The Morning After: Starting from Zero Box Set

by Dallen, Maggie

  She really was adorable when she was pouting. “There’s nothing wrong with ‘Purple Rain,’ except…what the hell does it mean? I mean, seriously, if you can explain those lyrics to me, I will serenade you in front of the entire camera crew.”

  She laughed so hard the bed shook and Mark had one brief, terrifying moment of possessiveness. He didn’t want to let her go.

  Elizabeth’s earnest but completely irrational attempt to make sense of the lyrics put an end to the ridiculous thought. He chalked it up to the fact that it had been too long since he’d had fun with a woman. Well, for more than just one night.

  He cut off her third attempt to interpret the lyrics by kissing her lips to silence her. The quick kiss lingered and turned into a deep, passionate kiss but eventually he pulled back long enough to say, “Just admit it. The song makes no sense.”

  Her answering smile was so bright it made it difficult to breathe. Tapping her finger against his nose, she said, “That’s why it’s our song. It doesn’t make sense and neither do we.”

  She looked absurdly pleased with her realization. She was right, of course. They didn’t make sense—not as a couple, at least. She screamed monogamy and commitments—family, marriage, the whole deal. And he….didn’t. But still, being here alone with Elizabeth—it felt right. He was more comfortable than he could ever remember being. He’d been living in that apartment for years—ever since the breakup—but for the first time it felt like a home.

  He backed away a little too quickly and said the first thing that came to mind. “We make more sense than Connie and Robbie.”

  The moment the words left his mouth he knew they were a mistake. He didn’t want to talk about Connie and Robbie now. Not when they were having so much fun.

  One glance at the disappointed look on Elizabeth’s face told him he’d stuck his foot in his mouth.

  “What’s your problem with Connie and Robbie?” she asked.

  Where to start? But they’d been over this before and he had no desire to get into a fight with Elizabeth. For a second he scrambled to think of a response that wouldn’t make things worse. “Their names,” he finally said with a melodramatic sigh.

  Her nose scrunched up in confusion. She was so cute when she was confused.

  “Their names?” she repeated.

  He nodded with a straight face. “Connie and Robbie? You can’t have two names that end in ‘ie’ or else it sounds like they should be co-stars in a 50s sitcom.”

  She blinked at him for a moment before a little smile curved those luscious lips into a smile. “The Connie and Robbie Show?”

  “Exactly.”

  Her brows furrowed in mock consternation. “That does sound a bit ridiculous when you put it that way.”

  He held his hands out wide. “See? I’m a very wise man. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” But some of the amusement had faded from her expression and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was studying him, and reading far too much into whatever she saw. “How did you get so wise?”

  Uh oh. She’d gotten serious. Too serious. He did not do serious. Not in bed and not with a woman. One look at the clock on his nightstand gave him the perfect opportunity to change the topic. “Sorry, sweetheart, I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  “On a Sunday night?” The disappointment in her voice was endearing. For a half a minute he even toyed with the idea of calling in sick and playing hooky…again.

  He shook his head, forcing himself to pull away from her warm, soft body and out of bed. It was goddamn painful, like cutting off a limb. But it had to be done. They were entering into serious territory here—not to mention the fact that he couldn’t afford to anger the owner now, he needed to stay on his good side for a little while longer at least.

  He risked a glance in Elizabeth’s direction and instantly wished he hadn’t. She was too damn tempting in his bed.

  All the more reason he should get to work. He needed to get some distance and perspective. Somehow he had the horrible feeling that he was sinking here. He was having fun, of course he was, and he was satisfying that desire he’d been harboring since the first moment she’d walked into his bar. But he’d also been….happy. Too happy. He’d been having too much fun.

  He dropped one last kiss on her forehead as he gathered up his keys and wallet, ignoring her puppy dog eyes and the fact that she looked entirely too perfect in his home.

  It was good that he was going to work. A little distance was exactly what he needed.

  Chapter Eight

  Elizabeth was hard pressed to say what compelled her to head to her sister’s house rather than home. She should be preparing for work in the morning, mentally at the very least. Her students had a way of draining her and she typically spent Sunday nights getting battle ready.

  But tonight, after slinking out of Mark’s too-quiet and empty apartment….she needed company. Or maybe she just didn’t want to face her empty, fiancé-less house for a little while. Either way, she ended up on their doorstep and was welcomed in with open arms, as she knew she would be.

  But not without getting a lecture first. “Where did you two run off to?” her sister started in. Robbie was cutting vegetables in preparation for dinner and gave her a sympathetic smile over Connie’s shoulder.

  She liked Robbie. A lot. Especially during moments like this when he acted more like her ally than her sister’s fiancé. Despite what Mark thought, she could see that they fit one another in their own unique way. He mellowed her sister and she doted on him—true, not in the typical way but in a way that was solely Connie’s. As someone who’d spent most of her life being the sole object of that particular brand of overprotective doting, she knew just how endearing it could be when you were in her sister’s inner circle. It was just hard to explain that to someone like Mark who was witnessing it from the outside.

  But she wasn’t here to think about Mark. She needed a break from that particular topic, which was why she shrugged off Connie’s question. “What’s for dinner?”

  Connie was not having it. “What’s going on with you two?”

  She briefly contemplated playing dumb but that particular tactic had never worked with Connie in the past and she highly doubted it would work now. If history was anything to go by, avoiding Connie’s questions just turned her sister into a dog with a bone.

  “We’re sleeping together.”

  Her words were a quiet bomb in the kitchen. All movement stopped as Connie and Robbie stopped cutting and prepping and lifted their faces to stare at her, their mouths open with surprise.

  Robbie recovered first, his jaw snapping shut as a huge grin spread across his face. “That’s awesome.”

  Elizabeth blinked at him in surprise. Was it? The satisfied glow she’d been wallowing in for the past two days was enough to convince her that yes…yes, it was awesome. So why had she left his apartment feeling so low? They’d been having such a good time this weekend, maybe it was only natural for a low after such a high.

  She was still waiting for her sister’s response. Connie’s mouth had shut but she wasn’t smiling as she studied Elizabeth with those all-seeing eyes. When it came to her sister, there was no hiding.

  “Are you happy?”

  The question didn’t come out as a judgement but Elizabeth’s spine stiffened all the same. She shrugged. “We’re having fun.”

  Connie’s answering “hmmph” was noncommittal.

  Normally Elizabeth would let it go, but tonight? Tonight she wasn’t feeling normal. A spark of annoyance had her crossing her arms. “What’s that mean?”

  Connie’s eyes widened in surprise at her tone but only for a second. “It’s just…” her hands gestured in Elizabeth’s direction. “You don’t do fun.”

  Elizabeth frowned but chose to focus on the irritating know-it-all tone rather than how hurtful that statement was, intentionally or not. “What does that mean?”

  Connie sighed as if she was the one being
persecuted here. Elizabeth was vaguely aware of Robbie taking several steps in their direction, ready to intervene if a fight broke out, no doubt.

  Elizabeth watched Connie wipe her hands on the dish towel on the counter in front of her as she seemed to weigh her next words. “When you were with Jason…”

  “I’m not with Jason anymore,” she cut in.

  Connie’s lips pulled to the side in a thoughtful expression. “That’s true.”

  “And it’s not that I’m ‘not into fun’,” Elizabeth continued with air quotes. “Have you ever thought that my idea of fun and your idea of fun are just two different things?”

  Connie leaned against the counter with another weary sigh. “Of course I know that. And if you’re happy that’s all that matters to me. And I have to admit, when you were with Mark yesterday, you seemed genuinely happy. I guess I just never thought that your idea of fun was a casual fling.”

  Her sister’s next words took the sting out the comment. “That was more my style.” Connie gave her a wry, self-deprecating smile.

  Despite herself, Elizabeth smiled at the joke, but her mind was still stuck on something her sister had said before that. You seemed genuinely happy.

  It wasn’t the words that had her standing there dumbstruck, but the realization that they were true. She had been happy. Genuinely, deep down, heartwarmingly happy. And it had felt good. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so, so….alive. It wasn’t just since the breakup. It had been long before then. At some point over the last five years, she’d fallen into a funk. A safe, content, joyless funk.

  Jason had made her feel safe and that security was so refreshing and desired compared to the screaming matches she’d grown up around that she’d embraced it, wallowed in it. And somehow along the way, she’d stopped feeling joyfully alive. When the hell had that happened?

  Her sister and Robbie seemed oblivious to the mind-blowing revelations going on in Elizabeth’s head as they continued on a conversation around her, discussing her and her love life as if she wasn’t there in the room.

  “I didn’t say he’s a bad influence,” Connie was saying. She’d picked up the dish towel and was twisting it in her hands as she leaned against the counter, apparently all thoughts of prepping vegetables forgotten as she and Robbie debated the pros and cons of Elizabeth and Mark’s pseudo-relationship.

  “You don’t know Mark,” Robbie said, not seeming to be listening to Connie. He was frowning down at the vegetables he was cutting. Elizabeth had never seen Robbie angry before. He was the living definition of laid-back. To see the frustration on his face and hear his annoyance was disturbing.

  Elizabeth glanced between the two. It didn’t take an emotional genius to feel the tension in the room and she had the horrible feeling she might be on the verge of witnessing a couple’s fight, something she had no desire to see. She silently begged Connie to drop it, but of course she didn’t.

  “You’ve said yourself that he’s a player. He sleeps around and is terrified of commitment.” Connie crossed her arms. “Those were your words, not mine.”

  Elizabeth should leave. She should claim exhaustion and make a getaway, but Robbie’s next words halted her movements.

  “Yes, but he wasn’t always that way.”

  A rabid curiosity coursed through her.

  “It doesn’t matter what he was like back in the day, Robbie. People change. You can’t—”

  Elizabeth barely heard her sister’s rampage and interrupted without thinking. “He wasn’t?”

  They both turned to her in surprise for the second time since she’d arrived. This time she had the distinct impression that they’d forgotten she was in the room. Embarrassment had heat flooding her cheeks. She shouldn’t be so curious about Mark, not when this was destined to be short term. Two months at the longest, that’s what they’d agreed. After the wedding they would go their own way. Besides, given his apparent attention span when it came to women, she was fully aware he might grow tired of her well before the wedding. But still, she couldn’t stop the curiosity so she cleared her throat and tried again.

  “He wasn’t always like this?” she prompted.

  Robbie and Connie shared a quick look before Robbie answered. “No. He used to be quite the romantic, actually.”

  Robbie’s lips twitched up at whatever memory he was thinking and Elizabeth found herself smiling in turn. She couldn’t help thinking of Mark’s idea of the perfect fiancé—she had no doubt he had a romantic streak somewhere in there.

  “He used to always be looking for the one,” Robbie said with a roll of his eyes. “Even when we were in junior high, he thought every girl he liked was it. Destiny.”

  The sarcasm in his tone was tempered by amusement and an obvious fondness for his friend.

  “So what happened?” Connie asked.

  Elizabeth had been about to ask the same thing and shot her sister a grateful look.

  “Then he met Monica,” Robbie said with a heavy sigh. He’d managed to make Monica sound like a curse word.

  Elizabeth was leaning over the counter waiting for him to continue. “Who was Monica?”

  Robbie leveled her with his gaze. “She was the one who broke Mark’s heart.”

  Elizabeth’s own heart responded with a sharp pang—a mix of hurt on Mark’s behalf and jealousy, which was silly. She couldn’t be jealous of her casual lover’s ex-girlfriend.

  He leaned back against the counter as Elizabeth and Connie waited for the story. “What happened?” Connie asked.

  “They met in college.” Robbie got a faraway nostalgic look on his face. “It was love at first sight, at least for Mark. After all those years of looking, he was convinced he’d finally found the one.”

  Elizabeth swallowed back bile. Her jealous reaction to those words was stupid. Ridiculous. But no amount of telling herself that made it go away. Instead, she chose to ignore it, chalking it up to her overly emotional state following the break up. She tried to focus on Robbie’s words and block out the emotions.

  “He won her over eventually and they dated for ages.”

  “How long?” Elizabeth asked. She didn’t miss Connie’s raised eyebrow.

  What? She was curious. It didn’t mean anything.

  Robbie looked to the ceiling as if mentally calculating. “At least five years, I guess. They met halfway through college and started dating senior year. They lived together all during law school.”

  “Monica is a lawyer?” She didn’t know why Mark’s ex’s profession mattered, but it did. She wanted to know everything about Mark’s past and she refused to analyze why.

  But that question had both Mark and Connie looking at her in confusion until finally Connie said, “No, Mark is the lawyer. Well, was a lawyer.”

  Elizabeth gaped at her sister but Connie turned back to Robbie expectantly, waiting for the rest of the story. She, however, was having a hard time moving on. Mark had been a lawyer?

  “Anyway,” Robbie continued. “They got engaged right after he passed the bar and for a while there, it seemed like he had it all—everything he’d ever wanted, the beautiful fiancée, the dream of a family, a promising career at a prestigious law firm….”

  Her chest was closing in on her at the mental image of Mark with his perfect fiancée. “And?”

  Robbie shrugged, as if the rest was obvious. “And then she broke up with him.”

  She and Connie waited for him to continue but he turned back to his vegetables. “What? Why? What happened?” Elizabeth asked.

  Robbie focused on chopping as he answered in a bleak voice. “She’d met someone else and admitted that she’d been cheating on him.”

  Elizabeth’s heart ached as if she’d just walked in on Jason all over again. That pain was never far from her heart and she experienced it again now. No one should have to go through that sort of betrayal—especially not someone like Mark.

  “It destroyed him.” Robbie’s pain on his friend’s behalf was clear in his voice and Con
nie walked over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. Though he didn’t brush it off, he didn’t acknowledge the touch either.

  “He gave up everything,” he continued. “He let Monica keep the apartment and everything they’d bought together—the furniture, the pictures, all that stuff. I think he just didn’t want the reminders.”

  Elizabeth nodded even though neither of them were looking at her. She knew that feeling well—every other day she pondered giving up the house she was renting so she could start fresh in a place that didn’t harbor ghosts of what might have been.

  “And his job?” Connie asked.

  “He gave that up too,” Robbie said. “He said he’d had an eye-opening experience, played it off like it was the best thing that had happened to him. Started focusing on having fun and enjoying life.”

  He didn’t need to say the rest, it was obvious. In losing Monica, he’d lost all of the dreams he’d spent his whole life working toward. Elizabeth’s heart ached for Mark—for the man she knew now and for the romantic boy he’d once been.

  She didn’t realize Robbie had stopped chopping and was heading toward her until he was standing directly across from her on the other side of the counter. The gratitude in his eyes was overwhelming. “I knew he’d been acting different lately. Especially when it comes to you. I’m just glad to see that he’s finally moving on. It’s great to see him happy and dating again—”

  Elizabeth winced and cut in quickly. “We’re not. Dating, I mean.”

  His eyes widened with surprise. “Oh.”

  She found herself shifting from one foot to another. She and Robbie had gotten close over the past year he’d been dating her sister…but not this close. They’d never discussed her love life before and she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to start now. But he and Connie were watching her, waiting for an explanation and she couldn’t blame them. Mark may be known as a player but Connie had been right when she’d said it wasn’t Elizabeth’s style. But that was then….

  “I like him,” she said, hoping that softened to blow on Robbie’s end. She didn’t want him to think she was using his friend, after all. Even though she kind of was. But the using was mutual. He’d made the offer, not her.