Ask Me Again

by Gina L. Maxwell

  After hours of exploring each other and both of them coming more times than he could count, they fell into a sweat-slicked heap with her tucked back against him and their hearts beating in time together. Something big shifted in Tony’s chest, and the relief he felt was so strong, he slipped into unconsciousness with a smile on his face.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A FIVE-STAR MIDNIGHT picnic. Only Tony could come up with something so perfect as to bring both the beauty of the country and some of the finer things she’d acquired a taste for over the years together in one amazing evening.

  Earlier in the day, she’d cheered like crazy for the Shark Bytes as they shut out the Crazy Carp 1-0. Then Trish invited the whole team out to Fort’s favorite place for cheap ice cream, Frosty Freeze, and bought the kids—and their handsome coach and tag-a-long referee, Jason—a celebratory ice cream treat. The utter chaos that came from controlling twenty kindergarteners with sloppy faces and sticky fingers had been totally worth it to see their smiles.

  As the last player left with his parents and the stern promise of a very long bath, Tony told her he had something special planned for them that night. He said to wear something Sunday casual, which meant nice enough to go to church, yet comfortable enough to enjoy the church picnic the rest of the day. She’d opted for a simple sundress and had brought a light sweater wrap to keep her arms warm if the air got chilly when the sun went down.

  He’d picked her up around nine, just before dusk, and they drove out to a secluded area along Lake Koshkonong where nothing surrounded them but the sky above and the grass below. They laid out a thick blanket on the grass and watched the sunset melt into the water’s horizon as they enjoyed their late meal. He’d brought several kinds of sushi for her, which she’d grown to love in New York, and some dry rub chicken wings for himself, along with an amazing fruit salad for dessert with their sparkling wine.

  Trish smiled from a high dose of contentment as she sipped from a plastic flute, reveling in the tiny bubbles bursting with flavor on her tongue before sliding down her throat and warming her insides. “Mmm, this tastes so good,” she said, handing him her empty glass, “but if I have any more you’ll have to carry me into bed later.”

  Chuckling, he said, “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Touché.” She often fell asleep on his couch while they chilled in front of the television at night, and since the “no beds” rule had gone out the window several weeks back, he always texted Rhi to let her know Trish would be spending the night so she didn’t worry, and then tucked her into bed next to him. She’d been concerned at first, but nothing had ever been the least bit awkward. On the contrary, it allowed them the opportunity to wake each other up in new and creative ways, and now she stayed at his place more often than not.

  On a sigh of satisfaction, she lowered herself to her back on the picnic quilt and gazed up at the blanket of stars, wondering idly how lucky she was to have the best summer of her life when she’d thought a few short months ago that it would surely be her worst.

  Tony set everything off to the side and lay next to her, his body turned in and his head rested on his hand so he could look down on her. With his free hand, he drew lazy designs on the multitude of skin left exposed by her dress, causing her to shiver.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  She smiled. “No. I wasn’t shivering from being cold.”

  He gave her a knowing smile in return as he dropped his head to kiss her long and leisurely. “I think you taste a hell of a lot better than that champagne,” he said between licks.

  “Sparkling wine.”

  Kiss, lick. “Hmm?”

  Sigh, kiss. “It’s sparkling wine. It can only be called champagne if it comes from France.”

  He lowered his voice and made it sound dark and smooth, like audible sex. “Mmm, I love it when talk city to me, baby. Describe the smell of a taxi. In detail.”

  They both started laughing and then swapping ideas back and forth, trying to one-up each other on dirty city things.

  “Say the word for a fried snail,” he said with a dramatic groan.

  “Tell me the current rat-to-person ratio in the Big Apple,” she said breathily.

  “Ooh, how about the closing status of the Dow Jones today?”

  Trish dissolved into a fit of giggles. Perhaps the wine was more potent than she thought. “You really know how to make a girl hot, don’t you, Mr. DiAngelo? Must be those Italian genes of yours.”

  “They don’t call us Italian Stallions for nothing, Ms. Howell,” he said with a smirk.

  “Italian Stallion.” Reaching up she trailed her hand over the side of his face, his five o’clock shadow tickling her palm. “I don’t know that all Italian men deserve the moniker, but the name certainly suits you,” she mused softly.

  Turning his face in, he placed a kiss to the center of her palm and then the sensitive underside of her wrist. “Trish, there’s a reason I brought you here tonight.”

  “Is it to make love to me beneath the stars?” she asked, hopeful.

  The white teeth of his smile shone from the half-moon hanging low in the sky. “That’s not the reason, but I’m hoping it’ll be a nice side benefit.”

  “Me, too. What do I have to do to ensure such a wonderful benefit occurs?”

  “I have some things I want to tell you. All you have to do is listen.”

  “Sounds easy enough. Okay, I’m listening.” She gave him an approving nod as though he were a subordinate asking for permission to proceed from his superior. Another example of their effortless banter and likeminded humor that kept them in stitches more often than not.

  Trish hadn’t realized how lackluster her life in New York had been until she had these few months to compare it to. Not that she never laughed during her relationship with Nick or moped around in a perpetual state of gloom. But when she put her mind to it, she couldn’t recall any instances where they’d flat out belly-laughed until their sides hurt or tears streaked down their faces. With Tony, it was damn near a daily occurrence.

  Still lying on his side, Tony held himself up with his forearm tucked under him. His free arm snaked around her waist to pull her in and eliminate the offensive inches of space dividing them. How dare they. Trish almost giggled at her own joke, but stifled it when she saw the seriousness of the matter in Tony’s expression.

  “Hey, you know you can tell me anything, right?” she whispered.

  He answered with a thoughtful nod, then brought her left hand up to place a kiss on the backs of her fingers. “When my family moved to town in third grade, I’d left behind several friends that I’d known my whole life. So you can imagine how I felt about starting a new school in a small town where everyone had been friends since pre-school or longer. I was an angry kid. I did a lot of lashing out at home and planned to do more of the same at school. I foolishly thought that if my parents realized I wouldn’t get any better here, they’d move us back to our old home.

  “Then I saw you on the first day of school, and everything else faded into the distance. You were so happy all the time and full of life. Everyone adored you, students and teachers alike. Part of me envied you your close friends because it reminded me of how much I missed mine. And still another part of me resented you for being so popular and loved. Most of me, though, just wanted to be near you, but you weren’t paying much attention to the new kid. So I stole your softball glove.”

  “That’s why you took my glove?” Trish rocked her head back and forth in astonishment and grinned up at the goofy boy. “You know you could have just asked me to play tag or something, right?”

  “Yeah, well, you were like mental kryptonite. Anytime you came close, my I.Q. instantly dropped several points,” he said wryly. “Illegal possession of personal property seemed like a great idea at the time.”

  “Hmm, and how’d that plan work out for you?” It was a rhetorical question, of course. Everyone knew his shin had gotten a swift introduction to her foot an
d had the bruise to show for it.

  “Short-term? Not so hot. But in the long run…” His light brown eyes appeared cool and metallic in what little light the moon gave them, and yet she felt as if they burned through her, heating her from the inside out. “I’m here, lying under the stars with you on a beautiful night, and when we’re done here, I’m taking you back to my bed. I know you more intimately than anyone else. I know who you are as a person. I know your dreams and goals, your fears and what makes you laugh.” The rough pad of his thumb lightly skimmed back and forth over her knuckles, causing frissons of electricity to sizzle through her body. “And I know every inch of your beautiful body and have proven time and time again I know how to make it sing for me.”

  He was right; Tony did know all of those things about her. Their time spent together these last few months had included more pillow talk than most, for lack of a better term, friends-with-benefits arrangements.

  Tony was more. They were more.

  “So, long term? Yeah,” he said, “I think the plan worked brilliantly. Though, I’ll admit that I never dared to dream we’d ever get to this point. But now that we are, I don’t know how I could have ever doubted it.”

  Trish drew her brows together as something sparked to life in the pit of her stomach and soured her gut in warning, but she couldn’t imagine what it might be for. Bad news of some kind?

  “Don’t you feel like everything with us is somehow meant to be? Like no matter how far we stray from each other, our love will always bring us back together and we’d be exactly where we are right now.”

  Our love? “Tony, I...” She what? She had no clue how to finish that sentence.

  “I’m making a mess out of this, aren’t I?” He blew out a deep breath and framed her face with his free hand. “Trish, I’m trying to tell you that I love you.”

  Warning bells tolled in the back of her head now. She proceeded with care, hoping things weren’t about to take a bad turn. “I love you too, Tony, you know that.”

  “No, I mean I am in love with you. Have been from the first time I saw you on that playground, and I haven’t stopped since. I just never identified it as love before. People called it puppy love, a crush, a challenge. Some of my friends even called you my obsession. That one is probably the most honest out of all of them, but they’re all still wrong, because what I’ve always felt for you is so much more than that. It’s love, pure and simple, and unconditional.”

  With her heart racing, Trish slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position and he followed suit. Shit. What is he doing? Why is he doing it? Okay, deep breaths.“Tony, it’s been a really long day for both of us. We should pack things up and head back.”

  He shook his head before she even finished talking. “Not yet. I’m through with denying myself any longer. We deserve more. We deserve to be together.”

  “I don’t understand what this is all about. We’re together all the time. I see you more than I see my sister, and I live with her.”

  “So why not live with me?”

  Seconds dragged out as she stared. She needed to say something. Did she already say something? She couldn’t remember. Hell, she couldn’t remember what he said anymore. “Can you repeat that?”

  “I said, so why not live with me.” Then he held up a stunning diamond ring with antique details in the band. The precious stone in the middle winked at her in the moonlight. “Trish, I love you. I always have and I swear to you that I always will. I’ll treat you like the amazing woman you are and I promise to lift you up when you’re down and let you do the same for me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Marry me, T. Make me the happiest man alive.”

  Trish scrambled to her feet just as the panic attack hit her. “Are you joking? What on earth would make you think it’s a good idea to propose marriage in something that’s not even technically a relationship?”

  Tony rose and stared at her like she’d gone crazy. He might not be far from the mark at the moment. “What do you mean not a relationship? Trish, we couldn’t be in more of a relationship if we tried. We spend every minute of free time together, you stay at my place, we talk about the future, and what we have in the bedroom is fucking insane, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

  “No, I will not excuse the pun.” She had no idea why she said that other than she felt compelled to be contrary. She needed to end this. Right here, right now. She’d let things go too far and now it was too late to salvage anything. “Look, Tony, I love you as a person and a friend, and yes, we have insane chemistry in the bedroom, but that doesn’t mean we should get married for fuck’s sake. We never talked about this thing we had going getting more serious or taking things to the next level. There would have been a talk, and we never had a talk.”

  “We never had a talk about anything. Once we decided to start having a physical relationship, things happened organically just like all of them do. We agreed to keep things casual in the beginning, but we never said that it couldn’t change or grow, so how was I supposed to know you wanted to have your cake and eat it too? Because that’s exactly what this is. You want all the benefits of having me as your boyfriend with the freedom to think of me as your friendly fuck-buddy who’s okay with walking away whenever you decide you’re done.”

  “Jesus, Tony, I was with a man for almost a decade and had no idea just how wrong we were together. It’s absolutely impossible to even fathom that after a few short months with you, I could fall in love and know in my heart of hearts that we’re meant to be or even know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And I think if you’re honest, you’ll see that it’s not possible from your end either.”

  “Don’t patronize me the way that asshole used to do to you, Trish. You can’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know how I feel and I know that there’s no reason for me to wait six months, a year, or five years to see if I’ll still love you enough then to want to start my life with you. My love for you would only get stronger with time, not less. So if I say I’m ready now, then I’m ready.”

  “This is exactly why I wanted the no-beds rule,” she said, her voice escalating. “Beds skew the level of intimacy and amplify feelings of lust into something they’re not.”

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit, but even if it wasn’t, which of us was the one to call that rule off, Trish? Wasn’t me.”

  She closed her eyes and prayed her legs would hold up for a little longer before buckling. “You’re right. This is my fault, and I’m so sorry.” She heard him scoff and looked up to see hurt twisting his gorgeous features. “I think it would be best if you took me home, Tony. And though I’m sure it goes without saying, this, whatever it is, has to be over. I didn’t realize I’d misled you so strongly and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.”

  “Don’t worry about me, T. I’m no longer your concern, apparently.” He released a mirthless laugh that chilled her to the bone. “Maybe I’ll go find a friend to screw around with for a while to help me get over you and hope I don’t start to ‘strongly mislead’ her. Seems to have worked great for you.”

  If she’d had anything left of her heart after the breakup with Nick, Tony had effectively stripped it away with that statement. Not that he was wrong for saying it. She deserved that and more. So much more.

  They didn’t speak the rest of the night, not even when he dropped her off at Rhianna’s. As a test to prove to herself that she wasn’t in love with Tony, she watched him drive away and imagined that he wasn’t going the meager two-minutes to his house, but rather some place far away where she’d never be able to see him again.

  Immediately, she got sick, the contents of her stomach in the street just as vile as how she’d treated the man she loved. But no matter how they felt about each other, it wouldn’t change her answer to the proposal. It was ludicrous to think she could find her Happily Ever After so soon, and in her hometown of all places, as if she’d never had to go farther than her front yard to find her soulmate. It wasn’t logical or
practical. He had to see that.

  Either way, she needed to apologize to him for the way she treated him so callously. She’d beg his forgiveness and hopefully, in time, he wouldn’t hate her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PADDY'S WAS FAIRLY SLOW for a Saturday afternoon, but then again, it was Labor Day weekend. The last summer hurrah for families to get in a long-weekend mini-vacay with the kids before the new school year started the following week.

  A handful of the die-hards still showed up for lunch, though, so Trish had been able to stay busy. Between the food and drink orders, restocking the bar, prepping enough garnishes for an entire week, and dusting every bottle of liquor and the shelves they sat on, she’d been well and truly distracted. And distractions were a necessity the past couple of weeks to keep her mind off the shambles she’d made of her life in such a short amount of time.

  In April, she’d come home with her tail tucked between her legs and her heart crushed by the man she’d thought loved her. Now, a mere five months later, her tail was docked, and her heart felt shattered beyond repair. The current situation wasn’t only different because it involved a different man, but also because the man wasn’t at fault for her heartache. This time it’d been her own doing that caused the pain, both his and her own.

  Heartache.

  She scoffed at the word as she wiped the bar down for the third time in the last thirty minutes. Such a mild emotion for what she felt, and yet she didn’t deserve to claim even that much for herself. Oh, she definitely deserved to be suffering, but not in the pure and blameless way of someone whose heart had been mishandled by another. She’d had that right five months ago. But not any more.

  It killed her to know she’d hurt Tony. How did everything get so mixed up? Thinking back, she couldn’t even pinpoint when things had crossed from a casual summer fling into the L-word territory, much less a place where marriage proposals were even on the horizon.