by S. J. Sylvis
When she was out the door, Dawson turned towards me, eyeing me with just as much suspicion as Becca had a few seconds ago.
“It all makes sense now,” he whispered, walking further into my house.
“What does?”
I trailed after him, willing myself not to stare at the way his jeans hung so perfectly on his hips.
“Why she hated me after you left. I knew that she knew where you were, but she was so fucking angry at me. Did she tell you she slapped me?”
I choked out a laugh and then threw my hand over my mouth to silence it. Then I mumbled, through my fingers, “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Suddenly he paused, his face actually twisting like he was in pain. He roughly ran a hand through his chocolate waves and locked his blue eyes onto mine. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Ivy.”
My heart stuttered in my chest as I stood and stared into them. How could six words affect me so deeply? Like they had some magic healing power.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly the words that affected me so much; maybe it was just the person speaking them. I faked a smile although I knew he could see right through it.
“It’s fine. It was just a big mess. All under the rug now.”
“Yeah…” he said, and then he quickly turned around and started to dig into the bag he had been carrying.
After he’d dug out some plates and I’d found what was inside the mystery bag (chili fries from our all-time favorite restaurant, Ronnie’s), Dawson got to work on measuring some of the projects in my house. They were fixing the wall, starting tomorrow, to open up the living room and dining room, and then they’d work on the master bath and put in new floors everywhere. It wasn’t all of the work I wanted done, but in order to stay in my budget I needed to take baby steps.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask…” I piped up from sitting Indian style on my hardwood floor, watching his jaw tick back and forth as he jotted down different notes and dimensions.
“Yeah?”
“How are your parents? I know I saw your dad, but how is your mom?”
Dawson’s eyes flew up to mine, a pencil tucked behind his ear and a tape measure in one hand. “I keep forgetting that you’ve been so shut off from this town that you know, like, nothing.” His eyes swayed from mine a bit, showing he was conflicted about something. “My parents got divorced a few years back.”
Oh shit. Way to go, Ivy. Should have just stayed with the easy topics like last week.
“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry, Dawson. I didn’t know.”
He waved his hand. “It’s fine. It actually worked out. They’re better apart than they are together…”
I scrunched my eyebrows. “How so?”
I studied Dawson as he scribbled something down on his notepad and then as he tucked the pencil back behind his ear. The muscles in his forearm taunted me, as they moved swiftly with each motion he made. In my head I wiped the drool off my chin.
“Hey, come here for a sec. I need you to hold something while I measure.”
I jumped up from my feet, eager to be closer to him… I mean, eager to help. Help. He just needs some help, Ivy.
“And to answer your question,” he stated, “my mom and dad are just more present now. Like, when they were married, they were so focused on their jobs and beating one another at being successful that they forgot they had kids.” His soft chuckle filled the room. “Once they got divorced, they seemed to have more of an interest in Emmett and I than fighting with one another.”
I nodded my head understandingly. “That’s great, Dawson. I can remember that they weren’t home a whole lot when we were younger.”
“Yeah. Here, hold this up there.”
Dawson laid a yellow tape measure at one end of the wall that was still standing (even after I’d tried to take it down, adding that to my DYI fail list later) and then had me hold it up while he ran it across to the other side. I watched him the entire antagonizing time.
The way his tongue darted out to lick his lips while he was concentrating. The way his brow furrowed as he scribbled a number down on the paper. Then the way he sauntered over to me, stopping only inches away from my body. I turned my attention forward, looking past the single piece of wood that was still left, and stared into the darkened dining room.
I could feel the heat radiating off his body, bouncing right onto mine. I could also feel the racing of my heart from our close quarters. I tried not to smell him, but I did. I smelled that familiar scent of Axe deodorant and it made a tiny smile spread along my cheeks. It was so familiar, and it was so nice to not have to push away an unwelcome memory of him.
Still standing beside me, Dawson reached his hand up and touched my two fingers, holding up the tape measure. It was barely a nudge, but the feel of his fingers on mine set my entire hand on fire. I jolted my head to where he stood and met his intense stare.
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and then he opened that beautiful mouth. “I just need to see the two numbers that your fingers are covering.” Dawson’s normal tone was long gone and in its place was something along the lines of raspy and husky, all wrapped up into one hypnotic sound.
That’s what I was. Hypnotized. Like I couldn’t even understand what he was telling me to do because his voice had my nerve endings standing straight up, razor sharp.
Dawson licked his lips and a source of eagerness crawled down over my shoulders, all the way to the heels of my feet.
My eyes fell to his lips, and my mouth opened in response. Wow. It’d been six years and just the mere sight of him licking his lips, standing this close, instantly had me reliving my best fifteen-year-old memory all over again.
Dawson jumped away from me when his phone started ringing loudly in his pocket. We both dropped our hands, causing the tape measure to smack me right in the forehead before it clattered to the floor.
“Ouch,” I huffed while hunched forward. I brought my hand up to the painful spot, humiliation flooding my body.
“Shit, are you okay?” Dawson asked, bending down alongside me to look at my head.
“I’m fine,” I grunted over the still ringing phone. “Your phone.”
“What?” he asked, confused. Like he was in a daze.
“Your phone is ringing.”
Surprise flickered on his face when I glanced down to his pants and then he hurriedly snatched it from his back pocket and pulled it in front of him.
Call it curiosity or just a coincidence that I’d looked down to see who it was, but I instantly wished I had a time machine to redo the last few seconds.
The throb on my head no longer bothered me.
What bothered me was the name “girlfriend” flashing right above a picture of someone I recognized immediately.
I quickly snapped my head forward as I saw Dawson hit “Ignore” on the screen.
I hurriedly bent down to pick up the tape measure while willing the simmering resentment that lay so quietly in my lower stomach to go the hell away, and asked if he was finished taking measurements.
He answered, “Yeah, I think I’ve got it,” and then swiftly grabbed the tape measure out of my hand and headed to the door.
I stood back beside my half-wall, waiting for him to turn around and at least mumble a “goodbye” to me, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled the door open and walked out without saying another word.
That’s when the realization hit me.
I shouldn’t even be talking to Dawson if Breanna was involved. If she hated me back in high school, for absolutely no good reason, what would she do now if she knew I was having dirty thoughts about her boyfriend?
Kill me. That’s what she would do. She’d sever my head and feed it to the freaking wolves.
Chapter Fourteen
Dawson
Ivy was taking up space in my mind that was no longer reserved for her. I used to think about work, Breanna, and my next beer at Sailed Ships but now all I could think about was when I’d get to see Ivy again. Which was not how a friend should be thin
king, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t how someone who already had a girlfriend should be thinking.
Breanna called me when I was mere seconds away from dipping my head down and crushing my lips to Ivy’s the other night, which was so out of line that I could barely form words afterward. The only thing I could focus on was the way that Ivy’s mouth had parted and how she had sighed when I moved closer; as if she were tempting me... as if she really wanted me to kiss her.
Then the switch was flipped. The second my phone rang, the realization that I had almost just cheated on my girlfriend, with my childhood best friend, hit me like a 7-ton semitruck. I knew that Ivy had seen Breanna’s picture flash on my screen; she’d inhaled a sharp breath and her voice was unstable afterward.
Apparently, there was a lot that she needed to get caught up on.
Me dating Breanna.
The house I currently lived in… I couldn’t wait until she saw that. That would open up a whole new can of worms.
Breanna thought it was weird that I lived there. She said it was creepy, but she knew very well that I wasn’t going to move. She wouldn’t get her way with that.
She got her way tonight, though.
The second she got to my house after working at the dealership, the one her father owns (the same one that was always neck and neck with the one Ivy’s father had owned) she plopped herself in her tight, little dress down on the couch and ran her fingernails over my bare arm.
“Let’s go out tonight, babes.”
I groaned, running my hand through my hair. “I’m kind of busy, Breanna. I have a lot of work to do.”
She pouted so hard that I could hear it. Breanna was the queen at pouting to get her way. She was like a three-year-old trapped in a very attractive woman’s body.
“You’re always busy. You’ve been slaving away lately on whatever it is you’re working on. What’s keeping you up at night? The last few nights I stayed here, you’ve crept out of bed to work…we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now, remember? We’re supposed to go out together every once in a while.”
I wasn’t aware that she noticed me casually rolling out of bed and going into my office, which then led to me working for hours and crashing on the couch.
“Just this one house that needs a lot of work.”
This one house = Ivy’s.
“Well, take a break and let’s go to Ships. There’s a band tonight and I’m pretty sure Max is going and, like, more than half our friends. Pleaseeeee.”
The whiny part of her voice made me cringe and honestly had me contemplating why I was even with her in the first place. Oh, that’s right. Because she was the one who was there for me when Ivy left.
I sighed, slipping my reading glasses off. “Okay, sure. Go get ready.”
A smile spread along her face, showing off her bleached teeth and pink lipstick.
“Maybe we can slip off into the bathroom while we’re there, like old times…” Breanna winked at me and the suggestion had my balls tingling but only for about three seconds because another pretty face crept into my mind, which only made me feel like the worst boyfriend in the entire fucking universe.
What the fuck was I doing?
When I walked into Sailed Ships, I was relieved to have a beer placed in my hand almost instantly by Max. I knew he’d gotten word that Ivy was back in town and I was literally counting the seconds on the clock, waiting for Breanna to find out. I wasn’t sure how she didn’t know yet, but I knew for a fact that she didn’t because she’d be all over it like there was a sale going on at the local beauty store.
The second Breanna interlocked her arms with one of her stuck-up friends, whom Max had been trying to shag for months, he pulled me aside.
His jaw slacked when a shit-eating grin molded to his face. “You’re in over your fucking head, aren’t you?”
I tipped back the longneck, allowing the ice-cold beer to coat my throat, temporarily stunning any words that wanted to spew out of my mouth.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I muttered, moving my eyes around the bar. Ships was moderately empty but I knew that within an hour or two, people would be hopping on the dance floor with copious amounts of alcohol swishing through their systems.
Sailed Ships was the only bar in our town and since we were considered a small town, there literally wasn’t anything better to do than to come here. Friday and Saturday nights were for drinking at Sailed Ships – at least that’s what it said on the wall above the bar.
“I know you’ve seen her, I can tell. You just have this glow…” Max cackled as the words left his mouth.
I rose an eyebrow. “What the fuck are you talking about, Max?”
He smiled before tipping back his beer. I did the same, needing more alcohol in my system to deal with the thoughts swimming through my head of how I was the world’s worst boyfriend and how I couldn’t stop wondering if Ivy was going to show up.
“She has you by the balls already and she just got to town.”
“Dude, no. We’re friends. If you can even call it that. I’m working on her house and that’s it. We cleared the air a little, and now we’re just on neutral ground.”
He barked out a laugh, throwing his head back. Breanna caught my eye from across the bar, and she winked.
My stomach twisted. If I wanted Max to believe me, and even more importantly, Breanna, whenever she did catch wind that Ivy was back, I needed to make myself believe it.
I pushed past Max and his howling laughter, striding past a few already tipsy people who were dancing to an upbeat song in the middle of the poorly lit dance floor, and snuck up behind Breanna, where she waited for her low carb beer. I spun her around fast and she let out a piercing yelp.
My hands roamed over her curves as my mouth captured hers with a low growl. It took her no time to wrap her arms around my neck and push her full breasts up against my chest. Breanna nipped my lip before I let go, and her eyes twinkled with the sexy, mischievous, little glint that she’d always worn whenever I’d given her my utmost attention.
“Shall we head to the bathroom now… or later?” I asked, bending my head down to nip the skin just below her ear.
Breanna laughed softly but then her entire body went dead-stiff in my arms. I pulled back slightly and the second I saw her face, I knew.
I glanced to my left and then to my right. Almost every single person had stopped talking, stopped drinking, stopped paying attention to whatever was around them, and their stares were all directed to the same place.
I didn’t even have to turn around to know that Ivy had walked in.
The raised eyebrows on every single man’s face and the questionable expressions on all the females told me exactly who they were looking at.
Breanna’s tone was like fingernails on a chalkboard. “What the fuck is she doing back here?”
A surge of protectiveness flashed through me, causing my hands to leave Breanna’s hips. I turned around slightly, ignoring the way her eyes flashed with hate, just enough so I could get a glimpse of Ivy. That was a wrong decision on my end.
Ivy flipped her glossy brown hair behind her shoulder and laughed softly at something Becca had said. Her pretty green eyes swept the room, first landing on Max who was waving like a fucking maniac, then to the people on the dance floor, until they finally landed on me. Her smile fell instantly and the disappointment in her emerald hues was crystal clear.
It was as if she was asking me what the hell I was doing with Breanna… and I was beginning to wonder the same exact thing.
Chapter Fifteen
Ivy
I had been waiting the entire, antagonizing week to lay into Becca. After she grinded me about not filling her in immediately about the whole Dawson and I making up, she turned around and didn’t tell me that he and Breanna were a thing!
I wasn’t certain exactly how intense of a relationship they were in but I could only assume it was on the higher end of that spectrum considering he’d run out of my house like
a bat straight out of hell after we stood, alone, faces only a few inches apart. I’ve been wondering and simmering all week; were they serious? How long had they been together? Did he love her?
After trying on the third outfit Becca had thrown at me, and explaining whatever it was that had occurred between Dawson and me, I started to prod her.
“Are they serious?”
Becca’s head slowly inched upward and I knew right then that I wasn’t going to like her answer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” I exclaimed, pulling off the stupid sheer tank top she’d tried to get me to wear. It was too cold for a tank top. We were in Ohio and it was September: too chilly for no sleeves.
“Are you serious?” she asked, throwing off the tank that I’d chucked at her.
I stomped over to my closet, even more pissed than I was before because now it was truly confirmed that he was dating Breanna and it was also confirmed that it bothered me beyond explanation.
“Yes! How could you not tell me! Why is he with her?! God!” My words were coming in spurts and I literally had to reel myself back in before I got so worked up that I started to cry.
I was a crier when I became angry, which was infuriating because then people never truly knew that you were angry. They just thought you were sad when you were actually boiling inside.
“I didn’t tell you, because we agreed to never talk about Dawson again.”
I spun around towards Becca, my eyes skimming over her strawberry blonde hair and cheetah-print silk top. “When did we decide that?”
She rolled her eyes, standing up and coming over to help me pick out yet another outfit.
“It was an unspoken agreement. You never asked about him and I didn’t want to bring him up because I didn’t want you to go back into your shell.”