fingers of her two hands together. “No. Not silly at all.”
“I’m sorry, Easie. I really should have told you everything. I should have made time for you—for us—”
“Anderson,” she cut in. “I forgive you. Really, I do.”
Energy surged through my body, and before I knew it, I was reaching for her face and doing my best to touch my lips to the peachy softness of hers.
She backed away gently. Gave me a sad smile. “But I don’t think we’re ready to be together.”
I could feel her slipping away, sliding back out just as easily as she’d insinuated herself in. Desperate, I fought to hold on, grabbing onto everything I could and digging in my figurative fingernails to keep her from sliding through my grip. “I am, Easie. I’m ready,” I implored. “I choose you.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t with humor. It was the earth shattering sound of near devastation, a sob nearly choking her as it lodged in her slender throat.
“Yeah, I got that from your letter.” She shook her head with disappointment.
I didn’t understand. I’d thought that’s what she’d want to hear. I’d thought it was what she deserved. I’d thought it was romantic.
I’d thought wrong.
“If you’d given me the chance to know—to know you and Evan—you never would have had a choice to make.”
“Easie—”
“I wouldn’t make you choose, Anderson. Not ever. If you think that I would, you don’t know me either.”
I started to deny it, a matter of a means to an end, a path to having what I ultimately wanted—her. But she was right. I had never once thought there was the option to have both. That I could hold on and move forward at the same time.
Not once.
“I . . . God, Easie. I’m sorry.”
“I am too.”
She stood up, each inch of her now towering height breaking my heart a little more.
“So this is it?”
She leaned down and touched her lips to mine, and then left them there, each word she spoke weaving its way directly from inside of her straight to the
heart of me.
“Not a chance, Anderson Evans. This is just the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
She nodded. “The beginning of us. The beginning of Easie and Anderson.”
It took me watching her walk out the door, a near panic attack, and the lingering feel of her skin on mine to understand.
Neither of us really knew the other. The picture had been too well obscured by insecurities and secrets.
But it was never too late to start now.
SOME LESSONS ARE LEARNED; others are earned. Anderson and I earned ours.
I needed to embrace my soft as well as my hard, and he needed to start living for himself. If we wanted to be happy together, we needed to be happy alone first.
But by the grace of good God almighty, I hoped we found our lonely happiness fast.
I already missed the bastard, and it had only been two weeks. It wasn’t that we hadn’t kept in touch—we obviously had. Anderson had made a real effort to cut back on all things Evan in his life and even went out to visit his parents for the first time since he’d died. I was a little disappointed that he hadn’t asked me to go with him, but I understood. And frankly, the circumstances of our relationship were strictly of my making.
Every day, Anderson sent me a good morning text and called me mid-morning. He talked about his plans for the day or asked me if I had something on my schedule that I wanted him to be included in. My answer was always yes. If he asked, I accepted. No matter what.
He was working hard to weed through years of learned habits to find out what he actually liked and what he didn’t. Everything had started out as a way to validate Evan, but a couple of things turned out to be real passions. He’d admitted to me that he’d become really fond of surfing, but he liked it a lot better when he did it on his own schedule. He hated singing and playing guitar, claiming that the attention was all together too much.
Of course, that conversation—and the fact that we were still working together frequently—led to a discussion about acting.
I’d read the letter. As much as it broke my heart, I knew it wasn’t some fate-destined notion that we’d chosen the same careers. Evan had chosen his.
But the jury was still out about how he felt about it. Apparently, getting to work with me every day clouded his ability to judge the trade for its most basic properties.
Quirks & Kinks Page 21