“He isn’t? That’s weird. We came back here at the same time, and I thought he went in. Are you sure your phone is working? Maybe I can—” He reached for his pocket, presumably to pull his own phone out, but the pocket was empty. “Or not.”
“No, it’s okay, anyway. I should go back to my room. Coming over here was probably a bad idea. Or no,” she amended, allowing herself to acknowledge at least part of the reason for her tears. The realization she’d have to go through this gearing-up process again at least once more. She’d have to convince herself all over again that it was necessary, and honestly she was finding herself to be a pretty tough sell. “It was probably a really good idea and if he’d been here and I’d gone through with it while my nerve was up, I’d be better off. No time to second-guess myself. Which I’m absolutely doing now. Shit.”
She wasn’t planning to go anywhere just yet, though. Not until she was sure the crying was more or less ended. Right now the occasional sob still hiccuped its way to the top.
Alan all but twiddled his thumbs for a bit, then finally—reluctantly, if she wasn’t mistaken—muttered, “Did you want to talk about it?”
She really should have given him more credit. He was a very nice guy, and he was trying so hard to help. “No. No, I should get back.” As soon as you leave so I can wipe my nose on a leaf or something.
But apparently, he was staying as long as she was. Maybe I can scare him away with emotion words.
“Okay. Well, I can walk you—”
“You know, I came here planning to finally put all this behind me. Jeremy, the breakup, all those bad feelings. I was over it. Then he’s here and it all comes rushing back, and obviously I wasn’t over anything.” It was true. All true, and to her horror Amanda found that once she started talking about it, she couldn’t stop. The only way out was through. “I was coming to his room to tell him I hadn’t changed my mind, there’s no way this can work, we just want different things. But you know the first thing I thought when I knocked and he wasn’t there?”
“Um.”
“Relieved. I was relieved, because I was so sad to think about not seeing him anymore. I really missed him. Like, really, really missed him. Which is stupid, because if we can’t figure out where to live, how can we figure out anything else?”
Ugh. She was sick of this topic, but she was stuck with it. Poor Alan. That would sure teach him not to be a nice guy.
“Damn.”
“I know,” she agreed.
He sat down on the concrete railing. “Okay. Look. You and Jeremy, you’re both really smart. Between the two of you, you can figure out the logistical stuff of who lives where. I think you both accidentally picked the same hill to die on, and then once you were fighting from those positions, you got entrenched. Once people are in their foxholes, lobbing bombs, nobody’s gonna be brave enough to come out first. Right?”
War analogies? Really? Oh, sweetie, I think I finally get what Jules sees in you. “Okay.”
“It’s not a love problem. It’s a fear problem. This all sounded a lot better in my head than it does coming out of my mouth.”
I’ll bet it did. “No, keep going. I want to see where this foxhole analogy is headed. You could go so many ways with that.”
The tears had dried up at last, and her nose was gradually returning to its resting state of snot production.
“I think what I’m trying to say...I’m trying to say that somebody has to be brave enough to stand up out of the foxhole and say, ‘Hey, this is stupid. We’re on the same side.’ And yeah, you might get blown up. But if you stay in the trench, you’re going to...I don’t know. Die alone down there or something. Get dysentery. Bad things, is the point.”
Amanda laughed, surprising herself as much as Alan. “I get it, I get it. You can stop now.”
“I’m glad you get it because I have no idea what I’m even talking about, here.”
“I think what you were trying to say is that love is a leap of faith, and maybe it’s time for me to leap.”
“That sounds way better and used a lot fewer words.”
“It’s all that practice summarizing research.” She lowered her legs from the chair with a sigh, smoothing her dress out to see how bad the damage was. “And you know what? I think you’re right. I’ve been focusing on the wrong things. And I also think I owe you an apology for being kind of a bitch to you since...oh, since forever.”
He chuckled. “Nah, it’s all good. You were pretty much like all my sisters.”
The door latch clicked, the metal-on-metal snap very loud in the still night air. It was Jeremy, wearing boxer briefs and rubbing his head with a towel. He looked between them, clearly puzzled.
Everything. She felt everything when she realized he was there, that he’d been there in his room the whole time. That wasn’t just her kink, standing there looking clueless. That was her whole world. It was that simple, and that hopeless.
“Uh...hi?”
She stood up, her legs trembling. This wasn’t going to go the way she’d planned. Not one bit. It had never been destined to go according to plan.
“I knocked, and you weren’t there, and you hadn’t answered my text.” Her voice was still scratchy from crying.
“I was in the shower.”
There was not even an implied duh. Not in his tone, not in his eyes. There was only hope, love, desire, determination. And a hint of desperation that she hated knowing she’d put there.
Over the heavy tidal thud of her heartbeat, she heard Alan say something, but she couldn’t pay attention to anything but Jeremy. Who had been in the shower. She hadn’t even considered that. But of course, the shower. Duh.
Somehow, she found herself pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist. She could hear his heartbeat even louder than her own. Louder than the ocean.
Chapter Eleven
“I meant to break up with you,” she confessed, mumbling into his chest hair. Her face was hot and damp, as if she’d been crying.
“You did?” He might have been more concerned if she hadn’t been attached to him like a barnacle. She didn’t seem inclined to let go anytime soon.
“I did. But then I couldn’t, because you weren’t here, and I’m so glad because otherwise I might have succeeded.”
I was just in the shower...oh, fuck it. Doesn’t matter. “Oh. You’d made a plan?”
She nodded. “But it was a stupid plan. It was never going to work. And that’s okay.”
“I’m frankly astonished to hear you say so, but good for you.”
She pulled back to look at his face, probably to see if he was being ironic. She looked very tousled, and very fragile. He felt the urge, a somewhat familiar one, to tuck her into his pocket for safekeeping. But she sounded strong. “We can figure out what to do. And I can explain it better, what I was talking about before. I gave up and I shouldn’t have.”
For the first time in a long time, the prospect of relationship talk didn’t fill Jeremy with dread, because he felt as if he actually had some small clue at last. “It’s okay. I actually think I get it now. I kinda had a lightbulb moment while I was talking to Alan.”
She gaped, obviously astonished. “You and Alan talked about relationship stuff? Seriously?”
Jeremy nodded. “We did. He’s a good guy.”
“Did he tell you his foxhole analogy?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“So...” Jeremy sat on one of the patio lounge chairs, pulling her down onto his lap. “What was the highlight of your dinner with Julie?”
“Sex on the Beach.”
It took all his powers to keep a straight face. “Please tell me you videotaped that.”
She giggled, pushing his chest. “It’s a cocktail, doofus.”
“Wait, the
re was cock involved? I thought this tale was about you and Julie.”
“I had, like, three of them. And by three I mean...maybe four? No more than five. It’s entirely possible I may have the world’s worst hangover tomorrow.” She straddled his lap, knees to either side of his hips, snuggling into his chest again as if he was the comfiest pillow ever. He was happy to be that, if that was what she wanted. He wouldn’t mind being a few other things, as well. It might not be in the cards, though. Amanda was a serious lightweight.
“So if we’re going to screw around, we should do it now, before you throw up?”
“Ew.”
He shrugged. “Just being practical, honey. So I guess this isn’t the time to try my proof of concept, after all.” There was always tomorrow.
“Proof of concept?”
He brushed his chin over the ruffle of soft hair tickling it, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Then another one, just for good measure. “Mmm-hmm. See, I fucked up a bunch of things, but I can try to fix at least one of them if you’ll help. And it can be our test case to prove that the concept is sound and worth investing in.”
“Ooh, talk like a businessman some more.”
He tickled her, jolting her into a slightly more alert state and enjoying the way she wriggled in his lap. “I want to do this right. I want us to do this right, okay?”
To his disappointment, she sat up and nodded, looking chagrined. “You’re right. Sorry. Go ahead.”
Time to take things seriously. “So here is a thing I fucked up. This weekend. I said I just wanted to reconnect, not talk about past or future stuff. And that was what you agreed to. I was not honest and I didn’t abide by that agreement.”
“Well. It was just an oral contract. And mostly it was just stuff we were saying so our mouths would have something to do while we were taking our clothes off.”
True though that probably was, he couldn’t take the easy way out. “Still. I fucked up by sneaking all the other stuff into it anyway, and I apologize. I am sorry. I’m also sorry for saying I wanted to reconnect instead of just saying, Hey, I want in your pants really bad.”
Amanda grinned, suddenly looking much less somber. “Honey, I assumed that was what you meant all along. So there’s really no need to apologize.”
“Still.”
“Okay, fine. Thank you. Apology accepted. I’m sorry I agreed to reconnecting when what I really meant was, Here, please get in my pants this instant, or wait, no, let me just take them off to make it easier for us to fuck.”
He bit his lip when he would have blurted a request for a reenactment. This wasn’t going to be about that. It couldn’t be about that. Sex had never been their problem. Trying to use it to solve other problems was not going to work. If they were going to try again, it had to be about more than that.
Fucking they could do anytime. But he needed more.
“Not fuck. Make love.” It might have been the first time he’d ever spoken those words without putting invisible irony quotes around them.
“Dude.”
“Make. Love. Say it. Say it,” he insisted, even though he usually loved to hear her say fuck.
After a deeply skeptical frown, she finally gave it up. “Make love. Anything else, Mr. Reconnect?”
Amanda squirmed on his lap, generating some heat. Booze always made her amorous, and thinking about how he’d earned that knowledge was already getting him hard. He slid his hands down from her waist to cup her butt, grasping the plushiest parts through the fabric. Not enough. He tried another approach, going in under her skirt, slipping his hands inside her panties to get at skin before pulling her closer. Flush against his dick, grinding through their clothes. She had always loved that.
“We should go inside,” she murmured. Her voice had gone throaty, turned-on. He wasn’t far behind her, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.
“Yeah. Maybe in a minute. Couple things first. I have a whole plan, you know.” He was fast losing his grip on exactly what the plan was, but he pushed ahead anyway. “I want to talk about past and future stuff. I’m not saying we have to come to any conclusions. Just put stuff out there and talk about it, with no pressure to decide anything right away. Just...collaborate.”
“That may be the sexiest thing you have ever said to me.”
Not helping.
Her skirt kept getting in his way, so he tucked it up into the stretchy waist of the dress. Then, because it seemed vitally important he have completely unfettered access to groping her ass, he pushed her panties down as far as he could.
The lanai was in shadow, but anybody walking by could see them. Jeremy was practically naked, and Amanda’s dress and underwear were pretty flimsy and eminently removable. His brain and libido entered a full-pitched battle for control, the idea of getting her naked in public attempting a coup over his intention to get the important relationship stuff out in the open.
“It might not work,” Jeremy cautioned, even as he pushed her into a slow, filthy grind against his erection. It had escaped its boxer-brief prison and sat between them like a third party to the proceedings. A very valuable member, with much to contribute.
“Oh, it’s working.”
Love. “You dirty, dirty girl. I am shocked at your lewd double entendre.”
Laughing, she licked the ball of her thumb and brushed it over the head of his cock. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Fuck, that feels good. Okay. Okay, one last thing.”
“Just one.”
Specifics, man. Get to specifics. “Would you maybe move your stuff over here for the rest of the time, so we both know where we’ll be if we have to go looking? Or just, you know, a gesture of commitment to the process? It doesn’t even have to be all your stuff. Toothbrush and shampoo, whatever.” There was only one more night after this one, and the day after that they’d be going home. Hardly any time at all. He would have chained her to the bedpost if she’d let him, but he knew that wasn’t a sustainable solution for either of them. If he could get a toothbrush’s worth of assurance instead, he’d take that.
“A good-faith token to let you know if I flounce off, at least I’ll be back?”
He shrugged, hoping he looked more nonchalant than he felt. “Something like that.”
She took a moment to consider, and Jeremy held his breath until she spoke again. “I will agree to one suitcase and all my cosmetics. But my hanging clothes stay over in the other room. And at least two pairs of shoes.”
He wanted to whoop. To kiss her silly, to claim victory. To carry her down to the water’s edge and role-play the scene from From Here to Eternity, because now everything was going to be wonderful forever. But that kind of assumption was what had come between them in the first place. They weren’t there yet, and he knew it. He let out a sigh, and held out his hand so they could shake on the preliminary deal. Amanda didn’t take it.
“Not yet. I have a precondition of my own.”
“Oh, okay. This is sounding more like a negotiation. Hmm.” Negotiation was okay. It meant she was taking the whole thing more seriously than he’d thought. She cared, too. She wants this to work, too.
“Consider it full disclosure. The thing is, I haven’t been completely honest with you, either. Not just this weekend, but for a long time. And now I have to tell you about this before we go any further, because I’ve been telling myself it wasn’t a factor, but it is. And I’m sorry for that. For not putting it out there.”
He hadn’t expected that. He thought he knew her backward and forward...what could be so dire? “You’re kinda scaring me here.”
She shook her head and scooted back a few inches, leaving his dick cold and exposed. He realized that whatever she had to say, it was almost certainly going to suck. “It isn’t really about me. It’s...about my dad.”
He had planned to be
supportive and sensitive, but come on. She wanted to talk about her father? Five seconds ago she’d been sitting on his dick. He was still hard, for God’s sake, though obviously not for long “Oh, man. Really? Right now? Really?”
“Can I just say this?”
He held up a hand, silently asking for patience while he took a moment to process the gigantic shift in tone and subject matter. There was no way out of it. But he couldn’t have this particular conversation without making a few changes first. Clearing his throat, trying to clear his mind’s eye, as well, he reached down and tucked his rapidly softening penis back into his boxer briefs so it could sulk in privacy. Then he pulled Amanda’s underwear back into something like the appropriate place, and flipped her skirt down, smoothing the fabric and patting her thighs.
Better.
“Okay. Ready now. Go ahead.”
Chapter Twelve
Why does he have to do adorable things? That only made it harder to talk instead of jumping his bones as she would have preferred to do. But even if this was a terrible time, Amanda knew there would never be a better one. Once Jeremy was done rearranging the scene to his liking, she blew out a sigh and started.
“You know how, before we got to the Bay Area, my family moved every year or two? When I started third grade in San Jose, that was my third elementary school. And my mom had been trying to finish her bachelor’s degree ever since she got married. She kept having to transfer credits, apply to new places, take new prerequisites. Sometimes we’d move in the middle of a term, or at just the wrong time, so she’d have to wait almost a year to start classes. At which time...”
“Another move.”
“Exactly. But when I was in fifth grade, she was finally about to finish. It was the longest we’d lived anywhere. I’d been in that school for almost three years. I had friends. Dad was doing really well at work. And Mom was actually happy we’d ended up where we had because she was going to be getting her degree from Berkeley instead of some podunk school nobody ever heard of. I think, looking back, that year was the only time in their marriage she’d ever been happy. I’d never invited friends over to the house before then, it was always so tense. My parents wouldn’t be talking to each other, or my dad wouldn’t come home until really late, and my mom wouldn’t say where he was. We’d have to cancel plans to go on vacation or even out to dinner at the last minute because there was suddenly no money for that. Stuff I just accepted as normal at the time because I didn’t know anything different. But that year things seemed so much better, at least for a little while.”
Sex on the Beach (Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin) Page 8