However else this worked out… I was determined that Trudie would be looked after. What that said about me, I wasn’t sure. I just knew that I felt protective of her. I wanted to help her.
…without getting in too over my head.
7
Trudie
One of the nice things about my job was that I had Sundays off.
The coffee shop was closed on Sundays, and I could have gone and gotten another job somewhere but… I was already working six days a week. I needed a day off to relax and center myself. As tempting as it was to find another job and get that extra money, was it really going to be worth it for my state of mind? My emotional health? I didn’t think so.
Instead, on Sundays I got to sleep in a little and then go to church. I had been raised religious, although I’d sort of lost that with Pete. In our small town, going to church was more about being social than anything else and I hadn’t felt spiritual while I was there. It was just another place where Pete and I would go and he’d charm everyone, and I’d feel trapped, unable to be myself or seek help.
I still wasn’t up to going to a sermon, but there was this beautiful old Catholic church that I liked to go to, St. Clement in Lincoln Park. The vaulted gold and blue ceilings were stunning, and made me feel like I was a part of something bigger, something more. It comforted me.
After the morning sermon, I’d slip in and sit in the pews, and just admire the architecture. I’d light a candle, and sit, and just think my thoughts. Ask for some help. I wasn’t sure how the church or God would view my lying to all those nice people in Laird’s family, but it was ultimately a small lie that wouldn’t hurt anybody, right? And I needed this money. Surely God wouldn’t want me to keep living like this, scared and miserable, barely scraping by?
Laird seemed like a good person. It couldn’t be bad of me to help him out of a jam.
I wondered what he was up to, today. He was Irish, that meant he was probably Catholic, right? I hadn’t been raised as anything other than generally Christian, because that’s what you were in my town growing up, but I loved the Catholic architecture, the ceremonies, the… grandeur of it.
He must have the day off too, right? I was planning on wandering the city, myself. I wanted to get to really know this place. Make it my home. I’d known every street corner and back alley in my old town and I missed that feeling. That sensation of just… knowing a place like the back of your hand. And, well, if Pete did somehow find me, I wanted to be on my home turf. I wanted to know this place better than anyone else so I could get away from him if I had to.
Laird probably knows this city really well, my traitorous mind pointed out.
I wasn’t going to reach out to him. I wasn’t going to impose.
…but we did need to get to know each other. And I could use a friend. Laird seemed like a really good person. He was so sweet on Friday, and he seemed to really like me, and to really care about people. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing?
Okay, it could be a very bad thing. Laird was handsome, handsome enough that I blushed just looking at him. And he was strong, and successful… and again, kind. I could see myself—I could already feel myself caring about him more than I should, looking forward to spending time with him more than I should. But I also wanted to keep spending time with someone who was kind and I had to find a way to get through this somehow. What if I just exposed myself to him as much as I could, and then I could get over this silly little crush sooner? Surely this would fade the more I got to know him.
I did have his cell number. Before I lost my courage, I stopped inside a small bakery to escape the cold and I texted him. Are you up to anything today?
While I waited, I bought a small coffee and a scone. Mmm, delicious. I was trying not to spend a lot of money, for obvious reasons, but I told myself a small little treat here and there wouldn’t hurt. Just to keep my spirits up.
Nothing today. Just relaxing. What about you? I found myself reading that in his Irish accent, smiling down at my phone like an idiot. Ugh, just a couple of brief meetings with the guy and I was already blushing and smiling all the time like I was back in high school. I had to be careful. I had just gotten out of one relationship. I couldn’t let myself be so easily swayed.
I texted him back, telling him that I found myself in need of a tour guide for the city since I was new, and would he be free to help a girl out? I loved that I could be sassy with him and that he seemed nothing short of delighted with it. It blew my mind. Pete would get furious if I even thought about being sassy towards him. He couldn’t stand it. He’d accuse me of talking back to him, like I was an unruly student and he was the teacher instead of my equal partner in a relationship. But Laird liked it. He said it was a good thing. So did Jack, actually.
The response from Laird was almost instant. I’d love to.
I told him where I was, my heart hammering, and impulsively ordered him a small coffee as well. He probably wouldn’t like it but what the hell, right? And I owed him for dinner on Friday. Even though he’d said that he always paid for dinner when he went out with people, I wanted—I wanted to show that I could hold my own. I wasn’t a charity case or someone to be pitied. I wanted him to respect me, not just feel bad for me like I was some kitten he took in from the cold.
Stay put, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. This message was followed by a stream of emojis. I found myself laughing. Here was a grown man, rich and successful, and he was texting using a ton of emojis like he was a teenager.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later he arrived. I held up his coffee. “I know that you’re a coffee snob, but…”
To my shock, Laird turned right to the woman behind the counter. “How’s it going, Sara? Beautiful day despite the cold.”
Sara, evidently the name of the woman behind the counter, smiled. “It is, yes, a blue sky at last.”
Laird sat down next to me at one of the small, cramped tables inside the bakery and took his coffee from me with a grin. “This is my favorite bakery,” he confided, his voice low and warm like he was sharing a secret.
I bit my lip to avoid blurting out that this must be serendipity, then. That was the kind of thing you said when you wanted to flirt, and I didn’t want to flirt. Or, rather, I did want to flirt, but I knew that I shouldn’t. It was dangerous—for my heart. So I kept my mouth shut.
Laird winked at me and took a sip of his coffee. “Great as always, Sara!” he called.
I couldn’t help but feel, though, that there was something serendipitous about this. Even if I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.
8
Laird
I had never gotten to play tour guide to anyone visiting the city before. I’d been in the United States for years but people always assumed that I was new in town given the accent and so sometimes they would offer to play tour guide to me—but nobody had ever asked me to show them around my adopted city. I felt flattered.
Not to mention, hey, I’d give whatever I needed to if it meant I got to spend more time getting to know Trudie. I couldn’t help but feel it was fate, or something like it, that had her going to my favorite bakery randomly like this. She had no idea of knowing that it was my favorite. Not even Jack knew about this. Not that I kept it a secret, it just never came up in conversation and why would it? Who has a discussion with someone about what their favorite bakery is?
Actually, that was exactly the kind of discussion I’d need to have with Trudie. I needed to write down all the things that were my favorite, no matter what the category, and I had to write down all of my habitual things, the place that I went to regularly and all that, because if she was really my wife then she would know all of these things. She would’ve learned them organically from all the time that we spent together.
Well, we were spending time together now. That was something.
“I’m warning you,” I told her, “we’re not going to touristy places. Well. We are, some of them, but you can go to The Bean any day.” I grinned. “
And Anish Kapoor hates that we call it The Bean. So be sure to say it all the time.”
“Well, if you insist.”
“I do insist.” I offered her my arm again. Trudie seemed to like that. She took it, and I led her out into the city.
We probably didn’t have time to stop by the museums today, unfortunately. I did like a good art museum. But there were all the places that I usually went, places that Trudie would need to know if she was going to pretend to be my spouse. She’d know my favorite places, where I usually went, what my schedule was.
I showed her my post office, my favorite park where we took a walk around and I waved hello to some of the people that I knew there. “The nannies all know me,” I admitted. “Jack says they all want to date me but I think he’s just trying to boost my confidence.”
“You need confidence boosting?” Trudie replied, teasing me. I loved that she was growing confident enough to tease me like this.
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “I’m… not good at talking to women, never have been. That’s something you’d know if you were married to me. When my family asks, if you tell them I was confident then they’ll know you’re lying. I was a total idiot who took weeks to ask you out.”
“Oh, dear, aren’t you lucky I was so patient with you.” Trudie gave me a smile that made me melt a little inside.
I wish that you would be that patient with me, I almost said, but I kept it to myself. This happened every bloody time. I started to like a girl and I knew I’d say something stupid so my only option was to say nothing at all to keep from ruining my chances with her even further. Better to say nothing and stay friends than say something and ruin even that.
“This is the place I’d thought about taking my kids, when I have them.” I paused. It was a touchy subject, but I knew we’d have to talk about it. We would’ve discussed it before we got married. I wouldn’t marry someone that I couldn’t have an honest discussion with about our future and about what we wanted out of the relationship.
“I always wanted kids.” Trudie sounded quiet. “Um. My previous partner didn’t want them. I’m glad I didn’t have them, now. But I would like a couple. Someday.”
“I always imagined I would be the kind of dad who was successful enough I didn’t have to be in the office every day. I could leave that up to other people or maybe even retire so that I could spend time with my kids.”
“That’s sweet,” Trudie said. I’d heard that from other people, that phrase, oh that’s sweet. People were fond of saying that to me for some reason. But with Trudie it didn’t sound pithy or like something she was saying just because. It sounded like she was genuinely happy to say it, like saying that I was ‘sweet’ was the highest compliment that I could possibly have been given.
“So we’re agreed that… ah… for the family thing… we’re going to have kids at some point but not right away?”
Trudie nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. We’re only just married, right? Your parents didn’t say that we’d been married for years and you’d just failed to mention it.”
“Oh, no, definitely a newer thing.”
“So we’d want to get more settled before we had kids.”
“Good idea.” I nodded towards a beautiful old building on the right. “That’s my library. They’re closed on Sundays, otherwise I’d show you inside. It’s absolutely beautiful. Murals all over the ceiling. I like to go there and borrow books—I want to have my own library but I’m so picky about what I want so I just go to the library and borrow the books first.”
“I’m sure the librarians appreciate you supporting the institution.” Trudie paused. “I should get a library card. I don’t really have… um… space right now to own books but I can borrow them and take them back. That would work. I used to read all the time growing up, I got out of the habit the last few years.”
“It’s hard, with the internet and all, and work, to find time to read. I’ve really had to work to carve that time into my schedule.”
Trudie smiled at me, like once again I had said the right thing. I felt like talking with her was a bit like navigating a minefield. Not in the sense that saying the wrong thing would have her exploding on me, not like that. More like there were things that would make her withdraw, trust me less. Like I was still, in a way, being tested.
“Before I let you go,” I went on, “I have to introduce you to the best deep dish pizza in town. You can’t live in Chicago and not try deep dish pizza.”
“Isn’t it just like regular pizza but with an extra thick crust?”
“Oh, you poor deprived darling,” I said, sighing and shaking my head like this was a travesty.
Trudie laughed, blushing. “Are… are pet names going to be a thing?”
“Oh. Um.” I hadn’t even realized I’d done that. Bloody hell. “I tend to do that with people. It’s a thing in my family. You’re going to be called darling, love, lamb, all those things. If you’re all right with it, I mean. I don’t have to call you anything if you don’t want me to.”
Trudie’s blush deepened. “Well, if it’s natural for you… and it would be weird if your family was calling me all these names and then you weren’t. And it’s nice, I mean, to be called things like that. It’s a way of showing affection.”
“All right. Well. I’ll try and hold off on them until we get to my family, anyway. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“You’re so thoughtful,” Trudie said, again sounding almost surprised. What kind of people had she been hanging out with that common human decency was such a delightful shock to her?
She had just mentioned a previous partner. My curiosity was piqued. I didn’t dare ask for fear she’d clam up. Her private life was her own and I wasn’t going to barge in on that. Not even for the sake of maintaining this façade. But I wondered. I couldn’t help but wonder, who wouldn’t?
“It’s right down this way, the pizza, I mean,” I said, stumbling my way into changing the subject. “And before you say anything, I’m paying. I insist.”
Trudie looked simultaneously frustrated and grateful. She was a little thin. I worried about how much she was eating—how much she could afford to eat—on her current salary. A coffee shop kind of job… well, any kind of job should pay a person enough for them to live off it. But that wasn’t how our world worked right now and unfortunately a job at a coffee shop was not going to be enough to cut it financially. She needed to work somewhere else, a better place that would support her properly.
Not that I could tell her that. She’d probably tell me to shove it up my arse, and right she’d be, too. It wasn’t my business.
On a Sunday, later in the day, nobody was in the pizza place. Everyone had already had lunch and was going to have dinner later on, so we found a good table and I told her to order whatever she wanted off the menu. “Literally, everything. If it’s too much for us to eat now then you can take it home and warm it up for later.”
“Are you sure?” Trudie asked, her eyes scanning the menu.
“I’m sure. I want you to enjoy all of this.”
“Or we could just come back and I can try the things I didn’t try this time,” she replied.
“Should we make this the place we had our first date?” I suggested. “And we have regular dates here?”
Trudie smiled. “I like that idea. You’re really on top of this whole thing, aren’t you? I feel like I’m flagging.”
“I run a business, I’m used to being on top of projects and sort of steering them.”
“You’re very good at it. No wonder you’re so successful.”
I blushed under the praise. It probably came as a surprise to people who heard it, but I wasn’t really used to people praising me like that. People would talk about my ‘business smarts’ and other buzzword sort of things, but nobody ever looked at me like… like I was just a really great person who had done something great. Nobody looked at me in awe like that.
There was something special about Trudie
, I decided. Something about the way that she looked at me and spoke to me that was unlike the way anyone else had ever looked at me and spoken to me. I wasn’t sure what it was just yet. The definition of it eluded me. But fuck if I didn’t want to get more of it. Fuck if I didn’t want to get more of her.
We ordered, and the sound that Trudie made when the pizza came and she bit into it shot heat right through me. She sounded ecstatic, overwhelmed, like she was swallowing back a moan. I shifted in my seat, my pants feeling tight. I wanted to hear her make those noises in another situation. A more intimate one. I wanted to be the reason she made that noise, as I bit down on her neck, as my hand worked between her legs.
Buggering fuck, I had upgraded to sexual fantasies. Great. This was going to spell nothing short of doom for me if I kept this up. What if the poor woman thought that because I was paying her so much I expected her to actually provide… well, what certain ladies of the night would call a ‘girlfriend experience’?
I would just have to be careful so that she wouldn’t think I expected anything. I didn’t want to put her in an uncomfortable position or take advantage of her. My… my stupid attraction to her was my fault and mine alone. I’d deal with it.
We ate in silence for a while, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. So many people acted like sitting in silence was a bad thing. A sign that you didn’t know what to say to the person that you were with, that you weren’t comfortable with them, that you couldn’t open up. Personally—well, my family was bloody insane. Always talking over each other, filling up the space, yammering on. It made me appreciate the ability to be quiet. To just sit together and be.
Forbidden First Times: A Contemporary Romance Collection Page 23
