by Phoebe Fox
When I came back out to the dining room he was seated at one end of the table, my plate across from his, the cheap recycled-paper napkins folded like cloth beside them, a fork lined up in the middle and two glasses of water carefully set above and to the right of the plates, as though we were fine-dining. Chip shot to his feet when he saw me, gesturing awkwardly to my chair like a maître d’ in training.
I was touched by his sweet gesture. “This is nice of you, Chip. I’m glad you came. I could actually use a friend.”
“Sounded like it,” he said, taking his seat after I did. The grin came back. “Hope you like Gorditas.”
Actually, greasy ground beef and oily cheese and a thick, chewy taco shell sounded perfect at the moment. I unwrapped one of the three on my plate—I’d never eat all that—and took a bite, suddenly starving. Chip followed suit, both of us eschewing our forks.
“Oh, God,” I moaned through a mouthful. “Why are these so good at three a.m.?”
“Same reason Waffle House is. I think our standards relax after midnight.”
“Millions of bar hookups attest to that.”
Chip laughed, and so did I, and it felt good for a moment.
“Did I interrupt something tonight?” I asked. “A date? Sounded like you were out.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Nah, just some friends. I’d rather be here with you anyway.” He unwrapped his second Gordita and tore into it as ravenously as I was.
His comment was so simple, but it filled me with warmth. This new Chip said what he meant, and I liked it. He asked for nothing from me. There were no demands, no expectations. This moment was what it was, and that was all.
Ben had offered me more than that—offered me what I used to think I wanted: a man who thought of a future with me, rather than just living in the moment.
But I didn’t have the emotional depth to accept it.
“So,” Chip said after we ate in companionable silence for a few moments. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” I said, my voice flat. “It just...I thought I knew what I wanted. But it turns out it’s nothing at all like I thought,” I went on when he made no reply, just kept looking at me. “I guess I’m not quite who I thought I was.”
Chip chewed for a few moments. Then he said, “I don’t know if any of us are, Brook. I think we’re all capable of doing things that...totally surprise ourselves.”
I nodded, considering that as I unwrapped another taco. Chip was talking about himself, I guessed—the way he’d taken the reins of his life and changed everything to be someone he decided he wanted to be, instead of who he had been before. At our core, we’re who we are. We can change our actions, our choices, but not the essence of our selves. But Chip had changed all the choices he made—nearly every one of them—and in the process he had, if not changed, then at least accessed parts of himself that had remained deeply buried for most of his life.
Was that what I’d just done with Ben? Made a choice that revealed the core of me that I didn’t know was there—that all I wanted was a short-term good time with someone, rather than anything meaningful or committed?
It sure felt like that.
“I guess so,” I said finally. “I guess we change all the time anyway, so trying to figure out who we are at any given moment is an exercise in futility. You have to just live in the now, right?” I gave what I hoped was a blasé smile.
I reached for another taco, stunned to discover I’d already eaten all three. “Wow. I didn’t know I was that hungry.”
He held up half of his last Gordita. “You want the rest of mine?” he asked.
“That’s nice of you to offer. But that’s okay. I don’t really want it.”
He looked as crestfallen as though I’d slapped away his hand. I would have laughed at the incongruity of his expression, but it reminded me too much of Ben’s when I’d rejected what he’d been offering too.
“Wait, okay,” I said, wanting to erase the memory. “I’ll take it.”
“Nah, it’s cool.”
“No, bring it here—I want the taco.”
Chip’s smile had always transformed his entire appearance, chasing away the fierceness of what used to be his usual scowl. Now it gave him a boyish, youthful air, and lit up the room.
“Oh, you’ll get the taco,” he said, pushing back his chair and lifting one of those slanting satyr’s eyebrows as he slowly stood. He held the Gordita up in one cocked-back arm, like a paper airplane about to be launched.
“Chip...don’t you dare,” I said warningly.
“Don’t I dare what?” His tone was all innocence. “I’m just bringing you this taco you said you wanted so much. Open the gate—here comes the choo-choo.”
“Cut it out. I’m serious.”
“Chugga-chugga-chugga...whoo-whoo!” he said, making ridiculous train noises as he rounded the end of the table.
“Chip! I mean it!” I scrambled out of my chair on the opposite side from him and bolted into the kitchen, a tightness in my stomach letting loose at the silly game. This was what I needed—mindless, meaningless interaction.
He was right behind me, so I jagged left to cut into the living room, only to nearly run into his chest as he doubled back and cut me off. I shrieked and broke for the sofa, putting the cocktail table between us.
“No! No taco.”
“Taco,” he droned inexorably, feinting left.
I squealed and broke right. “No taco!”
He stopped dead still, lowering the hand with the food to his side and staring intently at me. “Brook...you said you wanted the taco.” He sounded so earnest and sincere it should have made me laugh.
But instead the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Something in his low, gravelly, dead-serious tone stripped away any sense of playfulness between us, and the air grew thick and charged.
“Stop,” I whispered breathlessly, my heart suddenly shaking my rib cage. “Stop it now.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
Chip stood for a moment that felt frozen, and then folded the taco carefully in its foil and placed it on my cocktail table. No, Jake will get that, I almost said before I remembered, with a fresh pang.
“I know this scene from a hundred movies,” I said. “And it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Isn’t it?” I was angry now—at Chip, at Ben...I didn’t know.
“No. Look, if you want me to go, I will.” His eyes were fixed on me across the cocktail table in our odd stand-off, but I couldn’t make out what was in them in the half-light from the moon and the streetlight spilling through a gap in the curtains. “But I came to be a friend. To listen. To cheer you up the way you’ve done for me. Because whatever else I feel or felt toward you, whatever else you want to believe about us, I care about you, Brook. And I want to help. If you’ll let me.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “You came here just for that. With no agenda. Just to talk to me about my broken relationship with another guy?”
“If that’s what you want. Yes.”
“Even though you told me you had feelings for me, you want to sit here and listen to me talk about my feelings for him—feelings in general, for that matter—like a girlfriend? Really?” There was no way he could miss the skepticism in my tone.
“Try me.”
I gave a sardonic laugh. “Okay. I will. Have a seat.”
He sat on the armchair beside him and I took the sofa across from it, the cocktail table a barrier between us.
“I think I love him,” I said, hearing the challenge in my tone. Might as well call Chip’s bluff now and he could leave.
“I know. You said that.” His voice was mild.
“He’s a great guy. Kind an
d open and funny. Smart. Generous. So much fun.” I was trying to hurt Chip, but the recitation of Ben’s wonderful qualities was only wounding myself. This paragon was the man I had just ended things with.
“That’s what you deserve, Brook.”
“Then why aren’t I with him?” I threw it in his face, but I wasn’t asking him the question.
He didn’t react, just looked calmly at me, waiting for me to go on. Finally, when I just stared back at him with what must have been a bulldog expression, he said, “I don’t know. Why do you think that is?”
Oh, for God’s sake. He was therapizing me.
“I don’t know! Dammit! I have no idea.”
“Maybe you don’t love him after all?”
That set every nerve I had on edge with a jangle, a visceral gut reaction that told me the truth. “I do love him. That much I know.”
He nodded. “Okay. Maybe he’s just not the right person for you then.”
I leaned back against the sofa arm, moving my gaze out the crack in the curtains and away from Chip’s steady stare. “I don’t know,” I said softly. “How does anyone know that?”
The question was idle, rhetorical, but Chip’s voice filtered over to me, quiet, hesitant. “I think it’s when you feel happier around that person, maybe? When they bring out what’s best in you. Make you want to...what...I guess live up to all the things you ever hoped for, for yourself? When you’re better with them than without them.”
I thought about that, still looking out my window where the streetlight dropped an arc of illumination onto the empty street in front of my house. It was a pretty good definition, actually. Did it apply to me and Ben? I did feel happier around him, in the easiest, most basic way—as if everything was simply right at that moment, just enough. Did he bring out the best in me? I never thought I was much of a caretaker, but I’d been a hands-on helicopter dog mother to Jake. I’d loved spending time with Adelaide, helping her—even when I couldn’t bring myself do the same with my own mother.
Was I better with Ben than without him?
Was I?
“I don’t know yet.”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until I heard Chip’s voice again.
“Maybe that’s the answer, Brook.” I turned my head from the window to look at him. “You said ‘yet.’ Maybe it’s just too soon to know. There’s nothing wrong with that. Is there?”
I regarded him for a long time, and he simply met my unswerving stare.
Finally I pushed myself up off the sofa and stood. “I’d better go to bed now. It’s late.” Chip stood immediately, and I met his eyes. “I’m sorry I was unkind before.”
“You weren’t.”
“You are a good friend, Chip,” I said quietly. “Thank you.”
“I would do anything for you, Brook.”
His simple words brought an ache to my throat. I took one hesitant step closer, then another, and then Chip’s arms went around me and he held me, offering nothing more than comfort. I let myself relax into it—giving myself just this one moment of human contact, a balm to my aching soul.
And then something shifted, so suddenly and completely it was like an electric current had shot between us. His clasp changed, subtly firmer—one hand stroked softly along my shoulder blades while the other lowered to the small of my back, pulling me closer, close enough to feel how affected Chip was too. His scent even seemed to intensify, cinnamon and soap and something else.
I pressed into him, every nerve ending completely alive and sensitized as if his naked skin were against mine. And when I felt his upper body shift, pull back slightly, I knew why, and I lifted my head to meet his as he lowered his lips to mine.
I lifted my head. I chose.
That was the last coolheaded realization I had before our mouths met and a jolt shot through my entire body straight to the center of me. After that I stopped analyzing what we were doing, or why—I stopped any rational thought at all. I devoured Chip’s soft lips, clung to his hard body, and surrendered completely.
twenty-five
Here’s when you have to wonder if you have crossed the line into total slutbag: When you wake up with a man next to you, and you have to think for a second to remember who it is.
And here’s when you realize you’ve made a horrible mistake: When you do realize who it is...and it’s the wrong guy.
I didn’t even have the excuse of being drunk to fall back on for why I’d finally ended up sleeping with Chip. The truth was, it had been in the works for a long time—maybe since he’d first walked into my office and some strange immediate animal attraction had jinged all the way through my body, straight to my groin. There was validity to the idea of chemical reactions, pheromones that drew you to someone on a level well below your conscious volition. Chip and I had been circling that draw for a long time, and even a child could have predicted that being alone with him late at night, when I was in a really poor state of mind, was going to wind up with me finally acting on all those sublimated impulses.
But the timing couldn’t possibly have been worse. Even if we’d actually gone all the way on the beach months ago—instead of being caught before the act by Deputy Dodd—rebound sex would have been better than what I’d just done.
And as much as I couldn’t deny that I’d wanted to go to bed with Chip (and I have to confess that the sex itself was phenomenal—like, porn-film phenomenal), he wasn’t the man I wanted to be waking up with.
Awkward.
He was lying on his side, facing me. A light layer of stubble covered his shaved head, the individual hairs gilded in the sunlight seeping through the window—even his unfairly long lashes seemed to shimmer. The sheet was bunched down around his legs, his bare chest and arms seeming enormous in my queen bed. The tattoos that covered his shoulders and upper arms were a colorful contrast to my plain white sheets. He wasn’t snoring exactly, but his mouth drooped open, and I could tell from his steady, deep breathing that he was still asleep.
Oh, and he had morning wood. Huge morning wood.
If we were at his house, I could just tippytoe out, like a true slutbag would. Which was exactly what I wanted to do—I could deal with the fallout later. But this was my house, my bed, and if I wanted the mountain of naked erect unconscious man beside me to leave, I had to wake him up and face the music.
“Chip,” I ventured, my voice cracking the stillness of the morning.
He didn’t budge.
I cleared my throat and said louder, “Chip,” but still, nothing. Hesitantly I tapped his shoulder, as if I were trying to get a stranger’s attention on the subway. Excuse me, sir, could you move? Your penis is making me really uncomfortable.
He gave a loud snore and snuggled deeper into the pillow. Good lord, had he roofied himself?
I took hold of one shoulder and shook. “Hey, Chip. Wake up!”
Finally his eyes flickered open, and as soon as he saw me a lazy grin drifted over his mouth. “Morning, Doc,” he drawled, reaching for me.
I put up my hands between us. “Listen, I have to...I’ve got things I have to take care of today, so—”
Chip took one of my hands and pressed it to his lips, holding it in place. “It’s Sunday, Doc,” he whispered against the sensitive skin of my fingertips. Then he pulled one finger into his mouth and sucked.
I yanked away so abruptly there was an audible pop as I retrieved my finger. “Chip—”
“Come on—you don’t have to jump up yet, do you?” He pulled my moist hand down to where he was still ragingly hard—more so, if that were possible.
This time I hauled my entire body backward and jerked away toward the edge of the bed, pulling the covers higher up my naked body.
“What’s the matter, babe?” he asked, his smile disappearing.
Babe? We’d moved to babe?
“I...I just need to get up,” I stammered.
Chip dropped down onto his elbow and rested his head on his fist, facing me. “Okay—how about this? Let’s get dressed and grab some chow and then we can go out on my boat.”
Chip wanted to go get brunch? And spend the day together?
Did he think we were dating now?
And then I thought...Were we?
I mean, it wasn’t like Ben and I weren’t definitively finished, judging by last night. Oh, God—last night. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since we broke up, and here I was in bed with another man. Ben’s side of the bed was barely cold.
Had I even changed the sheets since he’d been here?
Ew.
Chip was up and pulling on his cargo shorts, and before I could scramble out of bed he’d rounded the foot and lowered himself onto the mattress to sit beside me—effectively trapping me in my tainted bedclothes. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Just so you know, I’m not going anywhere, Brook. This wasn’t a one-night stand.”
He was being so sweet. Saying all the things a man should say on the morning after an impulsive night, when a woman’s fears were at her most acute.
But I hadn’t remotely had time to process what had happened between me and Ben. I certainly wasn’t ready to start something new.
I let out a long breath and leaned back against the wall behind my headboardless bed as far as the sheet would allow, trying to create some distance without pulling a total Lady Godiva. “Chip...we need to talk.”
He shifted and gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Uh-oh. That’s never a good conversation starter. Are you dumping me already, Brook?” He tried to make it a joke, but I could hear the thread of worry in his tone.
It was hardly the best situation to have a serious conversation, with only a cheap cotton sheet between me and total exposure, and Chip’s bare tattooed chest filling my vision as he sat beside me in the bed where I’d slept with two different men inside of a week.
Again...ew.