by Gwen Gavin
The word still stuck in my mind, but every time that I thought about it, I bit the tip of my tongue, holding back.
“You drive me bonkers.” He shook his head and droplets of water fall to the floor. His smile was bright though.
Maybe he was thinking that same thing. Maybe he was biting his tongue just as I was, but I didn’t know for certain.
“Get over here, bonkers. I want to see you.” I knelt on the couch cushion and waved him over. His eyes flashed darkly, and he swaggered over to me, leading with his hips.
The towel was dangerously loose around his hips, just one tug on the corner of it and he would be nude. I could see his excitement growing through the fabric and I licked my lips in anticipation.
Mike was different than the guys from my past. For one thing, for all of his grumbling, he didn’t mind that I was in his apartment and leaving my hair ties on the coffee table or kicking off my shoes by the front door.
Instead of rolling over in the middle of the night, he reached out to me, pulled me tightly against his body and breathed deeply into my hair. When he held me tightly against him, I could relax again and fall back asleep. I wondered if he knew that I could hear the happy way that he sighed.
He didn’t push me away or tense up his muscles when I wrapped my arms around him from the back when he was doing something else.
When I dropped in on him at work, he never seemed annoyed to say hi and kiss the corner of my forehead and squeeze my hip.
He was standing in front of me, only in his towel. My fingers uncurled and ran across his taut stomach, tracing the streams of the droplets.
“I have to teach you how to properly dry off.” I leaned forward and licked his stomach.
He shivered and threw his head back. “Why would I learn when you do that?”
His gravelly voice rumbled through my body. He gripped my hair and tilted my face up to look at him.
“Loni.” The way he said my name made me shiver as if he was the one licking my bare stomach.
“Yes?”
His eyes were dark and stormy, something going on there that I couldn’t read. If he was another man, I would have felt the urge to run, to get out of there before he could reject me. The open, vulnerable look on his face almost always meant that I was about to be rejected, be asked to leave his apartment.
This isn’t working out. You’re really great, Loni, but I have a lot going on right now. It’s you, not me.
That’s how it always happens. This is how it ends.
I cringed, tightening every muscle in my body.
Mike sat down on the couch next to me and grabbed my hands in his. His grip around my wrists was light, and I stared down at where our skin met. I could remember this moment, the feeling of our bodies meeting.
Maybe it was doomed from the start. Maybe it was always doomed when you start out hating someone.
“I was thinking,” Mike started. I gulped hard. “I was thinking that we should make the paint night at the bar a weekly thing and I know it might be weird to have a standing date, but it might be good for us both. If you don’t have to keep finding new venues and hustling all the time, maybe you’d have more time for your paint--”
It didn’t matter what he said next. I kissed him hard enough to stun him for a second, cutting off his words. Mike was an amazing, surprising man that drove me crazy in the best ways.
“I love you, Mike.” I pulled away from our kiss and whispered against his mouth.
His lips curled into a wide smile. “I love you too, Loni.”
When he kissed me, my body melted against his. He pulled me on top of his body. I could feel his heart happily thrumming away as I splayed my hand on his chest.
Love, Loni. Love. This was the magical comfortability of love. Somehow, I wanted Mike to keep pissing me off for a long, long time.
“Now, one of us is wearing too many clothes.” Mike wiggled his eyebrows.
The End
Want to see what’s next in the series? Check out the first two chapters of the next Gwen Gavin book, RE-ACTING…
Chapter 1
Sally
My car was barely thumping down the street. I patted the dashboard reassuringly. Come on. We just have to get to work and get home again. Payday is tomorrow. I said a silent prayer to the car gods that I would be able to make it to the school parking lot and back home again while running on essentially fumes.
The beat-up, almost twenty year old Honda Civic hadn’t failed me yet. Somehow, it kept chugging along despite all the ways I failed to take care of it.
I pulled into my usual spot at the school and took a deep breath as I shut off the car. I looked to the clouds. “Thank you!” I yelled through my windshield.
“Hey, weirdo, are you going to stop yelling at the sky while you’re at school? All the kids and parents are going to start talking about you.” Mateo knelt down next to my driver’s side window and flashed his white teeth at me.
I pursed my lips together. “Do you think that they’ll pay for some leave if I convince them I’ve lost my mind?”
Mateo rolled his eyes and clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Honey, you’ll be lucky if they don’t kick you to the curb. Have you seen our medical plan?”
He stood up and I grabbed my bags, my coffee mug and my phone. I got out of my car and the door made an angry squeal as I closed it behind me.
“One of these days, this death trap will be the end of you and I won’t even come pick you up on the side of the road.” Mateo side-eyed my old car.
“Shut up. It runs perfectly fine. Gets me from point A to point B and that’s all I need.” I slapped his arm with the back of my hand. “Wait, why are you here so early? I thought you had a date with Cooper?”
Mateo shook his head. “I should have known better than to go on a date with a man named Cooper in this small town. Total closet case. Not worth my time.” He brushed an invisible hair off his forehead. His short hair was coiffed perfectly away from his forehead. He should have been on the cover of Latin Music magazine, not teaching middle school science in the middle of nowhere.
I rested my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mat. I know that the dating pool around here is pretty slim. Good thing I brought you some pumpkin spiced cookies to bring you some joy today.” I tossed a bag of cookies towards him. He caught it easily and licked his lips.
“Oh, girl. You know that this will go straight to my tummy.” He puffed out his flat stomach, making me roll my eyes. “And, you know what? It’s fine. Things will turn around eventually. Isn’t that what all the old ladies say about love? Something like: It comes when you’re least expecting it or something cheesy like that?”
I shook my head back and forth. “I don’t know about that. I haven’t been expecting love in a long, long time and nothing has happened to me yet.” I thought back to my last boyfriend, right after college. He wanted to move away to a bigger city, chase his career. I wasn’t about to go do that so he left and I don’t even remember crying about it.
Mateo opened the front door to the school for me. It was the same middle school I went to a couple of decades ago. It still smelled the same. The lighting still made my pale skin look sickly.
I always said that you couldn’t pay me to go back to middle school. It was a miserable time and anybody who says that they had a great time from the ages of twelve to fourteen are giant freaking liars.
But apparently, the Oaks Pass Unified School District can pay me to go back to middle school. They do it every day. It’s not good money but it is enough to pay for my little place on the west side of town, usually pay for gas in my tank and help out dad when he needs it too.
Mateo stopped in his tracks and grabbed my arm. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to distract myself from my failing love life by focusing on yours!”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking towards my classroom, ignoring the slight dig at my lack of a love life. Mateo knew that I couldn’t get wrapped up in anyt
hing too serious right now. The play was starting soon after school and that on top of my regular Language Arts classes I teach, I was about to be very busy.
“Don’t worry about me, Mat.” I opened my classroom door and propped it open with the door stop. Soon enough, the halls were going to be filled with hormonal, mostly angry and dramatic middle schoolers. I needed the few moments of peace before it all started.
“Oh. Have fun at rehearsals tonight.” He waved at me using his fingers in a sarcastic way.
“You have no appreciation for theater!” I yelled over my shoulder.
I sat down at my desk and dropped my bags in the corner. The classroom was peaceful and silent and empty for just a few minutes more.
I sighed, took out my computer and got to work.
Mac
I ducked my head as I drove under the bridge signaling my true arrival into Oaks Pass. I tugged on the brim of my baseball hat. It wasn’t like anybody was going to recognize me in this rental car and my incognito outfit. That was the whole reason that I got the damn rental car in the first place. Yet, something about being back in my hometown made me flash white with anxiety. I shivered and a cool sweat broke out on my lower back.
I leaned forward as I drove, glancing from side-to-side. The town hadn’t changed much. What used to be a Dairy Queen was now a Chipotle but that was about it. The same buildings in the same places. The same old haunts with the same ghosts of myself hanging around.
I blew out a big breath of air as I crossed the threshold into town. It shouldn’t feel like another world but it did. There was a reason why I never came up the coast from Los Angeles to visit. There was no reason to. This place wasn’t even big enough to have its own movie theater, why would I bother coming here?
My phone dinged over the blue tooth and I answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mac, my man!” I sighed. My manager was exhausting in just the way he said hello.
“Hi, Dave. What’s up?”
“I’m just following up with my main dude. Seeing how things are. How are you doing?” He talked a mile a minute and I was certain that sometimes he was losing oxygen to his brain because he wasn’t breathing. He was just talking.
“I’m fine, Dave. I’m in Oaks Pass like we talked about. I’m going to head to my rental and then head over to the school.”
“Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. That’s great.”
“Dave, are you sure that this is the right move? I can always come back home. Maybe I could do some work with the local animal shelter or something? I can donate a shit ton of money or maybe do some social media shout outs or something.” I pursed my lips together. Something had to be better than going back to my hometown and helping with the local theater productions. It was beyond humiliating.
“Mac, Mac, Mac. We’ve talked about this. The studio needs you to pump up your wholesomeness vibe. You have to look like a humble small town boy who happened to make it big. That’s the whole thing that they have going on for this role. Consider it background work. Throw yourself into the work and come out a better artist for it. Plus, you can’t beat the photos and the press. Young Hollywood Magazine will be up there in two weeks to have a mini photo shoot and interview. That will be your time to shine. This role could really push you over the top, buddy. Next awards season will be yours.” Dave didn’t take a breath the entire time he talked and I silently listened as he rattled on. I maneuvered the car through the side streets with ease, taking me back to my childhood home without realizing it.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Dave. I’m just a little nervous.”
“Nothing to be nervous about, my dude. You got this! Catch you later.” Dave hung up his side of the phone call without waiting for anything from me.
I pulled the car up to the curb and put the car in park. It was no longer our family home. I bought my parents a house on the coast, something small enough just for the two of them. They are living happily with two Irish Setters and they drink their coffee on their back patio every morning.
But, this house was the real home that I used to know. It looked a lot smaller now. The shutters were still a dark hunter green. The yellow siding was faded. There was a trampoline in the front yard and a couple of bikes propped up against the garage. There was another family there, another set of histories being made.
I squinted out the window waiting to feel something, but there was nothing there. One time, an acting coach told me that my emotions were “inaccessible” and I was “cold.” At the time, I rolled my eyes and convinced myself that they didn’t really understand me at all, but now that my dear childhood home couldn’t foster any sense of nostalgia or anger or sadness or even happy memories made me feel a little bit broken.
My last girlfriend, Natalia, told me the same thing when she broke things off a few months ago. I told her that she was crazy, of course. She was a Russian supermodel who made her money by staring vacantly into a camera most of the time and she called me cold? Please.
I pulled away from the curb and didn’t look back. I made my way to my rental soundlessly, just listening to the noise of the tires rubbing on the road, trying to let my mind bring something, anything back from my time here.
The studio wanted me to look wholesome, emotional and “down-to-home.” I could do that. Once upon a time, I practically ran this town. The little old ladies would stop me at the grocery store and know my name before I even introduced myself. Older men on the street would clap me on the shoulder and congratulate me on Friday’s football game. Teachers wouldn’t even ask for an absent note when I got around to going to class.
I was charismatic, could charm the room with a smile and a wave. It was my saving grace after I lost my football scholarship in college. Who needs it when I started acting in commercials and bit parts in LA? Once the money started rolling in regularly, I dropped out of school altogether.
I had done alright. I bought my parents a house. I had a beautiful apartment with a view of the hills. I always had work as an actor. I was doing more than okay.
I pulled up to the rental house and walked into the dark living room. Outside of the house, suburbia trucked right along. There were people walking their dogs and waving to their neighbors. There were a few kids riding by on bikes and skateboards. A cat climb a tree in the yard next door.
I dropped my bag by the front door and sat down on the couch. I leaned back on the stiff furniture and listened to the quiet town moving around outside. I wasn’t in LA anymore. There wasn’t going to be any hiding behind my baseball hat.
Tomorrow, Mac Miles was coming home to Oaks Pass. Ready or not.
Chapter 2
Sally
“Miss Williams, I know that auditions are after school but I have this paper and I don’t know if I can stay that late and I’m worried that I won’t be able to perform for you before my dad picks me up.” One of my favorites, but exasperating students, Ana, was blocking my way to the bathroom in the very short window of break that I had between classes.
I hopped from foot-to-foot. I cursed myself silently for drinking two cups of coffee this morning. “Don’t worry, Ana. I’ll have you go first. I just have to--” I pointed over her shoulder towards the bathrooms, but Ana jumped up to meet my eye line. She didn’t have to go far. I swore that every year these kids got taller while I got smaller.
“Well, I don’t want you to show any favoritism either, Miss Williams. I know how important it is for the integrity of the show for you to choose the actress perfect for the role.” Ana’s face turned serious which was difficult to do with her wide eyes and pert nose.
I cleared my throat and drew my mouth into a line. “Of course, Ana. I would never want to show preference. But, I will definitely make sure that you get to audition before your dad picks you up. I’ll see you in the auditorium in just a few minutes.”
I gently pushed past Ana to go to the bathroom. In the silence of the small room, I took a few deep breaths. Outside the door, there were rousing voices o
f children yelling at each other, someone screeched in excitement or fear. It was difficult to tell with adolescent teenage girls.
I splashed some water on my face and looked in the mirror. I knew it wasn’t their faults. Their problems all seemed so big to them now. I only wished that all my problems were actually that small.
I wiped the water from my face and pinched my cheeks to give them a bit of color. I was going to need to start sleeping more.
Ana’s biggest problem today was her audition for the school play. But when I was Ana’s age, mom had just walked out on us, Dad was sleeping on the couch with an empty beer can in his hand every night and my little sister, Kristen, was having mysterious medical problems. I certainly didn’t have time just to worry about the school play.