I watched as Liam took Vince’s insults without a flicker of anger. He had more composure than I did, however.
I had to speak up. “Vince, calm down.”
Vince turned those eyes on me and then a finger was thrust toward my face. “Stay out of this.”
I opened my mouth, but Liam placed his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he told me out of the side of his mouth. But it wasn’t okay to me. It wasn’t okay that they all continued to let Vince get away with this shit. At a certain point, they were only enabling him.
“I don’t even know what everyone sees in you,” Vince continued, kicking his half-eaten sandwich and sending sand everywhere. “You bail on us. All the goddamn time.”
“That’s enough,” Seth said, standing. “You need to calm the fuck down.”
Something about Seth seemed to quiet Vince, and he flapped his hand at us like we weren’t worth the effort anymore and headed back to Chad’s rental.
“I’ll go with him,” Naomi said after a moment, sliding off the side-by-side and brushing crumbs from her hands. “He’s grieving too. Remember that.”
“Exactly. Too. We all are. But somehow we’re not all assholes to one another. We can have a civil fucking conversation with each other,” Seth said back, his voice raised.
Naomi held up her hands in a gesture meant to calm him. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here.” She tilted her head in the direction Vince went. “And neither is he. He’s just having a bad moment. He’s struggling.”
“We’re all fucking struggling!” Seth pounded his fist to his chest. Nicole quickly stood and wrapped her arms around him. It was the first time since meeting Seth that I could see the anguish rip right through him. His entire body shook, from his jaw to his fist on his chest.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Nicole shushed, squeezing him tightly.
It was almost too much to witness as an outsider. Seeing such raw emotion displayed when they had all been so happy and jovial this week despite the circumstances was breaking my heart. My gaze found Liam’s. There was a storm brewing behind his eyes. Seth was right; this wasn’t easy for anyone. They were all struggling. And maybe some of their outward displays of happiness had been forced, to push past the pain that was ever-present beneath the smiles and laughter.
I wasn’t a part of this friend group; I was a newcomer. But in some weird way, I felt ownership of them. Their pain, seeing it on their faces, affected me. I had grown to care for them all and witnessing their vulnerabilities was making me vulnerable, too.
Nicole and Seth turned and walked off for a moment, Nicole rubbing Seth’s back as she said things the rest of us couldn’t hear.
Chad nodded at Naomi, who stood still, as stunned into silence as I had been. Wordlessly, Liam and Chad began packing everything up as Naomi caught up to Vince.
Unlike our arrival which had been teemed with excitement, our departure was painted with a melancholy quiet. Liam and Chad loaded up the side-by-sides, speaking only when necessary, and then Chad waved to us as he jogged off to join Naomi and Vince at their car.
Nicole and Seth rejoined us after Vince had left. “Sorry about that,” Seth said, his eyes red-rimmed. He pulled his sunglasses off his head and put them on his face.
“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “You were right.” I glanced at Liam a moment. Leaning against his truck, his arms were crossed over his chest as he stared at the ground.
“I don’t know if I want to even go to dinner tonight, man,” Seth said to Liam. “I just feel like it’s going to be a shit show.”
“It’s our last dinner before the funeral,” Nicole reminded him gently. “One dinner.”
“It was supposed to be a fun ride in the desert too,” Seth said, frustration laced in his words. “But fuck that, I guess.” He turned and walked away to his car.
“Sorry,” Nicole said with a sad smile. “We’ll see you at dinner.” Turning, she followed her fiancé back to their car.
Liam opened my door and I was about to climb in before I stopped. Turning, I took him in. “Are you okay?”
He nodded as if he was going to answer automatically—but maybe not entirely truthfully. He exhaled and said, “No, probably not. It’s been a long week. And, like Seth, I’m not looking forward to dinner tonight. Being trapped at a table with Vince sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
“How about we make a plan? If Vince acts like an asshole, we’ll leave. Back to the hotel or your house, I don’t care. I know he’s your friend and I know you care about him, but you can’t let him keep talking to you like that. That made me really angry.”
“I know. You tried to jump in.”
“I did. And I will again if need be. You remember Katy? I think I told you that I was invited on that bachelorette trip to kind of keep her bitchiness in check. Because that’s what I do. I stand up for people I care about.”
With that statement, Liam turned to face me. “You care about me?”
I furrowed my brow. “I can’t believe you would think I didn’t.”
“You don’t talk to me about how you feel. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s only been a handful of days since we said vows to one another, and I still can’t get a read on you.”
It was both a comfort and disconcerting. When I had been at his home, holding George, a mix of complicated emotions fluttered to the surface. I worried he could see them, know exactly how I felt—which scared me because even I didn’t know exactly how I felt. “I care about Seth and Nicole, Chad and Naomi too.”
His eyes, intense and focused, bore into me. “The same way you care about me?”
All the air left my body. Because the easy answer was no. But nothing was easy about my feelings. They were complicated and I didn’t appreciate complicated. This was why I didn’t have boyfriends, though Liam was better than all of them combined. I didn’t deserve him, that much was painfully obvious. So, just like I had at his house earlier, I told another lie. “Yes.”
22
Tori took a short nap after we got back from the sand dunes. I had thought to suggest that we head back to the hotel, but mere minutes after she climbed into my bed, she was in a deep sleep. I had neglected to close the blinds, so the evening sun streamed through them, bathing Tori’s arms and legs in golden light.
The sun traced its path across her skin, kissing her in places my lips had yet to venture. George had curled up behind her knees, snuggling her like she was just as much a part of the family as she was herself.
I had never been in love, but I imagined that it felt like knowing you could all too easily take something for granted. Her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at me, those were all things I could too easily take for granted. The quiet rhythm of her breath on my chest in the early hours of the morning, the way her lips pursed when she fell into a deep sleep, or the way my hands reached for her in the dark—I could take every single moment with her for granted. Which made me all the more committed to acknowledging the little moments that explained the way I cared about her.
But looking at her like this burned more than I realized. After telling me the feelings she had for me were the same that she had for my friends, it was if she had injected ice into my veins. So cold it felt like fire.
I had never been more painfully aware of my own heartbeat until I looked at her. And I had never been more aware of just how quick I could feel pain than when she’d looked at me and essentially told me she had friendly feelings for me.
Soon, we would walk away from each other as if this week was just a blip. But the echoes of her would remain, embedded in my soul, reminding me that I didn’t know how lost I was until I’d found her—only to lose her again.
Opening her eyes slowly, she emitted a quiet little yawn. With her arms outstretched above her head, she locked gazes with mine. “Oh, hi,” she said, her voice hoarse from sleep.
It was as if my heart anticipated her effect before I did. Its pace quickened when she looked at me, like
it was waiting for the moment to strike.
“Hey,” I managed, committing this vision to memory so I could torture myself with it later. “How was your nap?”
“Mmm…” she said, stretching again. “Good.” She relaxed her arms, stretching them toward me. “Come here,” she said in a whisper.
I crawled across the bed, disrupting George’s sleep and earning an indignant meow in response as she took off.
“Sorry, George,” Tori said with laughter as I curled up in her arms. I laid my head on her, my ear over her chest as I listened to the reliable and consistent lub-dub of her heart. A sound that seemed etched in my brain, comforting me in a way no heartbeat had since my mother’s.
Will’s funeral loomed ever-present in the back of my mind. After a long, emotional week, I was dreading this moment. I wanted longer. I wanted more time. Maybe if I’d been given more time with her, she’d be convinced that we could make this work outside of this one week. One week wasn’t nearly long enough.
I pulled back to stare up into her face. If feelings could be transferred by touch, I knew there would be no doubt of her affection for me as my arms wrapped around her. But if all I had at the end of this week was a memory, I’d make sure it was a vivid one.
I kissed her chin, the divot where her dimple belonged, her cupid’s bow, and her mouth.
My kisses were gentle, slow, but need overtook me. Quietly and with hurried hands, we undressed one another until all that existed between us was skin and short, staccato breaths. I kissed her everywhere—the places my lips had traveled already and the places they hadn’t.
As I kissed her open thighs, her eyes went all heavy lidded like a sex goddess before her head fell back onto the pillow. I worshipped her with my mouth and nourished her with my hands until she was spent, brow wet with sweat and thighs wet from me and her.
When I slid inside her, I wondered if she could feel the echo of my heartbeat as it quickened, rocking behind my ribs like it was begging for something that wasn’t mine.
She whispered my name once, screamed it, and her final moan began with “Li” and ended with a trail of “ammm.”
I fell to the bed beside her, my limbs warm and loose. Even opening my eyes seemed like too much an effort, but I did it so I could watch her come down and come back together all at once.
Her pale chest was flushed from my scruff, her neck spotted in the places I had sucked, her lips bright pink from my teeth. Her blond hair spilled across my pillow like my own goddess Freya.
When her breaths had evened, she turned to me again. And with one slow, tantalizing smile, she raised her hands and clapped. “I’ll have you know,” she said, “I have never clapped after sex except with you.”
I wanted to laugh with her, to pretend this was all fun and games to me still. But I couldn’t. “I’ll have you know,” I began, making sure she was looking at me, “that was more than sex to me.”
I pushed myself off the bed, snagging my pants from the ground and pulling them on.
“Liam…”
“We’re going to be late. For dinner.” Stepping shirtless into my walk-in closet, I braced my hand on the wall just out of view of her. Part of me couldn’t believe I’d said that. Part of me had wanted to say something of that nature for a while now.
Behind me, I could hear Tori getting ready for dinner. I stayed in my closet a while longer, as if the decision of which shirt to wear was taking more time than I wanted to admit.
I half expected her to bring the conversation up, to push the issue with me. Or, perhaps I just wanted her to push it with me so we could confront this head on. But the drive to the restaurant was mostly quiet, with Tori staring out the window for long stretches.
We were the last to the large round table, which was regrettable because our tardiness seemed to set Vince’s mood for the night. Seth held up three fingers to me when I looked pointedly at Vince’s drink.
Vince, three cocktails deep on an empty stomach. A recipe for a disaster if I ever heard one.
Everyone was relatively quiet during dinner. In fact, despite the silent car ride here, Tori was the chattiest, engaging Naomi and Nicole in chats about her life back home. She spoke so fondly of it, as if she couldn’t wait to leave. Which only compounded my agitation.
It wasn’t fair for me to be disappointed. She had made it clear, the second night, that she wasn’t looking for long-term or serious. Perhaps I had prematurely told her I understood, because right then I wasn’t feeling very understanding. But even as I told myself I shouldn’t be disappointed, there the feeling was anyway.
In the past, I might have approached Will with these problems and asked for his advice. But that opportunity was taken away from me. Perhaps I could confide in Seth—he had a better relationship track record than Will anyway. But I certainly couldn’t lean over and spill my fucking guts to Seth during dinner.
“You look like someone shit in your mashed potatoes,” Seth said, leaning in. “What’s up?”
“I’m tired. I think this week is finally wearing on me.” In more ways than one.
“You’re telling me. If Vince orders another drink, we’re going to have to ask the waitress to cut him off.”
“That’s asking for World War III, though I don’t disagree with you.” I watched as Vince took his new drink and tossed it back.
It was like watching an explosion happen in slow motion. Immediately after the drink left his lips, he stared at the glass, his brow becoming increasingly furrowed. He shook his head and turned around and I knew it was about to get bad.
“Hey,” he called, loud enough to pull in attention from other patrons. He held his glass up in the direction the waitress had disappeared to. “This one was weak.”
The patrons whose attention he had captured turned to look at us.
“Vince, wait until she comes back,” Naomi said gently when Vince shoved his chair back to stand. Nicole and Tori’s conversation halted as they stared at him.
“I’m just gonna go find her,” Vince said. “Get a new drink.”
“Vince, just sit,” Chad said, getting up and wrapping his arm around Vince’s shoulders. He attempted to lead him back to the table, but Vince shoved him away with a loud ‘no’. Chad stumbled a few steps but luckily regained his footing so he didn’t fall.
“Fuck,” Seth said under his breath. “We need to get him out of here before he makes a fool of himself.”
“We’ll have to strong-arm him,” I said, dreading it already. Pulling my wallet out, I slipped a few large bills on the table and caught the eye of a manager who was exiting the kitchen, probably headed in our direction. I motioned to the money and stood, moving to Vince.
It took us three tries, but Seth and I had eventually gotten ahold of Vince long enough to nearly carry him out of the restaurant. In the process I lost sight of Tori, but she was right behind us as we brought him out onto the sidewalk.
“Are you going to hit one of us?” Seth asked calmly.
“Fuck off,” Vince said, shrugging out of our hold. He stumbled a few feet and braced himself on the brick wall. “I just wanted another drink for Christ's sakes.”
“You’ve had enough,” Seth said. “More than enough, actually.”
Vince’s stormy eyes turned hard. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means,” I interjected. “You obviously have a problem. And we’ve been bad friends for letting it go on this long.”
Vince’s jaw went slack. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
Chad joined us a moment later, standing between me and Vince as if he anticipated a fist thrown. The sky was black around us, causing shadows to darken Vince’s face as he turned to each one of us, one by one.
“I don’t have a problem—”
“But you do,” Chad interrupted. “You do.”
“Oh, so I have the problem.” Vince was shuffling, shifting weight from one foot to the other like he had endless unspent energy in his limbs. “You,” he said as
he pointed at Seth, “move as far away as you can get and make a life on the other side of the country. You,” he said, turning to Chad, “get married and have a couple kids and then suddenly you’re never fucking around and you…” he paused as he stared at me, “you blow off our friend. He didn’t ask me to go on that trip with him—he asked you and you fucking bailed on him. And then he fucking died. He died, you guys.” Vince’s finger was still in my face. “And you say I have the problem.”
Seth glanced sideways at me. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to counter. But before I could, Vince continued.
“I would have gone on that trip with him, but he didn’t want me. He wanted you, Liam, and you just didn’t go. He wouldn’t be dead if you had just fucking gone. I would’ve made sure of it.”
“You don’t know that,” Tori said, piping up from behind me. “You can’t say that.”
“Tori,” I began, but she blazed past me, standing in front of Vince.
“He could have died any number of ways. But the reality is that Will invited Liam to do a sport Liam had never done before. And Will died doing it. That’s not Liam’s fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“If I had gone—”
“No.” Tori held up a hand. “You don’t know. You could have died. Liam could have died.”
“I wish he had.”
There it was. The crux of Vince’s problems with me. I didn’t know if it was a sad thing that Seth and Chad didn’t try to persuade Vince that he didn’t really believe that.
Tori stood speechless and Vince took that opportunity to continue.
“He doesn’t have a family, he doesn’t have anything but his house and his job and if he had died, none of us would be here arguing on a street.”
Seth stepped forward, encroaching on Vince’s space. “That’s enough.”
But I let Vince’s words roll over me. I knew how he felt. And, perhaps, in some ways he wasn’t wrong. We were all here, arguing because Will—as flighty and wild as he had been—had been the glue that held us all together. He had knit us as a fearsome fivesome when we were just children and had ensured that we stayed together as adults. But he wasn’t here to police Vince or any of us.
One Little Dare Page 19
