Last Chance to Fall

by Kelsey Kingsley

  “They really don’t. Most of those women are already wearing makeup by the time the guy wakes up too.”

  “I feel cheated,” I teased, touching the impossibly soft skin of her face.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said lightheartedly, and morning breath be damned, she pulled herself up to kiss me.

  She wiggled against me, giggling as I ran sleepy fingers through her hair and along her neck and down her arm. “Stop,” she squealed, as those fingers weaseled their way under her arm. “Don’t make me tickle you again, inhaler boy.”

  I scoffed at the jab. Fighting my smile was useless. “Fine, fine,” I groaned and rolled over, rubbing my eyes and grabbing my glasses. I slid them on, noticing the time. “Feck, it’s already eight in the mornin’! I’m usually up by six. Did you drug me last night?”

  “No,” she quipped. “Why? Do you have a schedule to keep? I thought we were breaking the rules and routines this week.”

  “Right, we are, but I don’t want to miss—” I turned to face her, and her lips parted. “What?” I asked, smirking at the sheepish expression that blanketed her pretty face.

  “You have absolutely no idea how fucking hot you are,” she blurted, reaching out to press her hands to either side of my face, pulling me down to kiss me sweetly.

  I smiled. “That’s just the nerd novelty talkin’. It wears off after a while.”

  “I highly doubt that.” She kissed me again, and I knew with certainty that I could very easily wake up like this every day of my life and never tire of it.

  “Shower?” I asked, as one of her legs came to rest over my hip. I allowed a hand to smooth over the elongated thigh, to glide over her skin and squeeze her arse.

  “Or we could do this instead?” she suggested, positioning my morning erection to the heat of her body, making contact with that welcomed sanctuary I had indulged in twice the night before. One gentle thrust and I’d be there again, immersed and closer to never finding myself again.

  “Tempting,” and I teased with a bite of her lip and a gentle nudge of my hips. She satisfied me with a whispered gasp and the gentle closing of her eyelids. “But we could kill two birds with one stone in the shower,” I said with a grin, and rolled away and off the bed.

  “Oh, come on!” she squealed, laughing through her sexual torture. I grabbed her hands, pulled her from the bed, and she groaned. “Can’t we just stay in bed all week?”

  “No can do,” I said, leading her to the bathroom. “Today, we’re havin’ breakfast, and then you’re meetin’ my best friend, who is getting married on Saturday. And then we need to stop by your ex’s place and get your shite.”

  Despite my pulling, she stopped being led. She planted her feet firmly at the doorway of my bedroom, standing there, gloriously naked. What I would’ve given to possess Ryan’s artistic ability. To have a pen and a scrap of paper in my hand, memorializing the sight of her in that doorway, auraed in the morning sunlight. Flowing waves and soft curves, delicate collarbones and chipped nail polish.

  She reached out to me, and one hand ran along one tensed bicep, up the slope of a shoulder. She held my neck in her palm, pressing long fingers into my skin.

  “What is it?” I finally asked, finding my words somewhere in the middle of those thoughts about art and auras.

  “Two things,” she said. “Your best friend is getting married this weekend?”

  “Yep.” I nodded, touching a hand to her waist.

  She kneaded the skin at the back of my neck. “That’s during our allotted time together.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed, sliding my hand around to the small of her back. “That’s why you’re comin’ as my date.”

  Lindsey raised an eyebrow. “Wow, Sean. Very presumptuous for a scaredy-cat.”

  “Turnin’ over a new leaf,” I laughed, touching my forehead to hers. “What was the second thing?”

  “If we’re getting my stuff, does that mean I’m staying here this week?” she asked shyly, dropping her hand from my neck, ceasing her need to touch my body. As though I could ever say no.

  “Nah, I thought I’d let ya sleep in your car for the next several days,” I deadpanned with a roll of my eyes. “Of course you’re gonna stay here. I couldn’t live with myself, knowin’ you’re sleepin’ on a hard floor when you could be sleepin’ in my bed.”

  She smiled, raising both arms to loop around my neck. “Thank you Sean,” she whispered into my ear. I dipped my mouth to her shoulder, pressing my lips to her exposed skin, and pushing my chest against hers, I knew I was setting myself up for the worst crash-and-burn of my life.

  I was so much braver than I ever thought.

  CHAPTER SEVEN |

  Pancakes & Goats-beard

  “You want … Wait, what?” the waiter asked, scratching the eraser of his pencil against his temple.

  “Pancakes,” I said, unsure and shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

  Lindsey sat across from me, giggling behind tightly closed lips, as my usual waiter shook his head and scribbled my order down in his notepad. He turned to her, and she simply said, “Same.”

  Dave turned back to me and asked, “You’re sure about this?”

  Nope. Not at all. But I caught Lindsey’s hopeful gaze, and I nodded. “Yeah, positive.”

  “You’re absolutely certain?”

  “Why is this so hard to believe?” Lindsey laughed, looking between me and the waiter. “It’s just something different from the boring old plum and muffin.”

  “But Sean loves plums,” Dave argued with her.

  My cheeks were on fire. “Just get me the pancakes, Dave,” I grumbled.

  “O-kay, whatever you say man,” he mumbled, and walked away, officially perplexed, leaving us to sit by the bay window.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” she giggled.

  “What is?” I asked, struggling to feel comfortable on the chair as I shifted and leaned.

  “Your habitual ways,” she said, and I laughed. “Don’t laugh! When your waiter is that freaked out over you not ordering your usual, it’s a bad sign Sean Kinney. You’re wandering down a dangerous road.”

  Sun poured across the table, catching bits of sparkling gold in her damp hair. My chin propped in my hand, I watched the fragments of precious metal dance along the woven braid, and I thought about one of those old fairytales. You know the one: Rumpelstiltskin and the spinning wheel. All of those spools of gold.

  She shook her head with a smile and asked, “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen in my life,” I blurted out, a very brave thing for Sean Kinney to say to a pretty girl.

  “Oh, I do, huh?” Her smile teased, her crossed arms taunted, but the glint in her dark brown eyes told me she appreciated the compliment.

  So I kept going, suddenly inspired. “Have ya ever heard of Goats-beard?”

  She laughed, just as the waiter brought our cups of coffee. “No, can’t say that I have, unless of course you’re talking about literal goats. In which case, yes, I am familiar. I’m from North Carolina remember? Farms galore.”

  I laughed. “No, not literal goats.”

  “Then please, continue.” She took a sip from her mug, keeping her eyes on me. Listening intently.

  I grabbed a sugar packet from the little cup they kept on the table. Ripped it open. Dumped it in the mug. Stirred. Kept my eyes on her. Took a deep breath. “I used to spend every summer in Ireland in my late-teens and early twenties. It was an escape, ya know? Ryan was gettin’ into shite, Patrick was dealin’ with life and the reality that his marriage was worse than he’d thought, and I couldn’t take the stress of it. So, when I was off from school, I’d head overseas to spend time with my Da’s sister and her family. It was, ehm … good for me, I think. Ya know, to be away, because I could sorta reinvent myself while I was there. So, for a few months out of the year, I wasn’t me—I was a different Sean.”

  “Do you talk differently over there? I noticed
that when you’re around your family, your accent is a little thicker, so …”

  I squinted out the window, thinking. “You know, I never noticed before, but yeah, I guess it is. When I’d be in Ireland, by the end of the summer, I’d be talkin’ like a native. Honestly, that’s how it was here, before I went to school, but as I became more exposed to Americans, I talked more like one. It’s a weird thing when I think about it actually.”

  “I’m the same way though,” she said, nodding and staring into her coffee like it were the most interesting thing in the world. “When I’m home, I have an accent more like my parents, but up here … It’s like I trained myself not to talk with one or something.”

  Then, before I could ask anything further, she waved her hands and smiled up at me. “Anyway, sorry. Back to Goats-beard.”

  I returned the smile at the shy way she occasionally brought up the little secrets of her life, and continued: “Right. Goats-beard. So, anyway, my auntie and uncle live in this little cottage right outside of Balbriggan, where I was born. It’s somethin’ straight out of a, ehm … Like a Thomas Kincaid painting, ya know? I should show ya some pictures sometime. But anyway, in the mornin’, Auntie Colleen would serve breakfast and occasionally we’d eat outside in the garden that overlooked this field in back of their house. It was full of flowers and most of them, I couldn’t tell ya what they are because I’m no botanist, but I knew there was goldenrod, daisies, and these flowers called Goats-beard.

  “Well, the thing about Goats-beard is that it’s beautiful—this bright, lively yellow—but it’s, ehm … It’s a little shy, I guess, because it only blossoms in the early mornin’ and then closes early-afternoon. I remember my Uncle Conner sayin’ to me that it was almost a special thing to catch it before it went to sleep for the day.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, and the waiter brought our pancakes and syrup. We thanked him, and I looked at the plate in front of me like it was about to sprout three talking heads, and Lindsey laughed.

  “Oh God, just eat them!” she said with a laugh, and I eyed her with disdain. She had no idea what it was taking for me to not eat my bran muffin and plum. No feckin’ clue.

  “So, go on,” she urged, and I sighed, pouring syrup over my pancakes.

  “They were my favorite things about the mornin’. I couldn’t say that to my cousins because, I mean, what twenty-two year old guy stares at flowers and thinks they’re beautiful? I would’ve gained myself a few choice nicknames I didn’t wanna have slapped to my back, so I kept it to myself, but … I looked forward to them every mornin’, because they made me feel happy, and alive, and …” My voice trailed off, and I wondered if maybe I had made a mistake bringing it up. Maybe I should’ve just kept it to myself.

  “What were you going to say?” she asked, her knife and fork in her hands.

  I shrugged, deciding to just go for it. “Well, it’s just that … you remind of them, and of those summers.”

  Her fork stopped in mid-air, halfway to her mouth. Her breath was forgotten, her pulse hammered in the base of her throat. “Sean, I … I don’t even know what to say to that.”

  I shook my head, feeling like a total jackass. “You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to tell ya about them, and that you remind me of them. Of that entire field, really, but … mostly the Goats-beard. You remind me of times when I could be myself, and that’s something I haven’t felt in a long time.”

  The air was thick, heavy with tension, and I dropped my eyes to the plate. To focus on other things I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Things like the taste of pancakes and syrup. I hadn’t eaten pancakes since I was a kid and I was no longer sure whether I’d like them or not, but, with the desire to know, I took a bite and chewed mindfully. Lindsey watched me expectantly, cheeks flushed from my ridiculous chatter about flowers and how my convoluted mind related them to her, and she bit her lower lip, waiting for the reaction.

  “Well?” she asked, after I had swallowed.

  “Well, I don’t hate it,” I laughed.

  “Are you going to write poetry about them too?” she asked, teasing me with a nudge of her sandal against my shoe.

  “Excuse me?” The corner of my mouth lifted into a sheepish, lopsided smile. She was poking fun at me, and I loved it.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to write poetry about me and Goats-beard, so I was just wondering if you were going to write one about pancakes, too.”

  I laughed outwardly, rolling my eyes and making a show of my ridiculous display of male sensitivity.

  Inwardly, I couldn’t ever imagine writing a poem about her, if I could actually write one at all. My thoughts were intricate enough, but I wasn’t sure I could put them to paper and write anything beautiful. But lack of talent aside, I couldn’t imagine there being any words to find beyond one.

  Home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT |

  Suits & Shells

  The tux rental place was in New London, about twenty-five minutes outside of River Canyon. More than sufficient time to ask some questions, get some answers, fall further into whatever the hell was happening to me with a woman I had only just met.

  “When was the last time you went to Ireland?” she asked, her bare feet on the dashboard, tapping to the tune of Dave Matthews Band playing through the speakers. Several days ago, something so casual and unsanitary would’ve left me feeling uncomfortable, now I just smiled at her and the chipped purple nail polish on her toes.

  With a shrug, I answered, “I guess it’s been about nine, maybe ten years?”

  Lindsey shifted in her seat, eyeing me with lip-biting uncertainty. Afraid to ask what was on the tip of her tongue, and I urged her to continue, because we weren’t supposed to be afraid to speak our minds that week.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “If you loved it there so much, why has it been so long?”

  I tipped my head toward the window, staring thoughtfully at the road and those lines, dashing by. “I guess, because, life gets in the way? You get busy, you—”

  “Busy with what?”

  Busy with what? I ran a hand over my chin, over the scruff that I still hadn’t shaved. I hadn’t shaved since Saturday morning before the bachelor party and the strippers and the drunken night. Before Lindsey. Those lines kept racing by, boxing me into my lane. A metaphorical example of life.

  “Working, I guess. Family.” My answer was short and blunt, because to delve deeper meant finding out how inadequate that answer really was.

  “You should go this year,” she replied.

  “Ehm, well, I still have work, and—”

  “You sell mattresses. I think they’d survive without you for a little while.” I took my eyes off those lines, from all those limitations, and glanced over at her. The tightly wound braid, cascading over her shoulder like a golden rope. Her brown eyes, pinning me down intently, and that line of concern running between her brows. “You get one life, Sean Kinney. Don’t waste it on mattresses when you could be spending it staring at a field of Goats-beard.”

  I laughed, despite it not being very funny at all, and I shook my head. “We’ll see.”

  “No,” she said, putting a hand on my thigh. “Promise me you’ll try. Please.”

  I tore my eyes from the road, from those lines. I saw the worry in her eyes. The buried pain scraping to the surface, and I wondered what was lurking in the depths that suddenly looked muddy, deep and sad.

  Would I ever know why?

  “Okay,” I said, nodding slowly. “I promise, I’ll try to go.”

  Lindsey smiled, settled, and to my disappointment, she pulled her hand from my leg. “Good.”

  I swallowed, blinking at the road. Shaken. I might have gotten a taste of what it was like to be brave, of not questioning things, of living. But intense moments, unexplained passion … I could have done without that. I could have done without questioning what had brought that on, what had made her eyes so immediately panicked and pleading.

  I swallowed again, and tur
ned to her, needing a change in conversation. “So, how did you come to find yourself here?”

  “Oh boy,” she let out with an exasperated sigh. “Okay, so my parents are pretty well-off—I told you that, right?”

  “And socialites, right?” I asked, recollecting the information she had handed me on Sunday night at the bar.

  She nodded. “You got it. Well, at their country club, they knew a couple who had a son around my age, and by that, I mean, six years older than me.” She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Successful law student, just passed the BAR exam, working his way to really becoming something … Anyway, somewhere in chatting with these people, they decided it would be a great idea to set their daughter up with their son.”

  “And that was Jack?” I questioned, raising a brow.

  “Yep.” Her lips popped around the ‘p,’ emphasizing that last letter with a sarcastic bite. “Right off the bat, I didn’t like him all that much. But you have to understand where I come from. Very hoity-toity. Girls don’t have ambitions; they have men. I mean, I went to college, but it was more a thing to do than a thing to help me get somewhere, you know? And plus, I wanted to make my parents happy. I wanted them to rest assured that I would be taken care of by a rich lawyer, even if that meant not really caring for him for the rest of my life.”

  “And how would that have been different, had you not had your moment?” I asked, sideyeing her.

  Lindsey laughed toward the trees racing by at the side of the road. “You mean, what would I have done had cancer never happened?”

  I had purposely avoided the word, but I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She swirled a finger over the window. “I guess I would have rebelled. I wouldn’t have cared about keeping up with their appearances or doing what was expected of me, and I would’ve maybe found a guy who I could really love.”

  “Did you ever love Jack?” I have no idea why I even wanted to know something like that.

  She shrugged one shoulder, gazing out the window. “I really don’t think so, but I don’t know. I mean, I make it sound like I was always miserable with him, but he never hurt me or anything, and we had moments, you know? He was fun sometimes, and I’d catch myself having a good time with him, and I’d think, ‘I could be happy with this.’ It was more me settling than anything, and he was safe, so I took those good times and ran with them, even though they were few and far between.