by A. D. Ryan
“How much time?” Her voice is soft, barely above a whisper.
“Honestly?” I shrug, uncertain. “I don’t know. As long as it takes, I suppose. He’ll talk to you again.”
Her eyes grow wide with worry, glistening a little. “What about you?”
In truth, I’m not holding out hope that my relationship with Alan is even salvageable at this point. Yes, I want to be able to look back on this as one of those things that brings us closer, but I just don’t see that happening.
Instead of telling Amelia this, I offer her a weak smile and kiss her forehead. “Why don’t we worry about that later, hmm?” She shivers in my arms, and I’m uncertain if it’s because of her cold, wet clothes or the kiss. “Come on,” I add on, “you’ve got to be freezing in those clothes. Let’s get you into something a little warmer.”
She notices how I avoided her question, but she doesn’t press the issue, knowing that it’s got to be hard for me to talk about. “Okay,” she agrees, pushing off my lap and heading to the bathroom where she leaves the door open.
I hear the shower start before she calls me in to join her, and for the first time in the weeks we’ve been together, we shower together without it progressing into anything further. The passion of our relationship still remains, but that connection is deepening as we try to work through the first real crisis we’ve forced ourselves into.
After our shower, we lay on the couch for a couple hours, our bodies dry and warm, huddled beneath the thick down comforter from her bed, and we talk while the TV plays in the background. Some of this talk revolves around Alan, but we’ve exhausted that topic and are just talking in circles, so I try to lighten the mood by talking about the ball the night before.
This makes Amelia smile, and she props her head in her hand. “It really was wonderful. I loved getting all dressed up.”
“That was the highlight of my evening as well,” I tell her with a smirk.
She giggles in response. “When the hell did you turn into such a cheeseball?”
I playfully ponder this for a moment before replying. “I think it was this one weekend in November. I’d recently just escaped thirteen years of hell and had a beautiful young woman help me through it.”
“Well, she sounds amazing,” Amelia quips.
I shrug. “She’s all right, I suppose.”
Laughing so hard she almost snorts, Amelia pushes me—or tries to; it seems all her energy has been expelled into her raucous laughter, and it’s a nice change from just a few hours ago. “Ass!”
I wrap my arm around her waist and tug her to me, flipping her over until her back is pressed against my chest and our bodies are completely aligned. When my lips touch her bare shoulder, she sighs, settling into my embrace and draping her arm over mine as her fingers dance along the back of my hand. “We never really did talk about it,” she whispers.
“What’s that?” I inquire.
“What Gretchen wanted last night.” My silence must worry Amelia, because she shifts in my arms to turn her face toward me. “I know now’s not the most ideal time to talk about her, so we can wait if you’d like…I was just curious is all.”
Offering her a small smile of assurance, I kiss the tip of her nose. “It’s fine. She came to talk to me—something she assured me would have remained civilized—and when she saw I had a ‘plus one,’ she got jealous.”
“She admitted to that?”
I laugh. “Her actions spoke louder than her lack of confession.”
“Okay, that makes a little more sense.” There’s a beat of silence before Amelia speaks again. “What was it she wanted to talk about?”
Sighing, I shake my head. “She told me she refuses to sign the divorce papers until we can work out some kind of financial agreement.”
Amelia’s eyes widen and she sits up. “What? She can’t do that? Can she do that?”
Hoping to calm her, I pull her back into my arms and hold her again. “Stephen assures me she can’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try something underhanded.”
I can tell that Amelia’s deep in thought with every silent second that passes, and I’m just about to ask what’s on her mind when she finally speaks. “Can she use our relationship against you? I mean, I know we didn’t start seeing each other until after you left her, but we did sleep together that very weekend—before you’d even filed for divorce. I get that she has no real way of proving any of that, but…is it possible?”
“I suppose she could try,” I tell her. “But I don’t think it would hold up.”
Another moment of silence passes, and Amelia cranes her neck to look at me again. “You know I love you, right?”
My lips curl up into a huge smile, and I nod. “I do. And I love you. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I don’t want to be the reason that the ice-bitch walks away with more money than she deserves after what she did to you, so maybe we should try to—”
“If you’re going to say ‘keep our relationship hidden,’ I’m going to have to point out how famously that’s worked out for us with your father,” I remind her, my remorse returning ten-fold. I push it down and continue, in hopes of helping her understand why it’s a potentially bad idea. “It’s possible that keeping us a secret from Gretchen will only give her more ammunition to say that I’ve been sleeping around behind her back. It may not be true, but if she goes to the judge with this allegation, and proof of our hidden relationship surfaces, how would that look?”
“Not good, I suppose.”
“Exactly.” I kiss her shoulder again and rest my chin on it. “And besides, I’m tired of hiding from the world. Now that your dad knows, I say we try to go on with our lives. Together. Out in the open. What do you say?”
She hesitates a moment before slowly nodding her agreement, but I pick up on her lingering sadness and try to soothe her. “I just wish he’d call,” Amelia whispers, her voice cracking.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to make this all better for her, and I wish I could erase this horrible night from her memory altogether. I sigh into her hair, closing my eyes. “I know, sweetheart. Me too.” I glance at the clock on her DVD player and notice that it’s almost two in the morning. “What do you say we move this over to the bed and get some sleep, and we’ll try to call him again in the morning?”
Snuggling further into my embrace, Amelia’s head bobs. “Okay.”
I gather her blanket in my arms and carry it over to the bed before we crawl in, and Amelia sidles up to me. “Goodnight,” she whispers.
I kiss her neck. “Goodnight. I love you.”
“Mmm,” she hums with contentment. “I love you, too.”
It doesn’t take very long for her breathing to even out and deepen, but I stay awake a little longer to watch her. While she sleeps, the worry lines on her forehead from tonight soften before completely disappearing, and I vow to do everything I can to make things right with Alan…
Because I have a feeling our relationship will depend on it.
I wake the next morning to an empty bed. Remembering everything that happened the night before with Alan, I panic, unsure of where Amelia’s gone off to or if she’s all right. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she needs to go off to cry over her falling out with her father. When I hear the fridge door close, and Amelia’s body appears behind the counter that separates the kitchen from the living room, most of the tension leaves my body.
“Hey,” she says when her eyes find mine. “You sleep okay?”
Running my hands over my face and through my hair, I climb out of bed and head for the kitchen. “Yeah, I guess.” I kiss her temple, and she laughs lightly.
“That was almost convincing.”
“Sorry.” I smile before amending myself. “I slept as well as could be expected under the circumstances. You?”
Her eyes fall to the Chinese leftovers she’s laid out in front of her. “Same.” She flattens her hands on the countertop and sighs. “I called him again.”
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Wanting to comfort her, I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder. “And?”
“No answer. As usual… But I got his voicemail, which means he got all the other messages I left and chose not to call me.”
“Amelia…” I begin softly, turning her around to face me.
She leans against the counter and laughs dryly, wiping a lone tear from her cheek. “I know you said I need to give him time, but I just thought… You know?”
I pull her into my arms, holding her tight to my body and tucking her head under my chin. “I do,” I assure her. “And I know that your desire to fix everything is strong, but believe me when I say that the silent treatment is far better than the alternative.”
“Yeah, I know,” she breathes, winding her arms around me. She tilts her face toward mine and offers me a small smile. “You hungry?” I nod once and Amelia pulls free of my arms, turning back to the food. “I know it’s not really breakfast fare, but there’s no steadfast rule that you have to have bacon and eggs or French toast for breakfast, right?”
Chuckling, I grab plates and cutlery. “Food is food,” I agree, my stomach rumbling.
“Why don’t you go wash up,” she suggests, “and I’ll heat the food.”
It only takes me a few minutes to do my morning routine, and by the time I make it back out to the kitchen, Amelia’s got our food ready. Since the only plans we had for the day were originally to take Alan out to brunch to tell him the truth about us, we’re uncertain what to do with ourselves.
“What do you say we go see an afternoon movie and then go out to dinner?” I suggest, hoping that it will help keep our minds off everything that’s happened.
For the first time since last night, I see that excited glimmer return to Amelia’s eyes and she smiles genuinely. “You mean, like a real date?”
I chuckle, swallowing a bite of chow mien. “Yeah. Exactly like a real date.”
“That sounds nice.”
After we finish eating, we clean up the kitchen together, and then Amelia makes the bed. I’m about to suggest she get ready so we can stop by my condo before the movie to allow me to change—I really don’t want to go to the theater in my tux from the ball. Before I can say anything, though, there’s a knock at Amelia’s door that catches us both off guard.
It takes Amelia a minute, but then something registers in her eyes: hope. It’s entirely possible her dad’s come back to talk to us, and it’s obvious that this is what she thinks has happened as she bolts for the door. I stand back and hold my breath as she pulls the door open, but neither of us expects who actually stands behind it.
23. Lean on Me
“Liz?” I’m a little stunned to see her standing here in my doorway. I don’t know why, but I honestly thought that maybe it was my dad at the door. “What are you doing here?”
She’s positively beaming—and really, really tanned. “I just flew in an hour ago. I wanted to come by and see you! How was the party?” She pulls me into her arms, crushing me to her.
Then she freezes, and I know she’s spotted Owen.
Slowly, she releases me, and I see her eyebrows pull together in confusion before they move upward, hiding behind her wispy bangs. “Wait…” She’s putting everything together, and it’s like I can visualize each piece as it falls into place in her mind—the time I fessed up to seeing someone, how that relationship was “complicated,” Owen showing up at school that day I was all mopey and giving me a ride home, and the secrecy and why I didn’t tell even her.
Clearing his throat, Owen pushes his chair from the island counter and stands up. Liz’s eyes don’t leave him, and unlike the look in my dad’s eyes, I actually see her acceptance behind her shock. This relieves me, because I don’t know how I’d handle losing her too.
“I’ll give you ladies a moment alone to catch up,” he says, approaching us and picking up his suit jacket off the back of the couch.
“Wh-where will you go?” I ask, not to control his every move, but because I want to be sure he’s going to come back. These last twenty hours have been taxing on both of us, and I still worry it might pull us apart. I don’t want this, obviously, but I’m not naive enough to ignore the slight strain it’s already put on our relationship.
He takes my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “To my apartment. I’ll grab a change of clothes and then come right back. That should give you ladies a little over an hour, and then maybe we can catch that movie?”
I release a sigh of relief and nod, smiling. “Perfect.”
Before he leaves, he leans down and presses a soft kiss to my lips, and all the while Liz is watching this, her jaw slightly agape with shock and awe. Owen says his goodbyes, to which she mumbles something incoherent in return, and then he closes the door behind him.
Her head moves from the door to me, then back a few more times before she breaks out into a smile and pulls me toward the couch. “Tell. Me. EVERYTHING!” she exclaims, and I revel in her giddy reaction for a moment before remembering that not everyone was this accepting when they first found out.
It makes me love her just a little bit more, and I’m so glad to call her my best friend.
We sit there for the first thirty minutes, and I tell her everything, starting with how I came to find him in my bed at my dad’s place, how we’d fooled around a little in our sleep, and how that led to us confessing the hidden fantasies we’d both had about each other. Liz listens, completely enraptured with the story and hanging on my every word, occasionally humming a sigh of contentment—okay maybe it’s a tad on the lusty side, who really knows—or whispering an “oh my god.”
It feels good to tell someone everything. Owen and I have been keeping this secret for so long that I never realized just how heavy it was to bear. Even with Carla and Stephen finding out, and then my dad, I still felt like I was drowning. Now, though? I feel a little relief from the pressure that’s been holding me down. Sure, it’s not completely gone, but I’m holding out hope that everything will be fine once my dad comes around.
I tell Liz about the ball, even gathering my dress off my closet floor to show her. She loves it, and she laughs when I tell her that Owen bought me four pairs of shoes when he couldn’t find the ones I’d forgotten I’d loaned her.
When I get to the part about Dad finding out the way he did, Liz lends a sympathetic ear, listening and assuring me that everything will be fine.
“He’s just pissed that he was kept in the dark,” she tells me. “He’ll come around. You know he will.”
I nod sadly. “Yeah. I know. I just wish he’d talk to one of us and let us explain. He’s got the wrong idea and thinks Owen is taking advantage of me, when I was the one who instigated our first time.”
“Well,” Liz says, “if I had to hazard a guess, he probably doesn’t really think that. He was probably just mad and said it in the heat of the moment. I bet he regrets it. They’ve been friends practically their whole lives…surely he knows Owen well enough to know he’s not some kind of man-whore who goes out seducing girls half his age.”
I appreciate Liz’s logical approach to this, because, while I’m sure I’d have eventually come to this conclusion myself, I’ve been so consumed by guilt that I couldn’t see this clearly. She’s right, though. He knows Owen better than anyone; surely he can’t think that Owen would actually use me—or any young girl, for that matter.
Not wanting to sour Liz’s mood by talking more about my craptastic life right now, I ask her about her vacation. She tells me that she had an absolute blast, even with her parents there. It’s nice to get lost in her happiness, and I find myself coming out of my funk a little more with each passing minute.
Soon, Owen returns, knocking first before opening the door. He’s freshly showered and dressed in a pair of jeans and fitted sweater, while his hair is as purposefully unruly as ever. He looks amazing, only reminding me that I still have yet to change out of my t-shirt and flannel sleep pants.
I walk Liz to t
he door where she hugs me once more and reminds me that everything will be okay given time. I thank her for listening, and then she leaves, saying goodbye to Owen, who’s standing in the kitchen. She calls him “Mr. Cavanaugh” out of habit, and he just chuckles. Once I close the door after her, I feel his presence behind me, and I turn around. Not only does he look amazing, but he smells amazing.
“So,” he says, running his hands up and down my arms. “You still up for that movie?”
Excited at the prospect of our first date out—even if we’re still dealing with the fallout of coming out to my dad—I nod. “Just let me change and do something with my hair.”
Owen parks himself on the couch, turning the TV on and flipping to ESPN while I put on a pair of jeans and a deep purple, long-sleeved shirt. I grab my knee-high black leather boots and pull them on before disappearing into the bathroom to fix my hair and put on a bit of makeup. My hair isn’t too messy, still holding a bit of my natural curl from my shower the night before, so I finger comb it and add a bit of hair product to tame any flyaway strands, then I proceed with my makeup. When I’m ready, I exit the washroom and come up behind Owen, draping my body over the back of the couch and wrapping my arms around him.
“Ready?” he asks, turning his head and kissing my jawline.
“You bet.” I unwind my arms from him, and he stands up, taking my hand as he leads me to the door. “What movie are we going to see?” I ask, grabbing my jacket and pulling it on.
“Hadn’t really given it much thought. Figured we’d decide on the way.”
“Sure. I can look it up on my phone,” I say, picking it up and putting it in my pocket.
Picking a movie isn’t too difficult, and we decide to forego anything that might be too dramatic. Not because we don’t like dramas, but because I’m just not in the mood to watch something like that when my life has its fair share of it right now. There’s an action movie that looks pretty funny, and it starts relatively soon, so we decide to go to that one.
