by S. E. Harmon
“To what?” I demanded.
“You have to tell me something I mean to you. One thing.”
I blinked in surprise, my hands falling slowly. I took an involuntary step back. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “What?”
“We only have a couple nights left here, AJ. Back to real life. And as much as I’m going to miss this…you…us, I’m kind of glad. I’m through with the fake.” His voice was raw and quiet. “You want me in your bed? In your life? You tell me something real.”
“I…” The words stuck in my throat.
Could I really tell him what he meant to me? That I loved talking to him and making him laugh, and I wanted to be with him all the time? That I could see our future together with very little trouble at all? No. No. That was a little too real. Too vulnerable. And when you gave someone that kind of information, there was no going back. When someone knew you, really knew you, that person could hurt you. Destroy you. Take you apart in ways you’d never thought of, and you’d spend the rest of your life searching for the pieces.
I already felt more for him than I’d ever felt for Adam. I already lov—liked him more. Liked, I repeated to myself. Like. Not that other thing. When Adam and I didn’t work, I’d been upset. If this didn’t work out, I’d be devastated.
“You’re the best I’ve ever been with,” I said honestly. In the silence that followed my statement, I winced. Maybe he would take that in the very best way, which was how I meant it. His eyes narrowed. Fat chance of that. I tried to fix it. “The best fling that I’ve ever had. Not that I’m in the habit of having…”
Abort! Abort! While my brain scrambled around for the verbal version of an emergency parachute, I took a deep breath and tried again. “What I mean is—”
“I know what you meant.” He gave me a tight smile. He headed for the balcony doors. “I think I’m going to get a drink.”
My mind whirled as I watched him walking away. I hated watching him walk away, and it seemed to serve as both a physical and metaphysical statement this time. “Jackson, I—”
He paused, waiting at the door without turning. When I didn’t continue, he shook his head and went in. I sighed. Good going, AJ. You have a real gift for words. A real way with people.
I trudged back inside and headed back to our table where Lane was sitting by herself. I dropped down in one of the chairs across from her and snagged one of the glasses of champagne in the middle of the table. She toasted me mockingly, inclining her head toward the balcony. “I see you’re working your usual relationship magic.”
I scowled. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I saw your boyfriend stalk in a few minutes ago and head straight to the bar. Then you come in looking like something the cat wanted to drag in but rejected.” She lifted one slender shoulder. “Doesn’t take a genius to push those puzzle pieces together.”
“Your emergency exits are here, here, and here.” I used my hands in a quick airline demonstration. “You are now cleared to fuck off.”
“Don’t get smart with me. I’m the one who owes Art twenty bucks, thanks to you and your relationship train wreck.” When I had no rejoinder like I usually would, her voice softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I was briefly tongue-tied as I sipped my champagne. The bubbles fizzed inside my stomach pleasantly as I tried to think of the right words to explain what I was feeling. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it…I didn’t know how. How do you explain what you don’t even fully understand? More specifically, why I was ruining what might be the best thing that ever happened to me?
I didn’t have a clue, but I knew where to start. “Jackson and I aren’t really dating,” I blurted.
Lane didn’t flicker an eyelash. “I know.”
My mouth nearly flopped open. “I thought we did a fairly credible job of fooling everyone. How did you know?”
“It’s hard to pinpoint, exactly. Maybe it’s just because I know you.” She shrugged. “You guys are really affectionate with one another. He’s always touching you…looking at you. You’re ten times more affectionate with him than you ever were with Adam.”
I scowled. “I am not.”
“You are. You’re not normally like that. The few guys you’ve brought around, you keep at arm’s length. This was…it was like you were trying to prove you two were together.”
“You make me sound so…” I floundered, trying to think of a word that would perfectly encapsulate the reigning Ice Princess of the South, and came up wanting. I finished with a lame, “Cold. You make me sound so cold.”
“Not cold,” she corrected. “Standoffish.” My expression made her shrug. “Sorry. That’s probably not much better. I just mean that…well, we all kind of processed Dad moving on in different ways, you know? Art just separated himself from us completely. And you started looking at relationships differently…like love was just a word.”
Isn’t it? I looked down at the table, tracing the almost invisible pattern on the snowy white linen. “And you?”
She paused, looking down at her glass. “Rick and I went through a rough period. There was a time when I accused him of…well, a lot of things I know he’s not capable of. I don’t know, maybe I was trying to push him away.”
“Rick? Cheating?” I almost had to scoop up my eyeballs and pop them back in my head. I don’t think I’d ever heard of any real trouble in their marriage. I knew that no relationship was ever perfect but some came damn close. “Laney, that’s not possible.”
“I know. It’s absolutely absurd. He finally told me that he’s not going anywhere, so I might as well stop.” She rubbed a finger on the edge of her glass, back and forth, clearly lost in thought. “Relationships are hard work, you know? When you want something to work bad enough, you fight for it. We know that Adam certainly wasn’t the one. Maybe Jackson is.” Her eyes were dark and intense. “Don’t push him away.”
“The one,” I muttered. “What is with you people? There is no ‘the one.’ That’s a romantic notion for fools.”
“Wow.” She smiled at my disgruntlement. “I’m really not far off track, huh?”
“You’re so far off track, your race car just flipped into the stands.”
“Fine, AJ. You don’t have to tell me. I have eyes, and I know what I’ve seen over the past few weeks. And a lot of it wasn’t fake. Certainly what I heard when I passed by the bathroom early this morning wasn’t fake.” She raised her eyebrow. “And it wasn’t seven minutes either.”
I went fire red. Oh jeez. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said starchily.
“Uh huh.” She refreshed both of our glasses with an arch look of her own. “I sprayed down the shower with Lysol just in case.”
“We were saving water,” I mumbled, and I wasn’t surprised when she laughed. Despite myself, I had to ask. “So…you really think he likes me?”
She looked at me incredulously, like I’d barked like a seal and clapped my hands. With those wide eyes and thick, super long lashes blinking in surprise, she looked like Minnie Mouse. Actually, she looked like Minnie reacting to Mickey telling her that those giant yellow shoes don’t match her dress.
Just before I tried to feel for a pulse, she exploded into laughter. Big “hee-hee, haw-haw” kind of laughter. I scowled and waited, arms crossed, letting her get it all out. “Oh my God,” she managed between splutters. “You’re actually serious!”
“Could you just answer the question?” My ears were red and hot.
“Well, I can’t speak for Jackson, but I can tell you what I see. He looks at you hung the moon and farted out the stars.”
“Why would someone fart out—”
“Christ, AJ.” She wiped tears of mirth from her eyes with a knuckle. “You haven’t noticed how he listens to every word that comes out of your crazy mouth? Or did you really think your stories about microprocessors are really that interesting?”
“Not everyone hates electronics, Lane,” I said
without heat, too distracted by what she’d said to be annoyed. My stomach bloomed with warmth.
“Wow,” she said to herself, finally winding down from her completely inappropriate laughing fit. “I needed that.”
“What you need is Prozac.”
“There, there,” she soothed. “Let’s change the subject.”
Finally, an idea I could get behind. We sat talking as the reception wound down, going on about nothing in particular. Reminiscing about the old times and catching up on some of the new things. For the first time in a long while, we had new family stories to add to the repertoire—Lane pushing me in the drink when she wanted my paddle board, and all of us getting drunk off our asses on the back deck. Apparently, Rick had used her as an afterschool special type warning to their girls the next morning as she’d glared at them all from behind a pair of dark shades.
The newlyweds whirled past our table, doing a fairly credible ballroom waltz. My father looked right sharp in his dark suit—his only good one, and he insisted that he only needed the one—with his hair so neatly arrayed that I could see the precise comb tracks. Irene fairly glowed in a lilac suit, her hair gathered in a complicated knot on the top of her head
My father leaned in to say something in her ear, and they both began to laugh. They looked so…bloody happy. Part of me found it impossible not to be happy for them. But at the same time…my fingers tightened on the champagne flute so tightly I was afraid I might shatter the fragile crystal.
“They look good together, don’t they?”
I glanced over to find Lane looking at them, too. I smiled. “Yeah. They do.”
We watched Art cutting in on Irene and Dad’s dance. There was a lot of laughing and good-natured tussling, but eventually Dad bowed out as Art spun Irene around on the dance floor.
I shook my head with a small smile. “How is Art so okay with this?”
“He’s emotionally stunted, mostly.”
“Lucky bastard.” A flash of gold caught my eye, and I squinted at our father’s jacket sleeves. “Nice cuff links.”
“Mmhmm.” Suddenly Lane seemed very interested in the tablecloth. “I didn’t notice.”
“They look almost like the ones you got Rick last year.”
She finally growled. “All right, fine. You got me.” She squinted at his upraised arm. “So where’d he get that watch?”
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Looks like a Movado. Doesn’t Julian like Movado?”
“Is there any more cake?” I asked innocently.
“Mmhmm.”
I didn’t mind that I was busted. Hell, as long as this champagne was pleasantly sloshing around in my belly, I didn’t mind much of anything. I was pretty sure my liver was floating in the sea of liquor like an iceberg in the Atlantic.
Lane poured us both a fresh glass of champagne. Pink’s soft, husky voice filled the room as she sang something about glitter in the air. It almost felt like Mom had given me another gift right then. It wasn’t something provincial enough to be contained with gift wrap and ribbon. I could call it a life lesson of sorts. If she hadn’t died, I didn’t think I would truly know the importance of life. Or how fleeting it was. I’d never have appreciated my family quite so much. As was the case with the most important life lessons, it’d been expensive. But if the cost was that I had to miss her so badly it felt like an actual ache in my chest, then I would just have to deal with that.
“Laney,” I said, gently nudging her leg with mine to get her attention. “I propose a toast.”
We raised our glasses. “To mom,” she said faintly.
“No,” I said firmly, touching my glass to hers. “To us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Art and I stumbled up the beach and back to the house, I realized something kind of important. We were tipsy. Unless someone had truly snuck in our house and tacked on the front door crookedly. I had my shoes tucked under my arm, and he’d stolen a centerpiece for no reason I could discern, but at least we’d made it back unscathed.
“Here.” I handed my shoes to Art so I could focus on getting the door unlocked, and he took them slowly, looking at the strappy heels like they were UFOs. It took me three tries to get the keys in the door, and four tries to realize he was taking them out every time I put them in.
“We can’t drive,” he said loudly, snatching them out again.
“Gimme those!”
“No drinking and driving, AJ,” he said sternly, holding them out of my reach.
I scowled and snatched them from his loose grasp. Okay, maybe I was the tipsy one. He was clearly trashed. “It’s a door, you idiot. Not a car.”
“Not a car?” he questioned. He blinked big, brown eyes at me. Then he promptly threw my shoes across the yard.
I finally got the door unlocked and ushered him in the house. He tried to go in the hall closet instead of his room and I sighed exasperatedly. I grabbed his shoulders, and pointed him toward the right door.
“Damn.” He scratched his head. “Who moved my fucking room?”
“You’re drunk,” I informed him with a wry smile. “Go sleep it off.”
“What a waste,” he muttered, stumbling in his room. He hit his leg on the bed railing and tumbled into bed headfirst. He bounced for a minute before lying still in a heap. “What kind of guy goes to a wedding and can’t scare up even one lonely bridesmaid?”
“The kind that starts most of his pickup lines with the phrase ‘Damn girl,’” I said.
Clearly his question had been more rhetorical, because he did not appreciate my levity. Even in his twisted pretzel position, he managed to flip me the bird. He was still flipping me off when I turned off his light, and I hoped he’d fall asleep that way. I wished him the mother of all cricked necks for the morning, and closed his door loudly enough to make him moan pitifully.
When I finally got back to my room, Jackson was already in bed. It was a scene I’d gotten far too used to—him sitting with his back against the headboard, fingers swiping across his iPad dexterously, his forehead creased in concentration. I stood in the doorway for a moment, struck dumb by the sight of him for no reason at all. There was absolutely no reason that watching him work in bed should make me feel this way. Watching him do something simple as pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose shouldn’t make my stomach feel funny.
I strove for something smooth and svelte to say. But I had a little too much champagne swirling around in me to achieve anything of the sort. “Hiya,” was all I could come up with. Smooth, AJ.
He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “Hiya yourself.”
His voice was cool, and I winced. I knew I owed him an apology, and I wasn’t going to make him wait for one. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I wouldn’t say I was if I wasn’t.”
He held my gaze for a minute before inclining his head. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“You want a hand-written acceptance of your apology?” He sighed. “I said it’s fine. So let it be fine.”
Fine by me. And then I noticed his luggage, packed and prepared by the door. “You’re packed already? We weren’t going back for another two days.”
“I have to go back tomorrow.”
Someone shouldn’t sound so matter-a-fact when sliding a knife between your ribs. Going back a day earlier than we’d planned? Alone? I blew out a breath. “Guess it’s not so fine after all.”
He didn’t deny it. “A case of mine is getting close to settlement. Looks like her husband has finally seen the light. I want to setup a meeting with his counsel before they change their minds. Besides, I think we accomplished what we came to do, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course. You want to take the car? I can just fly back.”
“That works.”
I bit my lip as he went back to answering emails. I’d been around him long enough to know that he was still kind of mad, and I was kind of okay with that. Angry goodbye sex was exactly what
I was looking for. It certainly beat tears and violins by a mile. I waffled over how to get the ball rolling, but in the end, I just went with what works.
Nudity.
I unzipped my dress and let it fall at my feet, a whisper of fabric on the hardwood floor. And suddenly there was a quiet stillness from his side of the room that I pretended not to notice. I padded over to the dresser on bare feet, and grabbed my hairbrush. I let down my hair and brushed slowly, pretending I didn’t see him watching me avidly in the mirror. From the way he was staring, I surmised that black thong underwear really worked for him. When I bent down to pick up the dress, extra slowly, I heard a soft groan.
“You trying to kill me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just getting undressed over here, Sparks.”
When I turned, he was standing behind me. I hadn’t even heard him get off the bed, and suddenly I was face to face with a wall of impatient male. Hard, impatient male. His boxers hung low on his hips, showing off that ripped and cut abdomen. My fingers flexed almost involuntarily, and I reached out.
He stepped back swiftly. “You can’t just get your way with sex, AJ.”
I bit my lip. “I said I was wrong. What else do you want me to say?”
He stared at me, those golden-green eyes and thick dark lashes so beautiful and unreadable. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t really expect you to apologize so quickly. I kind of wanted to milk this a little.”
He reached for me and I stopped his hands. He deserved the truth. He deserved to know a little bit of how I felt. As he tilted his head questioningly, I cleared my throat. Why were my palms suddenly so damp? Sweaty palms were not sexy.
“I love the way you laugh. Your eyes get all crinkly in the corners and they sparkle a little… I almost feel like I won something when I make you laugh.” I wiped sweaty palms on my thighs. “That’s all I got. That’s your real.”
Those eyes got all crinkly in the corners as his mouth half-lifted in a smile. “Not bad, Winters. Not the sonnet you promised me, but not bad at all.”