by Malcom, Anne
So he was not happy when he got to school.
Neither was I.
The bad mood continued until the late afternoon when Karen called to say she had a free afternoon and could pick Nathan up and hang out, knowing I had a long shift today. She seemed to sense something in my voice because she also told me she was making her risotto.
I cheered up then.
Karen’s risotto was the shit.
She’d done a semester in Italy while at college—how frickin’ cool was that? My only experience of travel was driving across the country trying to escape Robert—and while there, she’d learned how to make this porcini mushroom, sage, and orange risotto that angels would sing about.
I had sung about it.
She saved it for special occasions, whenever one or all of us were craving excessive amounts of parmesan and carbohydrates.
My day continued to go up from there, as my headache went away and some sense returned. It also helped that Bobby made peanut butter cake. Chocolate, peanut butter and the knowledge of good friends and risotto were waiting for you at home were all I needed to get my head out of my ass.
I kissed Lance.
Maybe not my smartest moment, but not something I was going to regret.
Firstly, because it was epic.
The best kiss I’d ever had in my life.
The hottest.
Secondly, because I’d been torturing myself with Lance, my feelings for him. I made a move, for better or for worse, I’d done something so I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life wondering when all this chaos was over and done with.
I would not regret the kiss.
Whether Lance came back or not.
Shit, I really wanted him to come back.
The kiss was better than peanut butter chocolate cake.
Better than Karen’s risotto.
So, when I saw a familiar SUV parked outside my house when I pulled up, my heart skipped a beat. Then another twelve beats.
He got out of the car as soon as I parked and got out of my own.
I glanced over to Karen and Eliza’s, waiting for Nathan to run out and jump on Lance. He did not do so, luckily.
Lance was wearing shades, so I couldn’t gauge his expression. His jaw looked hard, his hair looked great.
That wasn’t something that needed to be noticed right now. Or the way I could totally see the outline of his abs underneath the black tee he was wearing. I hated that almost every time he saw me, I was either wearing my work uniform, a towel—okay that was only once—or cut-offs and whatever tee was clean at the time. The only time he’d seen me borderline presentable was at church, even then, I didn’t get to pull out the stops I normally did.
Granted, I hardly ever pulled out any stops apart from doing something cute with my hair and showering, but still, I liked dressing up, I liked looking nice, especially when confronted with a serious hot guy who looked beyond nice, all the frickin’ time. But that was life, I was facing the hot guy while wearing a diner uniform that smelled of grease and coffee, with no makeup and questionably clean hair.
“Inside,” I said the second he stopped in front of me, deciding to take charge of the situation, and maybe he’d be distracted by that and not notice the hair or the grease smell. “Nathan is next door and probably watching the street for you periodically and I think it would be better if we...” I trailed off. If we had a quickie on the sofa? Made out again. Got married?
“Inside,” I said instead of all of that.
His sunglasses stayed focused on me for a long pause before he nodded once.
Right. So he wasn’t even going to speak to me.
Fine.
Good.
I straightened my shoulders and walked purposefully to the house, waiting until we were inside and the door was closed before I spoke.
Lance was barely two steps in when I started on him.
“We need to talk,” I said, my voice rushed and panicked.
Lance obviously picked this up in my tone, because he picked up everything. He did not react outwardly, nor did he say anything to the four words that men usually ran from. He just folded his arms and jutted his chin up slightly, which was his way of telling me I had his attention.
Well, that and the fact his eyes were searing into my skin.
“There is obviously something between us,” I continued, somehow keeping eye contact and enough courage to bring up the thing that I’d been feeling sick about all day. “I know you’re an intense guy and a big badass alpha male, so some of the smoldering looks and what people would call overprotectiveness can be explained away with that. But I’m also a woman. One has been out of the game for awhile, that’s true. I haven’t known a proper, healthy relationship with a good man, so my experience is rather lacking. But women know when something is going on with a man. Even a woman like me. Especially in this situation. Because this” —I waved my hands between us— “whatever this is, it’s not normal. I’ve tried to ignore it, talk myself out of even having this conversation. I’ve tried to think of all the reasons why having this conversation, having you in my life is a very bad idea, but I’m still here. Talking.”
I swallowed roughly and ignored my sweating palms and butt at Lance’s intense, and silent gaze.
“I used to be afraid,” I continued. “Of pretty much anything. I grew up with parents who I knew to fear before I learned to talk.”
Lance’s jaw went harder at the mention of my parents, his body wired. I wondered if he’d looked up my history. I didn’t doubt Greenstone had the ability to find out my real name, and find my parents, if they were alive. I had no idea. After Robert had proposed, I moved straight out of the trailer park and in with him. He told me I should cut them off.
I thought it was because he cared for me, didn’t want me connected to ugly, vile, abusive people. But no, he just wanted to replace them with more ugly and vile.
“I went straight from that life to one with Robert,” I said, shaking myself out of thoughts about my parents. “First, I was afraid of screwing things up with him, because he was so perfect, because he was cultured, and I so wasn’t. Even before he showed me what a monster he was, I still spent most days afraid I’d say something wrong at one of his father’s parties, eat with the wrong fork when he took me to a fancy restaurant, be the wrong kind of person for him.” I rolled my eyes remembering how large my problems had seen then. “It took me a long time to realize that he not only saw that fear, but he relished it. He made sure to create more. And when he couldn’t in those ways, he moved onto more traditional, sure-fire ways to make a woman fear a man.”
Lance’s arms were no longer crossed against his chest. They were long against his sides, hands fisted, shaking.
A visible, visceral reaction to my words? The pain in them? Or just me saying out loud the ways that Robert had hurt me?
Probably a combination of all of it, and other things that I didn’t know enough about him to think of. But another reason that showed me that this conversation was a good idea. This was beyond the reaction of a good, albeit scary intense alpha male who had only professional feelings toward the woman he was meant to be protecting.
So I had to keep going.
“Once I left, the fear didn’t leave me,” I continued, taking a breath. “It got so bad I could hardly breathe around it. Everywhere I looked, I saw him, coming to drag me back. Coming to kill me. To take my son from me. Then that fear, his fear, it slowly receded. It never really went away. I wish I was a strong enough woman to say that I stopped fearing him as I started to build my life. It wasn’t that. I just got too busy to give myself the luxury of fearing a memory. I had different things to fear. Like losing my job. Like not getting enough shifts to cover bills. Fear of being a bad mother, not bringing my son up right. Not giving him the childhood he deserved.” I smiled. I knew it was melancholy, because I was filled with it. “I’m coming to learn that being a mother is being in a constant state of fear. I would like to say that having this bitte
r emotion following me around from ever since I could remember makes me somehow numb to it. But that’s not the case. I’ve never not known a state of fear. And when Nathan was taken from me, I was shown the highest peaks of terror. Then he walked through that door holding your hand.” A tear trailed down my cheek with the memory of it.
Lance stayed where he was, hands fisted at his sides, eyes never leaving mine. Breathing evenly, face blank.
“Ever since then, ever since I’ve been around you, I don’t feel afraid like I used to. I’m afraid of what I feel for you. It unsettles me. It terrifies me. Because of how powerful it is. A feeling that shouldn’t be that powerful considering you barely speak to me. I don’t know your favorite book, music. I don’t know what kind of past you’ve had to make you the man you are.” I paused. “I don’t know your pain,” I whispered. “I can feel it though, as stupid as it sounds. I feel it, and my own pain recognizes it. You make me feel less alone. Less afraid. And that’s why I have to have this talk with you. I can’t keep feeling like this, I can’t get used to feeling like this if we’re never going to be anything more. If you don’t want more from this. From me.” I looked out the window to the yard, then around the room at the toys strewn about.
“I have a little man that is relying on me to make better decisions on who’s in his life than I have in the past,” I said, regaining eye contact with Lance. “I already know that having you in his life is a good decision, though you might not teach him what he needs to know about proper vocabulary, you’ll give him a proper kind of role model to look up to. But that’s going way too far, considering we’ve only kissed. I’m probably making the hugest mistake even saying any of this,” I said, contradicting myself because Lance wasn’t interrupting me as I’d expected him to and now I was spiraling.
It was now I chose to purse my lips, fold my own arms and not say a word until Lance said something, anything, even if it was to totally shoot me down and send me low enough to bury myself in Reese’s cereal and bad TV.
But he didn’t say anything.
No, he just crossed the distance between us in two strides, snatched me by the face and kissed the ever-loving shit out of me.
I couldn’t even fathom what was happening until after it was over, my whole body was electrified, my lips felt swollen and bruised, my panties were drenched and my body was crying out for more.
That was of course, when he stopped kissing me.
But he didn’t move. Didn’t let me go. That was a good thing, not just because of how awesome it was to have his hands on me. But because I was almost one hundred percent sure that if he let me go, I’d fall to the floor and that would be really frickin’ embarrassing.
“We’re both allowed one mistake,” he murmured against my mouth.
And then he let go of me and walked away.
Luckily, I didn’t fall over.
But I did just stand there, mouth half open, heart beating in overdrive, staring at the empty space that used to be occupied by a beautiful, harsh and insanely confusing man.
* * *
“We’re both allowed one mistake?” Karen repeated, frowning at her wine glass. Not just because I bought the wine when I was across town and that meant it was my favorite ‘Two Buck Chuck’. And not because I’d eaten the last of the risotto.
Eliza was at my place, putting Nathan to bed, sensing I needed some adult time.
She was frickin’ right.
I’d just recounted the whole ‘event’—that’s what I was calling it, for lack of a better word—with Lance that had happened only a handful of hours ago. It seemed like seconds and a lifetime all at once.
I nodded after taking a sip from my wine. It may have been that I was beginning to rely far too much on my one to two glasses I was having a night. That was definitely a bad thing for a daughter of two alcoholics, but it was a problem for me to worry about when I was lying in bed worrying about a plethora of other things too, not now when I was recounting my crazy kiss with Lance with my girlfriend.
“He didn’t say anything else?” Karen probed.
I raised my brow at her. “Yes, he then got down on one knee, presented me with a diamond large enough to sink the Titanic all over again, asked me to marry him and professed his undying love for me,” I said dryly. “I just left that part out.”
She poked her tongue out at me. “Okay, so do you think he meant that kissing you was a mistake or that walking away was the mistake or was he just trying to be a badass and say something to drive you crazy and walk away?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Those are the three-million-dollar questions. I don’t know what’s going on in his head.”
“What if I’m a bad kisser and that’s why he said it was a mistake?” I blurted the fear that had been bouncing around in my head.
“You’re a good kisser,” Karen said without pause. “Don’t be stupid.”
“We’re not allowed to say stupid, you know that,” I scolded her like I would Nathan when he used that word, which wasn’t often.
I’d outlawed it like I had a curse word because I didn’t like it on principle and because my parents had routinely called me that all my life. I didn’t like the way it made people feel. I didn’t want my son to make people feel that way. Nor did I want him to ever feel that way. Obviously Karen was not a kid and could say whatever she wanted but I tended to get into mom robot mode.
“Plus, you haven’t kissed me, so you don’t know whether I’m a good kisser or not,” I added.
Karen didn’t say anything, she merely put her glass on the coffee table, leaned forward, snatched the back of my neck and kissed me.
I was so shocked that I didn’t even try to fight her.
“You’re not a bad kisser,” she said after she detached, grabbed her wine and leaned back on the couch. “And that comes from someone who’s kissed a lot of chicks.”
I blinked rapidly at her, trying to figure out what the heck just happened. Then I took a sip of wine, leaned back in my chair and thought on it. “Well, if I’m not a bad kisser then why did he walk away and act like nothing happened?”
She shrugged. “Lesbian.” She pointed to her chest. “One of the reasons I became one, other than I was born one, was so I didn’t have to deal with men’s bullshit games.”
My brows furrowed. “You think he’s playing games?”
She thought about it. Properly, because Karen was a good friend and she wasn’t just sitting here sharing empty placations with me. She was Frenching me to make sure I knew I was a good kisser and thinking hard about what the heck was going on in my previously empty love life.
“No,” she decided. “Granted, this is coming from a woman with little to no experience dating men, and I barely know the man in question. But I feel like I’m pretty good at reading people. Not as well as you do of course, with all of your auras.”
She rolled her eyes. It was safe to say that Karen did not believe in auras, star signs, tarot, or the healing power of crystals.
“I’m a reasonable judge of character. He’s damaged, that’s obvious enough. He’s hot as balls. That’s even more obvious. He’s dangerous.” She tilted her head in thought. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. How he is with Nathan. It’s different. I can definitely get a better read on the men around him because they speak in actual sentences and do things like smile and converse. They’re good men. The kind of men that would not let someone who played games spend so much time with a single mother and her kid. I think he’s just really fucked up. He wants you, but he’s also probably got it in his head that you don’t need a damaged and complicated man in your life right now.”
She sipped her wine. “I don’t blame him for thinking that. Because I don’t have to be heterosexual in order to tell that man is a world of trouble. That man is going to turn your entire fucking mind upside down. He’s going to wreak havoc on your vagina, in a good way.”
She winked. And my stomach dipped at the thought of what he would do to me, if two kiss
es had me feeling like this.
“But he’s also going to bring a different kind of ruin to your emotions,” she said quieter, more serious. “And honey, you’ve already had a man rip through your life and take over your brain, your body. Lance would never do it in a way that Robert did, with malice. I think he has the ability to hurt you more than Robert ever did. I see the way you look at him too. I know you’ve been on exactly two dates since I’ve known you, and that you’ve never let either of them passed first base. This one has made it to home with only a kiss. He’s under your skin. And I want all of the best things for you. We both know I’m the romantic in my relationship.”
That was the total truth. As much as it seemed like it would be the other way around, Eliza had a lot of demons in her past, trust issues that stemmed from parents who didn’t support who she was.
“I had to work hard to get Eliza to trust me,” Karen said, sipping her wine and making a face.
I rolled my eyes and sipped my own, more because I needed it with all the truth she was laying on me right now.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat what we were at the start,” Karen continued. “It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t easy. We didn’t make each other happy. We made each other miserable. My family hated her, and not because she was a woman, which was why her family hated me. But because for the first year we were together, I was a mess. I’d call my mom crying, drunk, telling her about the latest fight, the latest breakup.” She winced, because Karen was not a woman who cried.
“Real love, with real people, it’s not pretty. We could’ve given up on each other. We tried, in fact. Because I convinced myself that love wasn’t meant to hurt that bad. That love wasn’t enough. But in the end, it was. I’m so happy that we fought for each other, that she opened up to me, that she trusted me enough to let me in. My family have almost forgiven her. Hers still haven’t forgiven me and won’t until I magically grow a penis.”
She grinned. “If I could go back through all that hurt, all that misery, all those tears, sleepless nights, screaming matches, breakups—I would. In a heartbeat. But that’s because I only had myself to worry about. I was luckily enough to have a relatively healthy history. A good family. An unscarred soul. So I could take all those hits.”