Say You’ll Stay

by Carrie Lomax

  Who were these people? Her family? Her neighbors? How could any of them think this was a reasonable approach to resolving the unbelievably messy situation she’d put them in? She glared at Zach and Marc.

  Zach’s eyes flared with anger.

  Marc’s with something stronger.

  “Alyssa, honey.” Her mother’s hand on her shoulder almost made her scream as if a spider had landed on her. “Janelle’s idea is a little unorthodox, but think about it. You’ve gone from a long-term relationship to a…”

  “They’re called one-night stands, Mom.” From the corner of her eye she saw Marc flinch, which sucked. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, but if anyone should be used to hearing that term, it should be him.

  At least her candor gave her the satisfaction of wiping the arrogance off Zach’s face. Good. Her brain was back in control now, and her rational self had one hell of a mess to clean up.

  Her mother closed her eyes. “I know what they’re called. I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Alyssa. I’d expect your sister to do something like this. Not you.”

  Guilt wormed its way through her anger. She’d made such a hash of things. Already stressed, her gut clenched harder.

  If she’d been honest with her family about wanting to leave New York, about the job, and about the cracked foundation of her relationship with Zach, they’d know getting back together wasn’t an option. But all they saw was the guy she’d been outwardly happy with for a couple of years, versus the one she’d leapt into bed with. The one who’d never been in a relationship in his life.

  While she groped for words, Catherine turned to the two men seething with testosterone and hatred on her front lawn. Both were flexing their muscles, ready to resume beating the living crap out of one another, when her mother stepped between them. There was no denying that a not-very-modern part of Alyssa found this display of manly chest-beating a turn-on. Obnoxious, yes, but hot. She’d never admit it to another living soul, not even if her nails were pried off one by one.

  “Marc, go to your house now. Zach, Alyssa’s father is going to get you an ice pack. You should go back to your hotel to clean up. We’re going to need some space to talk this through as a family.”

  “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” Zach accepted the ice pack and held it to his chin. “We’ve been together for two years, Aly. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “I can’t believe you dated this asshole.” Marc glared at Zach, then at her. “What’s the appeal?”

  “A guaranteed million-dollar bonus is a hell of an aphrodisiac.” Smirked Zach. “Bet you can’t touch that with your dirty fingernails.”

  “Did you just imply I dated you for your money?” Alyssa gasp-shrieked. Oh, he was such a shit. Half the crap he’d bought her she neither wanted nor liked. She’d only accepted it to avoid a fight. She sure as hell hadn’t asked for it. Maybe if she’d stood up to him before, she wouldn’t be watching him brawl on her parents’ lawn now.

  Janelle stepped to her mother’s side before they started swinging at one another again. “Enough. Since Marc was with Alyssa last night, Zach gets tonight. It’ll be a dinner date. Marc, you’re taking her out tomorrow, so get planning. I’ll be styling my sister—”

  Alyssa groaned. Janelle shot her a shut up glare.

  “You’ll coordinate dates with me. For Aly, it’ll be a surprise. No contact, no communication outside of the contest. That’s a rule.” Janelle kept talking, which at least kept Zach and Marc from one another’s throats.

  “Hold on. You’re all assuming I agree to this madness. I don’t,” Alyssa said. Someone had to think with their brain. She’d fallen asleep on the job last night, but she was wide awake now and determined to shut this down. “No bachelorette, no contest. So, quit fighting. Zach, go home.”

  “Honey, let’s get rid of the men and talk inside,” her mother hissed, but it was too late.

  “No problem, Aly, I’ll happily kick your ex’s ass from here back to New York just for being a racist shit heel.” Marc lunged around Janelle, while Zach dodged to the other side of Catherine.

  “That’s what you think, Garden Boy.”

  Through fingers she watched her mother and sister try to hold two large, angry men apart. Up and down the street, neighbors popped out of their houses to see what the commotion was all about, like a ward of curious prairie dogs. Mrs. De Luna was among them. She began yelling at her son in Spanish. Alyssa wasn’t fluent enough to catch more than a few choice descriptions. Marc’s head jerked up at the sound, distracting him long enough for Zach to land a blow over Janelle’s shoulder.

  Oh, for chrissake. Alyssa marched over and grabbed a handful of Marc’s shirt. “Get out of here.”

  He shrugged her off like a fly and huffily let his mother berate him into the house. Alyssa picked up the ice pack and handed it to Zach, and gave him a push toward the rental car in the driveway. “Get back on a plane and go away. Nobody asked you to come here.”

  “You did, Aly. At Halloween, when I hid the fake ring in the candy bucket at the parade in the West Village and said we should get engaged for real, remember?” The hurt in his voice shredded her remaining anger like tissue paper. “It was barely twenty-four hours, Aly. Jesus. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry you if I didn’t love you.”

  Guilt well up through the ragged seams of her dignity. Maybe she’d been too hasty. Maybe she’d been more hurt than she’d wanted to believe, and last night had been more about revenge than rebound. Alyssa rubbed her forehead with her thumb and forefinger.

  Or maybe she was giving in to avoid a fight. Again.

  “Do the contest. Give me another chance. I’m going to prove how much I love you, and you’ll see this guy’s just a fuckboy. I know you were mad, but I can forgive whatever happened if you let me make it up to you.”

  He’s right. Marc’s a fuckboy. That was the entire point of sleeping with him last night. Yet being with Marc had been erotic than any sex she’d ever had with Zach.

  Alyssa turned away, her cheeks on fire as she faced down her very recent ex while thinking about the wonderful night she’d spent with Marc. It made her pulse race and her breath shallow, and she wanted more.

  “I’ll consider it. Now get out of here before someone calls the cops. This is not the kind of spectacle that happens on our street.” Alyssa gave him a little push. Touching him through the linen shirt was familiar, but she recoiled as if it had singed her fingertips. Finally, Zach turned and got in his car.

  “Alyssa Carlisle, inside the house please.” Her dad stood inside screen door, watching everything. Her mother and Janelle had already gone in.

  They were sipping iced tea with lemon wedges in the living room, as if she hadn’t turned their family into the after-Christmas community spectacle. Alyssa accepted a glass of tea from her dad and sat on the couch.

  “I’m not doing the contest.”

  “Would it be so bad to take a few days evaluating your options from a calmer perspective?” Catherine replied, sipping her tea through a straw. “I can’t take the excitement of two virile young men fighting over my eldest daughter. Mariana and I always thought you and Marc would make a good couple, if he ever settled down and if you ever came back to Florida long enough to talk to one another. Our instincts were on point, but this is not what we had in mind. It’s not like you to act so impulsively.”

  Alyssa crunched an ice cube between her teeth. She wished there was some way to describe what was wrong with her relationship with Zach without sounding delusional. Maybe if she compromised—again—and went along with the scheme, they’d see it for themselves. Although that was probably too much to ask, considering Zach had spent several days here last summer and her family had been positively charmed. He could be very winning, when he wanted to be.

  “I’ll be out back. Sounds like you have this covered, Cathy.” Her dad headed for the kitchen.

  “Now you’ve scared off Dad,” Janelle complained.

  “I
can’t imagine why he’d want to sit here and listen to Mom describe our neighbor and my ex as ‘virile’ while you plot to force me into some cut-rate reality-TV knockoff.” Alyssa stirred her tea with the straw, then set it down on the coffee table. “Maybe I’ll join Dad out back.”

  “Do you have a better idea for cleaning up your mess?” Janelle glared.

  Not if she wanted Zach contained so she could spend more time with Marc.

  There was also her sudden guilt over the fact that Zach had come all this way to apologize, and she’d been out with another man. She had to contend with that. Yes, she was annoyed how straightforward I don’t want to see you ever again had proven too subtle for Zach, but perhaps she’d been hasty in dumping him on the spot. He wouldn’t have chased her to Florida if he didn’t care about her. Whether it was enough to fix their relationship, Alyssa had her doubts, but going along with the contest would at least keep him away from Marc.

  If it all went sideways, it wasn’t as if she had to continue seeing either of them after the week was over. Her mom had a point. The contest was a balanced approach to spending time with both men and making a reasoned decision between her head and her heart. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded.

  “Fine.” She’d suffer through six dates, and when it was over she’d become a nun. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

  Janelle jumped out her chair and squeezed her. “It’ll be great. You’ll have fun. Promise.”

  Suddenly Alyssa’s much needed vacation was in the hands of her impractical, surprisingly canny, fierce little sister. If only she could die on the spot and spare herself the continued humiliation of the next six days.

  Speaking of which, Catherine got up and patted her shoulder. “Now that we’ve settled the contest issue, Aly, why don’t you go next door and make things right with the De Lunas while Janelle arranges the details for tonight’s date with Zach.”

  “I see you’re on Team Zach,” Alyssa sulked.

  “I’m on Team Alyssa. Now go change out of Marc’s clothes.”

  7

  Years ago, when her parents had first begun talking about moving to Florida from their home in Ohio, Alyssa’s father had brought home a whimsical cuckoo clock. Every hour on the hour, a tiny parrot leapt out of a colorful house and called the time in a speaking-parrot voice. The house was painted parroty colors, a mélange of yellow, red, blue, and green. It was, by far, the tackiest thing they owned.

  Alyssa sat below the clock on a worn armchair, waiting for it to spring open. She felt marginally better wearing her own jeans and a t-shirt. Janelle claimed the earrings and necklace she’d given Alyssa for Christmas radiated positive energy. Since it was true she needed as much positive energy as she could get, Alyssa had put them on.

  “Four o’clock,” screeched the parrot. Marc’s shorts and t-shirt, freshly laundered, were folded on the coffee table. She’d delayed going next door until they were clean, then rounded up to the hour. If only every mess was so easily tidied up as a bit of cotton. She gathered the pile of clothing into her leaden arms.

  The bouquet of lilies and roses sat nearby on the coffee table, still beautiful. Alyssa ran her fingertip along a petal and wished she could go back in time, not that she would’ve done anything differently.

  “Yes, dear?” At least it was Mrs. De Luna who answered.

  “I came to apologize for the way Zach treated Marc today. I had no idea he was planning to come here. I never imagined he was capable of saying something so awful.”

  Yeah, you did. You thought he only said awful things to you. But outright racism was new. She’d never heard him say anything like that before.

  “Please come in.” Mrs. De Luna held the door open wide. Alyssa hesitated, but how could she refuse?

  Marc’s dad met her in the foyer. “This way, please.”

  The De Lunas, straight-backed and somber, sat across from her on the wicker sofa. Alyssa took one of the chairs facing them, perching the small pile of clothing on her knees like a scarlet letter A.

  “Thank you for coming over. You do not owe me any apology. It wasn’t you who said those words.”

  “But I’m the one who brought it into your life. If I hadn’t…I swear Zach’s never said anything like that in my presence before. Ever.”

  “Alyssa, do you think we have never been called names before?” Mr. De Luna’s voice was soft, but there was steel in it. “There will always be circumstances in which people reach for the wrong tools to resolve disagreements. Your former boyfriend was threatened. His money had no power to stop you from leaving him, so he used the very last tools anyone should ever reach for to lash out at Marc. He wanted to drive a wedge between you and my son. He did so very effectively.”

  Alyssa dropped her eyes to her hands. “I made it easy for Zach to do. We…everything moved too quickly. With Marc.” Note to future self, next time you have a one-night stand, choose someone whose parents you aren’t going to see socially.

  “Your mother told me you had broken up with your boyfriend and asked the family to dinner. We had an idea that you and Marc might suit, but you were always in New York. I thought you might talk, make a date. No one expected you to disappear together,” Mrs. De Luna said sternly.

  Alyssa was stung by a sudden longing for snowy Christmases. Maybe her family would come visit her in New York next year. “I don’t think anyone expected it. I certainly didn’t.”

  “I could not believe it when he said he was taking you sailing this morning,” Mrs. De Luna continued. “None of us could. Marc never takes anyone sailing. It is his quiet time, his favorite way to be alone. He has never taken a girl out before. Your sister is outrageous. Get rid of the boyfriend and patch things up with Marc.”

  Alyssa swallowed. She’d hoped he’d be around so she could soothe his bruised ego, or if that didn’t work, bully him into dropping the idea of this stupid contest.

  Mrs. De Luna was grasping at a fantasy if she thought Marc had any interest in her beyond a hookup and a means of getting back at Zach. Well, she’d agreed to play along. “Do you have any ideas how to do that?”

  “We were hoping you would.” Mr. De Luna pushed his glasses up with one finger. Mrs. De Luna’s face fell a little.

  So much for finding an easy way out. “Can you tell me the address of his project house? The one he just bought?”

  “That wreck? What do you call it—a boondoggle?”

  “From how he describes it, boondoggle sounds like the right word.” She smiled, and for this time it wasn’t forced. Being around Zach’s family had always set her teeth on edge. They bickered endlessly and let Zach off the hook for everything from hurtful jokes, to not cleaning up after meals, to outright drunken rudeness. As long as his star kept rising at the hedge fund, he was golden. The De Lunas always called their sons on their bad behavior, and if Marc had turned out to be the man-whore of Verona Harbor, it wasn’t for parental laxity.

  “He does spend a lot of time there trying to make it into a habitable property.” Mrs. De Luna scribbled an address on a piece of paper. “He keeps some of his tools here in the garage, where he can lock them up. He usually comes by in the evening.”

  “For dinner,” Mr. De Luna added with a ghost of a smile. “Sometimes he comes in the morning, too, if he needs tools.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what to do, but I’ll try something.” If he dropped out of the contest, so could she. But then she’d have to spend New Year’s with Zach. It was worth trying, anyway.

  She placed the clothes on the coffee table. “May I ask you to return these to him? I borrowed them. They’re washed.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather return them yourself?” asked Marc’s mother.

  She shook her head. “Yes, I would, but according to my sister’s contest rules, I’m not allowed to see him outside of officially sanctioned dates.”

  Mrs. De Luna buried her face in her hands. “Young people are hopeless. In my day, we did not behave like this. We courted. This is not
normal, but if Marc finally goes on an actual date, then you and your sister will have achieved something with this silly contest.”

  Yeah, well, she’d dated Zach as properly as could be, and look how that had turned out. Courtship had a new rule book. Somewhere. She’d never read it and doubted anyone else in her generation had either.

  At least however things shook out with Marc, her parents wouldn’t have to feel awkward around their neighbors.

  Back at home in her bedroom, she booted up her work computer. She’d hoped not to have to use it but learned long ago never to go on vacation without it. This time, though, her mission was personal. She didn’t open her email, though she did pop into each of her social media accounts out of habit. The picture she’d posted with Marc on the boat was getting buried under an avalanche of likes, comments, and retweets.

  No wonder. In sunglasses, his hair ruffled by the wind, and wearing a life vest, he was gorgeous arm candy. She wished she was more like her online persona, the carefree fictional Aly who did yoga poses with a smile in fun locations.

  She needed a strategy, a plan to see Marc as much as possible between now and when she left without Zach getting in the way. Last night hadn’t exactly reassured her that he’d given up being the libertine of Verona Harbor, but she wouldn’t mind a repeat or two of the amazing sex they’d had last night.

  A knock at the door pulled her out of her work.

  “Showtime, Aly. Green or silver?” Janelle appeared in the doorway bearing two tiny dresses as substantial as handkerchiefs.

  But first she had to deal with her ex. He’d managed to spin the situation into one where she’d hurt him, not the other way around. With Zach, she was always in the wrong. Tonight would undoubtedly be more of the same. Alyssa popped one eyebrow. “Do you have a nun’s habit?”

  “Aly.” Janelle lowered the dresses.

  “I am not wearing either of those for a date with Zach.” Alyssa pushed back her chair.

  “Rule number one. You have to wear clothes the same level of sexy around both suitors.”