The Fable of Us

by Nicole Williams

  The air might have been heavy with tension, but there was something else moving in and taking over. Anger.

  “Why in the hell did you do that?” I said, my words feeling venomous in my mouth.

  Boone’s boots bounced across the carpet as he tossed each one. Pulling off his socks, he did the same with those. He knew I was a bit of a neat freak when it came to my room, and this was clearly another way for him to try to ruffle me. “Because I’m tired of being your dirty little secret.”

  I popped up, wringing the heck out of my pajamas. “I’m paying you, Boone—a hell of a lot of money too. All I asked was for you to stay here and be a ‘dirty little secret’ for tonight.”

  “That’s right. Exactly.” He rose out of the chair, angling himself in my direction. “This is business. Which means I’m not some star-struck boy in love with a girl and willing to do anything for her. You might have been able to ask me to stay hidden in your room when we were kids, but I’m not a fucking child anymore, so stop treating me like one.”

  Pacing across the room, I collected his scattered boots and socks and tucked them neatly against the wall outside the bathroom. “Oh, yeah? Stop acting like one then.”

  Boone fired off another huff. “You first.”

  “Your maturity just keeps careening,” I said before slamming the bathroom door behind me and locking it. I was planning on changing into my pajamas before crawling into bed and putting this whole God-forsaken day behind me, but instead I found myself leaning into the bathroom counter and fighting an onslaught of tears I hadn’t known were coming until they were close to spilling.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been locked inside the bathroom, fighting off tears as fervently as I’d been fighting off bad memories all night, when a soft knock came at the door.

  “Clara?” Boone’s voice was quiet, back to the same one I remembered. “I need to take a piss.”

  So much had changed about him . . . and so much hadn’t. I shoved off of the counter and finally changed into my pajamas. “There’s a plant just outside the door. I’m sure it could use a good watering.”

  From the other side of the door, Boone sighed. “Clara?” Another sigh. “Are you okay?”

  I kept changing, focusing on stuffing my arm through a shirt sleeve and my legs through the shorts’ legs. “I’m okay, Boone.”

  Once I was done changing, I doused some cold water on my face, brushed my teeth, and pulled open the bathroom door.

  He was still there, hovering just outside. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I said, slipping past him. “It’s all yours. Sorry for the plant comment.”

  Boone chuckled as he moved inside the bathroom. “I’m not. If you had taken another minute longer, I would have gladly ‘watered’ that plant. In fact, I just might before I leave this week, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to take a piss on something of your dad’s . . .”

  I made a proceed motion with my hand. “Knock yourself out.”

  Another soft chuckle filled the room before Boone closed the bathroom door.

  While he took care of his business, I headed for my bed, throwing off the decorative pillows and throws before folding down the blankets and sheet. The same flowery fabric softener lingered in the sheets, transporting me back to my childhood and adolescence.

  I’d just turned off a couple of the lamps staggered around my room when the bathroom door exploded open and Boone marched out of it . . . right before pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it onto his boots. I tried not to stare. I didn’t want to stare.

  I couldn’t help but stare.

  When his hands lowered to his jeans, unfastening the button before moving to his zipper, my blood curdled. “What do you think you’re doing?” My voice came out squeaky and high.

  Boone paused, mid-zipper-lowering. “Getting ready for bed.”

  “And this requires stripping?”

  His head tilted as he took a good look at me. The corners of his mouth twitched when he noticed me clutching my pillow like I was about to strangle it. “Well, yeah, unless you have another set of those pink silky jammies. I’m not exactly into wearing stiff, heavy jeans to bed.” He waited—I guess giving me a minute to offer him a pair of pink silky pajamas—before tugging his jeans down his legs and stepping out of them. “There. Much better.”

  He curled his jeans into a ball and flung them into the same corner as the rest of his stuff, giving me a front-row seat to checking him out when he wasn’t looking. My throat ran dry, my arms tightening around the pillow clutched to my chest. Boone had always been in possession of a good body. The kind a girl couldn’t help staring at and wondering what it would feel like wrapped around hers.

  Years later, and nothing had changed. While some guys his age were starting to show signs of a gut, Boone’s was still flat and hard, carved with so many lines and planes my eyes felt close to crossing from staring at them. His shoulders had gotten wider, his back broadening too. His skin was already browned from the summer, and from what I could tell, he hadn’t gone and tattooed himself up like I knew my parents and our high school teachers had predicted.

  All this time had passed and I didn’t have a sliver of the feelings now I’d had for him then, but I still found myself being pulled toward him. Almost like a planet orbiting the sun, I couldn’t escape his pull.

  I plastered on an unaffected face and got back to fiddling with the blankets. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Is what really necessary?”

  “Sleeping in your underwear.” Talking about them made me look at them, which made my throat run dry all over again.

  Boone shrugged. “I’ve always slept in my underwear.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not exactly sleeping alone, free to strut around however you want.”

  A smile that was a bit too knowing worked into position. “I remember wearing a whole lot less whenever it was just you and me in this room, Clara. If that’s what you’re getting at, I can just as easily go commando . . .”

  When his hands moved to the waist of his boxers, I sat up. “The boxers work just fine, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Boone snatched the pillow from my arms and dropped it on the floor. “Thanks for the pillow.”

  I pretended to ignore the grin he fired my way, and I finished turning off the lights. I kept the small lamp glowing on the table across my room, unsure I was ready to be in a dark room with Boone again. After crawling into my bed and tucking the sheet over me, I rolled over to the edge where he was just getting settled onto the carpet below.

  “Thanks for staying in my bedroom like I asked.” Then I snatched the pillow right back.

  His head hit the floor with a bump that was accompanied by a surprised grunt. “Is that an invitation into your bed, or are you trying to prove a point that there are consequences for not obeying your highness?”

  Accompanied by the darkness, Boone’s low, smoky voice brought back memories I did not want to have resurrected when he was stretched out half naked less than a few feet away and I was still two shades past tipsy.

  “I think you can figure out the answer to that question on your own.” I kept my eyes focused on the ceiling, the sheet tucked tight under my arms.

  “I’m not sure I can. I’ve never had much of a talent for figuring you out.”

  My eyes narrowed at the ceiling. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what you think it’s supposed to mean.” From the sound of his voice, I knew his back was to me.

  “You’re hopeless when it comes to trying, wanting, or pretending to decipher people’s feelings?” I stuffed the pillow I’d just stolen back from him beneath my head and tried to get comfortable. In the few seconds it had been pressed around his head, it had taken on his scent. The one that was still the same.

  No amount of punching or adjusting would make that pillow any more comfortable.

  “Only with you. Only because to really know and understand a person, that
person has to want to be known and understood. Which you didn’t. Which you probably never will.” Boone sounded like he was shuffling around to get comfortable on the carpet. “So there.”

  As I continued my stare-a-thon with the ceiling, a smile started. So there had always been Boone’s and my way of bringing up a grievance with each other, speaking our piece on the topic, and moving on. Our way of not getting hung up on the details when there were no shortage of much larger issues impeding our relationship. So there had been spoken between us so many times, it had been responsible for saving us from at least a few hundred potential fights.

  A few hundred and one now.

  “Hey, Boone?” I whispered a few minutes later. He hadn’t moved or so much as fired off one of his go-to grunts, but I knew he was still awake.

  One of those grunts sounded.

  “Thanks for having my back down there,” I said, rolling onto my side. The side facing him. “It’s nice to know there’s one person in this house who’s in my corner. Even if it’s the one I had to pay to stand there.”

  “When it comes to you and your family, I’ll always have your back.” From the change in his voice, I knew he’d turned in my direction as well. “And that has nothing to do with our present business arrangement.”

  I buried my head deeper into the pillow, finally feeling comfortable. “So there.”

  His chuckle was the last thing I remembered hearing before falling asleep.

  “Clara Belle? Wake up already.” A pattern of sharp knocks outside the door and just as sharp words roused me the next morning. “It’s almost eight o’ clock. Breakfast is on the table in ten. It would be nice if you’d grace us all with your appearance. That’s what Mom said.”

  I groaned and threw a pillow over my face. A three-hour time change, five hours of sleep, and too much tequila were not the recipe for putting the “good” in good morning. Not to mention the snappy sister probably tapping her foot outside my door.

  “Thanks for the wake-up call, Charlotte,” I replied, my voice muffled by the pillow. “We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  “Yippee,” she replied, though her tone was the opposite of what her word choice suggested.

  Giving myself a few seconds to blink my eyes awake, I rolled onto my side. “Hey, Boone,” I said around a yawn. “Time to rise and shine.”

  It took every scrap of strength and determination woven inside me to level my tone and expression and make it seem like I was as unfazed at waking up with him in my room as I could have been. Like rolling out of bed to an ex was a weekly sort of thing I scheduled into my calendar. When he didn’t say or grunt anything, I scooted farther onto the edge of the mattress to see if he was really asleep or just giving me a hard time by ignoring me.

  My eyes about burst out of their sockets when I peeked down at him. Throwing myself back onto my mattress, I tried to flush the image from my head, but the damage had already been done. No amount of flushing would erase it.

  “And you clearly already are rising and shining.”

  A single-noted chuckle vibrated in his chest. “Quite clearly.” His voice was extra smoky, heavy with sleep.

  I clamped my eyes closed and hummed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in an effort to distract myself from what I’d just seen. “Could you clearly take care of that please? So I can get up and get ready for breakfast before my family decides to break through that door and drag me down?”

  “Would you like to assist me in taking care of it, or would you like me to take matters into my own hands?”

  I wasn’t looking at him, but I’d long ago memorized the smirk I knew was holding his expression captive right now. “Control yourself. For once.”

  Another chuckle rattled in his chest. “Come on, Clara. Chill out. It’s perfectly normal.”

  “No, that most certainly is not normal.” Why couldn’t I stop picturing it? Why did it seem the harder I tried, the more it pressed into my mind?

  “You’re right. It’s above average.”

  I snatched one of the pillows on my bed and fired it in his direction. “No, it’s abnormal.”

  My eyes were still clamped closed, but I heard him moving around. “When I fell asleep last night, I don’t recall it being around a pillow and blanket.”

  I cleared my throat. “When I woke up in the middle of the night, I had a weak moment, seeing you all curled up on the carpet and shivering. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “I’m used to sleeping in eighty-degree temperatures and eighty-percent humidity. This air conditioning should be renamed Arctic Blasting.”

  I’d never been a big fan of the air conditioning either. I didn’t like feeling sealed up and shut in, trapped inside something that created an artificial environment.

  “You’re welcome,” I said as Boone let out a loud yawn.

  “Thank you,” he said when he was finished.

  “Breakfast is in ten, according to Charlotte, and I’d like to arrive a minute early so I can make sure she doesn’t sprinkle arsenic into my eggs. I’d suggest the same to you.”

  “Since she hates my guts?” he said.

  “Only outdone by how much she hates mine.”

  “Then we’d better get down there quick. I’ve still got years of pissing people off in me. It would be a shame to go before I’d reached my full potential.” Boone shuffled to his feet beside the bed, the sheet still wrapped around his waist and hanging just below his hips.

  He was still having morning . . . issues.

  “Really, Boone? Not helping.” I waved in the general direction of his southern . . . region . . . area.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d turned into such a prude. Kind of went the opposite direction on me.”

  I was looking away, but I heard him moving toward the bathroom.

  “Don’t worry. The above-average tent pitcher is out of sight . . . but maybe not so out of mind, right, Clara?

  “Boone . . .” I warned, not sure how I’d survive the day if it continued in the same manner. Morning wood and illicit comments revolving around it had exhausted me sufficiently—no need for anything else.

  “You know I love it when you say my name like that.”

  I ground my teeth together, cursing my moment of weakness last night. Sure, he was cute when he was sleeping, but the awake version wasn’t anything close.

  “I’m just gonna take a quick shower, then we’ll go watch for arsenic poisoning, k?”

  I rose up in bed and twisted in his direction. “Not enough time . . .”

  Boone was heading into the bathroom, his back to me and still clutching the sheet around his waist. However, it wasn’t covering anything around his backside.

  “Jesus Christ, Boone. What happened to your boxers?” I should have clamped my eyes closed again, but Boone’s backside . . . yeah, it would have been a crime against humanity to divert my eyes when his ass was in view.

  “I took them off. Too restrictive.”

  “Well, would you mind putting them back on? Preferably before I wake up and you start traipsing around my room naked?”

  “I’ve got a sheet on.” He paused outside the bathroom door and turned around.

  My eyes shot up from where they’d just been focused. I didn’t want him to know I’d been checking out his ass. From the flash in his eyes, he already knew.

  “A sheet only works if a person cinches it around their front and back.” I lifted an eyebrow at him.

  “Oh, well, in that case . . .” Lifting his arms in a what the hell kind of gesture, he let the sheet float to the floor. And now he was standing in front of me, facing me, fully naked.

  I tried not to look.

  I wasn’t up to the task apparently.

  “You’ve proven your point, Boone. You have nothing to hide. Would you mind covering up now?” My chest was on fire, spreading to the further reaches of my body. How I managed to sound so unaffected, I didn’t know.

  “Nothing you haven’t seen before. Nothing you haven’t do
ne a lot worse with either.” Giving another shrug, Boone disappeared into the bathroom, only closing the door halfway.

  While he took his shower, I threw on a light cotton shift dress and a pair of sandals, and ran a brush through my hair a few times before I tied a scarf around it. I wanted to brush my teeth, but that would have required stepping into the bathroom, and after everything that had already happened between Boone and me this morning, I didn’t need to add seeing him step out of the shower, wet and naked, to that list.

  There was only so much a woman could take before she broke. I was fast approaching mine.

  So the tooth brushing was delayed, temporarily filled in by a couple pieces of mint gum I’d unearthed from one of my suitcases. I’d just finished popping in my second piece when I heard the shower turn off.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, having already made it, and waited for Boone to get dressed. When he emerged from the bathroom a minute later, in the same clothes he’d been wearing last night—since the whole packing a suitcase for my plus one hadn’t crossed my mind—he broke to a stop when he saw me.

  “You waited for me,” he said, more like a question than a mere observation.

  “You seem surprised.”

  He rolled the cuffs of his sleeves up past his elbows, giving his wet hair a shake. Droplets of water rained around my room, catching the sunlight breaking through the windows and forming hundreds of tiny prisms.

  “I just assumed you would have headed down when you were ready, you know, so you wouldn’t keep your family waiting.” He bent over to tug on his boots, seeming grateful for the distraction.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to throw you to the sharks all alone. This might be a business deal, but that doesn’t mean I can’t treat you humanely in the process.”

  Boone stopped in the middle of tugging on his second boot, the skin between his eyes creasing. He was going to say something—I could feel it—then the moment passed before it had a chance to take root.

  Standing, he cleared his throat and headed to the door. “Rip the bandage off?” He opened the door and waited.