“That is easy to say when you are seven months pregnant and have a fiancé who openly expresses his love for you.”
Simone scoffed. “The mother of my fiancé’s child lived with him for the first ten months we dated. Anybody looking at that would have called me crazy, insisted they were still sleeping together, encouraged me to leave.”
“I wouldn’t have. I didn’t, because I know Roman.”
“Exactly. You didn’t warn me off of Roman because you knew the man, and you trusted his intentions with me… do you see where I’m going with this?”
I did, but didn’t respond. I was too busy doing exactly what she’d urged me not to do: over thinking it. I understood where she was coming from, and I mean… she would know. Although the romantic thing didn’t work out, she and Carter still talked often. She had insight that I didn’t.
While I didn’t expect her to divulge the details of their private conversations with me, it would have been beyond helpful for her to give me some of the notes from the margins, or something. A clandestine suggestion to “trust the process” did nothing to ease my mind.
When Eddie and Simone realized I was lost in my own thoughts, they continued the conversation without me. Eventually, I joined in again, laughing at Eddie’s stories, caressing Simone’s belly when the baby moved, but really, my mind was still a million miles away.
— & —
Il est magnifique.
That’s how my mother described him. Magnificent. And really, he was. Sitting in front of the window, with the early morning light glowing on his skin, he was… beautiful. I don’t know if Carter would appreciate that description or not, but with those gorgeous black locs resting on his shoulders, smooth bronze skin covering his athletically toned body, he looked like ancient royalty.
Magnificent.
Carter was occupied with the chewing of a pen as he stared at the notebook clutched in his hand. He was writing, and had been for at least the last twenty minutes that I’d been awake, watching him alternate between furiously scrawling words on the page and long moments like this, where he would stare off into space as if he were just waiting for the words to appear so he could grab them.
Disturbing him seemed like sacrilege. I was barely even breathing, trying my best to hold on to this moment of quiet between us. Then our eyes met, and a moment of… something else happened. He smiled at me, and his gaze drifted away from my face, but the smile remained as he scanned my nude body. Blushing, I pulled the sheet up to cover myself, and Carter scowled, tossing his pen and notepad onto the desk.
“Come here.”
My body moved immediately, not waiting on my thoughts to catch up. This is where he had me, moving at his command, completely willing, but still baffled by how I had gotten to this point. He pulled me into his lap, then reclined in the chair. “Why were you covering up? You shy now all of a sudden? Uncomfortable?”
“No,” I said, giggling as he peppered kisses over the back of my neck. “I have to start covering up so you don’t tire of seeing me naked.”
He scoffed. “Never. Who gets tired of perfection?”
I sighed as he wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me back against his chest to nuzzle his face in my hair. “Carter… what are we doing?”
As soon as those words left my mouth, I remembered Simone’s warning, not even a week ago, to just let it be, but it was too late now. Carter tensed immediately, pulling away as I turned to face him.
“What do you mean?”
Averting my gaze, I looked out of the window as I answered. “You know what I mean, Carter. This. Us. What are we doing?”
“Are you asking me if we’re in a relationship or something?”
I turned back to him, meeting his eyes, but didn’t respond. He scrubbed a hand over his face, tossing his head against the back of the chair. “Frenchy… that’s not what we signed up for, you know that.”
“I do,” I nodded, blinking back the tears that were quickly forming in my eyes. “But… I’m kinda… feeling differently now. I’m… I’m putting my heart on the line here.”
He sighed, staring down at the floor as his thumb absently stroked my leg. “I….” He stopped, shaking his head before reluctantly bringing his eyes up to my face.
I swallowed hard, trying not to choke on the painful lump building in my throat. “Just say it.”
Carter brought his hand to my face in what seemed like slow motion, caressing my cheek and then burying it in the soft curls at the nape of my neck. “I didn’t ask you for your heart.”
So there it was.
I didn’t ask you for your heart.
My stomach turned into a knot as my chin dropped, and dizziness swept through me as I tried to stand up, stumbling over my own feet. I righted myself quickly, dodging Carter’s hands when he tried to grab me. My cheeks burned as I frantically searched the room for the clothes I’d haphazardly discarded the night before, in the midst of what I thought was passion, but now seemed more like straight lust.
So, so stupid.
“Viv,” Carter said, approaching me as I pulled my shirt over my head, not caring that it was backwards. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” I held up a hand, smiling with as much forced cheerfulness as I could. “You’re right. You didn’t.” I shook my head, bending to retrieve the panties that were peeking from under the corner of the bed. “It was… unfair of me to burden you with that.”
I yanked my panties on, then sidestepped him to retrieve my jeans from the other side of the bed.
“Hold on a second, Viv, can we talk?”
“About what?” I asked, zipping and buttoning the pants. “Unless you’re going to tell me….” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “Right. You’re not. So… there’s nothing to talk about it. We’re fine.”
“You’re mad at me, we’re not fine.”
“I’m not mad, I’m….”
Embarassed? Devastated? Hopeless?
“I just need to go.” The tears I was trying so valiantly to hold back were right on the verge of breaking free, and I knew once they did, it wouldn’t be pretty.
“I don’t want you to leave, not when you’re like this.” He tried again to grab my hand, but I stumbled back, clutching my arms.
“Carter, please. I just need a moment. I’m fine.”
“I’m looking at you, Viv. You’re not. I know you’re not.”
I shrugged. “What do you want me to say to that? What do you think I should do?”
“Let me—”
“Let you? Let you what? Let you explain why you don’t share the same delusion that I had about us? Let you hold me? Comfort me? Make love—” I stopped, biting the inside of my cheek in a last ditch effort to not dissolve into a puddle of tears. “Carter… I’m gonna go.”
When he didn’t say anything, I hurried past him and into the living room to shove my feet into my shoes, grab my purse, and get the hell out of there. I stumbled into my apartment, my legs weak and wobbly as if I were drunk. Stripping myself of my clothes, I got into the shower and just sat there, letting the water pour over me until it ran cold. I didn’t even bother drying my hair, just crawled into the bed and lay there, hoping that at some point the hurt would stop.
And… it did.
Or at least, it lessened, as I tossed the last three months around in my head. This was my own fault, for going right from the break up with Darren into indulging my crush with Carter. He was right. He hadn’t asked me for my heart. He hadn’t asked me for anything. It wasn’t his fault that I took a seed and ran with it, creating an illusion of a mutual affection that simply wasn’t there.
Late that night, laying in the same place I fell after my shower, hunger stirred, and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. I got up, pulling open the drawer that contained my lounge clothes — now full of his tee shirts. I bypassed them all, opting for one of my own.
I was halfway through a bowl of cereal when the rattling of my doorknob sent prickles of fear over my skin. My
hand was wrapping around the biggest knife in my block when Carter’s face appeared in my doorway, and I remembered that he had a key.
He stepped in, closing the door behind him, and for a long time, neither of us said anything. Then finally, unable to handle the silence, I asked “What are you doing here?”
Carter shrugged, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he joined me in the kitchen, stopping a few feet away. “I was worried about you. You haven’t returned any calls or texts all day… I knocked a few times, no answer. I… I don’t mean to intrude on your space like this, I just needed to see that you were okay.
I nodded, looking down at the swirls of cinnamon and sugar as I stirred the cereal in my bowl.
“And,” he continued, taking another step closer, “I feel like shit for hurting you.”
I dumped my now-soggy dinner into the sink, turning on the water to rinse it down into the disposal. “Don’t. You haven’t done anything wrong, Carter.”
“So you say.”
“Really. We’re okay.”
To prove it, I didn’t even flinch when he pulled me into a hug, clutching me against his chest in a way that reminded me of my return from France. Tears pricked my eyes, and we pulled away. I dodged the kiss that he aimed at my mouth, angling my head so that it landed on my cheek.
I shook my head, and he gave me a dry smile in return before he pushed out a deep breath, reaching up to massage the back of his neck. “So… do you want me to leave?”
No.
“Yes.”
He gave a brief nod, then kissed me on the forehead and left, without a backward glance. I refused to puzzle over that. Carter didn’t get to be perpetrator and comforter at once. I turned off my lights, crawled back into bed, and tried my best to go back to sleep, but I kept having the same nightmare, in which I was constantly picking up pieces from a broken heart.
Funny how it’s hard to tell dreams from reality sometimes.
— & —
For a moment Bria’s laughter drowned out my music. I punched up the volume, ignoring the happy sound in preference of Jhene Aiko singing my life in The Worst. Even though she was my best salesperson, I seriously contemplated firing her when she giggled again, even louder this time. I snatched my earbuds out, then immediately cursed myself for being angry with her. She was young, pretty, and from the sound of it, flirting with a handsome man. She had plenty to be giggly about.
I hated being so… cantankerous, and for the most part I kept it at bay. I saved my right to wallow in my sullen mood for brief periods of alone time. Other than that, especially around people, I faked a cheerful facade, hoping that if I did it long enough, it would filter into my psyche and actually bring me back into the happy Vivienne I was before I just had to open my big mouth.
Only a week had passed since my forced epiphany about my relationship — or lack thereof— with Carter, and although I pretended otherwise, it still hurt. As much as it stung, I answered when he called me, responded when he texted, but I carefully avoided his physical presence. He was being cautious with me, trying to hold on to the fragile threads of our friendship. I wanted to meet him halfway, but how do you smile in the face of the person who rejected love when you offered? Using a cell phone, separated by walls, I could pretend. In person… I could not.
But that was no way to live. Bria laughed again, and I pulled off my rubber gloves, tossing them into the trash as I headed to the front to see what was so damn funny.
Bria’s pretty face was pulled into a smile, smooth mahogany skin glowing as she flirted with a young man standing at the counter. He was… no he’s not… yes, he was, holding her hands, as he leaned against my display case, saying something that I wasn’t quite in earshot to hear.
“Welcome to Guilty Pleasures,” I said, clearing my throat. Bria snatched her hands away, shooting me a nervous smile as she remembered that she was at work on her off day from her college classes. The young man was slower to react, taking his sweet time to get his weight off my display before he glanced in my direction.
Sweet Jesus.
He looked just like Carter.
The only slight differences were the low, faded haircut and clean shaven face. Other than that, he could have been Carter’s twin. “You must be Roderick,” I said, stepping forward with my hand extended. Carter had called me the day before, asking if I was comfortable with doing him a huge favor.
The favor?
Hire Roderick, who Roman had already threatened with death after an out-of-the-way comment about Simone, who had hired him first to help with deliveries. So I did. Because Carter was, supposedly, my friend, and that’s what you did for friends. Granted favors, even when you were hurting and it was kind of their fault.
“Yeah, I’m Rod. And you must be one of my future girlfriends cause goddamn, you fine. Carter didn’t tell me all that. He said you were thirty, but that’s cool. I’m into cougars.”
Did this child just call me a damn cougar?
He rambled on, but I barely heard him, and definitely didn’t respond. Now I understood why Carter called it a “huge” favor.
I fucked up.
In so many ways that I can’t even pinpoint which one was the worst.
Befriending her in the first place, when I’d been wanting her since before she moved in… bad.
Kissing her that night? Very bad.
Taking the relationship to the sexual point of no return… that was terrible.
Telling her that I never asked her for her heart… fucking catastrophic, and I had no idea how to recover from it. As soon as those words left my mouth, I knew I’d messed up, but she put me on the spot, when I had no idea Viv was even sweating me like that.
In retrospect, I should have noticed. It should have been pretty fucking clear that “hey genius, she’s falling for you”, but I was too busy trying to convince myself that I wasn’t falling for her, and now I’d done that last thing I wanted to do.
I didn’t get her easy smiles anymore. The same ones that Eddie, Simone, Roman, hell even Rod got were out of reach for me, and instead I got the counterfeit copies. I almost think I would have preferred that she just not talk to me at all, but she was trying, and even though I could see in her eyes that she was hurt, I couldn’t just stay away. In some ways, it was selfish of me, but after spending the last three months building a connection with her… how was I supposed to just let that go? But on the other side of that, I had no idea what it would do to her for me to just withdraw, and not even be the friend I’d originally set out to be.
So… I stuck around. I called, and I texted, and I stopped by, hoping that at some point, it would stop being torture for both of us. At some point, something would click, and we’d fall back into the same easy friendship we’d forged before things got… complicated.
That’s why I found myself knocking at her door late one night, two weeks after our falling out, without having called first to say I was stopping by. Rod had only been here two days and was already out with a girl. He’d also already eaten everything he could find, so on my way out to feed myself, I passed Viv’s door.
And then I went back.
She’d carefully avoided being alone with me for any extended period of time, so I really didn’t expect her to take my offer for dinner. Still, I had to try. Maybe we wouldn’t ever get back to that blissful place we were before it all fell apart, but we could get our friendship back.
But then she opened the door. She smiled at me… one of her real smiles, the ones that hit me like a shot of adrenaline and damn near took my breath away. And she was wearing my shirt. Was this it? Was this the turning point I was waiting on, where stuff like titles didn’t matter, and we could just… be?
Viv’s smile dropped into a frown, and she leaned into the doorway as she scrutinized my face. “Carter… is everything okay?”
“What?”
“You … were staring, without saying anything. Did something happen?”
“What? No… no, nothing happened. I’m g
ood.”
“Good,” she said, the smile returning to her face. “Um… did you want something?”
Where do I start?
“Yeah… actually. I was seeing if you wanted to grab a bite to eat… hang out or something.”
Her forehead wrinkled, and she looked away, glancing around her apartment without answering.
“If you don’t want to, that’s—”
“No.” Viv reached out, grabbing my wrist like she thought I was about to back away. “It’s not that, it’s just… I’m in for the night. I’m working on some new recipes for the shop, and I’m kind of occupied with that. But… you’re welcome to join me if you’d like. I don’t have a hot meal for you, but I have enough chocolate to give you a belly ache. If you aren’t interested though, I won’t—”
“I’m down.”
She hesitated for a moment, then for the third time in less than five minutes, she gifted me with a smile. “Well… come in.”
I closed the door behind me, trying not to stare as Viv led me to the kitchen. She was — thankfully— wearing shorts today, but they were short, and clung to her body in a way that they may as well not have been there at all. But, that reminded me of the day she hurt her head, which reminded me of her bent over with her ass in the air, which reminded me that now, I’d been inside her in that position, and that just wasn’t a place where my mind needed to go.
“You might want to take your shirt off.”
“Huh?” I asked, with a slight jerk of my head.
She grinned. “Your shirt. You may want to take it off, so it does not get dirty.” She pointed at her own clothes, and I noticed for the first time that they were covered in random splatters of chocolate, sugar, and whatever else she was working with.
I nodded, then pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it onto her couch across the room. I looked back, half expecting her to make a filthy comment, but she wasn’t even looking at me. She had busied herself at the stove, stirring and moving around the different pots before she finally did glance up.
Didn't Mean To Love You (Serendipitous Love Book 2) Page 11
