by Evans, LJ
♫ ♫ ♫
Theresa wasn’t kidding when she said she needed someone to do research. I wasn’t sure if she was testing me, or just desperate, but she dragged me around with her for the next week like some combination of a personal assistant and a paralegal. I was neither, and she actually had both. She didn’t have a law office. She told me she’d given it up when she’d taken on the full-time position at Georgetown, but she had a staff that worked part time out of her house on the outskirts of town.
Because she didn’t have her own office, she rarely took on cases, but the ones she took were because she was passionate about them. Kacey, her paralegal, and Ryan, her personal assistant, were both enrolled in classes at Georgetown’s main campus, not the law school. They came and went from her house with their own key, often ignoring the daggers Theresa threw out at them about not being there when she needed them. It wasn’t true; they were highly efficient, and they also weren’t afraid to tell her when she’d overstepped. It left me admiring all of them for their strength and outspokenness. It was the way I handled all my relationships.
Except one…my soul whispered to me. And I realized, with a shock, that it was true. I’d been avoiding a certain man with eyes the color of the sea and sky. I’d known that. I’d used my time with Theresa as an excuse to continue to ignore him and the issue, instead of just facing it head on—with facts, and truths, and proofs. But it was the complete opposite of how I’d handled everything else in my life, and I was sort of tired of it.
Theresa saying my name brought me back from my heart-to-heart with myself.
“Georgia is the only one who deserves to be paid, and she isn’t even making any money,” she threw at Kacey when she saw her heading toward the door on Friday.
“Georgia is going to learn soon enough that if she doesn’t tell you no, you’ll take until there’s nothing left but a burnt stub,” Kacey hollered back. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week?” Theresa groused.
“It’s Friday. I have a boyfriend and a life waiting for me. If you had a relationship, other than one with the law, you’d understand.”
Then, Kacey was gone.
I was smiling as I shut my computer.
“Are you leaving me, too?” she asked. “I suppose you have plans, also.”
“No,” I said, thinking about the apartment and the tension that was there now all the time because of Mac and me. I had a renewed desire to fix the situation, but I wasn’t sure how.
“Oh Lord, there’s that wistful look all you young people get.”
I laughed. “I’m not wistful or young.”
“What do you call that face?”
“Thoughtful.”
She laughed.
“If that’s thoughtful, I’m twenty-one again.” She eyed me over the top of her steepled fingers. “Are you worried about classes starting?”
“No, not really.”
“I won’t hold back on you just because you’re helping me, you know. Don’t expect any freebies.”
It was my turn to stare her down. “I don’t expect handouts.”
“Good.”
My phone buzzed.
RAISA: They are at each other’s throats again.
ME: You still don’t know why?
RAISA: I have my…what is the word? Suspicions? But no facts.
ME: No proof, you mean.
RAISA: Yes. This. No proof.
ME: Just ask him about it.
I realized, after texting Raisa those words, that the solution was really that simple. I just needed to talk to Mac. Get things out in the open. Put everything on the table and move on so we didn’t continue to dance around the apartment, avoiding each other.
RAISA: That is never easy with Malik.
ME: All you can do is try.
I put my phone back in my bag and picked up all my belongings.
“One text conversation and everything is better?” Theresa smiled at me.
“What? No. That was my sister.”
“But you’ve resolved whatever was making you squishy-faced?”
I laughed. “I’m not sure I’d say I was squishy-faced any more than I’d say I’d been wistful.”
“Trust me. I’ve been reading people for years. You were squishy-faced and wistful. Now that you have that problem resolved,” Theresa continued, “will you have time this weekend to spend on the case?”
“Sure,” I told her, making my way to the door. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Bring more of that black-and-white coffee stuff.”
I nodded and left. My brain was on Mac and the long overdue discussion we needed to have. But when I got back to the apartment, it was to find out that Mac had had very different ideas. Dani told me he had taken the train home to Delaware with his dad, which made me wonder if the only real solution to our situation was for me to just move out so he wouldn’t have to run from his own home.
♫ ♫ ♫
My first day of classes came and went, leaving me exhausted and wired at the same time. The other students had been friendly, and, true to her word, Theresa hadn’t given me an inch. If anything, she’d judged me harsher than the other students whenever I’d made a comment.
When I made my way back to the apartment, it was late, and I was surprised to be the first one home. I felt like celebrating, and for the first time in a long time, I felt alone.
I pulled my phone out of my bag to text Raisa and realized I’d missed a text from Dani.
DANI: You’ve survived your first day! Congrats! We’re bringing home Bentley’s.
It filled my heart. I was just about to text back when the door opened and the siblings entered, in the midst of a heated discussion.
“He didn’t mean that,” Dani said.
“Of course, you’d think that,” Mac was saying.
They both stopped when they saw me, but Mac seemed to take me in for longer, as if he was trying to assess if I’d changed from the last time I’d seen him.
“We didn’t think you were home,” Dani said.
I waved my phone. “I was just about to text you.”
“Congrats on your first day! How was it?” Dani asked as Mac started to unload the bags, the smell of garlic and basil filling the apartment and making my stomach growl loudly.
“It was really good, but I didn’t get a chance to eat,” I answered over another loud grumble from my intestines.
“We can tell.” Mac grinned, and my stomach flipped again but for a different reason. Because Mac’s smile was gorgeous, and every time I thought I’d gotten used to it, I was proven wrong.
I pulled out plates from the cupboard, and we all dished up, sitting at the counter while I talked about my day, and they talked about theirs. It felt like, maybe, Mac and I were moving closer to the friendship that I was hoping we’d find.
We were almost done when Dani’s phone buzzed. She looked down at the text before jumping off the barstool and heading down the hall.
“Who is he, Dani?” Mac tossed at her.
She just waved the phone at him and kept going.
He turned back to me.
“I’m glad you had a good first day,” he said.
I nodded, picking up the plates, and he joined me. We cleaned the kitchen in silence. We both reached for the kitchen towel at the same moment, our hands tangling and then stilling. I pulled my hands away, crossed my arms over my chest, and swallowed. I wanted to have this talk. I wanted to move on, or move out, or just do something instead of hiding.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” I said.
“Not so much avoiding as giving us some space,” he said, but he moved closer to me as he said it, leaning on the counter next to me so our arms were almost touching.
“This is space,” I teased, but he didn’t smile in return. Instead, his eyes seemed to bore into mine, and I found my courage and resolve melting beneath the heat of his stare.
&nb
sp; “Will you be honest if I ask you something?” he asked quietly.
That made me raise my chin in irritation. “I’m always honest.”
“Is it just me, or is this,” he waved a finger between us, “different for you, too?”
His words made me wish I hadn’t said I was always honest. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him how he made me feel. “Different how?” I asked, stalling.
His hand went to my hair, twirling fingers into my ponytail, tugging at the white stripe that had been there since that night my dad was arrested. He was too close for mere friends. For the mere roommates that I’d resolved we had to be.
“Different, as in, never had moments like these before. As in, I’m not sure I can stop touching you now that I’ve started. Different, as in, I feel like the pieces of us might just fit together better than any person has ever fit with me before.”
The words made my heart soar and stop all at the same time, aches of regret filling me. “Except we don’t, Mac. Not at all,” I told him, being as truthful as he’d asked me to be.
“Forget everything about your family and my political goals. If we hadn’t told each other any of that… If we’d just had that one incredible kiss and were here now, would you want me to take you out on a date? Would you be asking me, this very second, to kiss you again?”
He wanted to act like none of it existed. To pretend like we didn’t know all the things about each other that would never work. And I wasn’t sure if that hurt more or less than him not wanting to be with me at all, because I deserved to be with someone who chose me in spite of my family, not regardless of them.
“But I can’t do that,” I told him. “We have told each other those things. It’s all twined together. Our families, our lives, and what we want for our futures. We barely know each other, but what we know is enough to know that our lives don’t fit. Even in the short term.”
I pulled my ponytail from his hands, smoothing it with my own.
“You’re right that we barely know each other,” he said. “You’re right that, even in the short term, we seem like jagged edges instead of smooth curves. But all I know is that when I kissed you, I felt forever. Forever in one kiss.”
I moved away from him and toward the loft because, suddenly, I wasn’t ready for this conversation at all. I hadn’t expected it to turn on me in this way. He’d taken everything I thought I was going to say and swallowed it up in talks of forever. And I was surprised and unprepared for the longing and bitterness that filled me at his words. I may have never longed for a happily ever after before, but I knew, if it wasn’t for my family, I would have been caving. Giving in to him and the sweetest words that anyone had ever spoken to me…forever in a kiss. But I denied it all, instead. I spoke from the bitterness instead of the longing. “I don’t want forever with you, Mac.”
“No?” he responded, trailing after me, not at all put off by my words. Instead, he continued to push rather than walk away. “Because I think I sure as hell would like a chance to explore the idea of one with you.”
Mac
MORE THAN FRIENDS
“At the risk of sounding foolish,
I don't wanna fool around no more.
If we're gonna do this, then let's do this,
You can fix my broken heart if it's all yours.”
Performed by Jason Mraz & Meghan Trainor
Written by Green / Mraz / Trainor / Wells
I followed Georgie to the loft steps where she turned toward me at my words, smoothing her ponytail. I could see that my words had somehow penetrated the armor she’d drawn around herself, because I found a sea of conflicting emotions in her eyes that were a steely gray today.
So, I pushed because I had to. I had to know that I’d tried, or else the regret would have eaten at me for the rest of my life. “Tell me you feel nothing, and I’ll leave you alone. But if you do feel something, then don’t walk away without testing it. Without proving your own theories.”
Back in Rockport, she’d disputed my instinct with some theory of René Descartes, and hell, maybe she was right. Maybe once we dated and spent time together, we wouldn’t suit at all. Maybe instinct should have been left for military campaigns and not love. I wasn’t standing before her, asking her to marry me, but I also didn’t want to start something with her without the possibility that, someday, I might be putting a ring on her finger. That seemed like the worst way to start a relationship―with the knowledge of it ending instead of continuing.
She rubbed her forehead. “It’s just…so impossible.”
“Can you allow us, for a few minutes, to just be a law student and a senator’s aide?”
“It isn’t that simple.”
She was right. It wasn’t. But in the weeks that we’d been avoiding each other, I’d done nothing but think about this…us. About her. I hadn’t been able to get her off my damn brain. She’d been with me in the dark of the night. She’d been with me in the shower. She’d been with me when I was supposed to be reading gun stats and modifying the bill Matherton was putting before Congress next month.
I hadn’t been able to escape the thought of us even when I’d gone home for the weekend. Instead, my thoughts had run in circles about my career goals and her family. I thought about what Dani had said about just dating her with the thought of it ending someday, long before I ever announced an election campaign. I even thought about what it would be like to just assuage the physical need that was burning between us and leaving it at that. But at the end of every discussion I’d had with myself, I’d come back to the one thing I’d said to her that had been true.
That when I found the one I wanted to date, I’d be all in. That I would know, by instinct, that it was forever. I didn’t think my instincts were that far off.
Regardless, what I did know, without one shred of doubt, was that I wanted more. More moments. More kisses. More her. More time to figure out if my gut was right, or wrong, or completely screwed.
“Dani and I are going home next Friday for Labor Day. We have a family tradition of ending summer with tennis and poker. Come with us. Get to know me. Allow us to spend time together before you write the idea of us off.”
She turned away, looking out at the Washington skyline. The Capitol building was slowly coming alive with lights as the summer sun sank lower in the sky. I eased up behind her. I touched her shoulder and bent so my lips brushed slightly against her ear and the row of earrings that traveled their way up her skin.
“I want to know everything about you,” I told her. “You’re light and dark and hopes and fears all wrapped together. I need to know why. I need to know who Georgie is beneath the skin and the interchangeable contacts.”
She shivered. I wasn’t sure if it was at my words or the way my lips barely caressed her ear.
“A weekend,” she breathed out, her voice quivering like my insides were.
“A weekend at least,” I said with my breath still echoing across her skin.
“Okay,” she breathed out, pulling away and disappearing up the stairs. I let her go because I couldn’t believe I’d won. A smile filled my face and was reflected back at me in the window, joy surging through me that was quickly replaced with unease. Because what if she saw us all and ran for the hills instead of staying?
♫ ♫ ♫
Georgie and I didn’t avoid each other the next couple days. In fact, we seemed to have reached a truce. A truce that when we were in the same room, we sat next to each other. But she was working after school with Theresa, and Dani and I were working late on the gun bill, so we didn’t see each other except fleetingly. But knowing I was going to be around her for an entire weekend seemed to soften the knots that had worked themselves into all my muscles since I’d first gotten back to D.C. and found her ensconced in the apartment.
Thursday night, I was packing when I was interrupted by a text from Mom.
MOM: Dani says you’re bringing a girl home.
; My heart leaped at those words because they were and weren’t true. Georgie had agreed to give me this weekend as a way to get to know each other, but I didn’t want the family adding all sorts of pressure to that.
ME: We’re both bringing our roommate with us. Just like we brought Stan and Mel. And she’s hardly a girl.
MOM: You like her then, I see.
That I liked her was one way of saying it, but no way was I going to admit that to Mom at this point.
ME: I don’t know what Dani told you. Georgie and I are just getting acquainted. I’m not sure what I feel for her.
MOM: But you’ve never brought a woman home.
ME: Please don’t read more into this than it is. Like I said, we’re bringing our roommate with us, just like we have a gazillion times before.
MOM: So, don’t bring out your baby albums yet?
ME: ** Eye roll emoji **
MOM: You know I can’t tell which emoji means what.
ME: I’m rolling my eyes at you.
MOM: Just for that, I’m going to make sure the picture of you in the tutu is at the very front of the mantel.
ME: If she likes me after that, then it’s meant to be.
MOM: It’s texts like that which make me realize this is much more than bringing a roommate home.
I couldn’t continue to deny it. It was more. Mom would know that as soon as she saw me mooning over her like I’d never mooned over anyone. So, instead of lying, I just ended the conversation.
ME: Love you. I’m going to go pack now.
MOM: Love you too, baby. See you tomorrow.
I knocked on Dani’s half-open door. “Yep,” she hollered.
