“You know me.” I put dirty glasses in the small dishwasher by the wine fridge. “And you know better.”
I picked up the box with my files. I should have gotten something with wheels. “If I leave, my clients come with me. You know that. So I won’t resign yet. But I will take a few days off. Think, Delia. Think. We’re doing something amazing here. I’m giving you the room you need to expand this business into something breathtaking.” I shook my hair out of my face. “And I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not me you want to punish.”
But she would do it anyway. I saw it in the way her stance adjusted. Shoulders a bit higher. Little hands balled into fists. Pretty little mouth ready to snarl.
“No.” I shook my head. “You’re hurting. I understand that. And when you realize it too, we’re going to go back to being friends and working together. Unless you say something else. Something you don’t mean and don’t believe because you just want to hurt me. I’m leaving.”
I had to grip my box of files tighter but the truth always made it easier for me to hold things otherwise too heavy for me.
I made it to the door and realized there was more. Just a little bit more. “I trust you. I trust you to make the right decision. Don’t let me down, okay? You’re one of the only people that never has.”
Cahir
She said it was okay. She came when I told her to. She nudged and maneuvered until her body was as close to mine as it could be when we laid beside each other at night. She still danced when we cooked and in the car. She smiled. And she sat with her client files around her on the floor.
She organized and reorganized them. She pasted on a smile when she told them that she had to take a few unexpected days out of the office but of course she would be back. She took clothes to the ones that had events. Things she had to go to different boutiques and stores to get because she couldn’t go back to Beyond. And she checked her phone again and again. She wouldn’t tell me why but I knew. Everything would change if she got just one text from Delia.
I woke up early that Sunday. Before the sun and walked to the farmer’s market. I loved that it was close enough for me to do that. Loved that the only reason why we drove was because we knew we’d do a bit too much.
“Yeah. I’ll take all of this. Can you be at my house in thirty minutes?”
Maybe Cash’s favorite florist would have said no if I hadn’t put an envelope in her hand.
She smiled. “I can be there in fifteen. Wanna ride with me?”
I did. And left her in the parking garage while I ran into the apartment. Cash was in my bed where I left her. She barely woke up when I slid one of my t-shirts over her naked body. She smiled when I kissed her and early morning breath washed over my face.
God, I-
I helped the florist bring bucket after bucket of flowers into the house. She smiled and closed the door softly behind her. I found the pruning shears Cash insisted I needed and rolled my shoulders.
“Okay. I can do this.”
The sun had just reached across the bed to warm her face when Cash turned and did what I knew she would. Wipe a hand across her eyes. Open them a bit. She sat up. And the flowers I’d spread across the bed and on my pillow moved to accommodate her.
I leaned against the wall and watched her take it in then decided I wanted to take it in with her.
In the time while I waited for her to wake up, I’d filled every vase, wine glass, cup, rocks glass, champagne flute and bucket I could find with the flowers I bought her. They crowded in every open space they could find, every flat surface. An explosion of color and scent and texture.
“Wanna go to the farmer’s market?”
She wiped the tears from her face and turned to me. “Come here.”
She was on her knees. They sank into the mattress just a bit. Her hands cradled my face. My hands reached for hers. She leaned into my touch. The sun cradled us both. And she was back. For the first time since she came home from Beyond with that box too full and too heavy for her to carry, she was with me.
“How do you always know?”
“Because you show me. You’re smart like that.” I kissed her while she laughed.
The laughter stopped. I spread her legs before I put my mouth on her and smelled the heavy, softness of lavender. I lapped at her, swallowed her, and there was the dusky, lightness of tuberose. The luxury and decadence of dahlias when her hands reached for the headboard and her back arched. Baby’s breath tickled my sides when I locked my arms around her thighs and held her down. It was called common lilac but I didn’t think there was anything common about the smell of it and her as she shook against my mouth.
Gardenia when I kissed my way up her body. And there-a flower known only as pink when I slid inside her. As her body got slick with sweat it mingled with the smell of peony and freesia. When her legs and arms locked around me-sweet pea and mock oranges.
When we came together, I only smelled us.
Chapter Twenty
Cahir
We made it to the farmer’s market because I ignored her. The way she smiled at me. Giggled up at me. Pouted when I didn’t join her in the shower. When she got out of that shower and water cascaded down her body. I gave her a towel and ran. Her laughter, throaty and aware, chased after me.
She held my hand when she thanked the florist. When she stepped into the sun and turned those brown eyes to me-When would she stop being such a miracle?
“Tell me,” I said.
“I-” She sighed. “All of it?”
“Even the parts that might bother me a little.”
“They might bother you a lot.”
“Tell me.”
She kissed me and gripped my hand a little tighter. “I’ve made so many decisions in the past few months. Well, no- I’ve made one decision and everything else has been a consequence of that.”
I thought I knew where the conversation was going and didn’t know how I felt.
“The baby. I decided to be a mother and it felt like my life kind of fell apart as a response?”
She didn’t look at me. That was good. I needed her to finish.
“The attorney. The paperwork. The showdown with Zion that we shouldn’t have fucking been at.”
I laughed. “True.”
“Losing my job. I decide to become a mother and I lose my job. What the fuck is that? I mean-I know it’s a thing that happens to women. I do. On an intellectual level. But I still can’t believe it happened to me. Especially since I work for a woman.”
“Is it that you decided to become a parent or who you chose to parent? Who you chose to parent with?”
“I wouldn’t do this with anyone else.”
Everything in me froze for a second. My next breath felt new.
“It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to-” She shrugged. “I’m not supposed to lose. Not now.”
No. She wasn’t. And it must have felt like she had been from the moment she told me she loved me and found out seconds later that my ex was pregnant. What had I lost?
I rubbed a hand on the back of my neck.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s selfish if you tell me something and then I start talking about myself. It’s…high school.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I love you. I love you so much. Tell me.”
“I don’t know how to help you. That’s-Even if I can’t solve your problems-”
“-you want to solve my problems.”
I shrugged. “And I can’t. I can’t take this away from you and make it better. I can’t hand you your job back. I can’t make it easier with the baby, everything. That’s a struggle for me. How can I help?”
“This helps.” She wrapped her arms around me. “That you want to help. That you ask. That you listen.”
“Can’t be that easy.”
“Sometimes.”
Cassidy
Cahir’s money wasn’t the issue. Making money in general wasn’t the issue. I still had
clients. They crowded into my apartment and cooed over my plants. At how grounded everything was. They threw around their money in Gran’s shop. So much that she came to demand why we hadn’t done this sooner and to ask if I wanted the empty apartment across the hall from me.
“It would be a nice studio space for you,” Gran said.
It would. And it felt good. Welcoming. North facing windows and original hardwood floors. I could see it.
And didn’t want it.
I wanted Beyond. I wanted whispered jokes with Junie and conspiratorial winks with O’Shea as she swapped out the wines Delia bought for her own “better” picks. I wanted the space. I wanted the room. I wanted less responsibility.
A baby and potentially a new business? In the world of “women can do it all,” I knew I couldn’t do that. Even if I could, why would I want to? The drive to push, to have more, to do more, to be more, seemed at war with everything that I was.
I wanted expansion. I wanted adventure. I wanted to be intentional. I wanted to be creative. I wanted to do less. I wanted to do it all for me. Not to prove that I made it. I wanted lazy mornings and early nights because I said so.
I didn’t want the grind, and I was proud of it.
I tossed and turned at night. Pulled Cahir from his sleep and touched him until he understood that I needed him to help my mind rest. It would work for a while. A few hours. Then the weight would return.
What did you do when you didn’t want it all?
Cahir
“I want a baby,” I said at the dinner table.
My parents laughed.
“And what will you do with it if we find one for you?” My father leaned back in his chair.
“Play with it.”
Wasn’t that obvious? It was obvious to my five year old self and my parents were so much smarter than me. They knew everything. Except how to stop arguing.
“And when it cries? When it makes a mess in its pants? When it wants to be fed? When it wants things and you don’t know what it wants and you think you’ll pull your hair out before you find a way to make the noise stop?” My father cut into his steak as if he hadn’t turned my world upside down.
“They do that?”
“Boy-o. They do that and more.” He leaned across the table towards me. That wasn’t normal-that I ate dinner with my parents and didn’t have to wear a suit. All my friends had to dress up for dinner with their parents. But they didn’t do it every night like we did. They didn’t just eat at the kitchen table like we did. They didn’t get to help cook like I did. Or wash dishes. Because dinner was fancy. Fancy dinners sounded boring. “Babies, children, a family. That’s a big decision, Cahir. The only decision you can’t take back once you make it.”
“Like a puppy.” I nodded.
They laughed.
“But different. Because the puppy will become a dog but it will always be what you trained it to be. Children-” He sighed. “A risk. You hope, and you want, and you wish for them. But they’ll be who they’ll be and you must do your best and hope for the best. You teach them but you’re never sure they’ll learn.”
I mulled it over as my mother cut my steak and gave a pointed look to my vegetables. I put my chin in my hands. I was going to eat them. I helped make them, didn’t I?
I thought a baby would be fun. Something to play with and put away when my friends came to visit or I got a new book or Dad let me help him pull things apart in the garage. I liked that best of all. To see how things worked. To find new ways to use old things.
But a decision I couldn’t take back? What if I got it and it didn’t stop crying? And-oh! It would stop being a baby one day. What if, no matter what I did, it became a person I didn’t like? What if it didn’t want to play? Or it always wanted to play and didn’t leave me alone? What if it didn’t like me? What if Mom and Dad liked it better than me? Would they send me back?
I ate dinner in silence. My parents talked around me and about me but left me to my thoughts.
“No baby,” I said when my plate was clear. “A puppy?”
They laughed.
My father’s hand was comforting, familiar, when it ruffled my hair. “Maybe, son.”
They never got me the puppy. I never asked again about a baby.
I was happy.
Cahir
She wasn’t better. At all.
I worried over that as I smiled at ultrasound pictures and our joint efforts to baby proof our apartments. Odd to hold two things in my head like that at once.
I woke her early one morning with the sound of the zippers on her suitcase. “Let’s go.”
She sat straight up. She’d been awake for hours. Her usual morning routine gone. She would lay there and stare at the ceiling. Never at me. Never a smile. A curl of her toes. A stretch. “Where are we going?”
“Your bag is packed.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Let me get dressed.”
“Your clothes are in the bathroom,” I said.
And here’s all the trust between us.
I shook my head. No time for that. Or too much. A lifetime to just…have her. To stop in my tracks because she let me handle it without question.
She reclined against me after we got settled on the jet. “What are we doing?”
Not where are we going. Not where are you taking me. Not when will I be home. Not Cahir, I have to work. Just a soft body against mine and a voice as familiar as my own. Softer than her body.
“We’re leaving it alone for a little while.”
“What?” She burrowed deeper into my side.
“That thing that’s keeping you up all night. That shit you can’t control no matter how much you worry about it.”
“What?”
“You really are turning into me.” I smiled when she laughed. Kissed the top of her head. “The job. The baby. It’s all going to happen how it happens. No matter how much sleep you lose over it. So we’re gonna stop fucking our way through it and relocate for a little while.”
She grinned. The one that told me my eyes would probably cross and I’d start questioning my own existence.
She straddled me. “We really have to stop fucking our way through it?”
I helped her take her pants off. I didn’t give her panties. So wet. “Maybe not.”
Cash did this thing with her hips when she was on top of me- a rock and a bounce. Her hair got as wild as she did. Her voice got deeper, every sound and syllable a little longer. Her hands got greedy. So did her mouth. When she was done with me it felt like she was everywhere and determined to take me with her.
I was lucky that I wanted to go.
I took her to the mountains. The first snow was on the ground. Enough to make you catch your breath. Not enough to bring out the skiers and snowboarders. It felt like we were alone in a world all our own.
On the first day, we hiked. My idea. She complained until we reached a clearing that gave us a view into the valley below us.
She grabbed my hand. Squeezed it. “You remind me to believe in things.”
I learned there were words better than “I love you”.
Another day we went shopping. Or we shopped together. I tried to pick out clothes for myself. She laughed at my choices. I picked out clothes for her. The things she did to me in the changing room would have gotten us arrested if she hadn’t stuffed her panties in my mouth.
“Foresight.” She kissed me. Broad sweeps of her tongue so I could familiarize myself with the way I tasted. “That’s what they call it.”
“Hustle,” I said and had her on her back in the hotel room in under half an hour.
“Oh, I like this,” she said, breath heavy. Chest rising and falling in ways that would have made me nervous any other time. “I like your hustle.”
I took my tongue off her clit. “Tell me what else you like.”
She did. Until she was screaming the words. Until she couldn’t find words at all.
We went to dinner in a place that we had no business at. Not beca
use I couldn’t afford it, or because we didn’t dress for it. Cash was gorgeous. Her dress was long. Almost the exact color of her skin. The slit up the front of that dress was the reason I decided we could recreate Miami and slid under the table. I grinned when she let me spread her legs so wide, so fast, the slit in dress grew a few inches. I laughed into her when her legs shook around my head. Fell silent when food was brought to our table. It smelled good. I didn’t want them to kick us out before I could enjoy it.
“This is good,” I said to a slumped over Cash. “Do you think it’s because it tastes a little like you? Try it.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
I worked while she slept. Checked on Olivia’s accounts, hers, while her hand snaked up my leg. Seductive even when she was asleep, her favorite satin cap slipping back on her head.
“I love you,” I said into the dark sure she wouldn’t respond.
“I love you too,” she said.
Because she was always there. Even when I didn’t know I needed her to be.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cassidy
He reminded me to believe in things. He reminded me to believe in myself and my power to make everything right for me. He reminded me that I wasn’t alone.
He dragged me all over that mountain. And waited. So I gave him what he wanted.
I talked.
And talked. And talked. And talked.
He didn’t tell me I was wrong. He didn’t lay judgment over me. That was good. My guilt was heavy enough. He just…listened.
And I felt it fall away. I felt it-it didn’t leave. But it was different. Something small enough to hold in my hands. Not something that laid heavy over my shoulders, a cumbersome burden that I could never find the right way to carry.
I woke up on, maybe, our fifth day in the mountains and stretched, smiled, reached for him.
He kissed me. “We can go home whenever you want.”
“Or we could stay a little longer.”
His weight pressed me deeper into the bed. I welcomed it-that grounding. “We could stay a little longer.”
Better Than Your Ex Page 9
