Across From You

by Amabel Daniels

  I nodded and kept playing random soft notes. Kind of like how it pissed me off that she figured I was just another asshole who played with women based on Bev’s assumptions. Actually, it was a hell of a shared problem. More so on her scale. At least there wasn’t a hashtag naming me as a man-whore. Because I wasn’t. How could I be when it’d been years since I buried my dick into a woman?

  “Well, I’ll always think of you as the uncontrollable blusher. The victim of losing her breath at the sight of me”—she shoved at my bicep—“supplier of gummy worms in the longest rehearsal ever.”

  She sat up. “And I’ll always think of you—”

  I faced her, deadpanned. “Completely naked.”

  She shook her head, but even in the darkness, I could sense her blush.

  “Well, it was a…” She cleared her throat. “Bold first impression. Not a bad one to be remembered by…”

  I smirked. But really, I felt triumphant. She couldn’t get the image of me out of her mind? Fine. I couldn’t get the image of her out of my new favorite fantasy and into my real life.

  “But just a visual. I didn’t meet you then,” she explained.

  “Fair enough.” I leaned nearer as I continued a chord of whatever. “But you’d had biases. Prejudices from what someone else said.”

  She crossed her arms. “So did you. You said Bev’s mentioned me.”

  Her narrowed eyes flipped a switch in me. Challenge? Oh, please, yes. Dare me, Lexi.

  “And she’s told you about…”

  “How you cry at every Disney movie.”

  She huffed. “Who doesn’t?”

  “How you stole a Backstreet Boys CD in fifth grade.”

  Her brows pinched. “You’re just a trooper. You can’t arrest me for theft.”

  “How you had a crush on that weirdo from Blue’s Clues—”

  “When I was seven!”

  Her laughter helped to chase away the depressing thoughts. “How about this? We’ll start over.”

  “Didn’t we already do that? In the chapel?”

  “Right.” I had suggested we go back to square one when I realized we had a chance to get along. Was re-restarting possible? Or could that fuck up some dimension of time travel? Did we need a map? What was even heavier to ponder was the fact I wanted more. Time to get to know her. Chances to joke with her. Opportunities to level the playing field.

  “Okay. Let’s do this. Delete our first impressions. The hell with what everyone else says.”

  “Yeah. Act Two.” I hit a few notes like it followed a punchline.

  She smacked her palm on the top of the piano. “I won’t let a moron who thinks muscles are the only symbol of power bring me down.”

  “Hell no.” Another rift of notes.

  “I’m not a fat ass, I’m—”

  “A goddamn goddess.” One more run of notes.

  She clapped once, jumping into this pattern of refusals. “You’re not a womanizer—”

  “I’m just not ready to let anyone get close enough to matter.” My fingers paused above the black and white tabs. Oooh. Right. This wasn’t confessional time. Too close to the truth. No. It was the truth. But too deep of a revelation for the moment.

  “Uh…” I pursed my lips, refusing to meet her gaze, even though her stare was like a torch blinding into my soul. “You didn’t get booed out of the karaoke bar singing Celine Dion at the bachelorette—”

  She gasped. “She told you about that?”

  “Oh,” I drawled conspiratorially. “Bev’s mentioned lots of butchered songs from one pretty brunette who loves karaoke.”

  Laughter snorted out of her. “Oh, my God. I had the worst hangover ever. So, so much rum that night. And vodka. And—”

  “At least you didn’t lose at poker and wind up posing nude.”

  Her smile brightened. “There’s a silver lining.”

  If she said so.

  “I didn’t get booed off…” she said, picking up where we left off.

  “…they couldn’t handle your talent,” I finished.

  “That’s right. You can’t touch this.”

  I ran my hands over the keyboard, starting a jam to MC Hammer’s hit. Pushing to her feet, Lexi left my side. Only, she didn’t stray too far. She climbed right up on top of the baby grand to—oh my God. Was she supposed to be dancing? Little Kicks were better than her…moves?

  I cracked up as she sang along to the lyrics as I played “U Can’t Touch This.” She more than lived up to her rep of awful karaoke. High notes were flipped to low and too long. Words missed and guessed—did she ever know the actual lyrics? Her concept of keeping to a beat was with the comprehension evident in a toddler doing the floozy. This was awful. And loud. Because as soon as she shimmied, getting low to me still seated at the bench, lights burst on. Blinded, I killed music hour.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” a lodge employee yelled from the doorway.

  Seven

  Lexi

  “This hall is supposed to be locked.” The Barton Hall security guy strode down the center aisle toward us.

  “Sorry,” Jack said and helped me hop off the piano. The front of his body ground against mine and I sent up a prayer of thanks that I was single. When his arms didn’t release me, I tried to remember what tattoos I was wedged against, how much taut skin was pressed into me—

  “How’d you get in here?” The guard’s question interrupted my wanton thoughts. Probably for the best.

  “Door was open. We’re with the Dexter-Manning wedding party.” I sighed as Jack stepped back. Air teased my thighs from where my dress had ridden up in my descent on Jack, and I didn’t bother to draw more attention to my exposed flesh in front of the security dude.

  “Uh huh. This room is not part of the reservation. If you have rooms, I’d be glad to escort you upstairs.”

  “We can find our way,” Jack assured him. He took my hand and guided me to leave.

  “Uh huh.”

  I tossed a glare over my shoulder at the barely legal security guard. Just because I was shimmying on top of a grand piano to a stupid song from the eighties didn’t mean I was trying to seduce Jack. Seduction fit into my new motto as well as a double cheeseburger did in a vegan lifestyle. Sex, with Jack? Sounds perfect, but again, I was trying a new method of dating. I was on sabbatical, wasn’t I? A break from looking for a guy?

  “Where’s your room?” he asked after we came to an elevator down a long empty hallway.

  Room? Yeah, I was staying at the Barton Lodge. We all were. It was part of the mandate for participating in Bev’s wedding. Control freak that she was. Only…

  “I got here kinda late.”

  “So?”

  “When I arrived I, um, shit.”

  Jack tilted his head. “O-kay… Maybe TMI—”

  “I wouldn’t share that with you.” I grimaced at him as the elevator dinged. “I mean, oh shit. I got here late, Claudia’s serf grabbed my arm and hauled me inside the chapel.”

  “Again, so?”

  “I never checked in.”

  His brows rose. “Ah.”

  “You’re not a man of many words now, are you? Did my singing terrify you from speech?” I stabbed at the buttons, halting our rise. “Let’s go to the lobby. Well, I need to go to the lobby…” I was still on the fence, unsure if I could delete the ideas in my head that Jack was a typical player. There was no way to forget about his confident and direct smirks and teasing almost smiles at the art studio. But my dastardly and wicked instincts were waking up, urging me, why not, spend a little more time with this fella…

  “The lobby?” Jack scoffed and hit the button for the third floor again. “Not happening tonight.”

  “Says who?”

  “Management. Check-in was cut off at seven.”

  His smile wasn’t sinister or gloating, but it still aggravated me. His message sure did. “What? That’s insane. You can check in anytime.”

  “At a hotel, yeah.”

  �
��And—” And Barton Hall was not a hotel. Just something like a private lodge, or personalized country club. Which meant I was homeless for the night.

  “We’ll think of something,” he said as he tucked his hands in his pockets.

  Something involving a revisit to nudity? Or a bed?

  “Goddammit, Lexi.” Leaning against the wall across from me, he was an example of an easygoing dapper man of leisure. The fiery grip in his stare, though? That was anything but calm. “Are you even aware of how expressive you are?”

  “Whatcha reading on me now?”

  “Want.”

  I pursed my lips. Seemed he’d had a chat with my irresponsible instincts and agreed to be on the same page. Want, I did. Whatever my face was telling him, well, it was a bad liar, too. Denial still wasn’t worth my energy, so I shrugged. Like he’d believe me if I refuted. Was the sky blue? Yes. Was my heart thundering at the idea of stripping this man? Yes, siree.

  He shook his head, more to himself than as a rejection, and lowered his sights. Onto…my breasts. His sigh competed with the Muzak before he moved. In one step, he pushed off the wall and moved as though he wanted to get right up in my face. To do what? I didn’t know. Maybe suffocate me in a deep, wet kiss by the determined scowl on his lips. But no. He settled back against the wall across from me and shoved his fists in his pockets.

  “You want me?” he asked, a smirk chilling any heat he seemed to wish for.

  What kind of torture did he get off on? He was going to make me spell it out? Vocalizing it wouldn’t prove it. My damn blush and lingering stares made my desire evident enough. Same way a cupcake on the display shelf had to feel when I longingly gazed at it and smashed my face to the window. Though I had learned to refrain myself. Watching the teen who worked at Cupcake World—which was, mind you, right next to Cuddly Creation at the mall—wipe the grease and makeup residue from me pressing my face to their storefront display had me holding back on so physically pining for sugar. I’d adapted to wanting from afar. And switched to oily skin cleanser.

  So why not go keto and deny sugar from Jack, too? Or train myself to lust discreetly? I wanted him, according to my traitorous body. Just like with the freaking cupcakes, I knew to reject what was unhealthy for me. Convincing my body was a different war. One I routinely ceded defeat to.

  But was Jack necessarily a negative thing in my life? I’d been prepared to keep a decent distance from him on the premise of Bev’s stories of his womanizing ways. Despite our agreement to disregard what others have said about us, I couldn’t completely delete that background info. Even if he was good, but not too good to be a true catch, who was I to just hop right back into the game? My so-called fat ass was supposed to be out of this round, bench-warming while I licked my wounds of my last failed romance. Hell, I was still being dumped, over and over as every human on the planet found the post that dickface had plastered out there in the cyber universe. I had no business lusting after a man, even one as lusciously sexy and, well, charming, if I had to admit it, as Jack.

  “Alexis?”

  Oh my God. He had to use my whole name. In a honeyed drawl. I could take another dose of my name on his tongue. In a whisper. A shout as I tortured him in foreplay. A roar as he came inside of—

  “Alexis?”

  Stop. Really. Make it stop. I blinked, beyond irritated with myself. I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering why he gazed at me like he expected an answer.

  Oh, yeah. Answers normally followed a question. What was it again? Did I want him? He wanted me to say it?

  Rebel that I was, I refused to give him the satisfaction. “Nah. I don’t want you.” I bolstered my denial with a flap of my hand, like swatting away a gnat.

  A goddamn smile threatened to tip his lips up.

  See, that was why I never bothered with outright denial. Energy. It required a finesse of sorts. Even I wouldn’t have believed my answer. Not with the croaked, heady whisper I spoke through.

  “Oh.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms.

  How fucking long is this damn elevator going to take? It was only three floors. I could’ve walked backward up the stairs while balancing an egg on a spoon in as long as this was taking. Staring at the buttons on the panel didn’t drain the ocean of awkwardness I flailed in. Was he going to call me out on my lie? Was it even a lie? I can’t defend a lie if even I didn’t believe in it, Costanza said so.

  And why, was I even flogging myself with this nonsense? My desire did not have to be discussed here. I could cram it back into a faraway nook of my brain, hide it under other useless thoughts and memories, like Trig equations and musings of old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. I was not a slave to my stupid instincts and hormones. Attraction wouldn’t rule this woman, nope.

  Yet one more glance at him made me nearly cringe. Could he just, you know, not look so goddamn hot and brooding?

  Lies wouldn’t work. Denial was a crapshoot. What else could I do to get the hell out of this weird moment, if I couldn’t find a way to hustle the elevator faster and bodily escape?

  I was an intelligent, think-outside-of-the-box kind of gal. I’d once gotten out of explaining to a six-year-old that his stuffed dinosaur wasn’t missing a wiener. I’d graduated college, with two associate degrees that were not at all related to each other. I killed it on Jeopardy reruns.

  Deflection. Ah, yes. I knew I had another trick up my sleeve somewhere. Wait, no. this dress was sleeveless. I had a trick shoved in my bra then.

  “Where’d you learn to play the piano?”

  Boom. Done. I changed the topic like a badass and his soft smile conceded as much.

  “I took lessons with my sister until I started playing baseball in high school.”

  I crumpled my lips and I mock gagged. “Baseball?” Mention of the most bo-ring sport on the face of the Earth reminded me that Bev had told me that before. She’d get clingy and overly chatty—rapid-fire texts regardless of whether I was busy at work—in dull times in the cruiser when Jack put the baseball radio on. Watching it was hard enough. Listening to it? I’d rather suffer through a lecture of how people filed taxes in the 1970s.

  “What?”

  “Such a—” I lost my words and the momentum of deflection when the elevator doors whooshed open. Oh, now they open. Couldn’t have saved me a minute before though, bastardly slabs of metal.

  “This is my floor. Room 310.” Jack set his foot at the line in the floor, preventing the door from closing.

  I huffed. “At least you have one.” I jabbed a button for the lobby. “I’m just going to go find that room guard guy downstairs and demand someone gets me my key.”

  “Or…”

  I raised a brow.

  “Or you come in my room for a minute.”

  “What for?”

  Oh, yes. Bold, baby, bold. Make him vocalize his damn intentions. Not me.

  “To hang out? Just for a minute.”

  Wasn’t this how it always started? Just one drink. Just one call. Just one date.

  “I want to check the playoff scores and then I’ll walk you back down to the lobby.”

  “Because I need an escort?”

  “Because I enjoy your company.”

  Seemed I could learn a lesson from him about honesty. There wasn’t a single little alarm going off that he was trying to woo me and trick me into seduction.

  “Okay. Just a minute.” Famous last words.

  We walked down the empty hallway together, the sounds of our steps swallowed by the thick nap of the carpet.

  “What playoffs?”

  “America’s favorite sport.” He grinned without turning to face me. “Baseball.”

  Another mock gag. “I thought you said you hate being bored.”

  “I do. You only live once.”

  I checked myself and didn’t groan. Was he speaking to my inner slut now? “All right. Then how can you love the most boring sport ever?”

  “It’s not boring. You just need to know how the game
works.” He spoke those words as he turned to his door, holding the keycard to the panel. Was that a subtle hint that he was playing some sort of game with me?

  “No thanks.” Like I need any more challenges. I could hardly handle the playbook for real life. “So, a sister?” I asked as we entered the room.

  He strode for the TV and grabbed the remote. There was one chair pushed into the desk in the corner of the room, but since it was right next to the air vents and I didn’t feel like freezing, I decided to take the only other offering. I plopped onto the bed, crossed my ankles, and linked my fingers behind my head.

  Yeah, yeah. I got onto his bed in record time. Fully clothed. Firmly not in the mood for sexy time. Just to hang out for a minute, we said.

  But when Jack spun around, having turned the TV on and set at mute—thank God—for the playoffs, I wondered how quickly our innocent time spent together could gather speed and intensity to warrant a category five hurricane of lust.

  “Uh…” He returned his focus to the TV, not that having to look at his backside was any easier. “Yeah. I have a twin and an older sister as well.”

  “Baby brother, you.”

  “And you have…” He walked over to the other side of the bed and plopped down next to me, eyes on the screen. “One brother?”

  “Older. He’s a dentist and had an emergency appointment today. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Aren’t your parents in medicine, too?”

  Again, I was distracted by how much Bev talked about my family, or just me. Coworkers became something of forced friends. The more I considered it, I knew how many siblings my longest standing employee—uh, Cuddle Master—Traci had, what she was allergic to, how picky she could be with the damn salad bar stand at the food court. So, yeah. I’d have to get used to Jack knowing a little more than the obvious about me.

  “Yes. They’re both doctors.”

  Well-known, extremely dedicated, and accomplished doctors I was intensely proud of. Even if the issue of pride never seemed to be a two-way street in my family. Not that they’d ever outright ask me why I still worked at Cuddly Creation after seven years, but the judgment hovered like a reminder of indigestion.