Give Love a Chai (Common Threads Book 2)

by Smartypants Romance

  “Fucking idiotic move agreeing to those terms, Parker,” bemoaned Dan. “I had to sub in when one of the guys got ‘sick.’”

  “Must have missed that clause when I signed.”

  “No you didn’t, you fucker. I’ve never seen anyone so fucking detailed in my life.”

  Kat reached over to touch Dan’s short hair, suppressing a smile. “I actually liked the long hair and beard.”

  Putty in her arms, the big, potty-mouthed Bostonian turned to his wife and asked in a much gentler voice, “Really? Want me to grow it?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a beard,” she replied, before turning to the rest of us self-consciously. “Um, Tia, do you want to help grab some dessert from the kitchen with me? I found some great cheese at the local farmer’s market this week.”

  “I have suddenly discovered space in my stomach for dessert,” I said, following Kat. “We can gossip about the guys behind their backs too.”

  “As long as all of the gossip starts with how amazing we are,” called out Andrew, winking at me. Be still my heart, was he cute when he was happy.

  “Of course. We’ll discuss how amazingly arrogant you two are.” I winked back, except my wink was more of a face scrunch. He laughed anyways at my attempt.

  In the spacious kitchen, Kat busied herself plating cannoli and cheese, waving off my offer to help. “How long have you and Andrew been dating?”

  What rumors had she already heard? One thing that I had learned while dating Clayton—you didn’t need to be best friends with someone to share gossip. Drama was the most infectious of diseases, and no amount of social distancing could eradicate it, only slow the rate of spread. And breaking up with the golden boy after his own engagement party was juicy gossip indeed.

  “Umm, we’re not really dating, just hanging out,” I managed to get out.

  Kat’s eyes widened. “Really? You two seem really good together.”

  Dropping the topic when I didn’t respond, she steered the conversation away from the bee’s nest that was my dating life. “So, I heard Andrew call you ‘Ting’ once during dinner. Should I call you that too?”

  I shook my head. “No, no, you can call me Tia. Andrew and I grew up together, and back then, I went by Ting.”

  “Why did you change it?”

  “It seemed easier when I started college. Easier to blend in, I guess.” Even though this wasn’t a topic that I really wanted to delve too deeply into even with myself, Kat’s warm brown eyes made me want to spill. Or maybe it was my second glass of wine for someone who was the definition of “lightweight.” “I didn’t grow up in exactly the most diverse town. No one was mean per se. However, kids in middle and high school were either too curious or judgmental. ‘Tia’ seemed like someone who would fit in more, and it’s not that different from ‘Ting.’”

  “Names carry weight,” came Kat’s quiet voice.

  We looked at each other, and I knew that she understood my need to don a certain image. While unconfirmed, according to the rumor mill, aka Clayton’s mom’s friends, Kat had assumed a fake identity to run from her family legacy.

  She continued carefully, “I understand the need to blend in, though I’ve found that sometimes it’s okay to stand out too. Different and weird can be liberating, especially if you’re with someone who lets you be you.”

  My mind flashed to Andrew and the comfort that I felt around him. Shaking the image away, I confessed, “I’ve thought about changing my name back actually. Ten years ago, ‘Tia’ felt like an escape and a projection of what I wanted to be. Nowadays, it doesn’t feel like a rejection of myself. I think I’ve grown into that person, and going back to ‘Ting’ doesn’t feel right anymore. Weird, right?”

  “Not weird,” Kat said firmly, smiling broadly at me, before her eyes lit up. “Oh, hi, Dan!”

  I looked over my shoulder to see the guys amble in. My eyes went straight to Andrew’s. We made no move toward each other, but I felt his tender gaze on me, as if checking to make sure I was doing okay. For someone who proudly considered herself independent, I was oddly touched by Andrew’s care.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Dan asked as he crossed over to Kat. She pushed away the cheese plate and wrinkled her nose.

  “Yeah, my mind really wants cheese. But the baby is grossed out.”

  Silence.

  With a sheepish smile, as if just realizing her words, Kat looked at us shyly. “I’m four and a half months pregnant.” She pulled her loose shirt tight, revealing an undeniable bump.

  “Congrats!” Andrew shook Dan’s hand and patted Kat’s back, smiling broadly, as if there was nothing better in the world than babies.

  As for me? My ears were ringing, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. My body was physically still in the kitchen, rooted to the tiles underneath my shoes, even as my arms automatically wrapped around Kat in a swift hug. But I wasn’t really there. My mind had separated from my body and had floated back in time and space, awash in memories so painful that I physically recoiled.

  As if he could read the pain behind my smile, Andrew narrowed his eyes, studying me. I shook my head. This was not the time for that particular conversation. There would never be a time for that conversation. I was never going to be ready to tell Andrew. Yet, after seeing his delight, I couldn’t not tell him.

  I wasn’t sure how I got through the rest of the evening. Even though Andrew spoke way more than I have ever seen him in public to cover my complete inability to get words out, there was still this new tension. My awkwardness made others uncomfortable, and I had no energy or the wherewithal to try to fix it.

  What felt like both a blink and hours of torture, Andrew and I said goodbye to Dan and Kat. Well, he said goodbye, while I forced my face into a smile-grimace. We didn’t talk the entire cab home to my apartment—me stewing in my thoughts, and Andrew probably wondering what in the world was happening. I knew that I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. I only had to be normal for one evening, and I had ruined it by freezing up at the end.

  It had been a long while since I had felt embarrassed about my actions. I had basked in the residual glow that Clayton’s charm casted when we were together. My propensity to talk too much and act like a nerd was considered cute with his friends since Clayton had already deemed me worthy of his attention.

  At school, nerdhood was celebrated. Arguing about Machine Learning Platform features and open source code were my drugs, and elegant lines of PySpark were more interesting than heels. I spent most of my days with whiz kids who reprogramed their parents’ Roomba to chase after their dogs and treated coding as a major league sport. Seriously, I had students who hosted coding parties to solve difficult problems, like how to use Natural Language Processing to highlight key sentences in their readings. Since I taught computer science, I could only be happy for them that it took half a semester and all of spring break to create a shortcut that saved them two whole hours of reading.

  Tonight, I didn’t want Andrew to think me weird, or be embarrassed about me somehow. It was different from when we were kids—he had no other friends, he’d been stuck with me. Now, he was a major catch.

  Ugh, not the time to freeze up over the past. Idiot me.

  As the cab pulled up to my apartment building, I leaped out before it had fully stopped. Not something I’d recommend trying, as I lurched forward on the sidewalk, barely keeping my balance.

  “Wait!” Andrew’s voice grabbed me with its urgency. Before I could free myself from the hold of his command, he was in front of me, crowding into my personal space. His hands reached up as if to grab my shoulders, then lowered as he growled in frustration. It was a pure sound of irritation. At me.

  “What the hell is happening?”

  “Don’t be mad at me,” the people-pleaser in me automatically implored.

  Sighing—his second sound of irritation within the last minute—he ran a hand through his thick hair in exasperation. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at whatever circumstance is maki
ng you act this way. Tell me what the fuck I did wrong.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. Andrew Parker, the boy who will never amount to anything. Andrew Parker, the boy who will screw up just like his dad.” He repeated the taunts I had heard too many times when we were growing up. “What was it? Did I push you too hard? Should I have listened to you about not going to Dan’s house?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Did they say something?”

  “No, they’re great.”

  “Then, I don’t get it. I thought this past week was great, amazing. I thought you were enjoying us.”

  “I did. I do. I think?”

  “What’s not enough? Why do you keep running away?” His voice was bleak. Sadness and anger directed inward. At that moment, instead of the muscly, smoking hot, confident Andrew Parker, I saw my friend from years ago, who carried a chip on his thin shoulders and the unconscious, internalization of self-doubt.

  I instinctively understood that his “what’s not enough” was in reality a cover for “why am I not enough,” and that made my heart hurt for him.

  As he leaned his forehead against mine, Andrew’s voice lowered to a harsh whisper, the words ripping out of him. “I want you. My whole life, I’ve only needed you. Tell me what I did wrong and let me fix it. Please, Tia. Please. Let me make it right.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much. Ever since my trip to Chicago, I had been inundated with Andrew. Smart Andrew, sweet and thoughtful Andrew, charming Andrew, and now vulnerable Andrew. My defenses and reasons for keeping him out were falling apart with his words. They were crumbling before his gray eyes, illuminated by the moonlight. I could see how terrified he was at putting himself out there, yet he seemed determined to fight for us. This was it. The drawbridge crashed down for him to cross over.

  Taking a deep breath and knowing that this was a decision that I couldn’t take back once made, I asked, “Do you want to come inside? I think I made a mistake.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tia

  January 1, 2010 (never sent)

  Andrew,

  Made it to another year. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able. Then, for a while, I didn’t really care if I did.

  I took a walk outside today. That’s my New Year’s resolution—to go outside and walk a little bit each day. I saw your mom while I was out. She asked how I was doing. I didn’t want to see her pity, so I walked away.

  I should have told her that I still hurt physically and emotionally every day, that I cry for no reason, that I have never made it back to our park. The fact that I haven’t been there just breaks me. I should have told her that, despite all of that, I’m getting stronger. I’m not one hundred percent myself yet and maybe will never be the pre-Ting, but I think there’s a post-Ting that I could be okay with, sans speaking in the third person. Ha! My first kind of, awful, not-funny joke since … Even if it’s on a letter that will never be mailed.

  Ting

  It was a full twenty or thirty minutes before we spoke. I took my sweet time rummaging around my freezer to find an unopened box of mochi and boiling water for tea. It became imperative that I not say anything until my tea was steeped to perfection and the mochi defrosted enough for the ice cream inside to be soft. They were my flimsy umbrella against the upcoming thunderstorm of unpleasantness. Andrew sat on my couch, silently observing my movements as if I were some fascinatingly odd creature under the microscope.

  When my mochi balls were threatening to become pools of melted ice cream, I heaved a great big sigh and threw my figurative hands in the air. So many sighing, breathless moments and thundering hearts since Andrew re-entered my life. It was as if I lived inside a Fabio-covered romance novel instead of real life.

  Except this was my real life. And I had no expectations of a flowing-haired, shirtless hero to save me from the painful parts.

  Andrew’s gray eyes tracked me as I sat on the other end of the couch. He no longer seemed vulnerable. The depths of feelings that he had allowed himself to show momentarily were now carefully locked behind impenetrable doors.

  “So,” I started.

  “So.”

  “Um, hmm … oh no!” Vanilla ice cream dripped onto my pants from my mochi, my outside now reflecting my internal mess. Novice move—I had waited too long to eat them. There was nothing to do but stuff the rest of the ball into my mouth, as I dabbed frantically at my pants with my sweater.

  “Here, let me.” Suddenly, Andrew’s hands were everywhere, trying to dry my jeans and sweater with napkins.

  I froze.

  He froze.

  As if he just realized where his hands were, one hand stilled on my upper thigh, before he resumed slowly, purposefully. My breath hitched as one napkin-covered hand brushed close but not close enough to where my senses were pooling. The other hand rubbed my side up and down, a tantalizing tease. It was too much, and yet not nearly enough.

  I was aroused by his ministrations. Scared of what I needed to confess. Distracted by the sweep of his dark, dark eyelashes as he leaned over me. Tempted to let him make me feel better, so tempted to just live in this moment. So, so tempted to give in to what we clearly wanted and needed.

  Andrew lifted his head, his gray eyes pinning me with hunger and possession, and moved slowly toward me, his hands shifting to cradle my face. They were gentle, a direct contrast to the ferocity in his eyes. My eyes drifted shut as I felt his intake of breath against my skin, seconds before—

  “Hold on.”

  The words surprised both of us, as we blinked at each other. His eyes were still a little hazy, as mine must have been.

  “I have to tell you something first.”

  This time, my voice was stronger, even if it sounded as if someone else had spoken. My mind was apparently stronger than I had given it credit for. It recognized the foolishness of trying to defer conversation post-physical relief, especially when said conversation would probably lead to Andrew never wanting to talk to me again. Never mind touch me.

  With my body wrangled in by my mind, I pushed at Andrew’s chest. Urgh, his stupidly solid, very warm chest. He backed away immediately, tensing as he stood up. From where I sat, he loomed impossibly large yet still withdrawn, his shoulders hunched as if he had weathered a downpour. His hands were stuffed inside his pants pockets, and one leg crossed the other at the ankle, as he leaned against my door for support. It was as if he had already made up his mind to leave and was impatiently waiting for my words to confirm his decision.

  “Okay, start. What’s this thing that you have to tell me about?”

  I flinched at his voice. It was harsh and impersonal. It was the voice he used when talking to other people. Not with me. I didn’t want it directed at me, and I also knew that I better get used to it. “So … hmm …”

  “Wait, I want to get one thing clear before you start.” Determination shone on his face, daring me to argue. “We still have nine days left. I want those days.”

  “Nine? I thought it was eight more days.” I was momentarily distracted by his math. “It’s fourteen days, and since we started on Sunday, then next Saturday should be the last day.”

  “No, we made the deal on Sunday night, so day one was Monday.” Andrew’s mouth was a stubborn, defiant line.

  “Sure, whatever.” I shrugged. It wasn’t as if an extra day would even matter. No, he’d skedaddle way before then. So what if my heart twisted as if pinched by a thousand knives at that thought? When he had told the truth about Charlie, I should have spilled. I had only one word for myself for withholding this information—coward.

  His stony eyes scanned my face to ascertain whether I was telling the truth about keeping our bargain, before relaxing noticeably. He asked, “Okay, so what’s the big deal, Tia?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Before I could lose my final reserve of courage, I blurted out, “Remember when we had sex?”

  Okay, not the best start. Andrew smirked. Definitel
y not the best way to start this.

  “Pfff, okay, okay. Remember that night we had run out of condoms and decided to wing it? Apparently, neither of us were paying attention in sex ed or had watched Teen Mom. Sooo, the pull-out method isn’t the most reliable birth control.”

  Andrew’s smirk fell. He didn’t say a word, yet I could physically feel his body and mind buzzing with questions.

  “I don’t, we don’t anymore. There’s no secret nine-year-old.”

  That was painfully true. She would never turn nine or nineteen or even one.

  I waited for Andrew to respond. He stared at me blankly.

  I waited for him to understand. Shock colored his face, as my words and what I left unsaid started to sink in.

  When he finally spoke, his words were guttural, ripped out of him against his will. “I don’t understand. Not anymore. There was a baby?”

  Past tense. Shuttering my eyes against the emotions shining from his eyes, from the walls torn down around his armor, I whispered, “I had a miscarriage.”

  I hated that last word. What a clinical, unfeeling term for something so life-altering and life-shattering. I hated that word used to describe the dearth of the tiny flutters and movements that I had just started feeling. In no way did it fully describe the terror when I realized something was wrong or the utter agony in believing that my body had failed me or the months besieged by numbness afterwards.

  “Did you know when we were together?” His halting voice pulled me from the past.

  As much as losing her had torn me apart, I had had years to—not get over it, as I would never be one hundred percent over it—but to learn to live with the reality and finality of it. Andrew was just starting the process, and I felt sympathy for him.

  I opened my eyes. “No. I mean, not officially. You know my periods have never been regular. I thought something was weird, but I never experienced any of the typical symptoms. No nausea or morning sickness.”