by Hughes, Maya
“Hey, morning. Did you want some coffee? I can get you some.” She stood, already dressed in a tank top and boxers.
“I’ll tell you what I need.” Lunging forward, I pulled her down on top of me. “A proper good morning.” Capturing her lips with mine, I didn’t stop until her fingers curled against my skin, her nails raking down my back. “Now you can go.” I righted her and smacked her ass.
She glared at me and rubbed her left cheek. “Hey! You do realize you’re sending me out there to get a piping hot cup of coffee for you, right? It would be a real shame if I tripped on my way back in here.”
“I’ll take my chances.” I leaned back in the bed and propped my head up with my hands.
“I’ll turn on the pot and be right back.”
She left the room and gently closed the door behind her. I’d had my best night of sleep in so long holding her. The questions I’d wanted to ask had dissolved when my hands were on her. There was still so much to talk about, but right then, I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit if it would take away from the happiness I was feeling even the slightest bit.
I would uncover her reasons just as surely as she would fight me on it, but I wasn’t letting any of that detract from the contentment that settled deep into my bones. It was actually a bit scary how fast it had happened. Throwing on a pair of sweats, I followed her out into the kitchen.
The smell of vanilla, coffee, and sugar had my mouth watering.
“How the hell did you make all this so fast?”
She jumped and spun around. “You’re like a freaking cat. I didn’t make it just now. I was supposed to cook it yesterday morning, so all I had to do was put it in the oven. I came out earlier before you woke up.”
“I’m barely keeping my eyes open now—why were you up so early?”
“Force of habit. I’m at the bakery at two in the morning sometimes, so anything past six feels luxurious. It will help once school starts because I’ll have a flexible schedule for classes, so I can do homework and eat then go to the bakery.” She tugged the oven open and the wafting smell of French toast got even stronger. My stomach rumbled.
“And sleep.”
“Huh?” She closed the oven.
“You forgot about sleeping.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll squeeze that in somewhere.” She slid a mug of coffee toward me. “One sugar. I was going to make some bacon. Do you want bacon? I don’t know if everyone will like French toast, so I was thinking of doing some eggs too.”
“Avery—”
“There might be some pancake batter left.” She opened the fridge and crouched down to look at the shelves. Standing, she brought out a bowl, huge packs of bacon the guys would rip through in seconds, and some fruit.
“Avery—”
“I can chop up some fruit too.”
My chair scraped across the floor as I stood. I wrapped my arms around her waist, spinning her around. “Would you stop?”
Her eyes got wide and she stared up at me. “Stop what?”
“Stop thinking you’ve got to cater to everyone. Didn’t you keep telling me how you deserve to be here just as much as everyone else, me included? I think everyone will survive if they ‘only’ have French toast and bacon to survive on. Sit down and drink your coffee. I’ll do this.”
“But—”
“No, I’ve got it.” I spun her around and pushed her toward her chair. Grabbing her mug off the counter, I set it down in front of her. “Let someone else take care of things for a little while.”
A gentle melody came from Avery’s phone and she picked it up.
“Hey, Syd.”
The muscles in the back of my neck went tight, an involuntary reaction. I took a deep breath and laid the strips of bacon across the cookie sheet as those old feelings bubbled up again. What we’d done the night before had been totally unexpected, nothing planned. If you’d told me I’d taste her again, would feel her pressed against me and driving me wild, I’d have said you were insane, but the look in her eyes when she’d stared out the window… How did I know she wasn’t seeing someone—wasn’t cheating on them to be with me now?
The dull throb turned into a gnawing. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
“I can come back.”
A rough and scratchy voice blared through the other end of the phone. She jerked it away from her face.
“Jeez, calm down. It was only a suggestion. What about the guys in suits? Does this have to do with them?”
I opened the oven, sliding in the tray of neatly arranged salty strips beside the two dishes of baked French toast. I could practically hear her jaw grinding, so I knew the call hadn’t dropped.
“Yes, Max does have a big mouth. What’s the deal?”
She looked over at me and angled herself away a little. That hurt. Was she hiding from me? From what we’d done? From whoever was on the other end of the line?
“What?! I’m leaving right now.” She pushed away from the counter, knocking into her mug, splashing coffee everywhere. Her side of the argument went on. Every ‘no’ was met with a vehement cry from the other person.
I hated this helpless panic, hated that I had no idea who she was now, what was going on in her life, what our night meant to her.
She stood staring out the window. “Fine, but please call me if anything changes. I can be there in an hour. I love you.” Setting the phone down, she pressed her hands against the counter with her head dipped.
I tried to breathe through the doubts and rising anger caused by the thought that what we’d done had all been a mirage I’d willed into existence to satisfy my unending need for her.
“Who was that?” I kept my voice low and even.
“Syd—my boss.”
“You’re sleeping with your boss?” The question was out of my mouth before I could claw it back.
She swung around, all the tenderness and affection from earlier evaporating in an instant.
“You think I would have slept with you last night if I was seeing someone else? Sleeping with someone else?”
I sputtered, trying to grasp for the slightest bit of an excuse. “What happened last night wasn’t planned. It just happened. Maybe you didn’t mean for it to.”
“Fuck you, Emmett. Seriously.” She stomped to the oven, grabbed a towel, and checked the tray of French toast. Yanking it out, she slammed it down on the top of the stove so hard I expected the glass to shatter. She kicked the oven door closed.
I crossed to her the second the fiery hot pan was out of her hands. Wrapping my arms around her, I held on, even when she froze, her muscles tight with anger.
“I…I didn’t mean that.” My body blanketed her back, keeping her from running away from me, both hands holding on to her shoulders.
“You did. You thought I was cheating on someone else with you.” The accusation in her voice stung.
“These past few years have fucked up my head. It’s like I fell back into an old pattern. I didn’t really think you were…I don’t even know why I said it.”
“I do.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. There’s still a lot we haven’t talked about. I didn’t exactly give you lots of time to tell me everything I don’t know.” I breathed the words against her skin. Worry that I’d shattered the thing we’d only just started piecing back together tore at my soul.
Her body relaxed infinitesimally and she let out a sigh. Reaching up, she wrapped her fingers around my arm. At first I thought it was to push me away, but then she leaned back into me.
The pounding of my heart slowed when she didn’t try to make me let her go. Had I ever? Would I ever be able to let her go? I sure as hell didn’t want to. Turning her in my arms, I brushed back the hair from the side of her face and tucked it behind her ear.
We stood in silence, staring into each other’s eyes.
“Sydney is my boss. She owns the bakery.”
“Bread & Butter? You still work there?”
She nodded, her
hair tickling my nose. The only thing in the kitchen that smelled better than the French toast was her. I buried my face in her hair.
“It was her grandfather’s. There’s some issue with taxes or something. She’s disorganized, and things get away from her sometimes. I offered to go up there and actually help, but she shut me down. Maybe I should just drive back anyway…” She nibbled on her bottom lip.
Panic made my breath catch. She couldn’t leave, not yet. As it was, we only had a week left. Even that was too short.
“No, she said she’d take care of it. If she needs you, she’ll let you know.” I planted my feet. A day ago I’d have filled her car up with gas and carried her bags to help her leave. Now the thought of being apart filled me with dread. Here we were in a cocoon, hiding away from everything and everyone else while we sorted things out. What happened when the real world invaded?
“Stay with me. Don’t go,” I whispered in her ear.
She ran her palm over my cheek. “Okay.”
“Avery, I swear every morning you find a new way to wake me up drooling.”
We both jumped at the sudden intrusion when Olivia walked into the kitchen like she was sleepwalking. She shuffled around the kitchen, fixed her cup of coffee, and sat at the table. Avery cleaned up the spilled coffee, picked up her mug, and pulled out a chair. I grabbed the seat beside her, pulling her hand into my lap under the table.
“What’s cooking?” Olivia stared at us over the brim of her piping hot cup. “Other than the crazy intense banging you two were doing for the past twenty-four hours.”
“Liv!” Avery threw a handful of napkins at her head.
“I mean, if you didn’t want us to know, you two shouldn’t have been going at it against the door like that. I think they heard you on the boardwalk. Colm actually put his hands over my ears at one point.” She cracked up laughing and spilled some coffee on her hand in the process, but even singed skin didn’t stop her from nearly bursting into tears of laughter. “We figured we’d come back to the place on fire or with you two going at it like rabbits. I’m glad it was the latter.”
Avery stared at me, and I couldn’t hold back my smile. It wasn’t like I’d been trying to keep things quiet during our argument or the sex.
She shoved at my shoulder. “You’re as bad as she is.” Her cheeks were bright pink. “This is so embarrassing.” Avery buried her face in her hands.
“You don’t remember that time at the restaurant? I’m sure you were a little more embarrassed then.” I growled against the side of Avery’s face and nipped her ear. She yelped and her arms broke out in goosebumps. Flashes of our anniversary dinner back in high school and my wandering hands filled my mind.
“Please don’t start having sex on this table. It’s where we eat. But seriously, what’s for breakfast? It smells so good I might have to marry it.”
Avery went to the stove to check on the dish.
“Baked French toast, but I still need to make the cream cheese icing to drizzle over it—unless you’re good with syrup only.” She turned around to see Olivia shoveling a forkful of just-out-of-the-oven food into her mouth directly from the pan.
“I’m good with it as it is,” Olivia breathe-talked, trying to cool off the bread and sugar mixture with steam flying out of her lips.
The three of us got everything else ready and more people woke up, stumbling down the steps and into the kitchen. A night and day comparison with the previous breakfasts, this time everything felt perfect—absolutely perfect. Avery threw back her head and laughed at something Mak said, and now I didn’t have to deny what I’d felt all along. Any pain that still lingered could be cured at her hand. She had a power over me I’d tried to ignore for a long time, but this time we were going to do it right. I wasn’t going to let anything get in our way.
17
Avery
The sand and salt smell wrapped me in its breezy warm embrace out on the two-person balcony at the end of the hallway. The aroma of my too-hot coffee wafted up to my nose, and I inhaled even deeper. There were a few doors between me and Emmett, and it wasn’t a separation that offered comfort now; it was a distance that created longing. The lie I’d let him believe had evaporated in an instant. The second I’d seen that stinging hurt in his eyes, not clouded by my own anger and betrayal, I’d crumbled. Maybe that was why I’d stayed away for so long, why the thought of being in the same space as him had sent me looking for the nearest exit.
Inflicting pain on him had been like doing it to myself. I’d told myself I didn’t want to reopen the wounds that were healed over, but it was a lie.
They’d never heal until the truth between us was out, until all the ugly, painful, raw, aching cards were laid out on the table. I didn’t know if I could do that, though—tell him everything—not with what was happening with his parents, not when he was trying to repair and recapture something that had always hurt him no matter how much he pretended it didn’t. I didn’t know what my full confession would mean for us, or if there was a real ‘us’ to even worry about.
The balcony door slid open.
“Kara says her grad school friends have nothing on us.” Mak walked out and blew on her coffee.
“I can’t even imagine.” I took a sip of my own and winced. The cream and sugar hadn’t helped cut the heat that much.
“So he finally knows.” She glanced at me.
“You had to ask? I figured from what Liv said, people three states over knew.”
Mak had been telling me for years to just tell him, but there was still so much she didn’t know.
“What happens now?”
Shrugging, I took another steaming sip to buy some time. “I don’t know. He’s still kind of pissed at me, and I can’t blame him. He hasn’t said as much, but I see the little flares. I don’t think he trusts me either, like he’s willing to accept what I said because it’s what he really wanted, not because he actually believes it one hundred percent…and I don’t even know what I want.”
“I think you do.” She spun around and rested her elbows on the railing behind her, staring through the large glass door that framed the scene in front of her: everyone finishing up breakfast, sipping their coffee like reanimated zombies.
Emmett strolled down the hallway and raised his arms overhead, letting out a big yawn. His shirt rode up, showcasing his trim hips and the muscled body he’d honed during hours in the gym and on the ice. Dragging his fingers through his tousled hair, he stuck a cup under the upended coffee pot Ford held, his dimples on full display as he laughed at something one of the guys said. It had been a long time since I’d seen those dimples. The beard had hidden them back in high school, and then the scowling had erased them since.
“He shouldn’t be allowed to look that good in the morning.” I let out a sigh, the kind I hadn’t allowed myself in a long time. His casual confidence and ease had always drawn me to him, made me want to bask in the afterglow of his sureness that the world made sense.
“None of them should. We need to create a calendar or something, raise money for charity. Anyway, why are you out here all on your own?” Mak’s strawberry blonde hair flapped in the wind.
“It’s nice out here, quiet. I don’t get a lot of time to just be, to clear my head and think about things.” Breathing in the fresh sea air, I stared at the small dunes at the edge of the sand.
“What kind of things?” She bumped me with her shoulder.
“My future.”
“With Emmett?” She leaned in closer.
I shook my head. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. Now I guess things could be different…but I was thinking about September.”
“About college?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll do an amazing job. You got your associate’s even with everything you were juggling. That’s an achievement.”
“How did you know you wanted to go to med school?”
Her head jerked back and she let out a deep breath. “Funny you should say that—I didn�
��t. I don’t.”
“What? Med school is all you’ve talked about since forever.”
“I know.” She stared into her coffee like it was tea leaves ready to tell her future. “This is the summer where I decide. I’m giving myself some time off to think about what I want and why I want it.”
“Wow, that’s a big decision.”
“Tell me about it. And then there’s Declan.”
“What about him?” I followed her gaze to where he sat in the kitchen, laughing.
“He’s going to propose.”
I choked on my coffee. “Really?”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “Really. He’s been dropping hints about the future and once he gets his first pro check, I know he’s going to do something stupid like buy me a big ring with it.” She nibbled on her bottom lip.
“Would you not say yes?”
“Of course I would.” The words flew out of her mouth without hesitation. “But if I’m in med school here and he gets traded, what then?”
“What then is you two figure it out.”
“Since when have you known me not to worry about anything and everything?”
“True.”
She drummed her fingers against the mug. “Are you thinking about not going to college in the fall?”
I nodded. “Syd’s got some tax issues with the bakery and she’s thinking of giving the place up, selling it and moving to Florida. I have a bunch of money saved up for school and I was thinking maybe I could help her out, be part owner, try to bring the place into the twenty-first century.”
“I’ve tasted what you bake, so I have no doubt you’d kick ass at it. Do you think she’d go for it?”
I pushed my hair back from my face. “Maybe.” I squinted against the morning sun. “Yeah, I think she might.”
“Well, it seems we all have a lot to think about this summer. And what about Emmett? He lives in LA. What will you two do?”
I raked my hands through my hair. “I don’t even know. We just got past the ‘I’m no longer cursing a plague on both your houses’ stage. There’s been no talk of the future. Maybe this is what we both need to finally get closure on this thing.”