I shook my head, finishing off my drink. “No idea what you’re talking about, man.”
“Yeah right. Ace, come on, man. You haven’t cracked a single joke all night. Something’s eating you up.”
After staring into my empty glass for a second, I blurted out a response. “My girlfriend dumped my ass.”
Brandon’s eyes widened, amazed. “Damn, Ace. You got dumped?”
“I think we had a pretty mutual dislike for each other at that point, but yeah, she dumped my ass,” I admitted, with a chuckle. “Completely flipped the script on me. I was supposed to be mad at her, and I ended up cursed out.”
“Sorry to hear that, man.”
I shrugged. “I’m not tripping about it. It had only been a few months anyway. What about you, man? Any prospects?” I asked as I motioned for the server to come over.
Brandon took a heavy swig from his scotch. “Not anybody I want to be serious about, but I’ve always got a little something available. But man, I’ve got one girl I’ve been sweating for years, and I can’t close the deal.”
“You’re tripping over some ass you haven’t gotten?”
“I’m as surprised as you man, but this one… she’s not that kinda woman. Not just ‘ass’, she’s different.”
“What, so you’re in love or something?” I teased.
He shook his head, grinning. “Nah, man, but I like her. I kissed her a few weeks ago, and she turned me down, said she was still getting over her man or something, he still has her heart, all of that.”
Well, at least she’s up front with you about her bullshit, before she— never mind.
“You’re probably better off anyway, man. She’s probably crazy as hell, driving whoever this guy is up a wall with drama.”
Brandon laughed at my assessment. “Nah, man. She’s not like that.”
“Oh, she must be banging if you can’t see the crazy.”
“She is man. Soft ass golden-brown skin, nice little body, beautiful face with these sexy ass lips and eyes, a head full of hair I’m gonna get my hands in one day.”
“Sounds pretty damned nice,” I said, laughing at how similar our ‘ones who got away’ sounded. He could have been describing Tori.
“It is nice. But for real man, it’s not all about her physical. This woman is smart, driven, down to earth, she’s the kinda woman you lock down… but you’ve gotta catch her first.”
“Yeah,” I said, with a heavy sigh. “I know exactly what you mean, man. There’s a woman, from before Maya. She’s somebody I’m… let’s say extremely fond of, but she’s not open to the idea of a relationship. I don’t want to put any pressure on her.”
“But you want to be with her?”
“Hell yeah,” I said, with a dry laugh. “I’ve wanted her since the day I met her. You have to know her, to know what I mean, but Tori… she’s different, for me.”
He stopped, with his drink held in midair. “Did you just say… Tori? As in Tori Kennedy?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah…”
Brandon filled his cheeks with air, then blew it out in a slow, controlled stream. “Alright… Avery, I’m about to tell you something. Only because you’re my boy. If I were any less of a man, I would keep this shit to myself, and ride it out for my benefit, but… I guess I’m feeling generous today.”
“B, what the hell are you talking about?
“I’m talking about Tori, Ace. I do know her, from back home. That’s the woman I was talking about! She’s close with my boy Eric’s wife, and we talk whenever she comes to Cali to visit.”
Well damn. So I wasn’t alone. Is this what Tori did, get guys hooked on her then drop them? Did she just have a trail of men like Brandon and me in her wake?
I lifted an eyebrow. “Talk?”
“Well, flirt, but it never went any further than that. I can’t believe you’re the dude she was talking about.” He shook his head, and swallowed the last gulp of his drink. “Look, man… I like Tori, but she’s my friend too. I want her to be happy. I’m not going to tell you what do, but I will tell you if you mess this up… I’m gonna kick your ass, Bruh.”
“I don’t know what to do, man! She’s been the one pushing me away, not the other way around,” I explained, crossing my arms.
“Forget all of that, man. You said you wanted her, right?”
“Right, but—”
“Ace, listen. Fuck that. Call her.”
So I did.
As soon as I got home that night, I took a shower, then climbed into my bed and pulled out my phone. I stared at the number for a while, then decided not to do it. Then, I changed my mind, and I dialed, hoping she would answer before I changed my mind again. While it was ringing, I agonized over whether she would answer my call, until… she answered my call.
“Hello?”
Damn, she sounds good.
Her already sultry voice was raspy with sleep.
“Hey… did I wake you up?”
She giggled into the line. “Well…it’s one o’clock in the morning Avery, and I just got back from Cali today. What do you think?”
“My bad… I didn’t look at the time before I called. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok,” she said softly, something about her tone leading me to believe she had closed her eyes again. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah… everything is fine. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Humph I’m a popular girl today, I see.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I have some time tomorrow— well, today— if you wanted to maybe have lunch or something?”
“I’d like that,” I said, tempering the little surge of happiness that burst in my chest. “Let’s say one o’clock? I’ll meet you at your sushi spot you like.”
“It’s a date.”
Don’t over think that.
We got off the phone, and I tried to settle into sleep, but I couldn’t. I found myself in my home office, first organizing paperwork, then going through my personal email, looking for a phone number I couldn’t find. Anything I could do to distract myself from tomorrow’s lunch with Tori. My eyes landed on one of the last emails I had gotten from Matched, addressed from Melanie. I remembered her being annoyed I had never looked at it, so I downloaded the attachment, and opened the file.
It took a second to figure out how to navigate the document that opened, but soon I was clicking away, through the questionnaires I’d answered, personality assessments, summaries of my dates, and finally, on a folder named ‘matches’. A list populated on my screen, with a name, compatibility score, and a picture of each woman.
My mouth dropped open at the first name on the list.
All this time…
What the hell?
All this time, she had to have known we were a match. She had used that as an excuse, repeatedly, while I was trying my best to figure out how I felt. Tori had the answer the whole damned time, and she’d kept it to herself… for what?
No more ducking.
No more dodging.
I wanted answers.
So I went and got them.
— Tori —
What the hell?
I was pulled out of my sleep by the sound of pounding on my front door. After a few moments, I closed my eyes again, thinking it was the sounds of the storm that had been raging for the last few hours, but the insistent beat told me it was someone at my door.
At two o’clock in the damn morning.
I climbed out of the bed and grabbed my pepper spray and taser from where they were still stored in my nightstand drawer. Carefully stepping around the piles of boxes and other moving paraphernalia on the floor, I made my way to the front, where I was relieved to see I had actually remembered to turn on the motion detector lights, so my front porch was already bright enough to see without giving away my presence.
When I got to the door, I looked through the peephole before I reached for the lock.
Avery?
I lifted an eyebrow, lettin
g my confusion show on my face as I flipped on my living room light and opened the door. “Avery, hi. What are you doing… here… ?” I let the words trail off as he sidled past with no greeting or anything, just Avery, dripping wet from the rain, with no regard for the puddles he was making in my freshly shampooed carpet.
“You’re a liar,” he said, turning to me as I was digging through one of my boxes for towels.
“Excuse me?” I tossed one to him, but he didn’t move to catch it, just let it hit him in the chest and fall to the ground. Then he wiped his face with his hand. I’d never seen this Avery. Nostrils flared, rigid jaw, shoulders tensed… he was angry, presumably with me, and I had no idea why.
He took a step toward me, with his eyes narrowed, and instead of following the compulsion to take a step back — because, angry man, coming your way, get the hell out while you can— I stayed rooted to the spot. He was mad at me.
Why was he mad at me?
“You heard what I said, Tori. You’re a liar.”
I flinched, as if that word had actually touched me, slapping me in the face. “Avery, what the he—”
“Science and algorithms.”
My shoulders slumped, and tightness gripped my chest and throat as it clicked for me what he was talking about. He knew. I held up my hands. “Avery, please, if you—”
“You were never gonna say anything, were you?”
“Can you let me—”
“Were you?” he repeated, slightly raising his voice.
I managed to look away from him as tears pooled behind my eyes. “No.”
With my lip pulled between my teeth, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes, not daring to look directly at him. He looked angry enough — disgusted enough — in my peripheral.
He sucked in a deep breath before he began to speak, with his voice low and controlled. Too controlled. “All of this time, Tori. Over, and over, and over, you claimed that us not being a match was the reason we couldn’t explore something further. You clung to that shit as if it was your motto. Hell, all I had to say was ‘science and algorithms’ and you knew exactly what I was talking about. But now, I know, it’s a lie.”
“I never actually said that, Avery. You said it, and I … let it stand.” I was grasping at straws and I knew it.
Avery obviously knew it too, because he laughed, but there was nothing joyful about it. “Semantics, Tori? That’s what you want to do right now? Okay. How’s this? You intentionally participated in a distortion of the truth, to manipulate me into doing what you wanted me to do.”
“No. It wasn’t about manipulating you!”
“Then what was it about? Huh? We’ve established you’re a liar, and we actually are a compatible match, so can I please know the truth? Can you stop bullshitting me?”
My eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape, but he closed the distance between us, then cupped my chin with just enough force that I didn’t want to look away, even though I certainly could. “I just… need a minute, Avery.”
“No you don’t. Just say what’s on your mind, you don’t need a minute for that.”
“But, I—”
He shook his head. “But nothing. Just tell me the truth, right now. You don’t have to rehearse it, it doesn’t have to be eloquent… I want the damned truth. Can you give me that?”
No. I couldn’t. My brain wouldn’t work, and my mouth wouldn’t work, because he was mad at me, and I’d done exactly what I didn’t want to do, which was hurt him, and I… I couldn’t think. Therefore, I couldn’t respond, and no, I couldn’t just tell him the truth.
Avery’s eyes were cold when he dropped my chin, looking away from me with what was, to me, barely constrained contempt. He didn’t say another word as he stalked back out with the same quiet anger he’d worn when he came in.
No.
I was after him, as fast as my feet would take me, through the door, across the porch, down the steps, and then… on the ground, after sliding in my bare feet in the pouring rain.
Gotta get up, gotta—
I hadn’t made the first step toward picking myself when I felt Avery’s arms under my shoulders, pulling me upright, and then at my back and behind my knees to pick me up, cradling me against his chest to carry inside. He sat me down on the island in my kitchen, then retrieved the towel I had thrown at him earlier, running it over my face and hair before draping it around me.
“Where’s your band-aids and stuff?”
Still voice-less, I pointed toward the last box I’d packed before going to bed, and he pulled out the first aid kit, placing it on the counter beside me as he went to work on my knee. I couldn’t muster enough shame to be embarrassed by how I must look, with my soggy tee shirt sticking to my body, and my hair plastered to my head, but I could certainly find the lechery to be turned on by the sight of Avery with his soaked tee shirt clinging to the ridges of his abs as he carefully cleaned and bandaged my scraped knee.
“Why the hell did you come running outside like that without any shoes on? You’re lucky this was just your knee, you could have broken a wrist or something with the way you fell.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want you to leave like that.”
“Well, until you came sprinting into the rain like a crazy person, you could have fooled me.” He secured the bandage with one last piece of tape, then sighed as if he was relieved to be done.
“Thank you,” I said, looking up to try to meet his eyes. It came out of nowhere, and certainly didn’t seem like enough, even though only a complete asshole would have left me outside. But he could have left, just deposited me back at my doorstep and gotten the hell away, so maybe that’s what I was thanking him for. For not leaving me.
He shrugged it off though. “It’s just a scrape.”
I shook my head. “It’s not just a scrape.”
“Tori, it’s—”
“Listen to me. It’s not.”
How did I get him to understand — without seeming like a complete lunatic— that it wasn’t about my knee, and what he was fixing for me was more than just a scrape?
Tentatively, I cupped Avery’s chin. He shied away at first, looking annoyed, but I insisted, scooted forward on the counter until my body was pressed right up against his. He wouldn’t look at me, but I kissed him anyway. Softly at first, barely brushing my lips against his as I wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him closer, then pressing harder, until finally he responded in kind.
“I’m supposed to be pissed at you,” he said against my neck as he nipped my skin. “What are you doing to me?”
“Trying to show you what I feel.” Then, I was pulling the dripping tee shirt over his head, and attacking the buckles, and buttons, and zippers, and whatever else was keeping him from being inside of me. I lifted my hips so he could pull my panties down over my legs, then closed my eyes, nestling my head against his neck as he entered me. When he remained still, I opened my eyes and looked up, meeting his.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
I raised an eyebrow, whimpering as he moved, to thrust deeper. “Question?”
He lowered his mouth to kiss me, hooking his elbow under my knee for more open access as he began to stroke, long, slow, deep strokes that made me gasp at the end of each one. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you? About wha— Ah!” My eyes rolled back as he buried himself completely. I squirmed against the fullness and pressure, but he held me tight, covering my mouth with another hungry kiss.
He gently suckled my bottom lip, nipping it between his teeth before he looked me right in my eyes, and said “Science and algorithms.”
Oh. Yeah.
Between quick, panting breaths, I managed to blurt out “Self preservation.”
Avery stared at me for a long moment, without moving, and then he was stroking me again, a faster rhythm that had me digging my nails into his back as our skin slapped together. Without breaking his rhythm, he peeled my shirt over my head and tossed
it away. He lowered my leg so he could get closer to me, kissing me, and wrapping me in his arms as he kept pushing me higher, and higher, and higher and deeper, and further, and then higher again, until my legs were trembling so hard he had to hold them up for me, and still he kept going.
And I gave it back. As much as I could, I met him stroke for stroke, rolling my hips, clenching around him, whatever I could to let him know that as present as he was, I was there too. Just as good as it was for him, it was for me too. Just as much as he… whatevered me, I whatevered him too. He pushed me away, telling me to lie back on the counter, and I did, because he asked, and suddenly, somehow, he was deeper, and I couldn’t think, or breathe, or tell him I couldn’t think or breathe. Somehow, he knew I needed to be in his arms, so he pulled me up, holding me tight as I just… dissolved. I felt his body go tense with release a few moments later, and we stay there on the counter, connected to each other until we regained the use of our limbs.
I was still holding on to him when he placed a finger under my chin to lift my head so he could kiss me. “Tori… I—”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head to stop him. “Me too, but don’t…”
He chuckled a little at me, but gave me a slight nod of his head to show me he understood before he carried me into my bedroom, where we rediscovered each other, wordlessly, a few more times.
A while later, as the first rays of sun began peeking through the windows, I untangled myself from his arms so I could turn to face him on the bed. “We’re gonna end up with a baby if we keep at it like this,” I joked, kissing him on the forehead as he pretended to sleep.
With his eyes still closed, he palmed my butt. “Is that what I have to do to keep you from running away from me again? Get you pregnant? Cause if so, I’m cool with a few babies.”
I laughed for a moment, then sobered as I remembered that there were… certain complications to that. “So… I guess I am a home wrecker,” I said aloud, running my fingers along his bicep.
Looks like we both conveniently forgot about that.
He drug an eyelid open to look at me. “What are you talking about?” he mumbled.
“Maya,” I said, dropping my eyes to the sheets as I traced a pattern with my fingers. I don’t think your girlfriend would appreciate this.”
Finding Forever Page 22