Worth the Fall

by Caitie Quinn

  “Yeah, see. I can see that. You’re agreeing with her.” He shifted back around and picked up the bottle of wine, refilling his glass a bit more than the one before it.

  “I’m not agreeing with her. But you do have a habit of just doing what you think is right whether people want you to or not.”

  “Oh, really? And you know this after only a week?” He crossed his arms and added, “Give me one example.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him and he mirrored it back, waiting for me to come up with just one example.

  I pointed at my meal.

  “Dinner? I made you dinner and that’s your example of not listening to you?”

  “You didn’t say, Hey. Kasey. I know you’re in pain, how would you like me to throw together a little something? You just started cooking in my kitchen even after I told you all I wanted was a bath and a movie.”

  “But you’re getting a bath and a movie.”

  “On your terms.”

  “Sometimes people need to be taken care of.”

  The muscle at his jaw ticked and the fingers on my wine glass tightened.

  “Yes,” I answered, not sure of what else to say.

  “And, sometimes it’s nice to just do things for people. Especially if you’re dating her.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And you would assume that if two people were dating, making a meal one night when one person wasn’t feeling well would be a good thing.”

  Well, I couldn’t argue with that, except…

  “We’re not dating.”

  “I didn’t say we were.” He flashed me a grin, more cocky looking than before. “Are you hinting at something, Tuesday?”

  Incorrigible. That’s really all I could say about him.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m just saying that,” he went on innocently enough, “I need to be able to take care of people I care about. If she had a problem with it, she could have told me instead of inviting my friend over and greeting him at the door in her bra and underwear.”

  That was…Who does that? Who purposefully sets out to hurt someone that badly just because he was a little too much with the being-in-charge thing?

  “I can’t argue with that.” Because, what sane person could?

  “Thank you.”

  That was probably the best place to leave this conversation. I let Max put the dishes in the sink but told him he couldn’t wash them. I could see the hesitation on his face, but he nodded and left them there. It was probably going to kill him before the night was over. But, in light of our earlier conversation, I was really impressed he allowed me to leave my own dirty dishes in my sink.

  I wandered over to the small living room set Ben had left in my care and curled up in the corner. Max continued to make himself at home putting the movie in and walking around adjusting lights. It was hard to fault him when I was filled with great food and exactly where I wanted to be.

  I expected him to take the chair in the corner. Instead he plopped down on the other end, grabbing the remote and hitting play as if we did this every weekend.

  The movie flickered on and I got sucked into the world of good and evil and what would my super power be.

  I was pretty sure Max really would be a super hero if they existed. Him and his keeping people safe, always being there thing.

  I tried to stretch my legs out without kicking him, but failed miserably when my heel took him in the side.

  “Kasey, just stretch out.”

  I felt odd putting my legs across him and looked at his lap as if it might be radioactive. Instead, I shifted to try to put them on the coffee table at his end.

  “Unless…” He glanced at the blanket I was tucked under, lifting the edge and pretended to peer under. “Is it because your feet are naked? If it makes you feel more comfortable, I could get my feet naked too.”

  My gaze drifted over to where Max’s sock covered feet were propped up on the table. He probably had really strong, not hairy, perfectly shaped feet. The kind of feet you see on the movie posters walking down the beach next to a set of dainty lady feet.

  There was seriously something wrong with me.

  “No. No, need to get your feet naked.” I cleared my throat. “I just, you know, feel like it’s weird to be using you as a footrest.”

  “It’s not weird. Just stretch out. I don’t care.” He picked up my feet and pulled them onto his lap, sliding a little toward me so my feet hung over his far leg. “See, not weird.”

  I nodded, shifting my focus back to the movie and Hugh Jackman and trying ignore it as Max’s handed rested across my calf.

  I couldn’t even enjoy the last fifteen minutes. I kept thinking about not moving my feet or my legs or wondering why his hand was on my calf. Was it because my calf was in his way or was he touching my leg, touching my leg?

  As the credits rolled, I sat up, thinking about pulling my feet away, but before I could, he lifted them again, slid out from under them and headed toward the TV.

  “That was better than I thought it would be. The trailer was kind of lame compared to the one last summer.” He crouched in front of the TV set-up and ejected the DVD. “What did you think?”

  I think I needed to get him out of my apartment. This was supposed to be a quiet night at home recovering from Hailey’s abuse.

  “Yeah. It was good. I liked the earlier ones better.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, giving me a look that obviously said my flat tone came across loud and clear. Instead of asking what had turned me into weird-o girl, he just nodded and starting putting everything away.

  He headed toward the door, grabbing his corkscrew and sauté pan off the counter as he went.

  “Come here and lock me out.”

  Oh, yeah.

  I pulled myself off the couch, happy to see I was moving a little more easily and knowing there was no way I’d leave the house tomorrow.

  At the front door, he half stepped into the hall before turning back to look at me.

  I made the mistake of looking up at him. Jason had been a lot taller than me. He was a lean six-foot-one. But, Max at his more modest five-ten felt bigger as he filled my doorway, and closer. Amazing how much closer he felt with just a few inches of height lost.

  He stood there, looking down at me and I felt the need to fill the silence with something for some reason. Unsure why or what, I finally landed on, “Thanks.”

  Max grinned and shook his head. “Sure. Don’t forget the dishes.”

  And then, before you could say apartment takeover, he was gone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My blaring alarm clock sounded, pulling me out of another weird dream. More Max. More Max and the kitten calendars. This calendar’s year was all cooking. Eggs, steak, cupcakes, kebobs. If I would eat it, there was a month for it.

  This time, Max stood in a gourmet kitchen, wearing jeans and an apron, his shoulders broadly outlined by the thin white straps. The kitten perched on his shoulder, a little chef’s hat on his head, his tail gently wrapped around the back of Max’s neck to drape down his shoulder.

  I reached over and slammed the alarm clock off, happy to have my weird internal voice shut up.

  Max.

  I could lie to Jenna and Hailey, but I had to admit it to myself at least. I was attracted to Max. It wasn’t even just the hot cop uniform. He was completely the opposite of what I wanted, and yet…

  If I was going to get my life back on track, I needed to stay out of his sphere as much as possible. Too many women had been drawn by the siren’s call of flat abs. I would not be wrecked on the shore of male beauty.

  I looked around my new apartment and thought again about how free I felt out from under Jason’s controlling shadow. Lying in bed, I listened to the birds outside my window shout at each other and made a mental list of my day.

  Get up, get dressed, eat something. Those all seemed obtainable since my body was once again doing what my brain told it to.

  I finished the mental checkl
ist and decided it was early enough to head over to The Brew to get some work done. If I stayed in on a nice day like this, I’d just get cabin fever.

  Luckily, there were only to-go regulars there grabbing their morning mixes when I set up. I would be distraction-free now that Jenna’s office was repaired.

  Hopefully she wouldn’t totally forget about me without our shared workspace.

  I powered up my laptop and set in to answering the emails I was getting. Still nothing big enough to think of as an actual job, but people were checking in and get more information. Not bad for my first week in business.

  I created a FAQ page for my website and a contact form for the inquiries I seemed to see the most. Then I finished the mock-up of Jenna’s new landing page which turned out pretty kick-ass. Moving down the to-do list, I emailed The Village council to see if they needed any flyers made for their Farmers’ Market and Sidewalk Sale day.

  All in all, a pretty fine morning.

  I was getting ready to take a break when Jenna wandered in, her nose in a little red notebook as she scribbled away. A kindly patron pulled a chair out of her way as she beelined for the sofas.

  Dropping her laptop bag on the chair, she stood and continued writing until she was done.

  I’d learned by example watching Ben to just let this play out and then talk. Anything said while a notebook was opened was not actually said.

  Or, as Dane put it, if a friend speaks in the notebook void, does anyone hear them?

  “Hey.” She collapsed into her chair, a look of anguish on her face.

  “What’s wrong? Is Ben okay? Is anyone hurt?”

  She looked at me, her eyes still damp from unshed tears and said, “Chloe is going to college and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Chloe your…sister?”

  Did Jenna say she had sisters? In my head she was an only child, but I’d been meeting so many people I could have gotten confused.

  “No.” Her lips quivered as if fighting not to smile and she slouched back in the chair. “You’ll think I’m absurd. Even Ben occasionally thinks I’m absurd.”

  “I’m pretty sure Ben thinks you’re adorable even when he thinks you’re being absurd.”

  “But still…Chloe is the character of my series. I’ve been writing her since she got to high school. It’s one of the longest running single author YA contemporary series currently. Thirteen books. And now, she’s going to college and I have to let her go.”

  Okay, so that was a little…absurd.

  But, I’m sure in her world it was totally normal. I mean, there are books I’ve read that I hated when they ended.

  This was obviously killing her.

  “Aren’t you ready for a new adventure?” Because, New Adventure was my new middle name. Maybe I should hyphenate it. “Change can be good. You might have something really exciting in you that you couldn’t see because it was standing behind Chloe and once you send her off to her new home, you’ll be able to start on it.”

  Before the words were even all out of my mouth, tears were streaming down Jenna’s face. She lifted a hand to cover her mouth and dropped her eyes shut.

  Crud. I was really horrible at this girlfriend thing. I had no idea what I’d said to make her cry, but it was obviously the worst possible thing. She sat there, pulling in on herself while I glanced around the room desperately looking for a distraction.

  “I’m sorry. Whatever it is I said, I’m really, really sorry.”

  I half jumped, half crawled over the coffee table between us and set my butt on it taking her free hand in mine.

  “What is it? This can’t be about your series ending, right?”

  Writers weren’t that crazy, were they?

  I considered the tree in her office and the way she talked about Chloe’s day as if it were real.

  Okay, maybe they could be that crazy. But this didn’t feel like that.

  “People just…leave, you know? They’re there and they’re this huge part of your life, and then they just up and move across the ocean never to be seen from again.”

  Ah.

  “I don’t think you’ll never hear from Ben again.” I patted her knee, trying to get her attention.

  “I meant,” she sniffed, “you know, people in general.”

  I was really rusty on my girl speak apparently, because I was about one-thousand percent sure we were talking about Ben.

  “You’re talking about Ben.” Yeah, smooth.

  Jenna burst into tears again.

  I glanced over her shoulder at John standing behind the counter looking panicked. No help there.

  “I am talking about Ben,” she sobbed as if she were revealing a big secret.

  “Ben loves you. And, he’s coming back. You’re not going to never hear from him again.”

  “He asked me to go with him.” The words burst out of her mouth so fast it was as if she’d been standing in front of them holding them back until her knees gave out from exhaustion.

  “That doesn’t sound like a man who’s looking to toss you aside.”

  “I said no.” She sniffed and shook her head as if she didn’t understand it herself. “I said no.”

  I thought of Jenna and Ben and then I thought of Jason and it took everything in me to not scream, Good Lord, woman! Why?

  Instead, I took a deep breath and asked it more softly and without the lord’s-name-in-vain part.

  “I don’t know. I just, it seemed like so much. I followed my high school boyfriend to college and that turned out horrible. Like, left at the altar horrible. What if I followed Ben all the way to a different country and then he left me? I’d just be sitting on a rainy sidewalk in the middle of London almost getting hit by cars going the wrong direction.”

  I’ll say this for her, the girl had a vivid imagination.

  “I don’t want to be the naysayer here, but I don’t think Ben would just drop you and leave you to fend for yourself.”

  “That would be even worse. What if we got to London and he realized he attached himself to a goofy, introverted, awkward nerd and now as a cosmopolitan international lawyer fighting environmental bad guys he saw how mismatched we were and didn’t dump me out of pity?”

  “I think he already knows who you are.” I pictured the look Ben gave Jenna when she was being particularly Jenna and smiled. The man loved that side of her. I imagine that compared to working with complex world issues all day, Jenna’s feyness had to be a restful place for his soul.

  “He can’t possibly.”

  “If he really did see you that way, then he probably would have taken this assignment as a chance to see what being apart was like. He’d be all let’s-take-a-break guy. He wouldn’t be the guy asking you to go with him.”

  “He’s very polite.”

  I snorted. Only Jenna could think someone would ask her to move across the world with him because he was being polite.

  “No one is that polite.” I waved my hand between us before she could tell me that Ben was. “Have you asked him?”

  “Asked him what?”

  “If he wants to take a break?”

  She stared at me as if I’d told her to kill the darn dream kitten. Which—no. I wasn’t that desperate.

  Yet.

  “What if he says yes? What if he wants to take a break?” I didn’t blame her the horror she felt at that thought. If I had a guy who I loved like she loved Ben, not to mention who looked at her the way he did, I’d be horrified at tempting the fates too.

  “I would bet everything I have that he wouldn’t. I would bet you’d actually scare the snot out of him and he’d think you were trying to dump him.”

  She pondered this. Any other woman would be using this as a test, as a weapon. But I knew Jenna. Part of her was considering it because if Ben would be happier without her, she’d let him go. She’d suffer and she’d enter that suffering with her eyes open, but she’d do what she thought was best for him.

  “Maybe,” she started as she raised h
er free hand to gnaw at her cuticles. “Maybe I’ll wait until close to when he goes.”

  “Will you be all mopey-sad until then?” I grabbed her hand and yanked it from her mouth in a sad attempt to rescue her knuckles.

  She yanked it back and wiped her eyes, a new surety entering her gaze.

  “No. No moping. If this is the end, I want to enjoy it all. I’ll make sure we have the best two weeks ever.”

  She gave a sharp nod as if agreeing with her own statement and was forming a plan already. Jenna was sure she’d be creating memories that would have to last her a lifetime. I was sure she’d only be driving more desperation into Ben to keep her with him.

  I kind of wish she’d taken my bet, I could use the money. I was that sure of him.

  “Thanks, Kasey. You’re a really good friend. I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t been here for me.”

  She patted my hand as I let hers go and rose to head toward the counter as if everything that had just happened had been neatly put in a box to store for later. I knew that box would be forgotten in some mental storage unit, but I was glad she was able to do it.

  I watched her, shocked at how good it felt. I had actual friends. Or, at least one. Someone to do more than go out for a drink with after work. Someone who shared her problems with you and talked them through. Someone who trusted me to be honest with her and help where I could. I was enjoying that simple pleasure when a deep voice came from behind me.

  “Hey.”

  I half expected see a kitten on Max’s shoulder when I looked up at him.

  Instead, he stood there in his cop gear, the memory of the night we met rushing up and over me like a wave on a flat ocean. Part of it was the hurt of standing on the side of the road in the dark, trying to figure out how my life had become so empty while Jason stood next to his car raving at me. But part of it was the look of disgust Officer Max had given him and the teasing behave he’d thrown at me.

  “Hey.”

  He glanced toward Jenna at the counter before stepping around my junk to sit next to me. It was a relief to not have him hovering there, overwhelming me. Until I looked at him and realized he had the capacity to be overwhelming even if you put him in a well and had to shout down at him.