Anti-Romance

by Cassia Leo

  One guy wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off cast a stern look in our direction as he stamped out his cigarette on the asphalt and passed us on his way back into the club. Another woman in a tan canvas jacket shot a few furtive glances in our direction as George pulled me toward The Circle.

  “Don’t look at her,” he whispered. “You’ll turn to stone.”

  I laughed as I allowed him to pull me toward the street, where we took a seat on the curb. “You’re so diplomatic,” I gushed. “Mr. Class President.”

  As usual, he flinched at this nickname. “Can we please not bring up ancient history?”

  A pang in the pit of my belly fired up and I blurted out the first thought that crossed my mind. “Are you still hung up on Erika?”

  He pursed his lips and shook his head, but even in my inebriated state I could see that he was acting. “I told you not to bring up ancient history.”

  I grabbed his bicep and my eyes widened with surprise at how muscular it felt. “What are you talking about? It’s not ancient history if you were just telling me you were thinking about her two weeks ago.”

  “I was not,” he protested without meeting my gaze. “I was just thinking about her over the holidays. That’s perfectly normal. That doesn’t mean I’m not over her.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he turned to me and pressed his finger to my lips. I tried not to laugh, but my smile vanished when I saw the serious expression on his face.

  “Shh,” he whispered, and the sound of it sent a shiver through me.

  I nodded and he slowly removed his finger from my lips. “Okay… What was that about?”

  He shook his head as he turned to focus his gaze on the asphalt below our feet. “What happened with you and Mr. Potato-Face?”

  I let out a soft sigh and locked my elbow through his as I leaned my head on his shoulder. “He’s married.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Yeah, I know. He also knows about my blog somehow. Not sure how long he’s known about it, but he mentioned it, which makes me think that’s the real reason he fired me. He didn’t want Grossman becoming fodder for my scandal-hungry subscribers.”

  “I’m sorry, Laney.”

  I chuckled. “Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault I fell for a disgusting pig.” I smiled and repeated the usual justification. “Besides, it will make great fodder for my scandal-hungry subscribers.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “That,” he insisted, grabbing my jaw roughly so he could look me in the eye. “Don’t pretend you’re not hurting.”

  I clenched my jaw as a lump formed in my throat and the corners of my eyes stung with tears. “Stop it,” I whispered, reaching up to wipe the moisture from my cheeks, but he caught my hand midair.

  “You stop it, Laney,” he replied forcefully. “Stop pretending you’re okay with this.”

  I swallowed hard, but the lump refused to budge. “Why are you doing this? I’m not—”

  Before I could finish insisting that I wasn’t pretending to be okay, his lips were on mine. The salt of my tears mixed with the slightly sweet ethanol flavor on George’s lips.

  No, the flavor wasn’t on his lips. It was on his tongue. His tongue was in my mouth!

  In all the years I’d known George, I never once wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Because for as long as I’d known him, he’d been in love with Erika Greer, his ex-girlfriend who had dumped him for reasons unknown nearly two years earlier. Yet, now that the kiss was happening, I found a strange leverage in the pit of my stomach telling me to grab on to him. To pull him into me. To consume him.

  I had to stop this.

  I reached up to place my hand on his chest, but he caught my wrist in his hand. Gravity was working against me, drawing me toward him as if he were the center of the earth. Reluctantly, I drew my head back to break the kiss. Opening my eyes, I found his eyes closed as his mouth continued to seek mine.

  “George,” I whispered to break his trance.

  His eyes clicked open and he met my gaze for a long, silent moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  I let out a deep breath as I leaned forward and hugged my knees. “That was weird,” I said, trying to forget the strange longing I’d felt as his lips locked with mine.

  He nodded in agreement, though he seemed a bit offended by my comment. “Yeah, definitely weird.”

  After an awkward silence, I nudged his shoulder in an effort to return to normalcy. “Take me home?”

  Glancing at him sideways, the soft smile he wore told me everything would be okay. We’d gotten carried away during a moment of weakness. The kiss meant nothing.

  Twenty minutes later, George’s Land Rover pulled into the lot of my apartment building. My stomach tightened as I wondered if I should still hug him the way I always did when he dropped me off. Of course I would. Nothing had changed…right?

  I swallowed hard as I turned to George. “You’re right,” I began, my eyes focused on his chest. “I’m fucked up.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied, looking up to meet his gaze. “But I don’t want to be. I want to be normal.”

  He smiled as his hand reached up to touch my cheek. “You could never be normal. And that’s why I love you.” He leaned forward and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll pick you up for brunch tomorrow. Good night, Lane.”

  I exited the SUV quickly before he could see my tears, but the moment I stepped out onto the asphalt there he was again…my hot, surly neighbor.

  Oh, God. Will I ever catch a break with this guy?

  I flashed him a tight smile as I hastily wiped away my tears. That’s when I realized he wasn’t leaving as I was coming. We were both coming home at the same time. Great.

  I tried to slow down to allow him to walk ahead of me, but he also slowed down and we reached the entrance to the complex at the same time.

  “Go ahead,” I muttered as I came to a stop next to a row of box hedges.

  He stopped next to me and cocked an eyebrow. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  I rolled my eyes and continued past him. “I’m fine.”

  He followed closely behind me. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that. Just seems you’ve had a bad week.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  He chuckled as he continued after me. “I’m Kade. What’s your name?”

  “Not in the mood.”

  “That’s a shitty name.”

  I glared at him and he flashed me a ridiculously sexy smile. “Laney,” I mumbled.

  “Laney? That’s a good name,” he declared as we arrived at my apartment, where he had seen me incessantly scratching my crotch just three nights ago. “Laney always took a different lane, but we always arrived at the same place.”

  I stopped a few feet away from my door and looked back at him over my shoulder. “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s the beginning of a song about you.”

  I pressed my lips together to suppress my smile.

  He laughed out loud, a deep, manly chuckle that reverberated down my spine. “Till next time, Laney.”

  Sometimes, I felt like a giant, festering boil on humanity’s ass. Other times, I felt as if I was doing God’s work, giving poor, hopeless romantics their daily dose of reality. Today, I felt like the hairy pimple on God’s ass. I drank way too much vodka last night. One wrong move and I would erupt at any moment.

  I scooped my phone off the nightstand, surprised to see it still had 2% charge on the battery. Just enough to check the time—10:03 a.m.—before it died. I licked my parched lips as I attempted to sit up, but I only made it onto my elbows before my head started pounding so hard I feared my eyeballs would explode out of their sockets. Lying down, I grimaced as a small pocket of bile rose in my throat while the bed swayed beneath me.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered. “Kill me no
w.”

  “AS YOU WISH!” boomed a deep voice on my left.

  I jumped into the air, landing in a standing position on the bed, my pillow in hand, ready to use as a weapon to fend off whatever serial killer had entered my apartment. The sight of George standing in my doorway, doubled over with laughter made me sigh with relief. Then I threw the pillow at him anyway and fell to my knees on the bed.

  He caught the pillow and tossed it onto the bed next to me as he approached. “Come on, that was perfect timing.”

  “You’re an asshole!”

  I couldn’t look at him as he took a seat on the bed. All I saw when I looked at him was the way he looked after he kissed me, when I pulled my head back and his eyes were still closed. My sour stomach clenched at the memory, but I didn’t know if it was because I regretted the kiss or because I didn’t.

  “You said you’d be ready for brunch,” he said, completely ignoring the elephant in the room. “Ivan’s meeting us at Café Java in an hour.”

  “I’m not hungry. I’m hungover,” I replied, lying down on my side, facing away from him.

  He was silent for a moment before he lay next to me and gently placed his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, I know I already apologized for last night, but I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I guess…I’ve just got a lot on my mind.” He squeezed my shoulder softly. “I don’t want it to get weird between us. Just tell me what you want me to do or say so everything can go back to normal.”

  I smiled as I turned over to face him. “Do the dance.”

  He rolled his blue eyes and shook his head. “No. You’re probably secretly recording me, then you’re going to put it on your YouTube channel. No way.”

  I scrunched my eyebrows together in my best “pretty-please” expression. “I promise I’m not recording. Look,” I said, picking up my phone off the nightstand and holding it above our heads. “My phone is dead. Do the dance, please.”

  The wrinkle between his eyebrows grew more pronounced as he stared at me for a long while, lost in thought. I began to get the feeling he was going to kiss me again. I actually found myself wanting him to kiss me again. What was wrong with me?

  He was just too adorable. And I was on the rebound. Yes, that’s what it was.

  Who could resist those almond-shaped blue eyes he’d inherited from his father, who was one-quarter Japanese? Or the full lips he inherited from his French mother? And the man had Jude Law’s bone structure—absolutely impeccable. Even his shiny, brown curls, which he’d recently grown out to a hipster-ish two-inch length…and the way he screwed up his brow when he puzzled over a difficult problem…George was positively huggable.

  But kissing him had to remain off-limits.

  Oh, God. Had I just ruined my one true friendship?

  I turned away and ignored the whooshing sensation in my belly as I rose from the bed. “I’ll take a quick shower, then we can go.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said, lacing his fingers behind his head as he lay back on the pillow. “Oh, by the way, I thought you should know I found Hero sleeping in the fruit bowl again. I’ll do the dance if you let me take a picture of him posing like that with a bottle of gin under his paw.”

  I grinned as I glanced back at him over my shoulder while entering the bathroom. “Be my guest.”

  * * *

  George and I managed to avoid the topic of our kiss throughout the entire brunch. And Ivan, clueless as always, was none the wiser. To his credit, George did seem completely unaffected by my presence and the way I kept awkwardly shifting in my chair.

  The truth was, I was suddenly painfully aware of how much space I was taking up in the universe. My butt felt bigger, as if it were protruding out into the aisle between our table and the table next to us. Yet, somehow, it also felt bonier, and I found myself unable to get comfortable on the wooden chair. My elbows seemed to stick out too far as I picked up my breakfast sandwich. I kept tucking them in as I took each bite. And I swore George could hear my thoughts, but he never let on. He was cool as a cucumber as he scarfed down his migas and two mimosas.

  I finally gave up on the sandwich halfway through, then I asked Ivan to take me home. Both Ivan and George were surprised by my request, but neither protested.

  “I’ve got a ton of blog posts to write and schedule tonight and tomorrow,” I said to George as he walked with Ivan and me across the parking lot toward Ivan’s Hyundai coupe. “I’ll call you when I emerge from my lair.”

  “Ivan and I will bring you coffee tomorrow to keep you fueled.”

  Ivan shook his head. “Not me, man. I’ve got a client coming to look at concepts tomorrow morning,” he said, rolling his eyes as he deactivated the car alarm. “First, you two make me go to brunch today. Now, I can’t even sleep in on a fucking Sunday.”

  George shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to drop off coffee by myself.”

  I waved off his suggestion. “Don’t bother. I’ll probably sleep in late, too. I’ll see you next week. Are we still having lunch on Thursday?”

  My throat seized up, causing my voice to jump an octave at the end of the question. Suddenly, I was worried about coming off as needy for simply confirming a lunch date with a friend. Jesus Christ. I needed to get a grip on myself.

  “Absolutely,” George replied, leaning in to plant a kiss on my forehead, the way he always did.

  I panicked and my entire body twitched like a fish flopping on a boat deck as I tried to get away from his puckered lips. “Sorry,” I muttered as I hastily opened the car door and slipped into the passenger seat.

  The car sank a few inches as Ivan plunked down his six-foot-one-inch body in the driver’s seat. “What the fuck was that?” he asked as he jammed the key in the ignition.

  “Nothing. Just go. Please.”

  A slight smirk turned up the corners of his lips as he looked back over his shoulder before backing out of the parking space. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you’re trying to cover something up.”

  I sighed as I buckled my seat belt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you fuck George?”

  “What? No!” I shrieked. “Jesus. What kind of question is that?”

  He raised his eyebrows as he checked the cross-traffic before pulling onto Metric Blvd.

  “What is that”—I wiggled my eyebrows to mimic him—“supposed to mean?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that. Spit it out.”

  He sighed as he came to a stop at a red light. “Well, this is pretty much exactly how you acted after you and I had sex.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is, Lane,” he replied, a tinge of anger in his voice. “But the difference is I could handle it. You can’t fucking do that to George. He’s not like us.”

  “Not like us? What does that mean?”

  He was silent for a moment as the light turned green and he accelerated into the intersection. “He’s not like us. He’s different. You know that. He doesn’t fuck around, so don’t fuck around with him.”

  My heart raced as I realized how poorly he thought of me. “Look, just because it didn’t work out with you and me doesn’t mean I’m some kind of poisonous black widow waiting to suck every poor bastard dry. I have feelings, too. And I would never, ever hurt George. Ever.”

  He clenched his jaw as he continued driving in silence, but I got the feeling that there was more he wanted to say. By the time we arrived at my apartment complex, the tension between us was so taut, I didn’t know if I even wanted to say good-bye to him. The sight of my surly neighbor, Kade, getting out of his blue truck with his guitar case snapped me out of my grumpy mood.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as Ivan pulled up near the entrance to the complex.

  “For what?” he replied, his gaze focused on the steering wheel.

  “If I ever made you think that I didn’t care…about what happened…between us.”

  He let out a sharp puff of air.
“That ship sailed a long time ago, Lane. Just promise me you won’t throw George overboard.”

  I shook my head as I slid out of the car. “Not a chance. Good luck with your client tomorrow.”

  He smiled. “Good luck stringing together the narrative for Mr. STD.”

  “STI,” I corrected him before I slammed the car door.

  I bit my lip to suppress my embarrassment as I realized Kade was also watching Ivan’s car drive away.

  “Busy girl,” he remarked, shutting his truck door.

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s a friend, not that it’s any of your business.”

  He smiled as he carried his guitar case toward me. “Guess you’re right. Men are your business. I’m in the music business.”

  “Men aren’t my business,” I replied emphatically, then I scrunched my eyebrows together as I realized men were my business.

  Oh, God. Was I a prostitute?

  “They’re not?” he replied, keeping pace with me as we entered the courtyard. “You sure do seem pretty good at attracting a wide variety of them.”

  “What does that mean? Are you calling me a whore?”

  He laughed as he switched his guitar case to his other hand. “No, ma’am. Just commenting on the way you carry yourself.”

  I stopped a few feet away from my door and turned to him. In the sunlight, his light-brown hair appeared almost blond. His wide chocolate-brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at me. He had an easy confidence about him, a wise twinkle in his eye, as if this were his hundredth life on Earth, and he was just going through the motions now, enjoying the scenery and finding amusement at every opportunity.

  “How’s that? How do I carry myself?” I asked.

  His smile softened. “Like you don’t know if you’d rather fuck me or kill me.”

  I rolled my eyes as I reached for my door. “Good day, Kade.”