When she came to sit down in the living room with me on Tuesday morning before she went to the coffee shop for work, she sensed that something was up. She tucked her legs under herself and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug as she inhaled the earthy aroma of her ultimate crutch. “Ashley, you’ve been quiet since yesterday morning. What’s going on?”
I had a bad habit of clamming up and refusing to talk to anyone about how I was feeling or what I was thinking. Back when I used to live in St. Simmons, I had Lulu and the guys to break down my walls and force me to open up, which was crucial to my mental health. But ever since I moved to New York City and started dating Nick, I’d gotten back into bad habits where I internalized everything I was feeling and just shut down.
The things my mother had said to me when I went to see her at her new house had devastated me, and I’d been carrying the weight of her words around with me since Saturday afternoon. And it was killing me.
Lulu leaned forward and put her coffee down when she saw the tears surfacing in my eyes. She scooted to the middle sofa cushion so that her knees were pressed to my right thigh. I couldn’t look at her. I hated crying. I hated being vulnerable.
And I hadn’t felt like this in ages.
“Ash,” she pleaded gently.
How had I forgotten how to communicate? How had I let that skill become so neglected that I couldn’t even look my best friend in the eye when I was falling apart? I needed her desperately, and yet here I was, trying to keep her from seeing me hurting.
Lulu grabbed my hands and squeezed. “Tell me what happened. Now.”
Her demanding tone snapped me out of it. I looked at her, and for a moment, the tears stopped, and I was able to articulate, in a rough sense of the word, what had happened when I went to visit my mother.
Lulu was enraged. “She said what to you? Who the fuck does she think she is? The nerve. I swear to God if I was there, I would have—”
“I know,” I said gently.
Lulu frowned. She was still holding my hands and showing no signs of letting go soon. Which was good because I liked the contact. It felt safe. She sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ash. But you know how messed up that is, right? You know she’s wrong?”
I nodded.
“I need to hear you say it. Tell me you know she’s wrong. Tell me you deserve better than Nick the Dick.”
I smiled involuntarily. “I deserve better than Nick the Dick.”
“Good.”
“There’s more I want to tell you,” I said.
Lulu blinked at me. “Do I want to know?”
I grabbed my phone from the coffee table and opened the message thread with Nick. There were at least seventy-five messages from him over the last four or five days, and I hadn’t responded to a single one. They ranged from angry, to sad, to desperate, to apologetic. And I was starting to get worried. I handed Lulu the phone.
She glared down at it and scrolled through the messages. “Why does he think he has any right to keep messaging you after you’ve made it perfectly clear that you and he are done?”
I shrugged.
“You did make it perfectly clear, right?”
“It was clear. I swear. At least, it was as clear as I could be. He came home from work early the day I was packing up all my stuff. I told him I was coming back here and didn’t know when I would be coming back to New York, or if I ever would. I told him the engagement was off, and I didn’t want to marry him. And I told him I didn’t want to be with him at all.”
“Okay, that’s pretty fucking clear then.” Lulu held up the phone. “Then why is he saying things like, ‘I know you just needed time to process everything’, and ‘please come back to me’, and ‘I still love you’?”
“I don’t know. He wants me back, I guess?”
“Of course, he does. You need to set him straight and tell him to take a hike.”
“I know.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
I sighed and sank deep into Lulu’s sofa cushions. I heaved a great sigh that was indicative of my level of frustration over this whole situation. “I don’t have it in me. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t even want to message him. And I don’t think I should have to. Should I?”
“No.”
“Good, because the thought of reaching out to him makes me want to throw up.”
Lulu fidgeted with her thumbs, and we were quiet for a couple minutes. She looked aimlessly around the room, and I knew there was a question perched on the tip of her tongue that she was working up the courage to ask. “Is there more that you want to tell me? You know, about you and Nick?”
Instinctively, I shook my head. But I did it too quickly, and Lulu was always capable of reading me like an open book.
But she didn’t say anything. Her question had been delicate, but I knew that she was really asking, Did he hurt you?
The answer was no. No, he hadn’t. But the night he caught me packing was the first time I believed he would strike me. And if he went off the deep end, I feared he’d never get control of himself. Not until too much damage was done.
Nick was a big guy, nearly as big as Dean Thomas. He was built like a linebacker with big shoulders and thick arms. He was a strong man, and I’d been attracted to that at first. Then, over the past couple months, his temper started to show, and the power behind his body became frightening rather than appealing.
Lulu patted my knee suddenly. Her mood was chipper, and she had probably sensed that a change of topic was in order as things went from dark to black real fast. “You know, a few people I hang around with are hitting the bar tomorrow night. We should join them. There are awesome drink specials on Wednesdays, and we can dance, and maybe you can, you know, let your hair down a bit?”
“Are you suggesting I hook up with someone?”
“I’m suggesting you do whatever it is you want to do with whoever it is you want to do it with. Don’t overthink it.”
“That’s your motto for life, isn’t it?”
Lulu giggled. “Heck yes, it is. Because it works. We can get a couple drinks, and you can just have a good night. Blow off some steam. Kiss a hot guy—or a few—and spend the night rubbing your ass in his crotch on the dance floor.”
“Lulu!”
“What? Don’t be such a prude.”
“I’m not a prude.”
Lulu arched a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re the definition of a prude.”
I sighed. “I just don’t think I’m in the mood for a senseless hook up. It’s not appealing.”
“You don’t have to get laid. I just want you to come out with us and have fun. Just do what you want to do for once, rather than what you think you should do. Does that make sense?” I stared at her blankly, and she continued more forcefully. “Live a little. It won’t kill you. Just do what, or who, you want to do. It’ll be good for you, I swear.”
I ran my hands up and down my thighs. Her words were tempting. She was pleading with me to let go of all my reservations and just give in to the desire to have fun and let loose and go for what I wanted.
But I couldn’t have what I wanted most. I didn’t even dare speak it aloud.
I wanted the Thomas brothers. All of them. All at once or different times. Under me, behind me, and above me. I wanted their hands all over my naked body, and I wanted to feel their breath trailing along my skin as they traced the lines of my body with their lips.
“What are you thinking about?” Lulu asked, pulling me out of my steamy reverie.
“What?”
“What are you thinking about?” she asked again, this time giving me a coy smile. “Three hunky boys, perhaps? They’ll probably be there, you know? They usually are. At least, Ethan usually is. Dean and Jesse pop up from time to time to say hello. And for the record, they never bring any girls home with them.”
“I wasn’t wondering that.”
“Sure you were.”
She was right. I was. Damn it. I groaned and closed my ey
es as I let my head fall back against the back of the sofa. “What the hell is wrong with me, Lulu? I shouldn’t like them. I certainly shouldn’t be attracted to them. And even if it was okay to be into them, shouldn’t I only be into one of them? Like a normal person?”
Lulu scoffed and rolled to her feet. “Sex and attraction is never that simple. You like who you like. You want to fuck who you want to fuck.”
I scrunched my nose. Lulu could be so crude sometimes.
She pointed her finger at me. “Don’t make that face at me. I told you that you’re a prude. All I’m saying is, you need to let go of all these restraints you’ve placed on yourself. The Thomas’ aren’t your stepbrothers anymore. They’re just three super hot guys who, if you ask me, are just as into you as you are into them.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m serious.”
“Stop.”
Lulu shrugged and bent down to grab her coffee. She shuffled down the hall toward her bedroom to finish getting ready for work and called over her shoulder to me as she went. “All I’m saying is, they probably dream about the same things you do. And there’s no marriage stopping you from tasting them. We’re going to the bar tomorrow. And if you don’t want to kiss a Thomas, you can kiss another guy.”
Even though I knew there would be plenty of guys to choose from, there would only be three that I wanted.
The same three who had been haunting my dreams since I first moved away to college when I was eighteen and still wearing low-rise jeans and converse sneakers. A lot had changed in that time, but the lust I felt toward the Thomas’ had never abated, and the dreams had only become more and more intense since my mother left their father.
And soon, I’d be in the same room as them.
“You’re so fucked,” I whispered to myself.
7
Dean
The Lamp Post was the trendiest local bar in St. Simmons, and I hadn’t set foot in it in almost a year.
Like most popular hangouts for young people, it was dimly lit with hip music, cheap but tasty drinks, and a big dance floor. My brothers and I went in through the front doors and were greeted with hoots and hollers from people who recognized us. Most were guys from high school, from old jobs, from family gatherings, and from drunken nights at bars like this when we were young and dumb. The perks of living in a small town.
I spotted Ashley within seconds of entering.
She was standing at the bar. Her back was to us, and she was leaning forward with one foot up in the air as she spoke to the bartender over the volume of the music. She was wearing tight white shorts that showed a hell of a lot of leg—perfect, muscled, tanned, gorgeous leg—and a green crop top that also revealed plenty of skin. Her lower back dimples showed, and I fought the impulse to press my thumbs to them and hold her hips.
I crossed the floor and went to her.
As I went, I took in more details. Her long, thick blonde hair was in loose curls and pulled up in a ponytail. She had small sparkly earrings in her earlobes and a hoop in her cartilage that had been there since she was sixteen. I’d been in the room when her mom spotted it and gave her shit for getting a piercing.
Good Lord, was she ever sexy.
Ashley’s toes were painted blue, and she had a gold anklet on her right foot. Her sandals were gold and brown, and I spotted bracelets on her left wrist as she reached across the bar to grab her drink. She went to hand the bartender a twenty-dollar bill, but I slid up behind her, put my hand over hers, and handed him my money instead.
Ashley looked up, and her brilliant hazel eyes widened when she saw me.
“Dean!”
She flung herself into me, and I had her arms wrapped around my neck before I had time to say hello. She squeezed me tight, crushing her breasts to my chest and filling my nose with that wonderful floral perfume that smelled so familiar. When she pulled away, she was smiling, and her cheeks were pink. She bit her bottom lip. “It’s so good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too. I’ve missed you, Ash.”
And then, our moment was over. Jesse and Ethan swept in, and Ashley greeted them with equal enthusiasm. Her laughter was lively and bubbly, as it had always been, and I wished there was a way to have it constantly ringing in my ears. If there was, it would be impossible to have a bad day.
Ethan, always the boldest of the three of us, planted a kiss on her cheek and nodded at her drink on the bar. “That yours?”
Ashley nodded as she reached back to grab it. Then Ethan shimmied between two barstools and ordered four shots of tequila and four beers. He told the bartender we’d have whatever was on special. A minute later, I had a cold beer in one hand and a shot of tequila in the other.
Ashley was double fisting, too. She gave the tequila shot in her right hand a wary look. I nudged her gently with my shoulder. “You can leave it on the bar if you’d like.”
Ashley shook her head. “No, no. I just haven’t had any hard liquor recently. It’s going to hit me like a train.”
“Good.” Ethan grinned.
And then we all tossed back our shots. Ashley wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and winced as she swallowed the tequila. She washed it down with a sip of whatever she was drinking—something clear and bubbly decorated with a lime wedge—and I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips the whole time. When she had recovered from the shot, she smiled around at the three of us. “I’m glad you guys are here. How are things?”
“Good,” I said.
“Great,” Ethan said.
Jesse didn’t say anything. He was the quietest of the three of us, and he stood sipping the foam from the top of his beer. Ashley put one hand on her hip and eyed me up. “Are you going to tell me about this new business venture of yours, or are you going to make me fight you for it?”
I laughed and rubbed the back of my neck. “We started up our own security company.”
Ethan shook his head. “No. Dean started it. Jesse and I jumped on board when he offered us jobs. But it was all him. He just will never take the credit.”
“What else is new?” Ashley asked, shrugging one delicate shoulder. “Dean never takes credit for anything. Always so humble.”
“Alright, alright,” I said. “The business is going well.”
“What’s it called?” Ashley asked, leaning on her right leg.
The stance caused her hip to pop outward, creating a curved line of hip and leg that dared me to look up and down the length of her. I didn’t. I took a mouthful of beer instead and caught Ethan giving her the up and down out of the corner of my eye. “Thomas Security Company.”
“Simple enough. I like it.” Ashley smiled.
“How’s teaching?” I asked.
Ashley shrugged again and shifted her weight to the other leg. “It’s good. Well, sort of good. Being a substitute means I don’t really get to bond with the kids. I’m always moving from school to school and subject to subject. But it’s good enough, I guess.”
“Good enough?” Ethan scoffed. “Ash, that’s not what we like to hear. You deserve better than just ‘good enough’.”
I couldn’t agree with my youngest brother more. He’d hit the nail on the head. Ashley was meant for great things. She deserved the joy of a fulfilling career and a happy and healthy relationship, both things I feared she did not have.
Ashley pursed her lips. “Thanks, Ethan. But it’s the kind of thing you have to stick it out for. If I want a permanent teaching position, I have to make sacrifices now.” She paused and blinked when she said the word “sacrifices.” Then she shook her head and sealed her lips around her straw. She sucked back the rest of what was in her glass and then slammed it on the counter. She waved the bartender over. “Another four shots of tequila, please. And another soda water with vodka and lime.”
The bartender started fixing the drinks, and I shared a look with my brothers. Something was up.
Ashley spun back to us with the four shots and passed them around. We all put them back like
they were liquid candy. Ashley grimaced a little less this time and didn’t bother wiping her lips. She grabbed her drink and then slipped between the three of us. Her hand grazed my hip, and I resisted the urge to reach out, grab her wrist, and pull her to me. I craved a closeness I could not have. I craved her soothing touch and her embrace. She alone could spare me the loneliness I’d been plagued with for years.
Instead, I followed her through the crowd on the dance floor. Ethan and Jesse were on my heels, and she brought us to the far corner of the dance floor where Lulu was standing at a high bar table sipping on a drink of her own. Her long brown hair was braided off to the side, as it always was, and a yellow flower was tucked into the braid just below her ear. She looked like a summer goddess, and had I not been so hung up on Ashley, I might have developed a thing for the girl.
But I was hung up. So woefully hung up.
Lulu gave us all a bright smile when we arrived. “Thomas’! I was hoping we’d run into you lot. Ashley hasn’t shut up about you.” Lulu shot Ashley a look, and she blushed furiously and tried to hide it by burying her face in her drink. Then Lulu turned to me and winked.
Maybe I was reading too far into it, but then again, maybe I wasn’t. Lulu looked coy and playful, and there was something about the glint in her eyes that made me feel almost hopeful. Like things had changed. Something had shifted.
I wasn’t one to sit back and let things happen to me. I was a go-getter. So, I followed my earlier impulse and took Ashley’s hand. She turned to me, wide eyed and blushing, and I nodded toward the dance floor.
Ashley grinned.
I tugged her out between the swaying bodies until we were right smack in the middle. The music thumped, and I could feel the bass in the soles of my boots as Ashley put her hand in mine and I rested mine in the small of her back. I tugged her a little closer to me, closer than I might have if her mother had never found my father in their bed with another woman.
But she had. And they were divorced. And there was a feeling of electricity in the air that had always felt like nothing more than a hum before. Now it was wild and alive and exciting. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but the feeling in my chest and the look Lulu had given me was enough to know that I could walk a little closer to the edge with Ashley tonight.
Her Independence Day Page 4