I quirk my eyebrows. It looks like a birthday card. My mom hasn’t had a birthday recently. But I have.
I don’t think twice about snooping. I want to know why there’s a card hidden under her laptop. I grab it, open it, and gasp when I see my name on the inside. Then I cover my mouth so I don’t make a sound as my eyes roam the words.
There’s no envelope. No return address. But this is a card from my grandparents, who had promised to send me a birthday card every year.
Who never did.
Who always did?
My hands shake as I slip the card inside my purse, tucking it into the inside pocket and checking that it’s secure, then zipping up my purse. I slide the form through the machine, tapping my foot, urging it along, waiting for the sent notice. Once it’s there, I rip it out, leave my mom’s office, and nearly run for the door.
“Thanks for the scanner,” I say.
“Darling, do you want to talk more about next steps? How I can make this right for you? Can I take you out to dinner? Chat over sushi?”
Her voice is static, a late-night radio background blur to the noise and chatter of the last twenty-four hours.
“Another time,” I say, and leave her behind.
32
Harley
The first words on the card are like a headline, in big, thick letters: The Stories We Promised to Tell You.
Then, under them:
And the city girl returned to the sand and the sea, where the sun warmed her shoulders and the sky rained silver and gold sparkles…
And that’s all. It’s signed Nan and Pop.
I read the words again on the muggy subway platform, waiting for the downtown train. I read it on the subway car as it slaloms through underground New York, its lights flickering once around a bend, blasting us into darkness for a few seconds. I read it once more as I walk the few blocks to my apartment, weaving in and out of the early evening crowds who are returning home from work, their earbuds or phones keeping them company.
The card is odd too, on some sort of vintage letterpress paper, with a raised drawing of a red aardvark in the sand. Something you don’t find in the Hallmark section of Duane Reade, that’s for sure.
But the more I repeat the words, the less I understand them. They feel like a code, and I don’t have the key to decipher this strange sort of story from my grandparents, made stranger because I thought I was persona non grata to them.
I don’t know where they live, or if they’re still in San Diego. I don’t even have the same last name as my dad’s parents. When my parents split, my mom returned to her maiden name, and changed my name too. A neat, clean break, severing me from his side of the family.
The two of us against the world.
Now, I am untethered from her, but tied to someone I don’t even know who is using my body to build limbs and lungs and nails and eyes, all from DNA of mine that clung wildly, and unexpectedly, to Trey’s.
The air conditioner in the window chugs loudly, then spews a thick blast of icy air into the living room. As I deliver my news to Kristen, I welcome the chill. It suctions the day off me.
“I’m a train wreck, don’t you think?”
Kristen shakes her head. “No. You’re not. I swear I don’t think that.”
I don’t know if she’s more shocked now than when I told her I used to be a call girl in high school. “That’s because you expect me to be a screwup.”
“You keep my life interesting, that’s for sure,” Kristen says sweetly, petting my hair as I flop down on the couch and rest my head in her lap.
“What am I going to do? I want to finish college. I want to get my degree. I don’t want to be one of those girls on a reality TV show.”
“So don’t be.”
I scoff. “How?”
“Don’t be,” she repeats. “Be different. You don’t have to be messed up. You don’t have to quit school. You somehow found a way to be a call girl and get good grades in high school and college,” she says, and if anyone but Kristen said it, I’d punch them. But she says it admiringly.
“Like that’s an impressive accomplishment?”
“In a way, it is. You balanced some crazy shit. You’ll do that here too. You don’t have to quit school to have a baby. There are a million ways to deal with this. And you’re not alone. I will help however I can.”
I reach for her hand and squeeze it. “How did I get so lucky to have you as my bestie?”
“I could say the same. And you know, there is a father involved to help too,” she says, looking at me pointedly. “You need to tell Trey.”
“Obviously.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“He’s at the gym right now. He texted earlier that he wanted to see me when he was done.”
“You need to tell him soon,” Kristen adds.
But telling him feels like dropping the blade on my own neck. Insert head in guillotine. Pull the rope. Watch head roll. “I’m so scared to tell him,” I say, a thick sob lodging in my throat.
“I know, sweetie. But he’s stronger than you think.”
I don’t know if he is though. I don’t know if he can handle this.
A few minutes later, the phone rings and Trey’s name flashes on the screen. It’s past nine now.
“Kristen, can you tell him I have another headache and I went to sleep?”
She shoots me a sharp stare from above her red glasses. “Really?”
I sigh heavily, and another tear roadblocks my throat. “I get a pass right now. Don’t I?”
She huffs. “Fine. But this is your one and only I-haven’t-told-my-boyfriend-I’m-pregnant-so-I’m-asking-my-roomie-to-lie-for-me pass. Got it?”
I’d like to laugh. Really, I would. “Let’s hope I don’t have to use it again.”
33
Trey
Headache? What the fuck?
I know she’s lying. I know it. Harley doesn’t get headaches. Something is up, and I want to know what sooner rather than later. Actually, screw sooner. I want to know now.
I clench my fists as I walk home from the gym, trying to quell this treacherous ball of anger that’s building inside me. When I reach my apartment and turn on the shower, my hands are shaking. Only, it’s not anger that’s claimed squatting rights in my heart. It’s fear of the unknown. Of the absolutely terrifying uncertainty of something I never thought I’d know.
Love—and losing it.
Because this isn’t like it was with the others. This isn’t how it was with Sloan McKay, where she could walk off and I’d hook up with someone else the next day.
Harley is my whole heart, and then some.
I step out of the shower, dry off, and pull on fresh jeans and a T-shirt.
Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I’m scared for nothing. Maybe she’s truly suffering from the mother of all headaches. If she is, I need to do something for her.
Fifteen sweaty minutes later, my T-shirt is sticking to me, thanks to the hottest August on record. I call her when I reach the stoop of her building, but there’s no answer.
I inhale deeply, then hold my breath, counting to ten, remembering what my shrink Michelle told me. Don’t jump to conclusions. Speak only your truth.
But I don’t feel like speaking. I’m scared and frustrated and feeling out of control.
I slam a fist against the railing of her building. The metal rattles against my hand, which now hurts like a motherfucker. I shake it a few times.
Where is she, and why is she lying to me?
My head is muddy, and I can’t tell up from down or left from right, and I definitely can’t tell if what I feel is normal or just plain wrong. This is all so foreign to me. I never thought I could get hurt.
Because I’ve never been in love before.
I try her one more time. It rings and rings, but then someone picks up.
“Hey, it’s Kristen.”
“What’s going on? Where’s Harley?”
“She’s asleep,” K
risten says in a quiet voice.
“I don’t believe that,” I fire back.
Kristen laughs, a sharp, sarcastic sound. “You don’t believe she’s asleep?”
“You’re covering for her, aren’t you?”
“Oh my God, I want to strangle you sometimes. Come up and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Then the buzzer sounds, and I push open the door.
Once I reach the fifth floor, Kristen is standing in the hallway, one hand on her hip, the other on the open door. She shakes her head at me, tsk-tsking under her breath. “O ye of little faith, prepare to be strangled when you set eyes upon your sleeping Harley. And do not wake her up. She has a massive migraine.”
I hang my head. “I’m sorry,” I say, holding my hands out wide. “I’m an ass.”
She nods. “You can be.”
“Is she okay?”
She swallows, looking away then back at me. “She’s fine. I mean, she’s not. But…” Kristen says, stumbling on her words, acting a little weird herself. “Anyway, you can see her, or whatever you need to verify she’s asleep.”
“It’s not that I want to verify it,” I say, with a heavy sigh. “I just want to see her.”
“Go.” She points down the hall.
My knuckles sting from pounding my hand against the metal, but I deserve it.
Gingerly, I push open the door to Harley’s room, and I melt when I see her. All the sharp metal edges in me turn liquid. She’s sound asleep, curled up on her side, the blanket kicked down to her waist even though her apartment is doubling as a refrigerator showroom right now. Harley is my kind of girl in every way. She loves to blast the AC. The room is dark and silent, except for the hum of the cooling air. I pad quietly to her, bend down, and kiss her forehead.
She stirs and murmurs something unintelligible. The sound of her sweet, sleepy voice is all the evidence I need that once again I reverted to my baser instincts, and that I should start trusting this strange and unusual feeling of loving her, that I can survive even when I don’t know what happens the next day.
That’s life, and there are zero guarantees, and I need to get used to it.
Then her eyes flutter open. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What time is it?”
“Late. How are you feeling?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk.” She stops all conversation when she reaches for me, ropes her hands around my neck, and kisses me.
A quiet good night kiss. A come-join-me-in-bed kiss, so I answer its invitation. I untie my boots, kick them off, and slide under the covers with her. The kiss starts to fade out, her lips barely touching mine, just the faint trace of her softness on me. Then I taste something salty on her lips, and her breath hitches, a small stifled gulp. I break the kiss to look at her, arching an eyebrow.
She shakes her head, and silences me once more with her mouth. This time, it’s not a good night kiss. She is fevered and frenzied, and she kisses me like she wants to devour me, to render me useless to anything but the power of her kiss. My mind goes hazy, and my body takes over, all that uncertainty packing up and rocketing off to outer space. Because nothing is unclear between the two of us now. Her frantic hands tug at my shirt, and in seconds she’s yanked it over my head. Then her nimble little fingers find the button on my jeans, and the whole time she kisses me like she owns me.
Which she does.
She owns me, and I want her to stake her claim on me always.
We reconnect with our bodies, with our want, our need.
“Harley,” I say, my voice rasping as she pushes my jeans down, and I help her, kicking them off the rest of the way. Instantly, her hand is on my cock, and it’s like someone lit a fire inside me and it’s torching my whole body. She strokes me through my underwear, and I swear I might combust.
I am helpless in her hand.
“Take them off,” she whispers, and I oblige as she pulls off her tank top.
I slide a hand between her legs, and her panties are damp already. I know I shouldn’t rely on sex as a barometer for our relationship, but I can’t help it. I’m so damn happy that she’s this turned on. That I can do this to her. That she wants me as much as I want her.
I won’t last long tonight, and I don’t think she will either.
“Let me get a condom,” I say, and she makes a strange little squeak when I say that last word. I grab one from her nightstand drawer. I hand it to her because she loves putting them on me.
“Just put it on,” she says, looking away as I do, and if I wanted to dissect the moment, I’d probably ask why, but I don’t want to examine anything anymore. I want to reconnect with her. She’s been veering away, and if this is how we come together, I’ll take it. I’ll gladly take it.
She parts her legs wide for me, and there’s something needy and sad that flashes in her eyes as I sink into her, but then every worry is snuffed out at the feel of her surrounding me.
“Oh, fuck, Harley. You feel so good.” I ease out, and then rock back in, and she moans and clasps my back. “I missed you today. I know I saw you this morning, but I really missed you.”
“I missed you too,” she says, her voice breaking.
34
Harley
It feels like the last time. At least for me. Because I fully expect him to run when I tell him, and so I want this—one last time. One last moment. One last connection. I want to hold onto him, to never let him go.
So I grab him tighter, harder, tugging him as close as he can be. I am lost in him, and I don’t want to be found. I don’t want anyone to discover that I’m hiding out with him right now, under the covers, in the dark, the drone of the air conditioner the soundtrack that mingles with my sighs and his groans as he buries himself in me.
“Deeper,” I whisper, and grab his ass, pulling him into me, needing the feel of him like I need air and breath and sun. He rolls his hips and pumps into me, filling me so completely that I gasp loudly at the sharp, sweet ache of this sensation. He’s all the way in me, fucking me hard and slow at the same time.
I want to cry, I want to sob, I want to hold him close and never let him go. I am in heaven with him, and I have one foot in the hell of my own fear, so I need to lose myself in sex, in love, in connection. Maybe this is the druggie in me, the junkie that doesn’t know how to deal without her fix.
I loop my hands around his neck and bring his face close to mine, his chest damp with perspiration as he slides into me, rocking deeper. I kiss his lips, his cheeks, his scar, his earlobe, and then I wrap my legs tighter around his hips, my body inviting him to sink in.
There is a slow urgency tonight, a mournful desperation in both of us as we grasp at each other, needing to hold on to skin, to muscle, to flesh.
“So fucking good,” he moans in my ear.
“Make me come, Trey. Make me come,” I say, because I want to see stars. I want to blackout with pleasure. I want to be awash in the exquisite agony of an orgasm, one so intense it makes me forget all the words I don’t want to say.
“Always, Harley. I promise,” he says, driving deeper, and I cry out as my belly clenches and my climax hits me hard and furiously, like a wave slamming the shore, drowning the sandcastles that were built, then washing all the grains of sand out to sea. And I am tugged under, sinking, the water blotting out the sounds of my frantic heart, immersing me in its warm, wet embrace until I can’t surface—I only float underneath the edge of the ocean, drifting away from him.
35
Trey
The plastic edge of the Bed Bath & Beyond card digs into the back pocket of my jeans.
Poking me like it’s laughing at me. I must have lost my mind when I stopped at that store this morning to buy her a “let’s move in together” gift. Because that’s all I could come up with, and I’m sure it’ll make her eyes glaze over when I hand her the white hundred-dollar gift card.
Hi, Harley. Want to go shop for towels, like a bunch of domestic assholes?<
br />
I want to ask her to live with me and give her something that shows we’re together, but not that we’re home-decorating yuppies who fight in the aisles over the thread count of sheets. I don’t give a shit what the thread count of sheets is—I’m not even sure what a thread count is.
When she steps out of the bathroom at the Starbucks, I make a vow to buy her something right now that says I know her. I understand her. Maybe a leather jacket, badass and cool, like her.
She looks pale, her eyes dark.
“You okay?”
She nods.
I grasp her hand, sliding my fingers through hers, and we leave. “Can I take you shopping?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Since when do you like shopping?”
“I don’t. But I want to buy you something.”
“Trey, my birthday is over.”
“I know. But it’s for something else,” I say as we hit the sidewalk and are instantly covered in a blanket of wet heat. “Let me take you to that store you like that has the awesome T-shirts and combat boots.”
“Now?”
“C’mon. It’s just a few blocks away. I want to get you a gift.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. Just let me, okay?”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
I squeeze her hand. “You haven’t been yourself since your birthday. Is it seeing your mom yesterday that upset you?”
Harley’s mom is pretty much the human equivalent of a downer.
“No. But when I was there, I found a birthday card from my grandparents,” she says, and her voice is bright again.
“Wow. I thought you never heard from them,” I say as we cross the crowded avenue when the walk sign flashes.
“Yeah. Me too. I thought they cut me off from their lives when my parents split. But I found a birthday card hidden under her laptop when I was sending in my registration form, and it had a strange message on it,” she says, rooting around in her big purse for it.
The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Page 15