by Linda Seed
Brian had assumed that was what his mother had meant when she’d said not to worry about sleeping arrangements, but assuming it and seeing it played out in front of him were two entirely different things.
Especially because Lorenzo appeared to be about the same age as Brian.
“Oh. God.” Brian hadn’t intended to express his disgust—at least, not out loud—at the sight of Lorenzo and his mother making out, but the words had leaped from his mouth.
“Problem, dear?” Lisa delivered the words with a smug grin on her face even as she leaned in and pressed her breasts against Lorenzo’s chest.
“No, no. Nothing years of intensive therapy won’t fix.” He hadn’t even been formally introduced to Lorenzo yet—a situation Lisa promptly addressed.
“Lorenzo, this is my son. Brian, this is my—”
“If you say ‘fuck buddy,’ I swear to God—”
“My assistant, Brian. And yes, we’re seeing one another socially as well. My God, you’re an adult, and the mention of sex still makes you respond like an adolescent boy.”
“Please don’t say sex.”
Lorenzo let go of Lisa’s left butt cheek and reached out to shake Brian’s hand.
“Brian, it’s lovely to meet you. Lisa’s told me so much about you.”
Brian shook the hand despite where it had been. “She’s told me absolutely nothing about you.”
“Ah. Well. We’ll get to know each other this weekend, no?”
It was the no as much as anything that set Brian off. The sheer, affected pretentiousness of it, as though Lorenzo had only recently arrived from Milan and was still struggling with the nuances of the language. In fact, he had no accent, and Brian would have bet he’d been born in Des Moines or maybe Gary, Indiana. The no set Brian off more than the man bun, more than the leather sandals, more than the single hoop earring. More, even, than the bulging biceps, one of which was adorned with a yin-yang tattoo.
“Lorenzo, you and Brian are going to get along wonderfully, I just know it,” Lisa declared.
“I’ll just get the rest of my things out of the car.” Lorenzo shot a finger gun at Brian—with the corresponding click of his tongue—and went out the front door.
“How old is he?” Brian asked as soon as Lorenzo was out of earshot.
“Why does that matter?”
“He’s younger than me, isn’t he?” Brian accused. “He’s, what, twenty-eight?”
“He’s thirty-two.”
“Well, it’s okay, then!” Brian declared, throwing his hands into the air. “Thirty-two! That’s totally fine!”
“Brian.” Lisa lowered her voice, tipping her chin downward and looking at her son in a way that was somehow both scolding and confidential. “Just because you don’t currently have a satisfying sex life doesn’t mean that I—”
“Oh, God.” Brian slapped his hands over his ears. “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”
“Very mature, dear.”
Brian wondered if maybe he’d be better off at his own house with the mold and the termites. At least if those things were breeding, they were too small for him to have to witness it.
Cassie finished work at Central Coast Escapes at two p.m. Then she went home, retrieved the sample cake from her mother’s refrigerator, and drove across town to the home of her new client.
The woman, one of Deandra’s cousins, lived in the Top of the World neighborhood in a house surrounded by towering pine trees and looking out over the distant ocean.
She received Cassie into the house with such bubbling enthusiasm that Cassie couldn’t help but share in it.
“Come sit down!” Rachel, a perky redhead, waved Cassie in toward the living room. “My mother’s here, I hope you don’t mind. She wanted to see the sample. She was at Deandra’s wedding, too, and we both thought the cake was so amazing. Mom! Cassie’s here!”
Cassie remembered Rachel’s mother from the wedding, and they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“I wish Blake could be here, but he’s working a double shift at the hospital,” Rachel went on. “He’s not really into the details, anyway. ‘Just tell me where to stand and what to say.’” She imitated her fiancé’s voice. “Which is fine, because I’m a control freak about this stuff.”
“She is,” her mother confirmed.
Cassie laughed, caught up in Rachel’s giddy joy. “Well, after you told me what you had in mind for the ceremony and reception, I came up with a concept for your cake that’s different from Deandra’s. Here. Let me show you my sketches.…”
Forty-five minutes later, Cassie left Rachel’s house with a signed contract for a three-tiered wedding cake. Rachel had loved the concept and the sample cake, which Rachel, Cassie, and Rachel’s mother, Joyce, had eaten with mugs of hot coffee.
Out of a sense of moral obligation, Cassie had disclosed her somewhat informal status.
“You should know that I’m not exactly legal,” she’d said with a nervous laugh. “When I get a commercial kitchen to work from, I’ll get a license and health department inspections and all of that. Until then …” She’d left the rest of her thought dangling.
“Well, I guess you’ll charge a lot more once that happens,” Joyce pointed out.
“I suppose that’s true,” Cassie admitted.
“Cassie, when you do get all of that—the kitchen and the license and all—you’re going to take off, I just know it. And we’ll be able to say we knew you when.” Rachel gave Cassie an impulsive hug.
Cassie left their house feeling excited and optimistic about her business—or maybe that was just the sugar high.
She couldn’t wait to tell Brian about her triumph.
But first, she had to go home and get ready for their date.
Brian arrived at Cassie’s place to pick her up at around seven. She’d been reluctant to have him do that, fearing that her mother—or, even worse, her father—might harass him if they saw him approaching the trailer through the backyard.
But the way Brian saw it, Cassie had already had enough exposure to his mother. Lisa alone was bad enough. Lisa plus Lorenzo seemed like too big a risk for his budding relationship with Cassie to withstand.
Dinner at Indigo Moon was more casual than Deandra’s wedding had been, but he still wanted to look nice, so he showed up in pressed khakis and a button-down shirt open at the collar. He wore leather loafers, and he was freshly shaved, with his dark, thick hair neatly combed.
“And where are you headed, all dressed up?” Lisa had wanted to know.
“Nowhere. Just … out.” Brian stood near the front door, his hands shoved awkwardly into his pants pockets.
“You have a date, no?” Lorenzo grinned from where he was draped obscenely across the living room sofa, with Brian’s mother draped obscenely across him.
“I have a date, yes,” Brian said, unconsciously mirroring Lorenzo’s sentence structure.
“With whom?” Lisa asked. “Is it that darling Cassie?”
There it was again—that word. Darling. Lisa’s passive-aggressive attempt to be pleasant while suggesting that the woman in question was no more than a mindless Barbie doll, an attractive but useless plaything.
“It’s Cassie, yes.”
“Interesting,” Lisa said.
Brian didn’t care for how she said it. He didn’t care for it at all.
Chapter 15
Cassie opened the door to her trailer to find Brian standing there looking casually handsome. When his eyes widened at the sight of her, she knew her calculation to go with heart-stopping sexiness had been the right one.
She was wearing a little black dress from Whitney’s closet—tight, form-fitting, low-cut, and short.
She was also wearing a pair of Whitney’s heels, which were so tall they gave her an extra three inches of height, besides making her calves look sinewy and muscular.
She’d considered putting her hair up, but Whitney had urged her to leave it down, arguing that men lov
ed long, loose hair. Cassie’s hair wasn’t long—it barely brushed her shoulders—but she’d given it the artfully mussed treatment, as though she’d just gotten out of bed looking this way.
He’d seen her looking elegant. He’d seen her in jeans, with flour dusted on her clothes. He’d even seen her wearing nothing but a towel. It was time for him to see her in an outfit that said, I haven’t been laid for a while and you’re just the man for the job.
“You look …” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. The way he was taking in the sight of her finished it for him.
“Shall we go?” She grabbed her purse from where it was hanging near the door.
“Sure. But … you mind if I take a look at your trailer first? I’ve always wanted to see inside one of these things.”
At the restaurant, they got a table in a secluded corner. Cassie ordered a glass of chardonnay, and Brian, explaining that he was more of a beer guy, ordered a local craft brew.
The conversation between them was awkward at first—Cassie could tell that something was bothering him.
“Whatever it is, you might as well come out with it,” she told him. “Otherwise, I’m going to think it’s me, and I’ll go home tonight wondering what I did wrong and obsessing over my various inadequacies.”
“I can’t see any inadequacies from where I’m sitting.” He took a sip of his beer, then carefully replaced the glass on the table.
“Then what’s going on?”
Brian sighed, looked at the table, then fussed a little with his cloth napkin. “Okay, here goes. My mother is dating some hipster guy with a man bun who’s only one year older than I am. And he’s staying with us at Otter Bluff.”
Whatever Cassie had expected to hear, it hadn’t been that. She let out a guffaw that was probably less than ladylike. “You’re joking.”
“I wish. His name is Lorenzo.” Brian said the name Lorenzo with a kind of flourish that told Cassie more about the guy than the man-bun hipster description had.
“You must be mortified,” Cassie said.
“You have no idea. You know what’s worse? Her bedroom shares a wall with mine. If I have to lie awake tonight listening to rhythmically squeaking bedsprings and moans of passion …”
Cassie laughed again—she couldn’t help it. At the sight of Brian’s scowl, she said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not funny. Not to you. But at the same time, it’s … you know. It’s kind of funny.”
“It’s like one of those recurring nightmares where you try to run but your feet are stuck to the floor.” Brian rubbed his face with his hands. “You know? Mothers aren’t supposed to … They’re supposed to become impregnated in a lab somewhere by a white-coated doctor with test tubes and surgical instruments.”
“Oh, Brian,” Cassie laughed. “If that’s how you think sex works, then I shouldn’t have bothered to wear this dress.”
Cassie didn’t fully realize what she’d said until she saw Brian’s reaction to it. He was blushing and stammering, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.
That was when she understood that she’d pretty much told him she wanted to lure him into bed.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. She hadn’t fully decided yet whether she wanted to lure him into bed. But when she’d chosen her wardrobe, she’d considered it a distinct possibility, and she’d just inadvertently admitted as much to Brian over the appetizer.
“That’s … wow. I didn’t … You’re not …” Brian seemed like he might actually swallow his tongue.
“What exactly is it you’re trying to say?” Cassie prompted him.
He made eye contact and said, “I’m trying to say it’s a hell of a nice dress.”
Cassie could have walked back the thing about the dress and the sex, but she didn’t. As their entrees came, she decided she didn’t mind leaving the thought out there. At the very least, it would, as Lacy had suggested, prevent her from being friend-zoned.
They ate rack of lamb (him) and salmon (her), and they talked a little more about his mother and her boyfriend, Cassie’s business, and Brian’s plans for his career.
“I posted a video earlier this week,” he told her. “Video game stuff—me giving commentary as I play, that sort of thing. Those do really well. This one did okay with views, but the comments were way down.” He drank from his water glass, then put it back on the table. “I’ve seen a drop in revenue without Ike, which is okay since I’m not splitting it in half anymore. Still, I haven’t settled on a clear direction for the show now that it’s a solo deal. I need an angle. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Okay. What are you considering?”
They talked about that—about Brian’s ideas and the pros and cons of each. Cassie, who was a regular YouTube viewer, threw in some ideas of her own based on what she enjoyed.
“I always love watching Pinterest fails,” Cassie said. “Those are hilarious.”
That sent Brian into a discussion of some videos he and Ike had done of the two of them attempting something they were comically unqualified to do. Once, they’d tried to follow along with a Bob Ross painting tutorial, and another time, for a Halloween show, they’d tried to duplicate an elaborate pumpkin carving they’d found on the Internet.
“That stuff does work,” Brian acknowledged. “But it’s best if you have two people on the show. With just one, there’s no reaction footage, and that’s where the humor is.”
Cassie thought about that as she took a bite of salmon. “I could teach you to decorate a cake.”
He paused with a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “What, you mean on camera?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “I could teach you something complicated that you’re sure to mess up. Compare my cake to yours—that kind of thing.”
“That could be good.” Brian’s far-away look told her he was envisioning it, pondering how such a thing might go. “We’re coming up on Easter,” he said. “We could time it to the holiday. Do a bunny cake or something.”
“Except …” Cassie said.
“Except?”
“Except, that would involve me … you know. Being on camera.”
“Well, that was part of the concept.”
She’d suggested it because she hadn’t expected him to like the idea. She was just talking, just throwing things out there. Now that he was picking up on it, she realized she was terrified of having her face on video for thousands—or, considering Brian’s audience, maybe hundreds of thousands—of viewers.
“I know. I know it was. But …”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be great.” Brian grinned at her, and she felt the genuine warmth of it, the sincerity. He believed what he was saying. He believed she could do this.
“Are you sure?”
“It won’t hurt that you’re gorgeous.”
She suddenly felt too warm, and it had nothing to do with the temperature in the restaurant.
She knew a little about his family, so they talked about hers. Her three sisters, her brother, Nick. She told him she’d grown up in Cambria in a house full of kids and pets and a constant, cheerful mess.
“My mother was a stay-at-home mom. My dad’s an architect. Moving out into the trailer was the first time I’ve been alone in thirty years.”
“Did you always live with your parents until then?”
“No. No, no. There was college and the dorms, then there was an apartment with two roommates. Then I was a live-in nanny for a family with three kids. But this is the first time I’ve lived in a space that’s just my own. Though, I spend more time in my parents’ house than I do in the trailer, so …”
“Sounds a lot like Ike’s family,” he said. “Lots of kids, lots of activity. A devoted mom.”
The way he said it, she could feel the longing coming out of his pores. Especially with that last part—a devoted mom.
“That must have been hard for you, not having your mom around.” Cassie reached out and put her hand over his on the tabletop. He
turned his hand palm-up so he could hold her hand.
“I spent most of my childhood at Ike’s house. I was an honorary Fitzgerald.”
“I’m glad you had him.”
“Me too.” He shrugged. “My dad did his best, but he worked a lot. And he’s not exactly a touchy-feely kind of guy. His approach to feelings was that if you don’t talk about them, they’ll get bored and go away.”
“How has that worked out for him?”
Brian took a bite of his lamb, chewed, then shrugged again. “Well, he’s got a drinking problem, so probably not very well.”
When dinner was over, they drove to San Luis Obispo to see a movie. Thankfully, they both wanted to see the same thing—the newest release from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Brian had worried that Cassie might be the art movie type—that maybe she liked things with heavy symbolism and subtitles—and he’d wondered whether they could make a relationship work with that kind of obstacle between them.
So when she’d suggested a superhero flick, he’d been nearly giddy with his good fortune.
They got a couple of soft drinks and a large popcorn to share, and about halfway through the movie, Brian was bold enough to reach out and take her hand. He held it atop the armrest that separated them, and after that, he barely noticed what was happening on the screen.
By the time Brian took her home, Cassie’s mind and body were buzzing with the possibilities of what might happen once they got there. She didn’t usually sleep with someone on the second date (because she did consider this their second date), but a little harmless making out wouldn’t be unwelcome.
He held her hand as he walked her across the yard, their shoes crunching on the gravel path that led to the front door of the trailer.
If she decided to invite him in, the chances were high that her resolve would collapse and she’d tear her clothes off and throw herself into his arms. For now, she stood at the Airstream’s front step and tipped her face up to him for a kiss. The moon was at three-quarters and the sky was clear, and they both were bathed in a gentle, silvery light.