Under The Peaches (Teaching Love Series Book 1)

by Shana Vanterpool

  “Maybe you didn’t go wrong. Maybe she did.” I take a drink and realize I’m done with my beer.

  “Want another one? I want another one. Let’s get drunk tonight.” He looks like he’s asking for permission. “Let’s just have some drinks and eat something and forget everyone else but us.” He opens the cabinet over the fridge, stretching so his shirt rises. I soak up the sight of his muscled lower back as he reaches for the bottle of vodka hidden behind a pack of pasta. He sets it on the counter and then gets down a set of glasses. “How does vodka and sweet tea sound?”

  “Dangerous.”

  He laughs a little. “When I was your age I would have jumped on the opportunity.”

  “Were you a partier?”

  “I appreciated a good party,” he offhandedly admits, pouring equal parts vodka in each cup. He tops them both with ice then pours from the pitcher of sweet tea to cover the top. “You’re much tamer than I was.” Handing me a drink, he meets my eyes. “I still kind of do appreciate a party. Cheers?”

  I clink my glass against his. “Cheers.” I take a drink and make a face. “Admit it. I ruined Jaz’s party for you.”

  “I would never admit that. I knew for sure you had feelings for me that night. I admit my methods were flawed, but I got the answer I was looking for when I kissed Deborah.” He looks away. “And you got your answer when you dissed me.”

  “Still bitter over that I see.” We were both still bitter. “If we weren’t, you know, talking, would you have slept with her?”

  “Yes.”

  I take a long drink. “Interesting.”

  “Desperate is more like it.” He glances at me, resuming cutting the vegetables. “Are you mad?”

  I hold my fingers together to indicate a little bit, and this time I’m not smiling.

  He sighs. “Let’s talk about other things. It’s about us tonight, remember?”

  I sigh too. “When it comes to you I’m so damn jealous it’s disturbing.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says, piling the veggies into a bowl. He grabs the soy sauce out of the cabinet and fires up the pan. “You know why that is?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t trust ourselves.”

  He had a point. I didn’t trust that I was enough for him, and he didn’t trust that I was ready to choose him. We were caught in this revolving door of doubt. To him, I was enough. And he was my choice. But our doubts still exist. “How do we learn to trust ourselves?”

  “Trust is scary on its own. Trusting another person is difficult. But trusting yourself might be the hardest thing of all. Because you have to admit you don’t always have all the answers. Sometimes the choices you make are going to be wrong. And how do we know this isn’t the wrong choice? That’s where trust comes into play.”

  He pours oil into the pan and then adds the vegetables. For a moment, all I hear is the sizzling as they cook. The colors hypnotize me. Red, green, orange, and white. He adds garlic and soy sauce, stir-frying the vegetables quickly. He deposits them into a large serving dish and checks on the rice.

  “I trust you,” I finally speak up. “I’ve never trusted anyone in my entire life but you, Julian.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me.” He leans over and touches my lower lip. Bending down to kiss it, his eyes tell me how much it means to him. “I trust you too. Now we just need to learn how to trust ourselves. In the meantime, we’ll drink, and talk, and refrain from makeup sex.” He gives me a wink.

  “You’re refraining. I’m waiting.” I take a drink and giggle at the look he gives me.

  “I need you to put in some effort here. Or we’ll have a repeat of the couch, except it won’t be your hand I’m in.” Take that, he doesn’t say.

  “Where would you be? In my mouth?” Point.

  He gawks at me. Trying to recover, he gives me a private smile. “We can start there. I won’t finish there, but we can definitely start there.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to get to the finish line? You seem excited just to be at the start.”

  “I am,” he admits, chuckling at himself. “Let’s eat.”

  “Healthy again?” I scoop some brown sticky rice onto my plate followed by some of the stir-fried vegetables. “I guess that’s okay. We have to keep you sexy. It’s the only good thing about you.”

  He pauses in the middle of taking a bite. “You brat.”

  I grin at my plate, pushing a bell pepper around. “No really, there’s so many good things about you. But I think you know that. Otherwise, you’d feel how I do.” I peek at him.

  He reaches over to lift my chin. “I don’t know that. I don’t think we feel all that different right now. My ex just treated me like the last six years didn’t matter. As if I didn’t ask her to marry me. As if everything I ever did for her meant nothing.”

  I sit back, taking my chin. I understand that he barely ended his relationship with Layla. He’s allowed to be upset. Jealousy, however, doesn’t feel nearly as sympathetic. But Julian is someone I care about. He deserves to feel what he wants to feel. My jealousy is my own issue; I won’t take it out on him. Plus, I know how hard it is to cure old wounds. “Did you really want to spend the rest of your life with her?”

  “Looking into your eyes, it’s hard to imagine I did.”

  I force myself to hold his eyes even as my blush eats away at my face, staining my cheeks no doubt pink. “I can’t see you with her. She’s so cold and unappreciative. Am I really unappreciative? Because I appreciate you every second of every day. I wouldn’t know what to do without you. I get it, you know. I miss you even when you’re downstairs, even when you’re right here.”

  “The only person I see myself with is you.” He looks at me oddly, almost as if he’s the one embarrassed this time. His eyes are wide and he’s having trouble meeting my gaze.

  I embarrassed him. The thought makes me giddy. I know what he’s feeling, how good, scared, and nervous it can be. That I can do that to him makes a smidgen of my doubt escape. In its place is something foreign. For the first time, I feel confident.

  I smile proudly and look at my plate, taking a bite. For a few seconds, we simply eat. He takes a long swallow of his drink and smirks to himself.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, nothing. Just that I’m already completely gone over you.” He smirks again, taking another drink. “Completely gone. I want to know about you. I understand we’re in the middle of a lot of shit, but I still want to know who you are.”

  I dread this part. I have no answers, and if I do I doubt that he wants to hear them. “No pink and fluffy, remember? What do you want to know?”

  “What’s your first memory?”

  I blow out a breath and take a drink, starting to feel fuzzy already. “Being hungry.”

  His face falls. “What do you mean?”

  “I remember my stomach making monster noises a lot. It was the first time I realized I was hungry. That’s my first memory. Being hungry. My mom at the time gave me a can opener and some ravioli. I wasn’t hungry anymore.”

  He simply looks at me. “How old were you?”

  “Probably around four, not long before I went to live with the Gibson’s. I remember a lot of palm trees too. We must’ve lived by them. Somewhere in L.A.”

  “So you’re originally from California?”

  “Does California have palm trees?”

  “Yes,” he answers warily.

  “Then I guess so.”

  He looks bothered. “Haven’t you ever wanted to find your family?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious about who gave birth to you?”

  “Why should I be? They didn’t want me. They gave me away to people who didn’t love me. I don’t even know what it’s like to be loved. Why would I want to know people who did that to me?”

  His mouth thins. He looks like he wants to say something more, but decides against it. “Maybe there was a reason th
ey gave you away. Maybe they were young parents, or they were afraid, or something else that made it so they couldn’t take care of you.”

  “Or maybe they made a mistake and didn’t want to deal with me?” I bite out. “Maybe they genuinely didn’t want me.”

  “I can’t imagine someone not wanting you.”

  “Look around. People do it all the time.”

  “I don’t,” he reminds me forcefully.

  I sigh sadly. “You’re the only one.”

  “I’m curious about your parents.” He finishes his plate and pushes it away. “But I can tell I’m starting to bother you, so I’ll back off.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You have to make peace with that. It’s going to eat you alive for the rest of your life if you don’t.”

  I take a long drink, fuzzy from the neck up. I hear him, but I don’t hear him. “What’s your first memory?”

  He looks bothered that I’ve turned it around on him. “Looking at myself in the mirror and thinking I was a girl.”

  “What?”

  He laughs a little. “My older sister used to dress me up as her dolls. I wanted to play with her so badly I let her. My first memory is realizing I would never let her do that to me again, and playing by myself was worth it.”

  I picture a little gray-eyed, brown-haired Julian wearing eye shadow and a dress. It makes me laugh. “I’m sure you were adorable.”

  “Lipstick,” he clarifies. “Is not my thing.”

  “So you weren’t an only child?”

  “No. Clara and I are two years apart. She works for Google in Mountain View as part of the design team. Not far from San Francisco. Mom and dad would never let their only daughter leave them.”

  “You left.”

  “I haven’t heard the end of it since. Every time I talk to my parents they want to know when I’m coming home. I haven’t had the heart to tell them they were right about Layla. I guess I will eventually. Then the campaign to bring Julian home will commence.”

  “Will you ever move back?” The idea leaves me empty. Julian in San Francisco. Me stuck in Savannah with my right now.

  He raises his eyebrows. “We’re a couple, remember? We do things with each other in mind. I would love to move back. But I’m not going to drag you away from your home anytime soon.”

  I relax. Marginally. “I wouldn’t miss Savannah.”

  “Well, that’s something to keep in mind.” His eyes shine, pleased. “Not that Mom would mind if I came home tomorrow.”

  “Do you miss them?” I finish my drink and am perfectly fuzzy.

  “My family? Yes. We’re pretty close.”

  I look into my empty glass. Other than Julian, I’ve never missed anyone. “What are they going to think about me?”

  “They’re going to think their son is happy. That’s all that matters to them. They’re going to think you’re beautiful, sweet, and shy. When I know you’re also feisty, sexy, and not afraid to say how you feel. They’re going to love you, Kael. I just know it.”

  Do you love me? I look closely at him. I can’t tell. I want to be able to tell. How can you be sure someone loves you? “Sexy,” I mumble, snorting. “Shy maybe. But Sexy? No.”

  “We’ll work on that,” he promises, eyes mischievous. “Now, it’s my turn again. What were you like as a kid?”

  I slump in my seat and dish another plate. I need something to occupy me while he grills me. “I was quiet, I guess. Quiet when Stacey America picked on me for wearing clothes with holes in them or when my stomach would growl. I got even quieter in middle school when everyone around me started growing up and I was already doing everything on my own the best way I could. My turn. What were you like?”

  His expression is smooth, but his eyes tighten at my answer. “I was normal, I guess. I excelled in math and failed English. I could count to any number but I couldn’t grasp Shakespeare.”

  That makes me smile. “That’s because math and literature are two different things.”

  “I’d rather play with numbers. The answer’s always the same.”

  “These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder.”

  His gaze holds mine. “If you want me to be romantic and quote the next line, that isn’t happening. I don’t know Shakespeare.”

  I smirk. “Which, as they kiss, consume.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  I shrug. “Just normal? I want to know what normal is. Did you have birthday parties?”

  “Of course. Please tell me you did also?”

  I shove a mouthful of rice into my mouth. “One.”

  “Kaelyn,” he moans, grabbing at his heart. “You’re not being serious. How old were you?”

  “The Gibson’s threw me one when they got me. When I turned five. That’s why I know how old I was when they took me in. I had chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.” I smile slightly at the memory. “Mrs. Gibson bought me this pretty pink dress. I was her doll for exactly one month. Then I started asking for things like food and water, and she realized kids were too much trouble.”

  There’s nothing but pity in his eyes. So much so that I can’t even get mad. He’s simply feeling what he’s feeling. “You’ve had one birthday your entire life?”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head. “Let’s see. You’re eighteen and had one birthday. I took a few weeks off from work. I think I can cram seventeen birthdays in that time frame.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about celebrating your birthdays. We’ll start tomorrow. Now we’re going to talk.”

  “Haven’t we talked enough?” I grumble. “I don’t need any birthdays, Julian. So get rid of whatever ideas you’ve got churning around in that brain of yours.”

  “Anyway,” he says offhandedly. “Keeping up with the theme, where have you always wanted to go?”

  I eye him suspiciously. “Why?”

  “You look like a Paris kind of girl.”

  “Paris?” My eyes widen. “Julian,” I warn. “Don’t you dare take me to Paris.”

  His grin is large and indulgent. “Or maybe somewhere more original. Italy maybe. I’ve always wanted to go to Rome.”

  “You can go to Rome by yourself. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’d let me go to Italy all by myself? All those sexy Italian women to tempt me?”

  My smile is sweet as honey. “I trust you.”

  “Oh, you’re so full of shit. Fine. Italy’s a little expensive right now. But maybe we can go one day?” His expression opens hopefully.

  “Only if you let me pay.”

  “Fine,” he agrees crossly.

  “Speaking of which, I need to call Tamryn at work and beg for my job back. And maybe,” I begin, and then stop.

  “Maybe what?”

  “I can start working full time.”

  “What about school?”

  “I don’t want to go back to school. I can’t deal with it anymore. Who’s to say it’s over? Do you have any idea the things people whisper about me being with you?” I stab at my empty plate.

  “You’re not dropping out.” His tone is final. Harsh and final. “You’re going back to school.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can and you will.”

  “They kicked me on the ground.” I seethe at him. “They beat me like I was nothing. I’m not going back to school so someone else can do that to me again.”

  He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He speaks without opening them. “Please tell me you’re not doing this for me.”

  I take too long to answer. His eyes fly open. When I open my mouth, he stops me.

  “Kaelyn! You’re not dropping out because we’re together.”

  “I don’t want to hide. If we’re together, we’ll have to. I don’t want to be a secret anymore. I want to have you in the open. And the bullying. It’s both reasons. It’s not all you.”

  “I’ll quit before yo
u drop out.”

  My jaw unhinges. “You can’t quit because of me.”

  “Why not? I already graduated. You haven’t. You’ve missed out on so much already I refuse to let you miss out on that too. No!” he growls when I open my mouth to argue with him. “You will graduate.”

  “You’re so bossy.”

  “You’re so uncooperative.”

  “Maybe because you’re bossy.”

  “If I’m bossy it’s only because you’re uncooperative.”

  I crack a smile at him.

  He can’t help it. He does too. “What do you want to do after you graduate?”

  “I’ve never let myself think about it.”

  “College?” He throws out there.

  “I’m more of a right now kind of girl. Later isn’t usually something I consider.”

  “Part of being in a relationship requires you to think about later. If you could go to school for anything what would it be?”

  “Why do I have to be anything? Why can’t I just be Julian’s girlfriend for now?” I feel giddy saying that out loud. A thrill goes through me.

  I can tell a thrill goes through him as well when he shifts in his seat and smiles. “Don’t let my next question scare you,” he warns. “It’s all maybe. But you can’t be my girlfriend forever. There’s marriage, being my wife, and kids. What about then? Later sounds amazing from my end. Don’t fear it.”

  “Wife?” I whisper, swallowing hard. If being his girlfriend made me giddy, the prospect of being his wife made me oddly yearning. “I’d be Mrs. Ean?”

  He runs a hand down his face. “Kaelyn Ean sounds kind of perfect.”

  I want to kiss him right now. I want to tackle him to the ground and rip his clothes off. “Way better than Jefferies.” That name means nothing to me. Ean means something. It’d be like I truly exist, and not something forgotten and tossed away.

  He doesn’t disagree. “Layla always got antsy when I talked about our future. Even when I proposed she hesitated before she said yes. That should’ve been my clue something was wrong.”