by Mia Ford
“You sure about that?” he asked Courtney, laughing like it was no big deal but not quite able to get rid of the weird little shake his voice had taken on. “I can’t say this is how people usually act when they’re happy to see me.”
“Well, she’s not your average girl, now is she? You’ve known her for as long as I have, buddy. You should know that full well.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “She’s certainly not average.”
Even though we were smack dab in the middle of Alaska, I felt myself growing hot all over. The way he talked about me gave me goosebumps. And those eyes. It felt like his eyes were reading everything about me, and I was sure he hadn’t blinked once since this strange conversation began. I’d told him to come and find me if he wanted to see more of me, not to try and take me home from some bar. Now that he’d actually done it, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. You would have thought he was a total stranger, and in a lot of ways, he kind of was. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, stranger or not. I wasn’t even sure what he wanted. So far, he hadn’t told me anything aside from the fact that he’d come there to see me and only for that. Once he made it clear that he didn’t even want something as simple as a Dr. Pepper, I was pretty much at a loss as to what I was supposed to do.
“So are you going to ask her out or what?” Courtney asked.
“Courtney!” I practically shrieked, totally mortified that she would come right out and ask a question like that.
She was talking like I wasn’t even there in the same room, which made me feel like a total idiot. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Apparently, whatever was going on here didn’t even need to involve me. I was almost afraid to look at Neil. I didn’t want to see what his face must look like with Courtney talking to him like that. When he spoke, I was about ready to go back to hiding behind the countertop, just so that I didn’t have to be a part of whatever awful thing was about to happen.
Neil grinned. “You know? That’s what I was trying to get to, but I guess I can see your point. I wasn’t doing a very good job, was I?”
“I don’t know,” Courtney answered in that sly, falsely innocent voice she had, that always made me think she was up to no good. “That sort of depends on how many months you were planning on taking to do it. If you were trying to really draw it out, then you’re right on track.”
“All right, all right. I see what you’re saying. Do I have your permission then? To take her out?”
“My permission?” Courtney asked gleefully. “Oh man, I like the sound of that. I wish more people would ask me that kind of thing.”
“Um, guys?” I interjected. “You know I’m standing right here, don’t you?”
Courtney only laughed again, which was good for lightening the mood. But it also kind of made me want to kill her. Neil had the good grace to flush a little, which made me feel better for some weird reason. If I was going to be uncomfortable, it only seemed fair that somebody else had to be also. He cleared his throat and looked at me again, this time with his eyes that were serious enough to bring my goosebumps back.
“I’m sorry, Fay. I’m not doing a very good job of this. If you want to know the truth, I don’t spend much time asking women out.”
“Ha!” Courtney snorted from behind us, making her opinion on the truthfulness of that statement easily known.
I thought Neil might look away from me and go back to bantering back and forth with my friend, but this time, her words didn’t even faze him. As far as he was concerned, she might not even have existed. Nobody did, aside from me, which was a pretty weird feeling when I reminded myself that this was Neil Driscoll I was talking to.
“Fay?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“I came by because I wanted to ask you to come to dinner with me tomorrow night. No pressure or anything. I realize it’s short notice, and you might already have plans.”
I waited for Courtney to expel that snort of laughter again. I was so sure it was going to happen that I was pretty sure I could hear it, even though she kept quiet. I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg when he said he didn’t spend much time asking women out, but I was positive that however much experience with it he had, I had even less. After Neil had left, I had pretty much bowed out when it came to going on dates. It wasn’t an intentional decision, but it was what had happened, whether it had been planned or not. The fact that it was Neil doing the asking now made things feel so surreal that I couldn’t even manage to get my mouth open. Once again, it was Courtney who came to the rescue and gave the answer I couldn’t seem to give.
“She’d love to. Pick her up at seven, okay? And don’t be late, whatever you do.”
Chapter 10: Neil
“What the fuck? What the fuck is going on with me?”
I stared into the mirror at myself, trying to figure out why my nerves were such a mess. What I had told Fay was true, or at least, I considered it to be true. I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time asking women out, at least, not to take them on dates. But asking a woman out to dinner wasn’t the only way to spend time with her, and when it came to spending time with women, I was a bit of an expert.
I had honed my skills over the years so that I hardly even had to talk to most women to get them into bed with me. It was almost as easy as breathing. That made me see the dating part of things as pretty much pointless. Honest to God, I wasn’t even sure why I had asked Fay to go to dinner with me the way I had. I knew that I hadn’t liked her telling me she wouldn’t spend any more time with me after the bar. I knew that much. I knew that I’d lain awake thinking about her, too.
I’d woken up the previous morning and showered, dressed, and gotten into my truck before I had even really figured out what I was doing. Even when I had been sitting at the counter right in front of her, I hadn’t really known I was going to try and take her out. The words were actually out of my mouth before I had time to think about them, and then I had been waiting to see if she was going to let me take her anywhere after everything I had done.
Just a date, man. Cool it, okay?
I nodded to myself, intent on taking my own advice if it killed me. It was just a date, and it was with a girl I had been on plenty of dates with before. I had known Fay for almost all of my life, and if I’d taken off for a year or nine, so what, right?
She had obviously forgiven me enough to hang out with me again. Unless she was planning on letting me have it in the middle of the restaurant, which seemed unlikely. It was also probably exactly what I deserved.
These were the things I tried not to think about and couldn’t get out of my head while I finished getting myself ready. I downed a whiskey while I waited for it to be time to show up at her front door. It was kind of killing me that I could see her house from my front porch. I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on inside of her head. Since I had gotten ready too early, I was left with too much time on my hands to think things through that didn’t need thinking on.
By the time I got into my truck, I felt like I had somehow turned into a girl when I wasn’t looking. I was acting like somebody I didn’t recognize, and since I couldn’t figure out why, I blamed it on the town. I had known that being in Ashville was going to mess with my head, and here it was, doing exactly that.
That had to be the reason I felt as messed up as I did. I felt nervous the way I might have when I was still a kid, watching the pretty girl living down at the base of the hill. It was just another reminder that I needed to get out of town as quickly as possible. Fay was a great way to pass the time, but she wasn’t going to make me stay. This time was no different than the time I’d left before. As soon as I could get my shit together, I was gone. I just had to hope that was something she already understood.
“Hey, stranger,” Fay said.
“Hey! Shit, sorry. I didn’t even come up to the front door.”
While I had been sitting in front of Fay’s house in my truck and contemplating just what the hell was going on here, Fay had quietly eme
rged from her house, making it all the way to my partially unrolled window before I noticed she was there. I was definitely off my game. Getting a look at Fay didn’t help me to regain it.
I had already seen her a few times since returning to Ashville, but this was the first time I was seeing her where it wasn’t a surprise for her, and the first time when she’d been able to get herself ready the way she wanted to. Even after all these years, I thought she was beautiful, no matter what. But tonight, her confidence was sky high, and I could tell.
Everything about her was sexy and sweet and crazy seductive. Again, like a high school kid, I could feel myself hardening in my slacks at the sight of her. It turned out to be a good thing I hadn’t gotten out of the car to greet her. The last thing I needed was for her to see an erection popping up to greet her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, laughing. She seemed totally oblivious to the mess going on inside of my head. “It’s not like you had much of a chance of sneaking up on me. I could see your truck coming down the way.”
“Ah, so you were spying on me, huh?”
She laughed, then headed around the truck and let herself in before I could even pretend I was going to get out and open her door for her. In thirty seconds, she was sitting beside me, her hand landing briefly on top of my own before she fastened her seatbelt. She gave me one of her million dollar smiles.
“Not exactly spying, Neil. This truck is older than God, you know? I could practically hear it starting in your driveway.”
“Hey! This truck is the best! What did I use to call her?”
“Oh brother,” she groaned, laughing again in a way that made me want to kiss her right then and there. “Bess? Jess? I don’t really remember, but I know I used to be jealous of her. Isn’t that crazy? You had me jealous of a truck, Neil!”
“I know,” I laughed, surprised by how quickly the two of us were falling into being comfortable again, but relieved all the same. “How great was that?”
“So great that you owe me this dinner. That’s for sure. Now, drive on, sir. I’m kind of starving.”
“Your wish is my command, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
Dinner was a blur. It may have been the wine. We had plenty of it, and there was a surprisingly good selection, given the fact that we were stuck in Ashville. But the wine wasn’t the only reason dinner flew by in a haze. It was her.
It was Fay. She sat across from me in a little black dress. A deep v in the front made it difficult for me not to stare down her dress. Her skin was smooth and tanned, making her green eyes sparkle brighter and her almost white blonde hair shine all the more.
As we ate, we talked. My concerns that she might be out with me to publicly chew me out had been completely baseless, which was a pleasant surprise. I was actually kind of disgusted with myself for having thought it about her, once I had gotten the chance to spend some actual one on one time with her. Just because I was a jackass didn’t necessarily mean that she was, and from what I could tell, she wasn’t anything close to that.
It was probably what I deserved, although I was working hard not to think about that. But it wasn’t what she was giving me, which made me one lucky son of a bitch. By the time we were done with dinner, something that took almost three hours, I felt almost high from my contact with her. It was so bad that I couldn’t think of anything to say in the truck on the way home. I just drove in silence while she continued to keep up the conversation for the both of us. Finally, when we were parked outside of her house, she turned to look at me, a slight frown creasing her otherwise perfect face.
“Hey, Neil? Did I do something wrong?”
“Wrong?” I asked quickly, wondering if this would be the moment where she finally asked me what the fuck I had been doing all of those years ago, vanishing without even trying to give her an excuse. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been pretty much silent since we got into the truck. I was just wondering if I said something wrong. I know sometimes I talk too much when I get nervous.”
“No,” I answered just a little bit too roughly, causing her to clam up immediately, which wasn’t what I was going for at all. “No, Fay, nothing like that. I was just thinking, I guess.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Thinking about how good it is to see you. Honest to God, Fay, it is.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” she said quietly. All of her former chattering immediately vanished. “Better than I thought it would be, actually.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that. Because there’s something else. I’ve been sitting here thinking about, too.”
Without giving myself the time to really think about it, I leaned forward and took her face in my hands. There was a moment when I was sure she would pull away and finally let me have it for all of the shit I’d pulled. But she didn’t do anything like that. At first, she didn’t do anything at all.
I thought I was going to have to end the kiss feeling like a complete asshole, but in the end, it didn’t wind up being that way at all. After sitting there stock still for a couple of seriously long seconds, I could feel her starting to soften at my touch, one inch at a time. Then she was kissing me back, melting into me. It was everything I could do not to try and pull her dress off of her, right then and there.
It was the strangest sensation. In some ways, I remembered this feeling. I remembered what it was like to taste her tongue on my own. Then in some ways, it was a totally new thing. It was unlike any experience I had ever had with a woman, and it made me want her more than I had ever wanted a female before.
I kissed her so that she would know that, and I kissed her so that my intentions were clear. Although I could feel her wanting me back, after a couple of very hot and intense moments, she pulled away from me. Her face was flushed, her breathing fast and shallow. I could tell that she wanted me, could see it on her, and yet when she spoke, it was to tell me no.
“I should go inside,” she said softly, her voice breaking a little at the end. “But thank you for such a lovely dinner.”
“Don’t go inside. Come up to my place. We can have another drink, talk some more.”
“Talk, huh? Is that what you think we’ll do?”
“I don’t know. I just know that I don’t want this night to be over yet.”
“I know, me either. But it’s best for me to go inside. We can see each other again if you like. I know I would like that.”
“Yeah,” I answered, doing my best not to let her hear the annoyance that was creeping into my blood. “I would, too. I’ll come by the diner, okay? We’ll make some plans.”
“That sounds wonderful. Goodnight, Neil.”
She kissed me again, immediately inflaming me and making me want to redouble my efforts to get her to come back to my place. And then she was gone. I spent the night alone, and it was a very long time until I was able to get to sleep.
Chapter 11: Fay
When I heard the knock on my front door, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had hardly slept at all the night before. As a result, I’d fallen asleep on the couch while I was supposedly cleaning the living room. Even this much-needed sleep was broken and unsatisfying.
It seemed like, whether I wanted it to or not, my mind kept going back to last night. It kept going back to Neil, which made it hard to calm down enough to get any rest. My pathetic excuse for a nap was the closest I had come so far, and it was cut woefully short by the rapping at my door.
“Hello?” I called out uncertainly, my voice sounding pathetically weak in my own ears. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Courtney, bitch! What’s the matter with you? Did he drug you or something? Because I swear to God, if he did I’ll go up there to his big fancy house and kick the shit out of him. I don’t care how rich he is!”
“Hold on, I’m coming. And stop yelling about kicking people’s asses!”
I pulled myself up to a sitting position, trying to adjust to, or at least ignore, the feeling of dizziness
that came over me with the movement. Part of me would have liked to have just ignored the knocking altogether, shove a pillow over my head, and get back to sleep, but I also knew that wasn’t really an answer.
Courtney wasn’t the kind of girl to just give up and go away. If I didn’t let her in, she was likely to just kick the door in and see what the hell was going on with me. I pulled the door open, squinting against the glare of the sun as it hit the snow, and then winced when Courtney started her yell-talking all over again.
“What the hell, lady? Do you know how long I’ve been out here knocking?”
“No, but judging by how shrill your voice is, I’m going to guess it’s been a little while. I know how good you are at being patient.”
“You’re damn right it’s been a while! Also, you sort of look like shit, you know it? What happened to you last night?”
“Ugh, I’m not really in the mood for your friendly critiques this morning, Courtney. If it’s all the same to you.”
“Who said anything about morning, girl? It’s the afternoon.”
I couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open when she told me that, and the look on my face must have been a pretty comical one, because the edge she’d had to her ever since I’d opened the door vanished. In its place was a general sense of merriment over my confusion and distress.
She started inside, and I stepped out of the doorway, shivering in the cold air the open door had let in. I tried to figure out how I had slept so late. It was totally uncharacteristic of me, but then again, pretty much everything I had been doing for the last couple of days was out of character for me. So why should this be any different?