by Megan Hart
There was still a moment when it could have gone a different way. If Sean hadn’t shifted again to press his thigh to mine in a move more blatantly sexual than Patrick had ever made on me, or if I’d come with a date the way I’d planned…or if it hadn’t been New Year’s Eve and I hadn’t still been in love with the one man I would never have.
“Actually, I’m going to grab something to drink.”
“Want me to come with you?” Sean smiled an easy, quirking smile that would’ve charmed me senseless if it hadn’t been almost identical to his brother’s.
“No. I’ll be right back.” My own hard-edged smile must’ve put him off, finally, because I escaped to the kitchen without a tagalong.
I didn’t want a drink, really. I needed some fresh air to clear my head. I was absolutely not going to give in to the glums, not tonight, not ever. Not again. I was fine.
I was fine until I shrugged into my coat and found the small, wrapped package in my pocket. I’d meant to give it to Patrick some time when we were alone, not in front of the group. I’d bought him a button featuring the stabbity knife from his favorite cartoon, Kawaii Not. He’d gotten me hooked on the quirky, sick-sense-of-humor artwork, and it was one thing we still shared that he didn’t with anyone else. I’d wrapped the button in nondenominational paper and scribbled his name across it. I’d wanted to make sure, so fucking sure, he knew how casual and careless a present it had been. An afterthought. Not important.
But feeling it there, the button’s round edge through the cheap paper, I knew I was the only one who’d have ever thought it was important, or meaningful.
By the time I got out the back door and down the porch steps, I was crying. My vision blurred. Tears froze on my cheeks. They burned, and I stumbled. I drew in a hitching, labored breath that seared my lungs. I made it all the way down the path and past the detached garage before I burst into raw, hateful sobs. I stopped, a hand on the bare wood, to swipe at my eyes.
“Fuck!” I cried when I saw I was not alone. “Where’d you come from?”
Alex, bundled against the weather, stood beneath the eves. He’d been leaning, but straightened now. In one hand he held a cigarette that wasn’t lit.
“I went around the front of the house. Olivia? Are you all right?”
“Do I look like I’m all right?” I’m sure I meant to answer him calmly, but the words shot out of me, riding the backs of more sobs. I pounded the garage wall. “No! I am not all right!”
I covered my face and sobbed into my gloves. The noises in my throat became like those of rusted gears, grinding against each other until the whole machine broke down and stopped. I became aware of a firm hand on my shoulder and then an even firmer chest against my cheek. I hadn’t realized he was so tall until my head fit just beneath Alex’s chin. His coat smelled good. The hand not holding the cigarette stroked down my back.
I’m all for equality of the sexes and everything, but I bet there are few women out there who’d have been able to resist the allure of the comfort Alex offered. Strong arms, manly chest. I didn’t want words or advice. I didn’t even really want to tell him what had happened, only wanted to stop feeling so bad. When I finally drew away, my sobs had stopped but I didn’t feel any better.
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year, my ass.” Alex put the cigarette between his lips. “Holiday time is shitsville.”
I tucked my hands into my pockets. “Yeah.”
He nodded. That was it. No explanation. No further assurances.
I looked him over. The streetlamp made his eyes seem darker, his skin paler. I watched him lip the end of the cigarette, then take it out of his mouth and draw in a breath of frigid air.
“Are you smoking that? Or not?”
“Not,” he said. “I quit.”
“So what the hell are you d-doing out here?” I said around chattering teeth. “It’s freaking freezing.”
“Ah…old habits. You know when you smoke you always have an excuse to duck out of a place when you want to.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I scrubbed at my face, not just to wipe away tears but to get some warmth circulating. “I should’ve gone out with that guy I met at the coffee shop. He wanted to take me to some package deal at the Hotel Hershey. Dinner and big band dancing. I’m sure there would have been plenty of chocolate, and a guy to kiss at midnight. Do you know how many years it’s been since I had a date to kiss at midnight?”
“Can’t have been that many.”
My laugh sounded faintly of the same grinding gears my sobs had. “Too many. And not because I haven’t had offers!”
“I wouldn’t have assumed that.”
Surreal. All of this. The night, the conversation. The man in front of me lipped his cigarette again, then let it dangle from the corner of his mouth.
“I didn’t have a formal dress, but that’s not why I didn’t go.”
Alex watched me with a faint smile for my babbling.
“Go ahead and ask me why I passed up a night at the Hotel Hershey to come here, instead.”
“Oh, I know why,” Alex said.
My shoulders slumped. I blinked my sore and swollen eyes. “You do?”
“You love him.”
If anything should’ve made me cry that night, it was those three words, said as simply and matter-of-factly as that. Maybe I was cried out by then, dehydrated. Frozen. All I could manage was a shake of my head and a sigh that blew my breath out in a long plume.
The crack of fireworks came from down the street. A church bell tolled. Tears welled up again and clogged my throat.
“Dammit,” I whispered. “It’s midnight.”
“Happy New Year,” Alex said.
Then he tossed aside the cigarette, pulled me into his arms and kissed me.
Chapter
06
His mouth, warm and soft, pressed mine for about five seconds before I managed to react, and by that time he’d pulled away just enough to murmur against my lips, “I don’t have any chocolate. Sorry.”
I stepped back and put a hand over my smiling mouth. “It’s all right. You didn’t have to do that.”
He fixed me with a steady gaze. “What makes you think I didn’t want to do that?”
Alex doesn’t like girls, Patrick had said.
“Well, thank you,” I told him. “I’m sorry I cried all over you and burdened you with my blabber. Again. It’s not the best way to start the New Year.”
He put his hand on his stomach and gave a silly little half bow. “My pleasure. Really. Knight-in-shining-armor shit always makes my New Year. It’s my fucking resolution, actually.”
I’d been sure I wouldn’t laugh for a good long time, but now I did. Loudly. It hurt my throat, but felt good just the same. “You should go back inside. Aside from being freezing out here, you’re missing the party.”
He looked over his shoulder, across the yard, to the house. “Right. The party. I think I’m heading home, actually.”
I nodded. “Ah. Okay.”
“You okay to drive?” He moved a little closer and put a hand on my shoulder.
“I wasn’t really drinking. I’ll be fine.”
His fingers squeezed gently. “You sure? I can drive you.”
“No, really. I’m okay.” I shivered and clamped my teeth against further clattering. “I’m going to go. I’m an icicle.”
He laughed and released me. “So much for global warming, huh? You wouldn’t know it by this weather. Drive carefully, Olivia.”
“I will. And, Alex,” I said as he turned toward the sidewalk. He looked back at me. “Thanks again. And Happy New Year.”
He tipped an imaginary hat. “I told you, it was my pleasure.”
He’d already disappeared around the corner of the house when I got my feet moving. I was going to go inside, get my things and head home. No more sitting too close to Sean’s brother, no more mooning over what might have been and never was.
“Where were you?” Patrick cornered me t
he moment I walked in through the back door. “It’s past midnight. You missed the toast.”
“I needed some air.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Patrick closed his eyes and turned away, held up his hand. “Never mind. I saw you.”
I saw betrayal on his face, clear as any expression I’d ever seen there. What picture would tell this story? “Saw me what?”
“With him.” Acid dripped from his voice, but he kept it pitched low, with a glance through the kitchen door toward the living room.
“Who? Alex? Jesus, Patrick…it was just—”
“Whatever.” He cut me off with a slash of his hand.
I stopped being sorry just then. Patrick, staring at me with fury burning in his gaze, was jealous. And I, seeing this for the first time, thought of how many other times over the past few years he’d steered me away from or out of potential relationships, knowing I loved him and trusted his judgment as my friend.
“You have no right.” My voice wavered alarmingly.
“I have every right! This is my house!”
“It was a New Year’s kiss from a friend. Hell, Patrick, you’ve gone down on guys when I was in the same room!”
He couldn’t deny that, but he wasn’t going to let that make a difference.
The look he gave me said it all, and then he looked away. His throat worked as he swallowed. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him this angry with me, and couldn’t. We seldom fought. Patrick and I were always best friends.
“What a really shitty thing to do to me,” he said finally.
“To you? I didn’t do it to you, Patrick. Or to anyone. If anyone has a right to be upset—” It was my turn to swallow against burning words. “I think I should go.”
He blocked the doorway. “You can’t rush out of here. Everyone will want to know why.”
“Do you think I care?” Tired, worn, and still too much in love with him to be able to be this close without wanting him, I stood my ground but didn’t touch him. “Really, Patrick? Do you think I give a flying fuck what anyone here thinks?”
“I thought you were staying over. It’s New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow we’ll have pancakes and…” He faltered.
“I’m not staying. And really, I think I should go. It’s better.”
“I fucked him, Olivia,” Patrick said tightly after a half a moment. “Just once. Teddy doesn’t know.”
“God, Patrick. Just…oh, my God. When?”
He shook his head, then gave it up. “Christmas.”
“In your house? With Teddy there? What the…” I swallowed hard. Jealous didn’t even describe it. “How could you? And you’re angry with me? What a shitty thing to do!”
“Teddy knows I sometimes sleep with other guys—”
“Yeah, he knows. That’s the point, isn’t it? That he knows who they are? And when you’re doing it? Fuck, Patrick, I wish I didn’t even know this.” About his arrangement with Teddy, about his sex life. About everything.
“Don’t you tell him.”
“Do I even know you?” I whispered.
Patrick cleared his throat. “Don’t tell Teddy, Liv. Please.”
“Why would I? I love Teddy. Why would I hurt him like that? Why would you?” I added, and rubbed my hand across my eyes. This was one big basket of fucked-up. “Why would you tell me this now, anyway?”
“I didn’t tell you. You forced me to tell you.”
He wanted to tell me, or he wouldn’t have. I’d just begun to warm up from being outside, and now I went cold again. From down the hall, Teddy’s loud laughter drifted. I swallowed a sour taste. I crossed my arms, more jealousy stabbing me all over, in tender places I didn’t even know existed.
“Fuck you, Patrick. That’s why you don’t want me hanging around him. You’re not jealous of him, you’re jealous of me?”
“I’m not jealous,” he growled. “I’m just trying to protect you.”
“From what? Clue me the fuck in, okay? Because it seems to me you’re not trying to protect me from anything. You’re just trying to…Fuck. I don’t know what!” I swallowed years of longing. “I am not a fucking coffeepot!”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Patrick reached for me.
I pulled away. “It means…it just means…What do you want me to do? Make him move out? Not be his friend because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants? What the fuck do you think is going to happen, Patrick?”
“Nothing,” he said sullenly.
I shook my head. Patrick stepped back. I waited for him to say he was sorry, or to make some effort at touching me again, but I was glad when he didn’t. Nothing he said or did could make this right, or make it go away.
“I’d better leave.”
He didn’t try to stop me this time. I pushed past him and into the hall, where I waited for him to come after me. He didn’t. I went down the back stairs and grabbed up my coat. In the front room, the squall of Rock Band had been replaced by the sound of party horns on the television. They’d tuned in to the Times Square celebration. The television was showing a local news program, coverage of the post-midnight New Year’s festivities. In Central Pennsylvania we’re big fans of dropping strange things from the sky on December 31. The newscaster was talking about the giant Lebanon bologna being donated to feed the homeless.
At home, Alex’s apartment was dark and quiet, no light beneath the door. This time, I didn’t knock.
“Halllp!” The small figure behind the towering stack of boxes and bags overflowing her arms cried out, but too late.
I managed to catch a couple of the packages, but most of them hit the floor at our feet. Sarah sighed and stared. I laughed, and she shook her finger at me.
“You’d better hope there was nothing breakable in those.”
“Why on earth would you have bought anything breakable for me?” I crouched to help her gather up all the things she’d brought. “Where do you want all this stuff?”
“On the table.”
Sarah’d been the one to find the long dining-room table set up in the center of my studio. I called it vintage, she referred to it as antique, but it had cost a hundred sixty bucks at the local church’s resale shop and came with a set of ten chairs. Only two of them had been reupholstered, and the others were all stacked along the wall, waiting their turn. When it was finished the whole set would be fantastic and impressive, just the sort of thing I’d always dreamed of having in an office of my own.
We settled the packages on the table’s scarred surface. Sarah regarded them critically. “I feel like there should be more.”
I looked at all she’d brought in with her. “More than this?”
She clicked a blue-painted fingernail against her teeth as she mused. “I guess we’ll see when they’re all open.”
I rubbed my hands together. “Then let’s open them up!”
Sarah laughed and grabbed a hair band from around her wrist, then used it to pile the mass of her blue-and-purple hair on top of her head. She pushed up the sleeves of her slim-fitting, silver spangled T-shirt and put her hands on the hips of her black skinny jeans, just over the black leather belt with its rhinestone-encrusted buckle. She was studying the array of goodies she’d brought while I was studying her, and when she caught me looking, she laughed.
“Sweet, huh?”
“What made you decide to go back to blue?”
She grinned and ran a hand over the unruly strands of multihued hair. “I dunno. Orange and red was a little too harsh and green won’t stay in. I like the blue and purple.”
I did, too. I’d tried dying my dark hair a few times, but without stripping the color from it first, nothing would show up. I’d given up on trying to bust out of that box. “I like it, too. I told you that before.”
“I know, I know.” She waved a hand. “I just wanted to try something different.”
I laughed. “Because everyone else has blue-and-purple hair.”
Sarah made a face and gave me the finger.
“Fuck you.”
I blew her a kiss. “Not today. I have a headache.”
She guffawed, the bold, bright laughter that turned heads, and slapped her thigh. “Do you want to see what I brought you or not?”
Of course I did. My studio had been bare and gutted when I bought the old firehouse. Sarah, whose design work I’d have admired even if she wasn’t my friend, had agreed to help me turn it into the professional-looking space I desired. In return, I’d promised to do her brochures and Web site and other graphic design-type stuff. Oh, and to take her picture whenever she wanted, which was usually every time she changed her hair. So that was pretty often.
I didn’t care. She always let me put the best pictures up on my Connex page, the one I kept for the rest of the world and not just friends. She was always willing to pose for me, too, if I had an idea in mind for something special. Sarah loved to dress up and put on makeup, but didn’t have any hang-ups about how she looked, or at least not as many as a lot of the “models” I had access to did. And she was okay with doing crazy stuff and looking silly, which most models definitely were not.
She pulled a length of material from the first bag. “Picked this up at a yard sale at a Mennonite place last summer. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
She held out the end for me to feel. Soft, auburn velvet, delicately embossed with a faint pattern of trefoils. She caught my gaze.
“For the side wall.” She pointed to the long, plain, windowless expanse. “I’m going to tack up some furring strips, top and bottom, and shirr this in between. I have some other stuff, too, some sheers. You’ll be able to hang your portraits and stuff over it.”
She started opening other packages. Bolts and stray pieces of material spilled out onto the table.
“Sarah, that’s too much. I can’t take your entire fabric supply. I was just going to paint the walls.”
She sighed and turned to me. Sarah’s a good five inches shorter than me. Despite this, she has no problem staring me down. “Liv.”