The marble-sized rock in the box swirled and doubled in front of my eyes. It looked like all the crystals that hung around the boat, catching the light. Ahh, I thought. That was creative. My head swam with random bursts of sound from the guests, the band playing something soft and backgroundish on a violin overhead, and all the thoughts pinging me at once. Mostly that I needed to say something. That everyone was waiting for me to say something. But something in me was still waiting—for him to say something.
I blinked hard, and willed the image in front of me to focus, but I had bigger problems, as my head went light and three plates of cocktail shrimp crawled back up.
“Brad,” I whispered, as the little pinpoints of black started closing in.
“Andie?”
I wheeled around and ran blindly for where I knew the railing to be, shoved two gasping Vera Wang gowns and their owners aside, and unloaded all that pretty shrimp back into the water. Not quite the same way they left it.
Chapter Two
I awoke to buffalo ramming the inside of my skull and leaving their fur behind in my mouth. That was the good part. Remembering the reason for it was worse.
The gasps and shrieks of the guests. Alicia coming to my rescue and Brad holding me. My leaving in a taxi in utter mortification, stopping for greasy tacos and a six-pack of beer, and downing it all within an hour while sitting in the dark park next to our condo. I still couldn’t kill the humiliation or the questions. By the time I dragged myself through the door, a very un-dapper-looking Brad awaited me in a chair.
He’d been worried, stressed, definitely pissed. His hair stuck out on one side, and his shirt was untucked. He woke up in the mornings looking better than that. He would have probably even taken me up on sweatpants if I’d offered it about then.
“Why, Andie?” he’d asked, sounding deflated. “Don’t you love me?”
He’d sounded like such a little boy with those words. Such a normal person, and nothing like the shiny persona he normally sported. And it was those words that had eaten me up the most. He wasn’t big on the love word. Only used it on occasion, choosing the special moments to wow me with it. The proposal would have been a good time.
It had been the longest night of my life, and it had ended with me in bed and him on the couch. Not quite the way I pictured our anniversary.
As I stared at the white ceiling and counted the beats against my head, I wondered what thoughts or poundings were going through his. What was wrong with me? I’m sure that’s what he was wondering. Any other woman would shove me into the nearest gutter to take my place—and I wasn’t blind to the smiles and hair flips and cleavage that paraded around him trying to do just that. To be the one that Brad Marcus branded as his own.
An involuntary body shiver hit me as I recalled that sentence, and how gaudy it felt in front of all those people.
Maybe I was overreacting. On the nineteenth and twentieth replay in my head, it sounded a little better. Cuter, maybe. Less contrived. But no matter how many times I played it back, I love you never made an appearance. You mean the world to me. You’re my everything. You’re my best friend. I want to grow old with you. I love you, Andie. None of the above made the cut in his proposal. Instead, I got I can’t brand you.
The smell of Italian roast coffee filled my senses, almost strong enough to lift me out of bed without my assistance. Seconds later, Brad walked in carrying two steaming mugs. He was wearing my favorite white pullover and jeans, and looked deliciously down-to-earth.
“Hey,” I said, struggling to a sitting position, and grabbing my head to keep the buffalo at bay. “Oh, dear God, I’m too old for this.”
Brad handed me a mug and two aspirins he had in his palm. “Here, this should take off some years.”
“If only.”
The coffee was fabulous, sending warmth and good tidings to every nerve ending in my body. Except my heart, which felt stabbed with tiny needles every time I looked at him. With a twist for good measure when our eyes met.
I had hurt him with my lack of an answer. Embarrassed him in front of his people. He had been so sure of the outcome, sure enough to invite an audience to witness it. How was he so sure and I wasn’t? He sat on the edge of the bed with his coffee, and I waited for him to look me in the eyes again.
When he did, I felt like something had flipped off-kilter. We weren’t the same. “I’m so sorry,” I managed to say.
He shook his head. “Don’t be.” He tucked the bedcovers around me and ran a thumb along my cheek. “It’s not over.”
“You’re not angry?”
Brad laughed, a small tired sound. “No.” He took one of my hands in his. “Baby, I’m sorry I caught you off guard like that. I just wanted to surprise you.”
I smiled. “You did.”
“Got that impression,” he said, and we both laughed. “But I know I’m right about us, and I’m not giving up.”
I nodded. I could deal with that. We just needed more time under us. Time to think of us in that capacity. Marriage and name changing and filing joint taxes. Maybe get a dog—
“Take twenty-four hours.”
I blinked and focused back on him.
“What?”
He chuckled, but his eyes looked sad and serious. “Twenty-four hours.” He smoothed out the bed around me. “Take the day. Rest and relax and read. Watch TV—watch a chick flick,” he said, laughing. “Take a drive to clear your head. I’ll even leave you the BMW and you can put the top down and run wild today.”
I stared at him as all my little anxieties and locks and bolts started clicking back into place. A day.
“Seriously? One day?” I ran a hand over my face, feeling the remnants of the previous night’s makeup and grimacing. “Brad, I was thinking more like months. Talking and working things out and planning.”
“We don’t need that, Andie,” he said. “We’re good. I know that. You should, too.”
“Well, good for you.”
He looked at me like I was choosing the wrong color of paint. “Come on, Andie. I know you’ll feel better in the morning.” He got up and leaned over to kiss me. He smelled yummy as his lips met mine, having probably showered at four in the morning when he couldn’t sleep. “I’ll even go stay on the boat tonight, give you a full circle on the clock.” He smiled at his own comment. “And then I’ll meet you back here in the morning to put this—” He paused to pull the box from the nightstand. “—on your finger.” Brad put the box back on the nightstand.
“In the morning,” I repeated, looking at the box.
He kissed my cheek. “Till tomorrow morning, baby,” he said. “Enjoy your day.”
And he was gone. My ears rang with the quiet. Twenty-four hours?
I rubbed at my eyes. “Take a drive and watch a chick flick,” I mumbled. “Fuck me.”
A few more slugs of coffee and I sat up. The room moved with me a little, but I refused to give in to that. It had been many years since I’d drank like that, and this was why. Hangovers are tougher to shake at forty-four than they were at twenty-two.
Twenty-four hours.
“Jesus,” I muttered. The ring box sat on the nightstand, looking innocent in its little white box. “You aren’t innocent,” I said to it. “You’re the cause of all this.”
Still, I had to look. I’d seen it for all of fifteen seconds before my world went sideways, and I’d been a little stressed at the time. Maybe it wasn’t as arrogantly overdone as I remembered it. Maybe it was tastefully elegant, or made up of more platinum to make it appear—
“Oh, my God, Brad,” I said, opening the box. “Really?”
I’d never seen a ring with a rock that large, not in real life. It was crazy. And something I would never, ever wear.
“And why don’t you know that?” I said to nothing or no one, snapping the box shut and setting it back on the nightstand.
I needed food. Breakfast food. Something heavy and bad for me and something Brad would hate. I went to the fridge and sighed.
Opened the cabinets and whimpered. I settled on a granola bar and plopped down on the sofa. Maybe I would watch a chick flick. Something he’d never watch with me, so I could feel like I was having a getaway. Maybe I’d—maybe I’d order pizza. And leave the box out. Just the expression on his face the next day would be worth that.
The little LED light on my phone was blinking madly. I knew it was texts and voice mails from Alicia, and I wasn’t up for that, yet. I didn’t want to hear about nerves and cold feet. I didn’t want to even acknowledge the evening happened.
The light streaming in the window landed on a bookshelf across the room, and I got up slowly to go see what book fate might be telling me to curl up and read with my pizza-and-chick-flick kind of day. Unfortunately, there were no epiphanies there, as it only lit on a group of old photo albums.
Pulling one out, I brought it back to the sofa with me and laid it across my lap. Instantly, I was brought back to my high school days, and nearly choked on the granola bar. Hairstyles and clothing—the eighties were such a strange decade. As I moved through college and parties and friends I’d forgotten about over the years, a yellowed plastic name tag fell from the page when I turned it. I caught it as it landed on the couch. It said FREMONT in black Magic Marker, and had a big water stain bleeding the letters on one side.
I chuckled to myself as I looked back at the page, knowing instinctively what would be there. Pictures of me and my college friends during a crazy drunk weekend at the lake, right after graduation. And one single picture of the hottest guy I’d ever met. Even now, my heart thudded a little, although not from his looks. From the memory of being twenty-two and free and having hot, passion-filled sex on the shore of a lake. One of my shining moments of glory when the most gorgeous man on the planet spent an entire day and night charming me instead of my much flashier college friends, before we had our way with each other right there at the water’s edge under a very bright full moon.
I ran my fingers over the lettering on the name tag.
“Fremont,” he’d said, picking up the tag around my neck. He only glanced at it for a second before meeting my eyes with the most intense gaze I’d ever seen. “What’s your story, Fremont?”
He was beautiful, if men can be beautiful. Cut and buff and a face carved from an olive tree. Soft, dark, playful eyes that I wanted to melt into. Dark hair that fell across those eyes. I licked my lips and looked around for my friends, knowing they’d be watching in shock somewhere.
I held my chin up and focused on not reacting. It was too early in the morning for games. We’d gotten to the lake late the night before, partied all night, and had just come down to the beach to find a giant waterside breakfast my friend’s parents had clearly felt very optimistic about. I guess they figured we needed solid food.
And then Adonis walked up in surfer shorts and a T-shirt.
“Just a little graduation party,” I said.
He still had my name tag in his hand, and set it back against my skin slowly. “You don’t know each other?” he asked, amusement on his face.
I laughed, and forced myself to continue filling my paper plate and appear unfazed. “It was a drinking game from last night. Guess I forgot it was still on.”
He nodded toward the tables of food. “Quite a spread you have here.”
“My friend Lisa,” I said, gesturing behind me toward the four blonde and beautiful college grads sprawled on beach mattresses already, ignoring the food to start tanning at eight o’clock in the morning. “Her parents have a cabin—and her mom did this for us.”
One eyebrow shot up. “Nice mom.”
I laughed and looked around. “Yeah. Not quite my world, so it’s pretty cool.”
His eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “So what’s your world, Fremont?”
I loved how he called me that. Something so fun and edgy and sexy about it. Or maybe I was just hungover or delirious from lack of sleep. I grabbed a strawberry and bit into it, getting a little charge from watching him watch me.
“My world would have been a barbecue in the backyard last night, and my mom making us waffles this morning.”
He laughed. “I hear that. Mine was a kegger in my dad’s garage last year.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to appear confident and worldly and disguise the fact that my knees were knocking. “So what do you do now?”
“I’m a grunt in my dad’s law office,” he said, raking his hair back. It only fell across his eyes again, which I liked.
“Law? That’s impressive.”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“What office?” I asked.
“McLerran and Montgomery,” he said, a small crook to his mouth as he knew what I was trying to do.
I tore a piece of apple fritter loose and popped it into my mouth. “So, M&M, huh? That’s cute.” I smiled. “Which M are you?”
His smile grew slowly, and he reached over and plucked a strawberry from my plate. “I’d be on the Montgomery side.”
I wiped my hand on the towel I had tied around my waist, covering my bikini bottoms. “Well, Montgomery,” I said, offering my hand in a mock professional manner. “Nice to meet you. How long are you here for?”
“Just today,” he said. “Gotta get back tomorrow.”
“Then I guess you need to make the most of this day,” I said, shocking myself as the words fell out of my mouth. Still, I couldn’t help the grin that took over my face.
Especially when his matched. “Fremont,” he said, lifting his strawberry to my lips, which made me laugh. “I have the feeling this will be an amazing day.”
I remember falling madly in love with him in that one twenty-four-hour stretch, and then spending the next few months trying to forget him.
Lord, the things you remember when you let yourself go. When you let go of the current world and its trappings and—ugh—Brad. I groaned aloud and wished that all of that would just go away. I didn’t want to think about Brad and his perfection and his smile and his freakishly large ring.
I wanted to feel that crazy freedom again.
Without thinking, I got up, grabbed a tote bag, my iPod, a change of clothes, and a book, snatched my purse up off a chair, and grabbed Brad’s keys.
“A drive it is,” I said to the keys, as though they were Brad.
* * *
I didn’t even have the radio on, because all I wanted was the feel of the wind in my hair and the sound of the road under my—or Brad’s—tires. What started as something reckless and crazy, however, started to work on me as the miles ticked by. This wasn’t me—this react-before-I-think-and-drive-toward-God-knows-what, with no plan of what to do when I got there. I planned everything. I made lists to organize my lists, and my planner was color-coded. I blew out a breath and pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes.
Maybe it was a midlife crisis. Eighty-eight would be a reasonable age; maybe that’s what it was and the halfway point had me all wigged out. Or maybe it was back to Brad and his I can’t brand you and his volleyball-sized diamond. He asked if I loved him. Where was that word for me?
I could find a hotel somewhere, maybe. Just to—not quite be home first thing in the morning. I didn’t want to be there when the time was up, because knowing Brad, he’d be back at seven straight up. I glanced at my watch. Almost nine. Only twenty-two hours left. Actually, as long as I stayed gone, that extended my time. I could even push it an extra day, I reasoned. Why the hell not? Buy some clothes somewhere—
Just One Day Page 2