by Meg Maguire
“Really?” There was a hint of flirtatious challenge in Reece’s voice.
“Oh yes. I was going to try and take advantage of you this very night,” she said, egging him on.
“Well, I’m sorry to have foiled your plans. Like I told Col on Friday night—go out. Have a good time, like you young people are supposed to. He didn’t get in until about two in the morning, so it must have worked for him.”
“Oh?” Libby felt a jolt of something troublesome in her middle.
“Yeah. Although that shouldn’t be a newsflash. It’s a bit shocking actually, how much time Colin’s been spending in his own bed lately.” There was a playful and conspiratorial quality to Reece’s tone.
Libby swallowed, not finding herself able to reply.
“And it’s about bloody time,” Reece added. “You know my brother has a crush on you, I’m sure?”
Another pang. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Well, I think he’s finally getting over that, thank goodness. God, imagine if he knew your cleanly little secret,” Reece teased, glancing at her.
“God,” was all Libby managed to say at first, until she realized this was a chance to lever some straight facts out of Reece. “Did you know Colin thinks I have feelings for you?” she asked carefully.
“Good. Let him.”
“So, does he think you have feelings for me?” she asked, knowing Colin believed no such thing.
Reece sounded amused. “No. He doesn’t know what it is we’re up to, but I can’t imagine anybody would ever fall for that.”
Libby glared at him. “Wow, thanks.”
“Well, don’t be annoyed—if I had feelings for you, you’d be off like a shot in the opposite direction, anyhow.”
“True.” Lies.
“If you were after a Nolan who wanted you back, you’d have broken our agreement weeks ago,” Reece said.
“Hmm.”
“And to tell you the truth, when you told me about your…inexperience. And your misgivings. Your requirements, I guess I mean. Well, it was a huge bloody relief.”
“Why exactly is it that you’re such a Nazi about that, anyhow? About me not getting close to your brother?”
Reece pulled up alongside the entrance to the marina before he replied, and he looked her in the eye. “Because he’s been to hell and back in the past few years, and I want what’s best for him.”
Libby narrowed her eyes. “And I’m not?”
“Are you kidding?” Reece asked, practically laughing. “You’re like chaos and disorder, personified. I can see why he’d like you, but trust me, he deserves someone more…”
“More what?” she demanded, barely hiding her anger.
“Just…someone who can offer what he does. My brother, he’s right there. All of him.” Reece held his hands up as if he were gesturing at something directly in front of them. “There’s no hidden agendas with Col. He’s an open book. He deserves someone who’s as sincere and unguarded as he is.”
“And what am I?”
Reece held the steering wheel, staring ahead and thinking a moment. “You’re someone who bribes someone like me to manipulate your father,” he concluded. “You’re someone who’s looking for an imitation of intimacy. You’re looking after your own arse. I’m not blaming you or anything. I think you’re doing what works for you.”
“You think I just use people?”
“I do.” Reece met her eyes, unapologetic. “It’s okay. You don’t make any bones about it. I know you had a hard time, when you were younger. I know you’ve got your reasons for being this way. You want someone who doesn’t have feelings for you, so they can’t hurt you, and I don’t mind being that person.”
“What a saint you are,” Libby said with a tight, falsely flirtatious smile.
“My brother…he’s good, but he’s reckless. He’s going to keep risking his neck out there in the world with no helmet, if you want to look at it literally. And even after he cracks his skull open, he’s still going to. He’s got something inside him that’s always looking to sabotage his chances at happiness. My brother doesn’t want what’s best for himself,” Reece said. “But I do.”
“You make him sound like a child.”
“I’m just telling you how he is.”
“You seem to have us all pretty well figured out,” Libby said coolly, pushing her door open.
Reece shrugged. “Anyhow, well done today. You know, I never would have guessed it, but this ridiculous plan might actually work.”
Colin could tell Libby was drunk the moment she walked—or more accurately, swayed—into the pub. He could tell even before she grinned at him and slurred, “Glash of red please, barkeep!”
“All right, Libby?”
She leaned unsteadily against the bar. “I am fannntastic, Colin.”
“Fantastically drunk, maybe. What have you been up to?”
“You like me, Colin?”
“Uh…”
“I mean, like me?” Her eyebrows bobbed.
“Let’s get you upstairs. Graham?” Colin nodded to his new favorite patron. They were going to need to put him on the payroll, considering all the time he spent guarding the register since Libby had come into their lives.
Colin steered her up the steps and through the door to the living room. She plopped onto the couch with a gentle push.
“Precisely how drunk are you?” Colin asked.
She threw her arms up gamely. “As drunk as you want me to be!”
“Holy hell. You’re going to stay up here and drink a lot of water, all right?”
He handed her the remote and then checked that there was no wine in the kitchen. He brought her a tumbler and the entire water filter pitcher from the fridge.
“Be good. I’ll be up in an hour.”
Libby wasn’t on the couch when Colin rushed up the steps after a hurried and sloppy closing.
“Libby?” As he said it, he could hear music from past the kitchen.
It seemed Libby was not too drunk to operate a record player, and Leonard Cohen was crooning quietly from his bedroom. When he reached its threshold, what should have been the answer to Colin’s most selfish prayers presented itself.
“What are you doing on my bed, Libby?”
She had all her clothes on but was sprawled in a posture of patient, seductive waiting, on her stomach with her stripey-sock-clad feet kicking idly in the air like barber poles, chin propped on her hands.
“You like me, don’t you?” she asked languidly.
Colin pulled the chair out from beneath his desk and sat to face her. “Of course I like you.”
“You’d like to do things to me, wouldn’t you?”
“Uh—”
“What would you like to do to me, Colin?” she demanded.
“Nothing I’d like for you to recall me mentioning in the morning.”
“You sucked on my fingers the other night.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. That was off-base—”
“What else can you do with your mouth, Colin Nolan?”
“Um…”
She looked him in the eye and said with a tiny slur, “We should have sex.”
“O-kaaay…”
Her head lolled. “Awesome!”
Colin moved to sit beside her. When she tried to turn over he put a palm on her back and pinned her down.
“Let’s, um, let’s do foreplay first.” He hoped he sounded convincing.
“Sure thing.”
Her rearranged her elbows and wrists so they lay flat on the bedspread and moved her head to rest on her forearms.
“Are you sure this is right?” Libby asked.
“Oh, yes, I’m a bit kinky. Just do whatever I say.”
“You got it.”
He sat beside her, staring off into the kitchen, rubbing a hand over her back and shoulders. She dropped off to sleep just as the record came to an end. As an added precaution, he continued the soothing motion a few minutes longer. When her unconsciousness
seemed assured, Colin got up and padded through the kitchen to fetch the pitcher and glass from the coffee table. He grabbed the popcorn bowl out of the drying rack for good measure. Veteran bartender or not, he wasn’t sure how drunk Libby was. He’d never seen her more than a bit buzzed before. It didn’t become her. It didn’t become anyone…though it didn’t diminish his feelings one jot.
He plugged in the string of Christmas bulbs that bordered the window and turned off the overhead light, holding his breath until he was sure he hadn’t roused her. He didn’t breathe again until he made it back to the couch.
Reece got home just shy of three o’clock. His body would not be happy when his alarm went off in four hours and he had to head out to open the studio. He flicked on the lights, surprised to find Libby here tonight. More surprised, however, when his eyes adjusted, and he realized it was a different body cluttering up the couch for a change.
Colin turned over. “Oh, hey.”
“What are you doing out here—”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down. There is a very drunk girl asleep on my bed and I’d like to keep her that way.”
“What, drunk?”
“No, asleep. It’s Libby. She’s legless.”
Reece walked over and sat on the coffee table so they wouldn’t have to whisper. “Why’d you let her do that?”
“I didn’t. She showed up drunk, around midnight.”
Reece frowned. “And she’s on your bed why?”
“She sort of came on to me,” Colin said, looking disturbed. “Well, I mean, she definitely came on to me. Anyhow, that’s the only thing I could think to do with her—bore her to sleep. Trust me, I did not invite her in there.”
Reece wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Panic, but of what variety… He believed his brother. Colin didn’t need girls to be drunk to lure them into his bed. That trap set itself, without Colin ever seeming to make any effort to find prey. Or predators, as the case may be. And Reece assumed Libby was probably the girl Colin would most like to find there, but he wasn’t with her now. Actually, since Libby had become a fixture Reece hadn’t once accidentally frightened a grinning, half-naked woman making her way to the bathroom on a given morning, having forgotten Colin didn’t live alone. And that used to be a weekly occurrence.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Libby properly drunk,” Reece said.
Colin raised his hands in weary surrender and lay back down. “How was the ninja party?”
“It was good. Sang says hello, talking of drunk girls.” Reece sighed, still agitated.
“Any cute ones?”
“Eh…” He considered sharing his news on this topic, but it didn’t seem the time. Not when the woman he’d been coerced into fooling around with was passed out on his brother’s bed, after apparently having made a move on him. Things had become distinctly strange lately. Stranger than usual, even.
Colin yawned. “Well, I’ve got to be up at seven. And you probably do too. So as much as I’d love to chat…”
“Yeah, too right. You want me to handle the Libby situation in the morning?” Reece felt a need to reassert his dominance where she was concerned, though he disliked the impulse.
“Whatever. Whoever’s up, I guess,” Colin said through another yawn. “Or whoever she stumbles into first. Just don’t tell her she hit on me. Maybe she won’t remember that. Tell her I said she was the most charming drunk I’ve ever seen, if you talk to her. Tell her she was witty and articulate and beyond moral reproach and I hardly could tell she was drunk at all.”
Reece nodded. This was the sort of face-saving courtesy he wouldn’t have thought to extend to the woman who’d been driving him nuts for the past month, and it made him feel like a heel. Their mother’s old observation was right—Annie was wise in her brain, Reece was wise in his body, and Colin was wise in his heart. Sometimes Reece thought he wouldn’t mind trading a bit of his physical ability for an ounce of whatever made Colin how he was. He didn’t want the pain his brother had been through, but he did covet whatever it was that had allowed him to live through it. That, Reece did not suspect he had in him.
“Oh, my holy God.”
“Morning, Libby.”
As her eyelids peeled open, the glare streaming in from the sunlit kitchen burned Libby’s brain. She blinked a few times, eyes adjusting. Colin was sitting on his desk chair a few feet away, a newspaper in his hands. The shiny steel popcorn bowl was below her on the floor by the edge of his bed, next to the water pitcher.
“Why am I on your bed?” And what was her head doing in an industrial paint agitator?
“This is where you fell asleep,” Colin said. “I thought I’d leave you be.”
“I have never been that drunk before.”
“You were fine.”
“Oh God.”
“Drink some water.” He bent to pour her a glass.
“Did I make a complete ass of myself?”
He handed her the water. “No, you were extremely charming.”
She tipped the glass to her lips. Ah, ambrosia. She set the glass beside the bowl. “So charming you gave me a puke bucket?”
“Just to be safe. It’s not like you needed it.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine or so.”
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“I have a flat tire,” he said.
“And you couldn’t change it?”
Colin smiled. “Only in about forty-five seconds. That’s just what I told my work. They think I’m hunting down a spare right now. I wanted to make sure you didn’t wake up totally confused.”
“I have.”
“I’ll make you some brekkie. A shower might feel good too. And here’s some aspirin.”
He shook a little bottle at her, and the rattling of the tablets was like a thousand maracas in her skull.
“Oh God, you’re murdering me.”
He laughed and took her hand, dropping a couple pills onto her palm. Libby swallowed them and rolled onto her back, her brain flip-flopping in her head, feeling bruised. She heard Colin in the kitchen, gently moving dishes around.
“I remember taking a cab here,” Libby said, mostly to herself. “And I think I tipped the guy about forty bucks because I couldn’t handle the math. And I remember Leonard Cohen.”
“Yeah, we listened to a record,” Colin called. “And we don’t really tip our cabbies here, but I’m sure he appreciated it.”
“Shit, I knew that.” Libby frowned so hard her face ached. “Tell me honestly—was I a complete douchebag?”
“Nah,” Colin said. “You were fine. Just drunk. You’re a cute drunk.”
“I think I drooled on your bedspread.”
Colin came back in and she heard him refill her glass. “Is it in the shape of anything?”
“My drool stain? I’ll have to check.” Libby laughed a little, though it hurt. Colin made it very difficult to feel embarrassed.
“You’ve got a few choices for breakfast,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Something starchy. And absorbent.”
“Muffins it is. Eggs are supposed to be good for a hangover, as well.”
She shuddered and closed her eyes. “You have no idea how disgusting eggs sound right now.”
“Coffee?”
“Maybe in a bit. Are you sure I’m not dying?”
She felt Colin’s cool palm on her forehead. “Nah. You’re just dried up. Keep drinking water.”
A terrifying thought sobered her. “Did Reece see me drunk? I don’t remember him last night.”
“No, you were asleep when he got in.”
“Well, thank goodness for small mercies.”
“Yeah.”
“Like he needs another reason to think I’m a spaz,” she added.
“He doesn’t think you’re a spaz.”
Libby opened her eyes in a wide Are you kidding me? gesture, staring at Colin upside-down.
“Well, not all the time. Only when you’re being one on
purpose. Come on, up you get. You want butter or jam or honey?”
“Just dry. Thanks.”
Colin went back into the kitchen, and she rolled herself artlessly off the bed, disentangling herself from the blanket he must have tucked her under. She padded to the doorway.
“So where did you go last night, before you came by?” Colin asked, pushing the toaster lever down.
“God, where didn’t I go?” Libby couldn’t recall much after about six o’clock—a series of wine glasses set before her on various bars, each a little blurrier than the one preceding it.
“Everything all right?” Colin asked. “Celebrating, not wallowing, I hope. You seemed pretty cheerful when you got here.”
That surprised her. Libby couldn’t remember feeling much aside from utter misery and confusion the previous afternoon. “I… Shit, I don’t know. I just felt like getting drunk.”
“Fair enough. No butter? You sure?”
“A little, I guess.”
Colin already had two browned English muffin halves on the cutting board. Their toaster always cooked one piece much darker than the other and Libby watched him grab the next pair as they popped up and assemble her breakfast out of the two least-burned halves. He buttered them and slid a plate in front of her on the center island before joining her.
“Thanks. You didn’t have to take the burned pieces.”
“I like them well done.” He made little attempt to sell the lie. “Plus all that crunching inside your skull might give you a migraine. You should have the soft nursing-home ones.”
“You’re a very full-service bartender.”
“I like to keep my patrons happy.”
Libby remembered his pair of Monday-night admirers, and it jogged something from the previous day. That horrible conversation she’d had with Reece—that talk, which had followed on the heels of what she’d thought had been their most comfortable day spent together on a documentation excursion. She’d always assumed that the closer she got to Reece, the more access he’d allow her to his goodness. The more she could soften him up, the more genuine affection she’d be able to tap. Unnervingly, the side of himself Reece had shared hadn’t impressed her.