The Pain in Loving You

by Steiner, Kandi

  But I couldn’t help it.

  And the monster inside me purred with satisfaction.

  I’m not sure how I managed it, but when his eyes found mine again, I smiled, waving him down the dock. He blinked a few times before his feet finally moved, and when he made it to me, he offered a small smile. “You’re sneaky,” he said, gesturing down to his swim trunks. “You’re also very lucky I still fit into these.”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure we could have figured it out otherwise. Here,” I said, tossing him the bottle of sunblock after I squeezed a healthy amount into my hand. “Lather up. Your sister would kill me if either of us got a sunburn before her big day.”

  “The pictures,” he mocked in her voice, and I laughed before we both fell silent — mostly because he had just started rubbing lotion over his broad, sculpted shoulders, and I was trying to remember why I ever thought this was a good idea.

  Once we were protected from the sun, we spread out our towels and took a seat on the dock. Then, I pulled the Bluetooth speaker out of my bag, propping it up between us and pulling out the clipboard with the band’s lists of songs they knew how to play. Then, I uncapped my bright yellow highlighter and we started from the top.

  Slowly, song by song, we filtered through the list, going over everything from what the band would play while everyone ate, to what would make people get up and sing and dance, to what would be perfect for the bouquet toss and garter throw. We selected a handful of slow songs, deciding which ones to group together for the couples to get some dances together, but ensuring it wasn’t too long so that the solo folks would want to throw themselves out the nearest window.

  Turned out Tyler and I had both been to weddings where we felt that latter scenario.

  The band had given us five pages of options, and after a few hours, we’d gone through them all, highlighting the ones that would go over best with the crowd that would be there for the wedding. And when our duty was done, I let the clipboard fall between us, the highlighter clacking on top, and then we both leaned back on the heels of our hands with a sigh, our eyes wandering the length of the lake.

  Clouds had begun to roll in, shielding us from the sun more than they had in the earlier afternoon, but the sun still peeked through enough to warm our skin, and the breeze was warmer now, too. I closed my eyes and soaked in the feeling of it blowing over my face as an old Tom Petty song played on the speaker.

  “Now this is summer,” I said, and I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that Tyler was watching me. “All we need now is a good swing off the rope.”

  I creaked one eye open to look at Tyler, who chuckled in response. “You first.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Prove it.”

  I smiled, closing my eyes again and sinking back onto my palms. “I will. In a little bit though, because I’m enjoying this right now.”

  “Suuuure,” Tyler teased.

  My smile grew, my stomach doing a little flip with his tease. I could tell he was still tense from our last conversation, but he’d let me drag him out here. And the more we’d gone through the playlist, the more the summer sun had found us through the myriad of clouds throughout the day, the more he’d relaxed.

  Maybe it was working.

  Maybe I could break down that barrier, after all.

  Maybe, we really could be friends.

  I ignored the way my stomach did a different kind of flip at the notion of the F word, letting out a long, pleasant sigh instead. “I think we did a good job. She’ll be happy.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Tyler said, pausing. “You know, I am a little disappointed they didn’t have ‘Like a G6’ on there. I mean, come on — that would have made Morgan happy.”

  I gasped, eyes shooting open wide as a laugh found my chest. “Oh, my God,” I said, shaking my head at a grinning Tyler. “I forgot about that song! Oh man, we loved that one. We used to pretend to make music videos for it, remember that?”

  “That one and ‘Billionaire’ by Travie McCoy.”

  I gasped again. “You’re taking me back to the summer after my freshman year real hard right now.”

  “That was a fun summer,” he said, shaking his head as his eyes found the water again. “We were just kids, you know? We stayed up too late, slept in too late, wasted our days away doing absolutely nothing.”

  “It was pretty perfect,” I agreed, and silence fell between us, a gust of wind rushing in another cloud that shielded us from the sun.

  And that’s when I remembered.

  I snapped my fingers, jolting enough to make Tyler look at me with a quirked brow. “Oh, just you wait,” I said, thumbing through my phone for the playlist I’d made my senior year and transferred to every new phone since then. When I hit play, Gym Class Heroes started playing, and Tyler laughed — a wholehearted, belly-deep laugh that had his head tilting back, eyes closing as he faced the sky.

  “Wow,” he said before he looked at me again. “What is this?”

  I showed him my phone screen.

  “WK+1’s Epic Playlist,” he read, and then he took the phone from my hand, thumbing through the list. “This is like every song we were obsessed with from 2010 to 2013.”

  “I made it senior year,” I said. “Remember? We played it at our prom pre-party.”

  “Your prom pre-party,” Tyler corrected.

  “Hey, you came, too!”

  “Only because you and Morgan forced me.” He shook his head. “Do you know how embarrassing that was? To be in college and going to a senior prom?”

  I shoved his arm. “Oh, shut up. You loved it.”

  He shook his head, eyeing the playlist one more time before he handed it back to me. “I do remember your dress,” he said softly, his eyes meeting mine for a brief moment before he tore them away. “You looked like a grown up that night.”

  “As opposed to your little sister’s annoying friend?”

  “As opposed to my friend who I didn’t realize had boobs,” he challenged, arching an eyebrow at me as he ogled the aforementioned boobs unabashedly.

  My jaw hinged open, and I swatted at him before covering my chest to the tune of his chuckle. Morgan’s words played in my head.

  I knew he had a crush on you, he had for years, but…

  After a moment, I leaned back on my hands again, watching him.

  And the longer I did, the more my heart raced in my chest, sweat beading at my hairline even though clouds had completely covered the sun now.

  “Morgan told me.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could consider not saying them, and they hung between us for a long moment before Tyler turned his head, his eyes meeting mine.

  “She told me about what happened that day after my mom left.” I swallowed. “About how you told her. About us.”

  I watched a stiff swallow bob in Tyler’s throat, but he never shifted his gaze.

  “I understand,” I said after a minute, sighing as I looked over the water — which wasn’t mirror-like anymore, now that the wind and clouds had rolled in — and then looking back at him. “I wish she wouldn’t have spoken for me, that she would have let you and I work it out, but I understand why she said what she did.” I paused. “And I understand why you said what you did, too. Why you told me…”

  My voice faded, because I didn’t have to say it. He knew what he’d said to me just as well as I did.

  The word mistake flittered through me like a cold chill.

  Tyler watched me with eyes full of pain, his eyebrows hitched together, throat tight. But he didn’t say a word.

  He didn’t have to.

  I could see it — how he was sorry, how he didn’t mean to hurt me.

  And now, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it all along.

  “She wants us to be friends,” I added after a minute, smiling a little as I nudged his shoulder with mine. “What do you think of that?”

  Tyler let out a breath, slow and easy, like he’d been holding it. The corner of his mou
th hitched up. “I think I want that, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded, and something sharp ripped through my chest, but I subdued the urge to reach for it and digest it and figure it out.

  “Me, too,” I said softly.

  Tyler’s smile widened, and I smiled in return — just as a bolt of lightning struck overhead, immediately followed by a deep rumble of thunder that shook the entire dock.

  Tyler and I exchanged worried glances, and then we were both up on our feet.

  “Damn New Hampshire summer storms,” I cursed, tossing everything into my bag and throwing it over my shoulder as Tyler grabbed our towels. “How can it be perfectly sunshiney one minute, and then hailing the next?”

  “You sound like such a Cali girl right now,” he teased, but I didn’t have time to smack him or flick him off before another crack of lightning and thunder hit overhead, and then, in the distance, the soft sound of rain in the trees.

  “Fuck,” I whispered, and Tyler and I looked at each other once more before we took off sprinting toward the old house.

  We hadn’t even made it off the dock before the rain reached us, and I threw my bag over my head — as if that would do anything — as Tyler did the same with the towels over his. I was trying to protect the clipboard with the playlist we’d just worked on while also saving myself from the downpour, but it was no use.

  We squinted through the sheet of rain, hopping over rocks and exposed tree roots in our bare feet on our way to the house. Careful where we stepped on the rotting stairs, we ran as fast as we could up to the back porch — the porch that wrapped all the way around the old house — and once we were under cover, we dropped the soaked towels and bag onto the porch and flicked the rain off us.

  When our eyes met, we both burst into laughter.

  Mine came in an explosion, one so fierce my stomach hurt, and I bent over, unable to stop laughing to find relief. Tyler’s bubbled out of him — slow at first, and then at the same rate as mine, and he bent forward, too, watching me as we both succumbed.

  “Real bright idea to go to the lake today,” he teased. “Did you even check the weather?”

  “No,” I confessed, still laughing as the storm raged on around us. The rain fell in a heavy, slanted sheet over the lake, the yard, pelting what was left of the awning that shielded the porch. “But now I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”

  Tyler shook his head, righting himself and leaning against the old wood of the house with his eyes on the lake. Slowly, steadily, the laughter left us — and my eyes found Tyler while his focused on the rain, feeling like each new bolt of lightning was striking right through my chest.

  Water fell from his hair and over his temples, his jaw, streaming in a small river that led down the valley of his throat. I followed the water down, down, over the muscular swells of his pecs, between the lean, cut edges of his abdomen, all the way to the band of his trunks.

  When my eyes crawled back up again, his were watching me.

  I was already moving toward him before I realized it, stepping into his space, into his warmth — so much so that he put his hands on my arms to stop me from coming any closer.

  “If she wouldn’t have come to you,” I screamed over the rain, blinking over and over as water dripped from my lashes onto my cheeks. “If Morgan hadn’t told you to stay away from me… would you have… what would have…”

  I couldn’t find the words to ask the question. It was as if all the boldness that had moved me toward him, that had propelled me to this moment was suddenly gone — washed away, wiped out with the rain.

  But Tyler’s hands slicked up my arms — slow, purposeful — his fingertips trailing over my skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake. Those warm hands pressed flat against my shoulders, my collarbone, curling around my neck as my eyelids fluttered shut.

  He stepped into me, and I swallowed, tilting my chin up as my heart pounded so hard that I knew he could feel it through the veins in my neck. I knew he could feel how I trembled under his touch, how I shivered from the rain and the wind and the tornado that he had always been in my life.

  Back away. Pull away. Stop this right now.

  But I couldn’t.

  I felt the heat of his breath on my lips, and I gasped, parting my own, feeling the most intense mixture of warning and desperation swirling within me that I had ever felt in my life. It was elemental, primal, powerful.

  Unstoppable.

  His hands slipped into my wet hair, tilting me even more toward him, and his bare, wet abdomen brushed my chest, eliciting a sharp inhale from my lips.

  It was his nose that touched me first, warm and wet, sliding down the bridge of my own before his forehead melded with mine. His hands gripped harder where they held my hair, and that’s when I realized.

  He was shaking, too.

  His arms trembled as I wrapped my hands around them, holding onto him, begging him not to pull away as much as I begged him to put distance between us because I knew we should — and I knew I couldn’t be the one to do it.

  Every new beat of my heart was a flash of memory, of a past life, searing through me like hot sparks as I gripped him tighter. I saw what once was, what maybe could have been, and more than anything, what never was.

  My breaths were ragged and shallow, eyes still shut, every other sense on high alert. Tyler’s lips were so close that when I licked my own, I tasted his, and I whimpered at the shock of that small, almost imperceptible touch.

  And that’s when Tyler let out a long, slow exhale of a sigh, shaking his head so softly I almost wondered if I imagined it.

  “I would have run to you,” he said softly over the rain, his lips touching mine as he did. “I would have pulled you into me. And I would have never let you go.”

  My eyes fluttered open, the tip of his nose where it met mine blurring in my vision. His words knifed me between the ribs.

  “You are my weakness, Jaz,” he husked. “You always have been.”

  I swallowed, pulling back just a sliver, just enough to look him in his eyes.

  But then, contrary to what he just said, he let me go.

  He released me all at once — his hands from my hair, his eyes from my own, his lips, nose, forehead — all gone with one giant step back as he ran a hand over his face, rubbing the stubble on his jaw like it was the root of all his frustration as he turned his back on me.

  “Goddamnit,” he murmured, shaking his head. Then, he kicked the porch railing, which was already too old and soggy to hold. It broke instantly, and Tyler kicked it again, and again, until his chest was heaving and the entire railing was falling off into the weeds below.

  The rain let up — not completely, but enough. Enough that the lightning and thunder rolled on across the lake. Enough that the storm that had been outside existed inside us now. Enough that Tyler jogged down the steps, and across the yard, and past the car to the trail that led the back way home. We used to ride our bikes down that trail, before we could drive, and it wasn’t short, but it wasn’t so far that you couldn’t walk it if you wanted to.

  Except Tyler didn’t walk.

  He ran.

  I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t run after him, though every muscle in my body ached in protest and begged me to.

  I just lifted two shaking fingertips to my lips, touching the flesh that he’d whispered those words into.

  And I watched him go.

  Chapter Eleven

  “OKAY, AND YOU’RE SURE you packed all the party favors in Tyler’s truck?” Morgan asked two days later, checking off the list on her clipboard with her glasses falling down to the tip of her nose repeatedly. Each time, she’d just push them up with her middle finger, only for them to fall down again. “The little champagne bottles, the custom Yeti cups, and the chocolate balls, right?”

  “Affirmative,” I barked, standing at attention like a soldier.

  Harry had his own copy of the list in Morgan’s hand, and he was checking through it, too, looking like h
is life depended on whether they had everything on it packed or not.

  “And you have the beach towels for the bridal party?” Morgan asked me.

  “Check,” I said, holding my hand up to my forehead in a salute.

  “And I already double-checked that we have everything on my list in the Escalade.” She worried her bottom lip, eyeing me and then Tyler’s truck in a way that told me she did not trust me when it came to making sure none of us would have to drive three hours back to the house for something forgotten. “Maybe I’ll just run through my list for Tyler’s truck once more, and then we can get on the road.”

  “Aye-aye, captain!”

  I saluted her with the hand I’d been holding at attention, and she shoved me through a grin. “You bitch, this is important!”

  I chuckled, pulling her in for a hug and holding her there until she sighed and deflated, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “We have checked and double-checked and triple-checked that we have everything on the list. And if by some miracle something slipped through the cracks, I will drive back here and get whatever it is, no matter what time of day or night. Okay?”

  She nodded against me, then stood straight, her eyes welling with tears.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, sweeping her hair from her face.

  “I just… I can’t believe it’s happening. This is it, Jaz.” She smiled, but two small tears slipped free when she did. “We’re loading up to head to the Cape. For my wedding. I’m getting married!”

  She threw herself into another hug, and I chuckled, rubbing her back. “You sure are. You ready?”

  “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment,” she said when she pulled back, and then she wiped away the last of her tears and bolted toward Oliver, who turned from where he was talking to Tyler and caught her just as she launched herself into his arms. He spun her with the motion, and then they were kissing and latching onto each other like koala bears. I watched Tyler clear his throat uncomfortably before ambling toward his truck.