Trying It All

by Christi Barth

  She gathered up the stack of clothes. Gave a nod to Elisa behind the counter that signaled the girl with the spiraling green curls should keep an eye on the floor. Then Summer headed to the back room, Chloe in tow.

  It was a contrast to the openness of the front of the boutique, with its late afternoon sun streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. No carefully spaced clothes displayed on beachy white woodwork. Everything in here was crammed together. Summer loved it. Loved feeling like it was her own personal treasure cave full of prettiness.

  Everybody needed some pretty in their lives. To pick them up. To help them to feel good about themselves. To make an ex feel bad about losing them. To give an extra layer of courage when asking for a job or a raise. Pretty things weren’t frivolous. They were incredibly necessary. They could make the difference between a hellacious day and just a very bad day.

  Summer knew.

  Because she’d died once.

  Sure, it was a technicality, and as such, had lasted for just one minute and eleven seconds (not that she was counting herself—the doctors told her afterward). But the months of healing and rehab torture that followed definitely drove the point home.

  It was all kinds of bad. Horrific. Physically and emotionally. And there were days when matching her bra to her panties, feeling the soft swathe of cashmere at her throat, or knowing that her ugly scars were hidden behind an asymmetrical hemline of dreamy, purple chiffon made all the difference. Made the difference between curling up in a ball and being too sad to cry…and getting up. Getting the hell on with her life.

  Which brought Summer right back around to why she’d dragged Chloe to the rear of the store. “Forget the photo shoot for a second.”

  “It’s in a month. When you freaked out and texted me last night in all caps—thanks for that, by the way—you said you had so much prep left to do that you couldn’t finish it all in two months. But whatever.” Chloe flopped into an ancient papasan that had been the centerpiece of their dorm room and then their first apartment in Virginia.

  For someone as obsessed with style as Summer? It should’ve been consigned to a dumpster years ago. But she couldn’t give it up. Couldn’t let go of the shared memories. Which were all the more precious now that much of Chloe’s free time was being sucked up by Griffin and his band of merry men.

  “Trust me, I’m no less freaked out now than when I texted.” She carefully hung each outfit over the hook on the back of the door. They each needed to be photographed before going back out for sale. Then Summer could pore over all the choices late into the night in her pj’s. With a glass or two of wine. It wouldn’t make choosing any easier. It would make the process more tolerable. “But I have a more immediate thing to freak out about.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You and Griff ran off for a ‘romantic tryst’ in the mountains.” Summer made air quotes with her fingers because who were they kidding—it was just a sexapalooza. “So I couldn’t talk to you.” For two whole days. She’d been ready to burst with this news. Vibrating with caffeine-overload-type jitters and the need to dump all of it at Chloe’s feet.

  “Summer, there’s cell service in the mountains. If you have an emergency, you know I’m always going to be here for you.”

  “I know.” She squeezed her best friend’s hand. They’d proved that to each other time and again. “Which is why I want to save interrupting a romantic sex-a-thon for an actual emergency. This isn’t that dire. It’s just…weird. Unsettling.”

  “Okay, now I’m freaking out. Spill.”

  Summer slid to the floor, crossing her legs into a half-lotus position. Easy enough to do beneath the wide coral skirt of her peasant dress. Which was accented with a hot-pink scarf as a belt so she could wear her pink peep-toe wedges. “After brunch on Sunday, I kissed a boy. A man,” she corrected herself. Because that particular point was not in contention at all. She’d been kissed—thoroughly kissed—by a man. Not a politico or a hipster or a lawyer or a professor. Riley was all man.

  “That’s not news.” Chloe’s eye roll had to be painful, it was so big. “You do that on a, um, frighteningly regular basis.”

  This borderline complaint was familiar territory. Chloe had been a virgin before Griff. Her lack of experience was in directly inverse proportion to Summer’s try everything and everyone approach to men. “Hey, I don’t see you saying no when somebody passes a box of truffles to you. Kissing boys is the same thing. An indulgence. And a mere trifle,” Summer said.

  “If that’s so, why did this one unsettle you?” Chloe countered, jabbing with an outstretched—and more than a little accusatory—finger.

  Summer squinted her eyes. “Because it was Riley.”

  “Riley who?”

  This is why they were best friends. It was the perfect answer. One that popped her own peepers wide to meet Chloe’s utterly clueless blue eyes. “See? It’s so incomprehensible you don’t even leap to the most obvious conclusion.”

  “Wait…you mean Riley Ness?” Chloe’s lips twitched in a weirdly undulating wave. Clearly, she was finding it hard to decide between landing on downturned disapproval, openmouthed shock, or upturned hilarity. “No. You can’t possibly mean Riley. Because you two can’t stand each other.”

  “True.” Sooooo true. As true as leopard prints being wildly overdone in a particular pocket of the Eastern Seaboard. “But that apparently isn’t a deterrent to wanting each other.”

  The almost-grin fell right back to shock. “You’re serious?”

  “Quite. Quite serious and quite confused.”

  “Me, too.” Chloe leaned forward, clasping her hands around her knees just like she had freshman year when they’d shared kissing stories after parties. Well, Summer had shared hers. Chloe had listened and come up with a helpful rating system. “How was he?”

  “Spectacular.”

  Holding up one finger, Chloe asked, “Better than Quinn, the Irish exchange student?”

  “Yes. Even including the extra points you gave for Quinn’s accent, Riley blew his score out of the water.” Not that Summer would ever inflate his ego by telling him.

  Chloe ticked up a second finger. “Better than the guy with the scars that you think was a CIA operative?”

  Summer raised both hands. “Just stop. We’re not going to revisit everyone who scored a nineteen or above on the official score sheet.”

  “Why not? It’d be fun.” Chloe rummaged for the phone in her tiny bag. “I can pull up the Google sheet with all the entries…”

  “No. Because nobody has ever scored higher than a twenty-five. Including spies and visiting nobility and firefighters.” Summer leaned forward, dropping her voice to a near-whisper full of a truth it was more than a little difficult to admit. “Until Sunday. Until Riley.”

  Tapping away at her phone, Chloe asked, “What score do you want to give him?”

  “It’s…it’s unquantifiable. There’s the utter surprise factor. The strength factor. His overall hotness. And then there’s the kiss itself. Kisses. Plural.”

  Summer’s eyelids fluttered shut. Just like they had that morning, and every time since that she’d relived those moments on that hot, crowded, noisy street. The reflex annoyed Summer to no end. But she couldn’t stop it. Riley’s kisses were swoon-worthy. Period.

  “Just kisses?”

  Throwing up her hands, Summer said, “Chloe, we were on the edge of Dupont Circle. There was no quickie in broad daylight against the wall of Starbucks. Besides, we can’t be in each other’s company for more than two minutes without bickering.”

  That pulled Chloe’s pink-glossed lips into a sly smile “How long did you kiss?”

  “More than two minutes,” she mumbled dreamily.

  After entering God knows what on the spreadsheet on her phone, Chloe set it down and tapped her hands on her thighs. “Now what?”

  “Now you have to help me.” Summer hugged herself. Twisted her arms into the Eagle pose to try to loosen her shoulders. They’d risen u
p to her ears and locked there during this conversation. “I’m completely confused by his kiss.”

  What did it mean? How were they supposed to act now? Pretend it didn’t happen? Would he talk about it casually among the group? We need a topic for our next Naked Men podcast, and oh yeah, I kissed the stuffing out of Summer.

  Would they do it again?

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “Either to stop a fight or because I dared him to. Sort of. I’m not really clear. I think I have makeout-induced amnesia.”

  “There is no such thing.” And Chloe punctuated her point with an Are you kidding me smirk.

  “Kiss Riley Ness and then see if you can make that statement.”

  Chloe patted at Summer’s arms to untangle them so she could see her face. “He’s really got you twisted up, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. Because we shouldn’t have done it in the first place.” The very idea of them kissing made zero sense. “It was impetuous. Stupid. Complicated. But we did do it, and now there are ramifications.”

  “There don’t have to be. You’re the queen of no-entanglement smooches. Think of it as being no different than kissing a stranger in a bar as part of a bachelorette party scavenger hunt.”

  Well. Summer had done that about a billion and two times. Girls and guys, come to think of it. And she’d have liked nothing better than to slot Riley under Questionable but fun so I went with it. If only it were that simple.

  “But it is different. Because I’ll see him again.” And for a split second, she resented Chloe for falling in love and putting her in this position. For putting the insufferable—and incredibly handsome—Riley Ness in her path. “I’ll see him all the time, thanks to you practically living over at the rectory with Griffin. He’s an integral part of our new social circle. He’s unavoidable.”

  “Face-planting onto his lips again, however, is entirely avoidable.”

  This was nowhere close to the support she’d expected from her BFF. Not to mention that it overlooked the obvious problem. “If I don’t know how it happened this time, how am I supposed to avoid a repeat? I blame Riley.”

  Chloe burst out laughing. “And I guarantee that he blames you. That’s hysterical. It’s nobody’s fault. Not if you both got into the hot and heavy.”

  The man irked her. The man’s moves, however, did not. “We did. It was definitely a wholly mutual lip-lock.”

  “Then I’m still stumped as to why you’re confused.”

  “It was hot. It was the kind of a kiss a woman only hopes to get maybe once in her life. And when you do get it, it’s all you want. That kiss was a gateway drug to Riley. Now I want him.” And more than just a kiss. Summer wanted all of him. Under her, over her, in her…

  Chloe tapped her lips with her index finger. “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Of course it is. He’s the opposite of everything I want in a man.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Summer lifted her shoulders, in the classic why aren’t you saying anything shrug that had broken the ice during boring conversations at parties, family dinners, and even a couple of television interviews.

  Chloe rolled her hand over and over, trying to squeeze…something…out of Summer. As if she had a clue and was voluntarily withholding it. Summer tossed a scarf at her. Then a straw hat. Finally, after a long, indrawn breath, Chloe said, “Which might make him exactly what you need.”

  That? That was what had taken an unendurable two minutes to deduce? That was the big, brilliant best-friend advice? Huh-uh. “Please. When it comes to men, I’ve tried it all. You’ve heard all the stories. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that I’ve left no stone unturned.”

  “You’ve turned over a bunch of stones.” Chloe slid off the chair to bump knees with Summer on the floor. “But did you ever actually brush off the dirt and take a good long look at any of them?”

  Summer blinked. Tried to picture it and gave up. “You lost me on the dirt metaphor.”

  “You do serial hookups. That’s not a judgment, just a fact. You don’t date, Summer. You don’t know what you want in a man because you’ve never stuck with one long enough to discover what you like in a partner and what you don’t.”

  Her back molars slammed together. Nothing gave Summer a bad case of serious face faster than talking about planning ahead. Making long-term lists and dreams and actually expecting it to happen. Her eyes narrowed to glare at Chloe. “Because there’s no guarantee of a future. You know that as well as I do. We both almost lost our futures in a random hail of bullets. And could again. There’s no point in trying to plan for living with someone for the next fifty years.”

  “Ouch. Promise me that you’ll leave that out of the toast at my wedding, or I won’t let you be the maid of honor.”

  “Your wedding? You’re finally proposing to Griff? When?” Summer thought it was weird that Griffin had handed Chloe an engagement ring with the directive to put it on and propose to him when she was ready. But him putting the ball in her court made her friend deliriously happy. And poor Griff had been miserable as he waited around for the woman he loved to pull the trigger.

  “Soon. Really soon, actually. That’s all you’re getting out of me on the subject right now.” She mimed locking her lips and tossing the tiny key over her shoulder. “Because the point is that there’s a very good chance nothing else tragically horrible will happen to you. Why not expend some energy on hoping for a future instead of wasting it all on ignoring it?”

  Been there. Heard it all before. Got the T-shirt and matching sweats with the motto down the leg. Chloe had given this speech—and numerous variations on it—as often as Summer used to lecture her on getting out and living a little.

  “I’m not doing this again with you. And I’m certainly not strategizing on how to get a man to share a nice, four-bedroom Federal-style row house with matching SUVs and a time-share in the Outer Banks with me!” Yeah, her voice got a little loud and a lot high. It didn’t matter. Chloe didn’t mind when Summer pitched fits. When she eloquently expressed every last emotion and thought that crossed her mind. Though what kind of man would possibly be that understanding?

  Chloe gave her a look waaaay too full of tolerance. The kind that said the venting person was full of shit, but they’d let you keep going because they loved you.

  Damn it.

  “Riley’s a very nice man.” Chloe ticked the points off on her fingers. The tips were stained with green ink. A daily hazard of being a professional letter writer. “He’s smart. Funny. Handsome. I hear he’s a great kisser. Are you sure that you haven’t spent all this time and energy disliking him because you’re scared of just how much you might actually like him?”

  The woman was spraying rationalizations all over the burning fire of her confusion and ire. With far less heat, Summer lobbed back, “In the four months I’ve known him, he’s made it clear that I annoy him, and vice versa. The man’s wound tighter than a champagne cork. And he’s got a stick so far up his ass that he probably sneezes wood shavings.”

  “Ewww.”

  “I liked kissing him. But I don’t think I like Riley.” Not that she knew him that well. They spoke to each other as little as possible, because all they ever did was snipe at each other. “There is no middle ground between those two facts. So what am I supposed to do?”

  A sharp rap at the door barely preceded Elisa’s opening it and sticking her head in sideways. “Chloe, your hunky flyboy is here. And he brought a friend with him who’s asking for you, Summer.”

  Chloe shot to her feet. “Is he tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome?”

  The sound that came from the back of Elisa’s throat was somewhere between a growl and a moan. “Green eyes. A dimple. Muscles for days. Yeah, I’d like Griff to give him my number, if you could arrange that.”

  Why…why would Riley show up here? At her boutique? History had proved that they never had anything to say to each other. At least, not anything nice. In fact, Riley frequently made fun of her f
or “playing with dresses all day.” As though her store weren’t a thriving business but just a stack of paper dolls.

  It fired her up all over again. “Is this man super-uptight, already telling you that something about the boutique isn’t maximized for efficiency and/or safety, and unrelentingly annoying?”

  “Um…he did point out that we should secure the standing rack holding the sunglasses to the wall in case there’s another earthquake.”

  Another earthquake. Really? There was one earthquake in D.C., five years ago, and not another one before it for something like two centuries. “That’s Riley, all right. But I don’t have the faintest clue why he’d want to talk to me.”

  “Maybe he’s confused, too?” Chloe pulled her up. “Or maybe he wants some more smooches.”

  “Fat chance. Mr. Statistics-and-Safety would never compound a mistake by repeating it. Plus, it’d be stupid.”

  But fun.

  And Summer never walked away from the chance for more fun…

  Chapter 3

  Griffin jammed his hands into the pockets of his summer tropical blues Coast Guard uniform. “Want to hear a list of things I never thought we’d do together?”

  “No.” Riley knew that bringing Griffin along to Summer’s shop was dicey. But he needed backup.

  Specifically, he needed an anti-wingman. A cock block. Six full feet of one, to keep him from accidentally kissing Summer again. Knox was in London for the week. Logan was off at some crash course in dealing with boards for when he took over as the head of his family foundation. And Josh—well, the only thing worse than repeating the mistake of kissing Summer was the way Josh would mercilessly mock him for going there in the first place.

  Griff had done some stupid-ass things when he started dating Chloe. He’d understand.

  “I never thought we’d go shopping for lady clothes together.” Griff threw a yellow scarf around Riley’s neck. “Oh, and I never thought one of my best friends would use the shopping trip to reveal that he likes to cross-dress.”