by Unknown
Well. Taryn does it, stretching out on the bedspread and lifting her hips obediently so he can slide a pillow underneath. The safest thing to do is quit talking, probably. This is getting out of hand, whatever it is. Still, “What happened?” she asks into the bed.
Nick gathers her hair to one side and sucks at the nape of her neck, uses his teeth down across her shoulder blades. Taryn shivers, this time not from cold. “Just family stuff.” Nick sighs against her spine. “Alexandra being Alexandra.”
Taryn rolls her hot forehead back and forth against the bedspread, telling herself to stop. Nick’s mouth is at the dip of her waist now, moving down with clear intent. It is not the mouth of a person who wants to talk about it. “I’m sorry,” she tells him uselessly, weirdly hurt by his reserve. They are not dating, God. He doesn’t owe her any explanations.
Nick pushes himself back up the bed for a second, leaning down to nose at her ear. “Don’t be sorry, Falvey,” he murmurs, planting a kiss on the thin skin at her hairline. “Night’s looking up.”
Taryn reaches back automatically to clutch at his hair, holding his head down nice and close. It’s a graceless angle but Nick stays, breath woofing across her neck as hot and humid as Atlas’s. “Yeah?” Taryn asks, shy and dumb. And like—yeah, of course it is, he just had an orgasm, but somehow Taryn gets the feeling he’s not just talking about the endorphins that go hand in hand with being buried in her vagina.
“Yeah,” Nick confirms. “Don’t have any bad nights with you.”
Oh. Well. Taryn cranes her neck around far enough to hurt, hell-bent on receiving the kiss Nick seems equally determined to give her. “Glad you called,” she finally murmurs against his mouth, picking through all the thoughts in her brain until she hits on the least embarrassing. The impulse to confess everything else too is almost irresistible. Nick just smiles, nipping at her bottom lip once before letting her turn her head to a more comfortable position.
“Not as glad as I am,” he promises, raking his teeth across her shoulder and lower, kissing down her body with intent. He’s got a thing for her dumb tattoo he thinks she doesn’t know about, how he always pays extra attention to the skin at the small of her back. “Now, are you gonna let me do this?”
Taryn wiggles against the pillow, the wet spot spreading underneath her. If he’s about to do what she’s pretty sure he’s going to do… “Um,” she pants, her brain practically shorting out as he bites at the curve of her ass. “Yes?”
Nick bites again, lower this time. “You don’t sound sure,” he teases. He rubs his scratchy chin down the backs of both thighs, licking at the places where she’s sticky. If it bothers him, no condom and the way the mess is still sliding out of her, he certainly doesn’t show it. “Are you sure?” He reaches up to spread her open, then one hundred percent doesn’t follow through, his breath washing across all the newly exposed skin. “Taryn. You gotta tell me.”
Taryn whines against the mattress, impatient. She’s not afraid to ask for what she wants, but Christ. Instead of using words she shifts up onto her knees, spreading her legs wide and pornographic. Nick groans against her body so she can feel the rumble of it clear up her spine, clever mouth everywhere like there’s no part of her he isn’t after. Taryn fists her hands tight in the blankets and hangs on.
It’s close to four in the morning when she finally makes it home (“Stay,” he muttered, one arm slung heavy over her hip, both of them in and out of sleep in his big, warm bed—and God, she thought about it, but she promised to quiz Connor on his state capitals at breakfast and probably some distance isn’t the worst thing in the world right now). Jesse’s in the living room when she lets herself in, TV glowing blue across his sharp face.
“Hey,” she says, dropping her bag on the armchair. She feels fucked-out and sleepy, damp and slick inside her jeans. She’s got to be up by six thirty. “Thought everybody would be in bed by now.”
Jesse raises his eyebrows at her over the back of the sofa. “Why?” he asks, a teasing lilt in his voice that might be friendly and might not be. “Is it late?”
What are you, my warden? Taryn almost echoes, then thinks better of it. He hung out with the kids tonight after all, even though Rosemary’s still behaving herself for the most part and it would have been easy for him to just shrug and take off. That’s what he did all last fall, the temper tantrums that started up the second Taryn floated the idea of moving in with Pete—Rosemary was sober then too, so at first it wasn’t like he was actually leaving the kids alone. Whole weeks at his girlfriend Sheena’s, pouting like a kid, but Taryn let it go because in the beginning it didn’t matter that much. She’d laid out her plan for him calmly, visiting and how she’d still chip in on the bills, and that was that. She really believed they’d be fine without her. It didn’t matter that Jesse didn’t believe it too, because she always assumed he’d come around.
Only he never did.
He fell off the face of the planet entirely, and then everything went to shit, and here they all are. In the interest of avoiding a repeat of that cycle, Taryn purposely hasn’t said anything about Nick to her family. Still, if the way Jesse’s looking at her is any indication, the cat’s basically out of the bag. “Thanks for tonight,” is the reply she finally settles on.
Jesse shrugs, eyes on the television. “No big deal,” is all he says.
Taryn hesitates. Back when they were younger she and Jesse used to stay up all night watching crap movies on Channel 11, buddy comedies and 80s cop flicks until the sky turned gray through the windows on the east side of the living room. For a second she thinks about asking him what’s on now, if they can find something extra awful with Mel Gibson or something, but when she opens her mouth to try it the words get stuck in her throat. “Night, Jess,” she tells him quietly. Heads up the stairs to catch some sleep.
Chapter Eleven
Nick’s got two days off in a row the following week, so he buckles the hell down and has Joe come over to help him get the kitchen counters laid before the hockey game. Once they’re in he finishes up the downstairs bathroom too, and just like that the whole first level is pretty much done except for paint and hardware. Slowly, slowly, Nick starts ripping out the dusky pink carpet in the upstairs bedrooms. Guest bedrooms first, one by one, until all that’s left is the master.
“Looks good,” Taryn says when she comes by after shift one afternoon, this little pink smirk on her face like possibly the whole HGTV thing is working for her. Nick—yeah. Nick’s not above taking advantage of that at all. He lays her out across the newly installed granite as soon as the mortar’s set, everything coming full circle since the night of the fire.
She must be remembering it too now, because she butts her face at his to get his attention, and when Nick looks up her eyes are serious and shy. “Sorry I was a dick,” she murmurs, rubbing her sticky mouth along his jaw. “After that first time. I liked you, I just—”
Nick breathes out hard against her neck, touched and not wanting to let on. “I mean, you’re always kind of a dick,” he says after a minute, laughing when she comes out swinging.
Things between him and Taryn are surprisingly good, considering. Nick was worried he’d scared her off with how heavy shit got on Sunday night, but she’s come over twice and stayed over once since then, messy-haired and childish when he wakes her up for work the next morning. Nick makes pancakes while she sits beside the butcher block and yawns, those small, peach-tipped breasts stretching out the front of one of his old undershirts. For the first time in years, Nick thinks seriously about calling in sick.
“Here,” he says instead, sliding a full plate toward her, plus the bottle of sickly sweet Aunt Jemima he bought special. He’s learned a couple of things about Taryn these past few weeks, mostly inconsequential stuff like how she prefers her eggs—runny—but also larger clues, like the fact that she’s never had real maple syrup before and hates the taste. “The fake stuff is a third of the price,” was all she said when he asked, shrugging as if that
explained everything.
Which—maybe it does.
They haul ass to work a while later, both of them in the Tahoe because an early March storm has rendered Taryn’s car useless. Nick is careful to drop her off at the front door before parking, staggering their arrival times by a few precious seconds. Lynette may be on to them but nobody else is, at least if the roster is any indication. Together again today, Nick notices, glancing at the posted list. It’s the second time this week. He’d be lying if he said he minded.
“Stop stalking me,” Taryn accuses when he meets her by the bus, tongue caught firmly between her teeth. Her hair is neat as a pin now, scraped back into a tight bun. The young pre-med kid named Doc looks up from her checklist just as Nick tweaks a stray piece.
Shit.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling back and shoving both hands into his pockets, stupid and obvious. “I don’t actually think that’s what I’m doing.” Fuck fuck fuck. He might as well have gone ahead and kissed her, for all the good the damage control does—Doc’s eyes are saucers.
Taryn doesn’t seem bothered. “I’ll be the judge,” she declares, shooting Doc one of those secret girl looks that could either mean shut up or later. Still, Nick goes through the rest of his own checklist on autopilot, dread weighing down his stomach like lead.
Turns out he’s worried for nothing. When they’re both inside the ambulance cab, sealed off from the world, Taryn takes one look at his face and bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, relax,” she tells him, this tickled expression behind those pale, witchy eyes. “It’s just Emily. We’re friends.”
Nick exhales. “You relax,” he says, aware he sounds just as full of it as she does most of the time. He’s smiling though; he can’t help himself. He thought he blew that play, and it turns out he didn’t, and—well. He’s smiling.
It’s a light day, a baby in respiratory distress and a high school hockey player with a gruesome broken femur. They’re standing in the ambulance bay loading the stretcher back into the bus when the plexiglass doors to the ER whoosh open and somebody calls Taryn’s name. “Hey. Tare, wait.”
Nick turns around before Falvey does, already sort of knowing. Sure enough, there’s Pete, her ex-boyfriend, wearing scrubs and Chuck Taylors, a stethoscope slung around his neck. He’s maybe twenty-eight, twenty-nine at the outside.
Nick feels his own heartbeat speed up. He’s not much for jealousy—he tried not to even let himself think about her last year after the fire, how it didn’t feel worth it to torture himself any more than was absolutely necessary—but.
But.
Taryn goes quiet and tense in a way that reminds Nick of the deer he sees in the woods when he’s out with Atlas, all sharp chin and that animal wariness. Then she recovers. “I’m working right now,” she says with a shrug, the brush-off ruthless in its clean, deadly efficiency. “Sorry.”
Pete frowns, crossing his arms against the frosty wind. “It’ll take five minutes.” He looks from Taryn to Nick. “Look, you don’t mind if she comes with me for five minutes, do you?”
“Don’t talk to him,” Taryn snaps, and Nick’s not sure which one of them he’s addressing—he does mind, actually, but fuck if he’d ever articulate that particular objection out loud. They’re not even dating, for Christ’s sake. “Don’t ask his permission. If I wanted to talk, we’d be talking.” She shakes her head, stubborn. “We’d have talked.”
“Seriously?” The kid sounds hurt, face falling. Even Nick’s taken aback by her brusqueness. And he knew that about her, he guesses, that she’s the kind of person who decides something’s done and then it’s finished, but it’s different to see it happening. “We were going to move in together, and now you won’t even—I’m sorry, Tare, okay? I fucked things up with your family, I get that, but I was just—” He holds up his hands. “I said I’m sorry.”
Which—huh. Nick takes a couple steps back then, wanting to give them some room and wanting to know what the hell happened in exactly equal amounts, but Taryn shakes her head again to stop him. “It’s fine,” she says, shrugging, all this uncomfortable body language. Nick feels like he’s got gravel in his throat. “We’re going.”
Pete curls into himself like a defeated teenager, hands shoved in his armpits and his tall, rangy frame compressing awkwardly. It makes him look about as young as Falvey. Just for a second, Nick recognizes something there—someone else who’s been on the end of one of Taryn’s cold, emotionless gazes. Whatever else Nick may feel about this guy, there’s that. “Okay,” Pete is saying now. “I get it, I just—Tare, I know there are programs, and—”
Christ, it’s like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Falvey wheels, sharp, furious face and white teeth lined up in her mouth like something set to bite. “Do not,” she says, low and deadly. “You were in our lives for two seconds, Pete. You know nothing.” Then she closes her fingers around Nick’s wrist and tugs, dragging him toward the bus with the strength of a person twice her size. Nick’s so surprised he allows it, letting himself be manhandled like a child.
He’s been the one driving all day, but when they get to the door Taryn hauls herself up into the rig without a single look back, adjusting the seat to her height in two firm jerks. Nick catches the door just before she slams it. “Give me a sec, okay?” he murmurs. He heads around back to finish loading the stretcher properly, fully aware of Pete’s eyes on him the whole time. When he finally closes the passenger door behind him, the cab is pin-drop silent for the second time today.
This time, Taryn doesn’t break the tension with a laugh.
She doesn’t say anything for forty-five minutes, in fact, straight through a false-alarm call they catch almost as soon as they pull out of Fairview, chest pains that end up being nothing more serious than heartburn. “Eat less,” Taryn tells the patient, curt enough that Nick worries they might have a complaint on their hands. “Maybe quit smoking.”
He’s painfully curious, of course, but the shut-down look on Falvey’s face coupled with how close to the edge he felt this morning is more than enough to sew his mouth closed. It’s only when Taryn pulls the bus into a Dunkin’ Donuts, on idle in the parking lot so they can both pee, that Nick ventures something non-work-related. “You okay?”
Falvey shakes her head, white underneath her freckles.
Nick tries again. “You want to talk about it?”
Another shake.
So. That’s that, he guesses.
But when he comes back after taking a leak, instead of pulling out into traffic Falvey turns the engine off entirely. “Look,” she says, tucking her cold hands between her thighs. “About earlier.”
Nick inhales. He wants like all hell to touch her, to curl his fingers around her skinny wrist or pull her into his lap, but he doesn’t want her to spook and change her mind. He settles for reaching out and sliding one hand behind her knee like that day at the diner, tugging until she’s facing him. “Yeah,” he says.
Taryn rolls her eyes at the gesture, but she doesn’t move. Nick keeps his hand right where it is. “I guess…” She trails off and tries again, sighing. “I guess I thought being with Pete was, like, a solution to something,” she says, looking hard at a spot in the neighborhood of his left shoulder. “But it wasn’t.”
Nick watches her, gauging. The bend of her knee is very warm. “A solution to what, exactly?” he asks.
Taryn shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, like no arguments. “That’s not the point.”
It’s exactly the point, how obsessive she is about not owing him anything, the way she still always waits for him outside her house. There are programs, Pete said. A picture is starting to firm up in Nick’s mind, but he’s not sure enough about it to push. “You love him?” he asks instead.
“Pete?” Taryn shrugs. “I thought I did, maybe. Or that, like, eventually I could.” She pulls one booted foot up onto the seat, rests her sharp chin on her knee. “You think I’m terrible,” she says. “Look at you. You think I’m the
worst person in the world.”
Nick shakes his head. “No, I don’t,” he says. “You don’t know what I think.”
“No?” Taryn sits back, raising her eyebrows. Out the window a woman holds the door to the coffee shop open, two little kids with pink-frosted doughnuts and big, sugary smiles darting underneath her arm. It’s staying lighter later into the afternoon these last few days. “What’s that?”
Nick hesitates. I care about you, he wants to tell her. I think about you, you scare the shit out of me, you make me lighter than I’ve been since I can remember and I am always and perpetually waiting for the sound of the other shoe hitting the floor.
“I want to take you out,” is what he says.
For a second Falvey doesn’t say anything, like of all the responses she’d anticipated, that wasn’t one of them. Then she looks him in the eye for the first time since this morning. “Like—”
“For a burger, Falvey, I don’t know.” Nick huffs out a nervous laugh. He’s been thinking about it on and off for weeks, is the truth, an actual sit-down meal that doesn’t take place at his kitchen island. What he’d like is to take her out out—somewhere with a wine list, maybe, somewhere nice—but he gets the feeling she’d do a runner if he so much as suggested it. “First moves,” he supplies instead, like a challenge. He’s done playing it cool.
Taryn blinks. “Huh.” She flexes her knee, the muscles tightening around his crooked fingers in a move that may or may not be deliberate. “So like, I tell you what a horrible long-term girlfriend I am and your first impulse is to ask me on a date?”
“Pretty much,” he says eventually, shrugging. “Why, you don’t wanna go?”
Falvey frowns. “I didn’t say that,” she mutters, huffing like a teenager, and right then Nick knows he’s going to get his way. He forces himself not to react. They sit in silence for a moment longer, watching each other.
Falvey breaks first. “Okay,” she announces, rolling her eyes and turning the key in the ignition. “When?”