Anything But Love

by Abigail Strom

  She let her hands fall back to her sides. “You did not.”

  “Sure I did.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “In junior high you said you were going to major in marine biology. Remember?”

  She’d put that dream aside a long time ago. “Yes.”

  “What did you end up majoring in?”

  “Business.”

  He stared at her. “You did?”

  His expression made her feel defensive. “It was what my parents suggested, and they were paying the bills.”

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “So you majored in business. What did you do with your degree?”

  Now she was feeling even more defensive. “I worked for my mother after I graduated. She sits on the boards of several organizations, and I helped her with event planning and fund-raising and things like that.”

  “You don’t do that anymore?”

  “I stopped once Tom and I got engaged. I was busy renovating our new apartment, and planning the wedding was a full-time job in itself.”

  Ben nodded, his expression neutral.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “It’s obvious that you’re thinking something. What is it?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing you need to get upset about. I was just wondering if part of the reason you got engaged to Tom was to get away from your parents.”

  She started to deny it—but then she found herself wondering, too.

  She’d moved back home after she graduated from college, since there was plenty of room in her parents’ place. They’d even converted a guest bedroom into a home office for her, making it easier for her to assist with her mother’s work.

  How had she felt when Tom had first suggested that the two of them get married? When she’d moved into his apartment after their engagement was official, and after that, when they’d gone apartment hunting together?

  Relieved.

  “Maybe,” she said, looking down at her lap. Her legs were crossed, and her hands, primly folded, rested on her knee. Her linen suit was still unwrinkled.

  “Hey, Jess?”

  She looked up again and met Ben’s eyes. “What?”

  “I’m not trying to criticize you or make you feel bad. I’m honestly interested.”

  “Interested in what?”

  “In you. In who you are now.”

  “I don’t know who I am.”

  The words came out before she could censor them. Her face flushed and she turned away from Ben to look out the window.

  She grew more and more tense as she waited for him to say something. To ask what she meant. When he did ask a question, though, it wasn’t the one she’d expected.

  “Why did you and Tom get engaged?”

  Jessica looked back at him. “I thought you said we didn’t have to talk about that.”

  “We don’t have to. I just thought you might want to.” He paused. “But it’s up to you.”

  Her eyes searched his for a moment. Then she shrugged. “You won’t like the answer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you always want people to be brave. You want people to be honest. Don’t you?”

  “Sure. But I’m not an idiot, Jess. I know things get complicated. I know things aren’t always black-and-white.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I don’t think it would help to talk about it. I just want to put it behind me.”

  “You could do that. Or you could think of this trip as your chance to tell the truth without any repercussions. You can spend ten days telling me any damn thing you want, and it won’t matter. I’ll never say a word about it. Hell, once we get back to New York we probably won’t even see each other again. So what do you have to lose?”

  Maybe Ben was right. Would it really be so terrible to talk about it? She could get it out in the open, and then they could let it go for the rest of the trip.

  She shrugged. “Tom and I have been friends for years. I’ve known he was gay since high school, but he didn’t want anyone else to find out—especially his parents, who are really conservative. He was afraid it would affect his job, too. He’s a trader and he works in a hyper-alpha-male atmosphere. So he stayed in the closet, but he was sick of family and friends asking him who he was dating and when he was getting married. I was, too. So we decided to help each other out. That’s it.”

  He stared at her. “That’s it? But what about—well, everything? What if you fell in love with somebody? Or hell, what if you just wanted to date somebody?”

  She frowned. “If I answer that honestly, you won’t believe me.”

  “Try me anyway.”

  She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t an issue. I don’t want to date, and I don’t want to fall in love. I just want to be left alone.”

  She said those last words almost fiercely.

  “But if you want to be left alone, why not just be alone? Why marry someone you don’t love?”

  “Just be alone, huh? Do you really think it’s that easy?”

  “Well, yeah. Why isn’t it that easy?”

  “Because we can’t all be you, Ben. We’re not all rugged individualists. We can’t all thumb our noses at our families and people’s expectations. Believe it or not, I didn’t want to disappoint my family. And I didn’t want to answer the same questions over and over, either. Are you dating anyone? Is it serious? Do you think you’ll get married soon?”

  “But—”

  “I know, I know. What does it matter what other people think? Well, it matters to me. It always has and it probably always will. And the fact that you don’t understand that doesn’t make it any less true. I know that’s anathema to you and I know you despise me because of it, but that doesn’t change who I am.”

  Her lips trembled, and she pressed them firmly together. Then she turned her head and stared out the window.

  “I don’t despise you, Jess.”

  She swiveled her head to look him in the eyes. “That’s not what you said in high school.”

  “You mean ten years ago? I hope I’ve changed a little since then.”

  She looked at him seriously. “But you haven’t.” She hurried on. “I don’t mean that as a criticism. I just mean you’re still doing what you think is right, no matter what anyone else thinks. You wanted to be a teacher when we were kids, and you are a teacher. You wanted to move away from the Upper East Side, and you did. You’ve done everything you said you would do.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “If I heard that from anyone but you, I’d assume it was a compliment. But since it was from you, I’m not sure what to think.”

  “I’m not complimenting you or criticizing you. I’m just stating a fact. You’re the same person you were in high school.”

  “Just because I’m doing the job I wanted to do back then doesn’t mean I’m the same person.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “My point,” he said patiently, “is that I don’t hate you—even if I did back then.” He paused. “And honestly? I don’t think I did back then, either. But that’s all in the past . . . along with your engagement. You have a chance to start a new phase of your life, Jess. That’s kind of exciting if you think about it.”

  “To someone like you, maybe. But I’m not adventurous. I don’t like uncertainty. I have no idea what the next phase of my life will look like, and that scares me.”

  Would she go crawling back to her parents? Ask them to give her a home and a job again? Or would she live by herself and get a job on her own?

  She sighed. “I don’t want to think about the future right now. This trip is supposed to be my escape from all that, at least for a while.”

  “Fair enough. But can I ask you one more thing?”

  “I guess it depends on what it is.”

  “Why don’t you want to date or fall in love?”

  She might have been willing to tell Ben the reasons behind her and Tom’s sham engagement, but there were limits to wha
t she would open up about.

  “I just don’t,” she said. Her voice was stiff, and she could feel her body stiffening, too. “Not everyone is obsessed with romantic relationships. And that’s all I have to say on the subject.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll shut up now.”

  Ben had always seemed big and strong and powerful to her, while Jessica, in comparison, had often felt weak and trifling and insignificant. Sitting beside him now she felt the same contrast—him with his long, lean, loose-limbed body, relaxed and dynamic at the same time, and her sitting stiffly beside him in her crisp linen suit, prim and proper and negligible. Now even their body temperatures seemed to echo the differences between them, his hand warm and vital while she felt small and cold.

  Heat seemed to seep into her through Ben’s big, callused palm. She was intensely aware of his physicality—his hard-muscled strength, the warmth of his gaze, the dark stubble on his jaw.

  She shifted away from him. “You didn’t shave this morning.”

  He ran his hand over his chin. “No, I didn’t. I showered, though. And I remembered my passport.” He paused. “So, new topic. Do you want to talk about weather or sports or current events, or should we just go back to reading?”

  “Well.” Jessica glanced out the window. “The weather at thirty thousand feet is gorgeous. As for sports, the big event in Bermuda this week is their annual cricket match.”

  “Cricket?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “I had tickets to a Mets game this week.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t force you onto this plane, you know. In fact, I gave you a perfectly good out this morning.”

  “Yeah, I guess you did.”

  “So no complaints about missing the game.”

  “Agreed.”

  Jessica nodded toward the newspaper he’d stuck in the seat pocket. “So, anything interesting in the Times?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As the cabdriver drove briskly along the narrow, curving roads, Jessica felt a rush of pleasure. The breeze coming through the open window was warm and soft as it teased strands of hair across her face.

  “Bermuda is beautiful,” Ben said, looking out the other window at the lush vegetation and brightly painted houses.

  “It is, isn’t it? Even more beautiful than I imagined.”

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  “No. My parents were never interested in coming, and I haven’t traveled much on my own. Tom hasn’t, either. That’s one thing he and I were going to do together—travel. His job is so cutthroat that he never felt like he could take a vacation. He was going to take things a little easier after we were married, though.”

  It was odd to talk about those plans, as though she and Tom had been an ordinary couple planning a life together. And in a way, they had been. They would have been friends, companions, confidantes—everything but lovers.

  A wave of melancholy went over her.

  “It’s okay to be sad about losing Tom, you know.”

  She turned her head to see Ben looking at her. Had he read her mind?

  “But I didn’t lose him. I mean, we weren’t really together.”

  “Yeah, but you’d promised to share your life with him. And then you had the rug jerked out from under you.”

  Did she wish that Everett had never come into the picture? That she and Tom had gone through with their sham marriage?

  No. Not just because it was the wrong thing for Tom, but because it was wrong for her, too. She didn’t have a clear direction forward—not like Tom did—but she was glad they hadn’t exchanged wedding vows.

  “Thanks,” she said to Ben. “But I’m okay. I mean . . . I wish it hadn’t happened like that, but . . . I think it was the right thing. For both of us.”

  Her hand was on the seat between them, and Ben covered it with his. “Good,” he said.

  A dart of electricity went through her just as they took a curve a little too fast. She slid across the seat toward Ben, and for one dizzying moment she was almost in his lap, her hand still in his and their thighs pressed together. In the breathless seconds before she managed to scoot back to her side, her temperature seemed to go up twenty degrees.

  “Sorry,” she said, turning her head to look out the window again. Her face was red and her heart was pounding.

  A minute later they turned onto a long drive, and a minute after that they pulled up in front of a sprawling, tangerine-colored hotel. A bellboy came out to meet them, collecting their luggage—well, her luggage, since Ben only had a carry-on—and telling them he’d bring it to their cottage.

  “We have a cottage?” Ben asked Jessica as they entered the hotel, crossing the lobby toward the front desk.

  She nodded. “Right on the beach.”

  “Wow. So are you going to tell the hotel people we’re not actually—”

  She stopped abruptly in the middle of the lobby.

  “Absolutely not. I left New York to get away from all that, remember? I’m not going to share the details with a bunch of strangers.”

  “So if someone calls me Mr. Shelburne and congratulates me—”

  “Just say thank you.” She paused. “It probably won’t come up, though. Tom and I chose this resort because it’s not one of those all-inclusive places where the staff is in your face all the time. They’ll give us our privacy.”

  “If you say so.”

  She glanced at the front desk. “The clerk will probably congratulate us if we check in together. If you want to avoid that, you could go on ahead and meet the bellboy at the cottage. It’ll be the one closest to the ocean.”

  He grinned at her. “You’re the boss, Jess. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  She checked in at the desk, made a reservation for dinner at the hotel restaurant, and headed for the cottage herself.

  The hotel’s main building was on a rise above the ocean. A winding flagstone path led down to the water, passing the pool, poolside bar, and several small cottages before it reached the beach. Just before the path gave way to sand, it branched off to the right, heading toward the honeymoon cottage.

  It was painted a bright cerulean blue and was surrounded by flowering bushes. The door stood open, and she could see Ben’s broad back as he stood in the doorway, arms folded, surveying the interior.

  “So what do you think?” she asked, coming up beside him. “We have our own path down to the ocean, and the concierge said . . .” She trailed off.

  All right, this was awkward.

  Really, really awkward.

  Jessica had assumed from the phrase “honeymoon suite” that this place would be—well, a suite. With a separate living area and foldout couch, the way hotel suites were usually laid out.

  There was a small sitting area but no couches. The place was basically one enormous bedroom, with one enormous bed.

  A bed strewn with rose petals, of all ridiculous things.

  It was a beautiful room. Big and bright and airy, with windows overlooking the ocean.

  But all she could see was the bed.

  The longer the two of them stood staring at that king-size behemoth, snow-white sheets and blankets providing the perfect backdrop for red rose petals, the more embarrassed she felt.

  This was her fault. She should have confirmed the layout of the room, or something.

  The truth was, she honestly hadn’t thought about it. It hadn’t mattered when it was going to be her and Tom, because—

  “Where the hell was Tom going to sleep?” Ben asked.

  She risked her first glance at him, and he was scowling. He looked so pissed off that she almost took a step back, but then she noticed the tips of his ears.

  They were red. All through junior high, that had been a sure sign that he was embarrassed or uncomfortable about something.

  That, oddly enough, made her feel a little better. At least she wasn’t embarrassed all by herself.

  “We were go
ing to sleep in the same bed,” she explained. “We’ve done it before. It’s not an issue, because—”

  “Because Tom’s gay.”

  “Exactly.”

  He took a few steps into the room and stopped, glaring at the bed as though he blamed it for the current situation. “I’m not gay.”

  Didn’t she know it.

  He and Tom actually had similar builds. They were both tall, both rangy and powerful. Their faces were very different—Ben’s was rough and craggy while Tom was more classically handsome—but in terms of what outside observers would characterize as “masculinity,” the two men were very similar.

  The difference was in her reaction to them.

  For as long as she’d known him, Tom had inspired affection but not attraction. Because of that, he’d been her first kiss back in high school. She’d chosen him because he didn’t make her feel uneasy or unsure of herself—not like Ben, for instance—and Tom had felt the same way about her. They weren’t threatened by each other, and so experimenting with their first kiss had felt safe.

  It hadn’t been unpleasant, exactly, but no sparks had flown, either. They decided to “just be friends” after that, and a year later, Jessica was the first—and for a long time, the only—person he came out to.

  When she saw Tom across a room, she felt a rush of warmth. He made her feel safe and secure and cared for. He would never ask anything of her she didn’t know how to give, and because of that, he was one of the few people in the world Jessica allowed herself to be physically affectionate with.

  Ben, on the other hand . . .

  Her reaction to him had always been utterly different from her reaction to Tom. Sometime in eighth grade she’d tumbled onto the fact that she had a crush on him, and her feelings had been as intense as they were confusing.

  Feverish excitement, anguished attraction. She couldn’t describe the state she was in as pleasurable, and yet . . . whenever they were apart, she longed to be near him again.

  Of course she’d hidden all that from him, allowing him to see only the outward signs of friendship. That was something else she and Tom had always shared: the ability to hide their true selves.

  Even in high school, when she and Ben were no longer friends, her physical response to him had been the same. None of the boys she’d actually dated had come remotely close to making her feel that odd, unsettling combination of tingling excitement and overwhelming anxiety.