He frowned, eyeing the bunch—there was an arm-wrestling match going on, with a lot of cheering by the onlookers. “Ehh? This is pretty chill. We’re going easy because this wedding thing is turning into a two-week ordeal, so we gotta pace ourselves.”
“This is chill?”
He nodded. “It gets pretty rowdy sometimes.”
I nodded. “It’s just weird. Nobody has gotten feisty, yet. Where I come from, a party ain’t a party till someone’s got a black eye.”
Bast shook his head, blowing a raspberry. “Hell, no, dude. We’re tight. Plus, there are some dangerous dudes in this group, and none of us want to risk that kind of damage on drunk-ass bullshit.” He gestured at one of the guys—shorter than Bast, resembling him, but with a razor-sharp, lethal air to him. “That’s my brother Zane, an ex-SEAL. He knows more ways to kill you bare-handed than I can count. Bax, the one with the wannabe mohawk, used to be a bare-knuckle prize brawler, and he never lost. So no, we never get like that. And me? Well…look at me. Been a few fellas that have seen the wrong end of my big ol’ fists.” He shook his head. “Nah, fightin’ ain’t our family ethos, if you get me.”
Not in their family ethos.
My heart twinged.
I shoved that down, savagely.
By the time the party started dwindling, and the guys began saying their goodbyes and leaving with their women, I was clobbered. I was able to walk, but I was drunk. I ambled carefully downstairs and found Torie on the couch, her legs across Charlie’s thighs, her head on Lexie’s lap, passed out, with Claire sitting on the other side of Lexie, braiding Torie’s hair into a billion tiny braids.
I felt my heart twinge again, this time it was the sight of Torie with her family. “Looks like somebody overdindulged.” I shook my head. “Thass not the right word. Overindulged.”
Claire snickered, held her cell phone to her mouth and pretended to be talking into a walkie-talkie. “Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. Come in, Pot, over.”
I nodded and leaned heavily against a wall. “Yep. I have a not very good tolerance. Not a drinker-er of heavy alcohols.” I shook my head. “Fuck, I sound stupid even to myself.”
“Don’t worry, you sound plenty stupid to us, too,” Claire said, her voice bright and chipper. “It’s all good, bro. We got your back.”
“Sweet of you to say, but you don’t know me. I got my own back. I’ve had my own back since I was fuckin’…fuckin’ twelve. Ain’t nobody never had my back but me.”
Lexie’s gaze upon me was speculative, sorrowful. “Speaking from experience here, buddy—that is a toxic as fuck way of thinking. Keeps you isolated and lonely, and keeps you from opening yourself to people who can, will, and want to bring you into their lives.” She gestured at the saloon, which was now occupied by Liv and Lucas, Lexie, Charlie, Cassie, Ink, Myles, Crow, Harlow, and Xavier—and shit but I was proud of myself for remembering all those names and faces. “Case in point.”
The twinge in my heart was suddenly like a crack, the way a chip in a windshield turns into a spider web of breaks.
“I’m leavin’ in the mornin’,” I said. “First light.”
Myles laughed. “Yeah, okay, killer. You can barely stand upright, and it’s already damn near first light now.”
Ink, who was even more bearlike than Lucas with his long black hair and thick beard, put a paw on my shoulder—he managed to actually be gentle enough that my teeth didn’t rattle. “Listen up, man. We all, every single one of us, knows where you’re at, right now. None of us got much by way of family outside this group. It’s why we’re as tight as we are. And the thing that binds us is that we chose this as our place, as our home, and chose this group as our family. Every single motherfuckin’ one of us had to decide if we had the balls to make the choice between the lonely road we’d been going down, and a new, scary road full of new people. Trust me, I fuckin’ get it. And I get you can’t just drop your whole life and stay here.”
“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s…her. Us. It’s tricky.”
“Tricky meanin’ you scared, bro,” Crow said, a small smirk on his lips.
“Yeah, I am,” I admitted. “Known her less’n a week. And suddenly it’s like…it’s like someone else is walkin’ around the world with my actual physical heart in her fuckin’ hands. How the fuck does it happen so fast?”
Crow nodded. “All of us wondered the same thing. And funny part is, a relationship like this?” He gestured at Charlie and then himself. “It’s just a question of getting used to that feeling. Trusting her to carry your heart around.”
“The real funny part of it is,” Lucas put in, “you come to realize she takes a hell of a lot better care of it than you do.”
“I dunno if I’m too drunk to be having this conversation, or just drunk enough that it’s making more sense than I’m comfortable with,” I said.
“Bit of both, I’d guess,” Lucas rumbled. “Come on.”
“Where’m I going?” I slurred.
“Harlow has offered one of her extra berths down below for you to crash in. Be easier than tryin’ to get your butt back across town to Liv’s.”
“What about her?” I asked, gesturing at Torie.
“We’ve got her,” Lexie said, flicking a thumb at herself, Charlie, and Cassie. “You’ll see her in the morning.”
I shook my head. “I gotta go home. Gotta rip the Band-Aid off.”
“If you leave without saying goodbye to her, you’d best not even think about coming back,” Cassie said, hard eyes scrutinizing me. “Because that’d be it for you.”
I shook my head. “Couldn’t. Couldn’t not say goodbye. ‘I may be an asshole,’” I quoted, “‘but I’m not a hundred percent a dick.’”
“Guardians of the Galaxy,” Lexie said. “Anyone who can quote great movies can’t be all bad.”
“Come on, guardian of the galaxy,” Lucas said, his huge paw nudging me toward a steep staircase. “Time for bed.”
I stared at the stairs, which were more ladder than stairs. “I can’t go down that.”
Lucas laughed. “Sure you can. Take it like a ladder. Plus, it ain’t that far. You fall, you’re drunk enough you won’t feel it.”
I nodded. Tried it, and made it down without issue. Lucas showed me the berth, which was a luxury one-room apartment nicer than anything I’d ever stayed in. Big bed, a round window showing the waterline not far below, a bureau built into the wall. I collapsed onto the bed, half asleep by the time I hit the mattress.
“Thanks, Lucas,” I mumbled.
“No problem, kiddo,” he growled. “You’re all right, Rhys. You’re a good kid.”
“Someone’s gonna find out,” I heard myself say, “So it may as well be you.”
“Find out what?”
“Torie knows. She’s been good about it so far, but it’s just a matter of time.”
“The hell are you talking about, kid?”
“RJ. It’s gonna happen, somebody is gonna hear it. Been RJ my whole life. Rhys Jonathan—RJ to everybody.”
“RJ, huh?” He laughed. “I’ll keep your secret for now.”
I felt myself spinning.
I heard the floor creak under Lucas’s bulk.
“Lucas?” I said.
“Yeah, kid.”
“How d’you know it’s real, and worth it? Love, I mean. When it’s only been four or five days. Or six, or however many it’s been. How do you know?”
“You don’t. You jump outta the airplane and hope the parachute opens. Ain’t any other way of doing it.”
“Love is like parachuting?”
“Well, all three of my boys jumped outta airplanes for a living, and all three of ’em have made the comparison, so I guess it’s probably pretty accurate.”
“I’m not a risk taker,” I mumbled, my face smashed into the mattress. “I make plans and I stick to them, and I don’t deviate.”
“And then life comes along and fucks your plans right up the pooper. And that’s when you
realize sometimes you gotta leave the plans behind and just…go off road.”
“You got a lot of metaphors.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Okay,” I said. “Night night time.”
I fell asleep, and for the first time in days, I didn’t dream about Torie. But only because I was too wasted to dream about anything.
Torie
I woke up with a pounding headache and a dry mouth. I felt bodies on both sides of me—Lexie on my left, Charlie on my right. I was pinned between them, and I had to pee so bad it hurt.
I struggled out from under the blankets and army crawled across the bed to the foot, flopped ungracefully to the floor in a pile of moaning drunk girl, stumbled to my feet using the wall and door post. Where was I? I didn’t recognize the room. The door was weird, too. I opened it, stumbled out, and wondered if I was still more drunk than I thought, or if the floor was moving. A glance out a nearby round window showed the world tipping up and down—and I remembered I was on a boat.
I found a bathroom and spent a very, very long time relieving myself, washed up, and followed my nose topside to coffee. Harlow was sitting at a tiny bistro table in the bow of the boat, wearing a bikini and sunglasses and a big floppy hat, with a pour-over coffee set on the table and a tray of upside-down white porcelain mugs beside it.
She heard me, twisted, and smiled at me. “Hi, there! Surprised to see you upright this early. You’re the first one up.”
I followed the railing and hesitated, squinting in the bright post-dawn sunlight—this was her boat, her coffee, and I didn’t want to just assume or invite myself into her quiet moment alone. “Yeah, my bladder woke me up.”
“No matter how drunk I get, my bladder wakes me up every time,” she said, laughing. “So I commiserate with that.” She tugged her sunglasses off, and patted the open chair. “Here, sit. Put these on.”
And just like that, I had Harlow Grace’s personal sunglasses on my face and she was pouring me coffee. Thick, black, strong coffee.
“This is amazing coffee,” I said.
Harlow sighed, a smile hidden behind her mug. “Isn’t it? Xavier makes it. He has this whole process he insists on, and I don’t know what it all includes but it ends up with this truly amazing coffee.”
“Where is Xavier?”
“Oh, he made me coffee and then went back to sleep.”
“Jealous of that ability. Once I’m up, I’m up.”
“Same,” she said. Glanced at me. “We don’t have to talk. I’m fine sitting here and drinking coffee ’til you’re sober enough to function.”
I groaned in gratitude. “Thank fuck. Talking is hard.”
She laughed, and we sat together in surprisingly companionable silence, the boat gently rocking, the sun shining, the seagulls screeing.
I heard steps, twisted, and saw Rhys approaching, his eyes squinted, shirtless, wearing his jeans but unbuttoned and unzipped, barefoot, T-shirt in one hand and shoes and socks in the other. Harlow noticed him too, and her eyes shot to mine.
“You need a minute with him?”
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
She poured a coffee, and handed it to Rhys as he leaned against the bow railing. “Here, have some life juice. You look like you need it.”
He accepted it, shielding his eyes with one hand. “This is why I don’t get drunk. I hate hangovers.” A sip. “Fuckin’ hell, this coffee was made by Jesus hisownself.”
“Or my dear husband, but he’s pretty close, if you ask me.”
“You guys are married?” I asked. “It’s hard to tell who’s actually married and who’s not.”
Harlow laughed. “We all look at marriage pretty loosely. Have we been joined in legal matrimony? No, not yet. We will, someday. Maybe once we feel like we’re ready to have kids, which I’m not, yet, and neither is he. But he’s my husband in every way that matters.”
Harlow’s eyes bounced between Rhys and me. “Well. The tension between you two is thick as mud, so I think I’ll go, now. Help yourself to the coffee, and if you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”
“Thank you, Harlow,” I said. “For the coffee, and the hospitality.”
She smiled at me. “You’re more than welcome. And please, call me Low.”
And with that, she vanished back inside, and I was alone with Rhys. He sat in the chair recently vacated by Low.
“You have fun last night?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Yeah. Maybe a little too much. And yeah, this is why I tend to smoke rather than drink. No matter how stoned I get, by the time I wake up I’m fine.”
“I feel like you may be onto something, there,” he said.
“How about you?” I asked him. “Have a good time with the guys?”
He nodded. “Coolest dudes I’ve ever met.” He was quiet a moment. “You’re walking into a pretty amazing situation here, Tor.”
I swallowed hard at the implication. “It’s too early for hard conversations, Rhys.”
He sipped. “I think I gotta rip the Band-Aid off.”
I hid behind my coffee, and hoped the sunglasses hid the haze of tears. “I know.” A thick pause. “When?”
“Today.”
“So soon?”
He turned away, probably for the same reason I was hiding behind a coffee mug and Harlow’s bug-eyes sunglasses. “The longer I stay, the harder it is. I don’t want to leave. I like it here. I like all the people. You, most of all. But…”
“You have a life back down in New Haven.”
He shrugged. “Been thinking about that, too.” He turned back to me. “If…if I got to a point where I could…cut some ties loose down there, would…would I be welcome, here? With you?”
I shook all over, holding back the tears, but only by virtue of extreme effort. “If you’re asking if I’ll wait for you, then yes. I’ll be here, and it’ll be…just me. I won’t be with anyone else. Not in any way. And if you come back up here, yes, there’d be…there’d be an us to figure out.”
He nodded. “I’m not trying to, like, get away but still leave myself an in just in case. I just…I can’t just stay here, no matter what I want or how I feel. I have clients and a boss and financial stuff I have to figure out.”
I swallowed around a hot lump. “I’m not asking you to give up your life in New Haven for me, Rhys. I’m not saying you have to choose between me and your life there. I just…I need to be here. And you need to be there, and it just sucks because…because I’m in love with you.”
A big, deep, pounding silence. He sucked in a breath, let it out slowly, shakily. “I’m in love with you too, Tor. I am. I have been. I will be.”
He wiped at his face.
“And I know you’re not asking me to choose, Torie,” he continued. “I just...I can’t offer you anything more concrete than I know how I feel about you, and it’s making my life back in New Haven seem a lot less attractive than it used to be. I just don’t know how I’d go about transferring my life here. I own property there, I have clientele there, and I’m almost done getting my realtor license. I’m about to be promoted to Jeremy’s framing crew, which I’ve been working toward for months. I just don’t know how or even if I can cut all that loose and come up here. It’s all off-plan. I just…I need time, I guess. To figure out a new plan.”
“I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling,” I whispered. “I’m in love with you. I want to be in your life. But I need my own future. I need to figure it out—what I want my life to look like. Who I want to be besides a stoner and a waitress.” I sighed, soft and quiet and tremulous. “But it’s hard to even think about that when everything inside me is screaming at me to not let you go.”
“So…so maybe this isn’t it, like goodbye. Maybe it’s just…both of us need some time to figure out how and when our lives can intersect again so we can be together.”
“I hate it,” I whispered, tears now on my cheeks. “I wish you were an asshole.”
“
I wish you were a bitch.” He laughed. “I guess there’s just one thing left, then.”
“What’s that?”
He reached over, picked me up, set me on his lap. Held my face. “This.”
He kissed me. Soft and slow at first, then hungrily and with building passion. It wasn’t sexual, though. It was him telling me nonverbally that he was past the I think phase. It was a declaration of love.
“Dammit, Rhys,” I breathed, a tear-wet sigh.
“I’ll come back. I don’t know how or when, but I will.”
“You better. You have to.”
“I have to, huh?”
“Yeah. Because I can’t give you my virginity until you do.”
He held me against him in a long hard embrace, then. “I know.”
Eventually, I had to climb off his lap before I started something we couldn’t finish. “I’ll call Mom, she can come get us so you can get your bag and your Jeep.”
He shook his head. “Been thinking about that, too.” He pointed at the road, beyond the dock, where the truck I recognized as belonging to Lucas waited. “He has my bag. He’s gonna take me to the airport.”
“The airport?” I echoed, confused. “Why the airport?”
“Because.” He showed me his phone, which had a digital boarding pass on the screen. “I have a one-way ticket back home. There’s a number of layovers, but it’ll get me to New Haven.”
“I’m not following.”
He dug into his pocket. Pulled out his keyring. Removed the key to the Jeep and handed it to me. “It’s yours.”
I shook my head. “No.”
He laughed. “Yes. I’m giving it to you. I can’t face the sixty-some hour drive home alone, for one thing. For another, I’ll never make any progress on my truck if I have the Jeep. And also…” He tucked the key into my hand. “I just want you to have it. She’s meant for you. I guess I just have a thing for hot girls in pimped-out Jeeps.”
“Rhys…”
“When I get back home, I’ll mail you the title signed over to you. Then you just have to sign it and take it to the DMV and make it official.” He waved a hand. “Gifting a car has a few other steps to it, I guess, but between you, me, your mom, and Lucas, we’ll figure it out. Point is, the Jeep is yours and I’m not discussing it. It’s a done deal, sweetheart.”
A Real Goode Time Page 26