by Fiona Quinn
Avery slid the onions onto a plate and moved to the sink to rinse the cutting board. “Lola, I tell you, you’re going to be the death of that man. What did you tell him this time? You couldn’t very well say you like it best when your husband ties you up and uses the whip. Andre is out of town, and Father knows it.”
“You’re right.” Lola swirled the wine in her glass, then took a long swig. “So I took my copy of Fifty Shades of Grey with me and read some of the passages.”
“Lolly, you didn’t. Stop.” Avery lifted her wine, breathed in the crisp clean scent before taking a sip.
“I was paraphrasing this bit about vibrating eggs and butt plugs, and Father Pat stops me and says, ‘Wait, my dear, I didn’t catch that last part. What exactly is ‘rimming’?”
Avery sputtered as wine went up her nose. She gasped and doubled over laughing. “Lolly, you didn’t.” She crouched down to the floor. “Oh God, you’re going to make me pee. I know you’re just pulling my leg, but I can actually visualize you doing that.”
Lola looked at her friend with a grin and wiggled her brows. “All right, girlfriend. Now that I’ve made you laugh, you owe me an explanation for this drunken girls’-night-in.” All levity wiped from her face. “I’m thinking it must be pretty bad.”
Avery stood and drew in a deep breath before telling Lola as briefly as possible about her trip to see Taylor and the following encounter with George. “And that was my day.”
Lola just listened, standing at the sink, peeling shrimp, letting Avery vent.
Even after Avery stopped talking, Lola silently worked through the pile of shrimp, scraped the shells into the trash, and slid the board into the sink. “You’re going to end up in the hospital.” She raised her brow and tucked her chin. “Or maybe the nut house from all this hoo-hah. What crawled up George’s ass? He’s a pig, and I never liked you dating him, but he was never abusive.”
Avery pursed her lips.
“Okay, he’s not clear about his sexual boundaries when it comes to you. But you have to admit this tirade is pretty far out there.”
“The founding father, Joseph Shreveport himself, called and chewed George a new one. Everyone’s losing their minds over this darned book. And it all comes down on me finding a way to get a manuscript from Taylor.”
Lola processed that then said, “Okay, on the bright side, having to babysit Taylor will give you a break from your mom for a while. You’ll get some sleep. Maybe after this is done, Fanny and Curtis will understand what you go through day in and day out, and they might help a little more.”
Avery nodded; the hives sparked on her neck.
Lola moved the shrimp to the frying pan. “Okay. Let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about this guy, Rowan Kennedy, FBI. He wants to Skype with you?” She paused and laughed. “Oh, that’s a very pretty shade of pink you’re blushing.”
“That’s not a blush. That’s hives.” Avery reached out and grabbed a tomato to cut for the salad. “But about Skyping with Rowan, I’m on the fence. I actually don’t think I’m going to do that.”
Lola turned to Avery. “Why?”
“Well, his picture looks exactly like Gerard Butler.”
“And that would stop you?”
“I asked him if it was his real picture.”
“And?”
“He said yes.”
Lola moved the pasta pot to the stove and lit the burner. “And?”
“Look at my life, Lola, I’m not that lucky. Aside from you, I only have certifiably crazy people filling my freak-show of an existence.”
Turning to push her hip into the counter, Lola pursed her lips. “What are the chances he is who he says he is?”
“If you look at my life-line, not that good. He could be some grossly over-weight, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, balding-with-a-comb-over, retiree in upstate New York.”
“Or he could live in Australia,” Lola offered, “trolling the Internet for vulnerable women, enticing them into sordid cybersex relationships that they video tape and then sell on amateur porn sites.”
Avery took another swig from her wine glass. “He could be a woman.”
“He could be ninety-two, toothless, with a colostomy bag, needing someone to push his wheelchair.”
“Ew!” Avery scrunched her nose.
“Let’s find out!” Lola switched off the flames and dashed to the dining room. “See if he’s there.”
Avery shot Lola a dubious look but it was missed on Lola who had already made her way to the dining room, sat down, and was pulling up Avery’s Twitter account as Avery followed behind.
A_Very – Rowan, are you around?
“Why am I doing this Lolly?”
“We need some proof about who he really is. I’m laying money on the nursing-home guy needing someone to smuggle cigarettes in to him, so he can suck the smoke in through his trach-tube.”
Suddenly, Avery felt green. Maybe she didn’t want to find out the truth. Maybe living in her little fantasy world was just fine, thank you very much. Why rock the boat when she was clinging to the side of it for dear life? She played that thought through her head again. It seemed true.
Shit.
Avery leaned heavily on Lola as her corner stone, the person who supported the structure of her existence. If something, somehow, pulled Lola away from her, everything in her world would collapse.
But Rowan. Rowan was hope. Hope for what? She wondered, and then the trickle of comprehension came to her and all of the air left her lungs. She hoped Rowan would pull her out of the water onto that metaphorical boat, and they could sail into the sunset. That is, after all, how romance books worked. And that was the world her brain inhabited most hours of the day.
Lola sat quietly as the cogs whirred in her friend’s mind, giving her the space and time to work through whatever it was she’d latched on to.
Avery clawed at the welts on her chest. This fantasy about Rowan was not healthy, and she knew it. She was not the heroine of a romance novel plot arc. This was real life and real life just didn’t work that way.
LeGit: Hey there.
Lola pulled the computer away and typed.
A_Very: Let’s do a real-time selfie exchange. Include a clock. Ready? Set? Go!
LeGit: Okay.
Avery pulled the computer back to see what Lola had typed. Her eyes grew wide, why the heck had she told Lola that she’d proposed this to Rowan? “You didn’t even say ‘Hi, how was your day?’!” Avery called back to Lola as she dashed up to her room, pulled on a turtle neck to hide the hives, brushed her hair manically, swiped on some bright red lipstick, and ran back down the stairs.
Lola was obviously amused at Avery’s panic. She got up from the chair in front of the computer and let Avery slip into place.
Reaching out, Lola unceremoniously tugged Avery’s shirt smooth over her bust and arranged her hair. Once Lola approved, Avery clicked the computer camera button.
“Um—not a good look for you, Avery,” Lola said, leaning over the laptop. “You need to take it again. Think something less panicky. Puppies. Think puppies.”
Seven shots later, with Lola’s teasing, Avery’s face had let go of the manic energy and had softened into a gentle smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. She posted it up on Twitter direct messages before she lost the nerve.
A_Very – Tah dah!
Rowan had already posted his picture. He was at a table near a dark window. Behind him, she could see a tidy kitchen. And there was Rowan smiling at her from a poorly lit room, wearing a running tank that exposed his gym-hardened shoulders. A clock radio sat behind him; it read 8:12. Avery glanced at her watch; it was now 8:18.
This was his actual picture.
“Holy Mother Mary.” Lola grabbed the corners of the laptop and turned it toward her. “He is freaking gorgeous. Look at those shoulders. Look at that smile.”
Avery pulled the screen back in her direction and drank in Rowan’s image. His tousled brown hair was short enough to be clean
-cut and long enough to be unruly. It hung a little damp. Avery looked out the window seeing that it was still raining. Maybe he’d just dashed into his house. Maybe he’d just gotten out of the shower. Avery’s imagination flashed to a picture of him naked, except for the soap bubbles, standing under a showerhead, and her body responded, making her feel warm and tingly.
Manicured stubble made Rowan look fashionably edgy. But it was his eyes that transfixed Avery. They reminded her of the ocean—bluish-green with flecks of white, and thoughtfully deep. Intelligence. She read a hint of mirth. The crooked smile he offered up had her smiling back. Avery felt the compulsion to lean forward and kiss his lips. She might have done it if Lola wasn’t sitting next to her, mouth hanging open.
Avery flipped out of the full-screen shot back to Twitter. Rowan had not replied.
Lola sat back watching her friend. “Well isn’t this a revelation?”
Her hands clasped in her lap, Avery waited. Still nothing from Rowan. Shit. Avery looked at her empty wine glass, but knew that drinking another would take her from a buzz to sloppy. “We’re Twitter pals. That’s it,” Avery said. But she knew that wasn’t true.
Rowan had become something pretty darned significant in her life.
LeGit: Avery, I’m stunned. I thought you were probably very pretty, but in my mind, it was more like Bonnie Hunt-wholesomeness.
A_Very: You don’t think I look wholesome? Bonnie Hunt is who my sister looks like.
LeGit: Um wholesome? No.
Lola grabbed the keyboard. A_Very: What then?
“Lola stop it. He’s going to think I’m fishing for compliments.”
LeGit: You are breath-taking. I had no idea. I don’t want to type in messages.
LeGit: Would you like to have that Skype conversation we’ve talked about?
Dumbfounded. It was the only word to describe Avery in that moment.
Lola reached over and shook Avery’s shoulder. “He wants to Skype. How awesome is that?”
Avery turned a blank face to Lola.
“Your mom’s fully sedated. She won’t bother you.”
Avery said nothing.
"Look, I'll hide out of the picture. If it gets too bad, you signal out of his view, and I'll call you. You can say you have to go."
Avery nodded and put her hands on the keys. “I’ve been drinking a lot of wine and Benadryl. Am I slurring my words?”
“Not that you’d notice,” Lola encouraged her.
“If I start to make a fool of myself, you’ll intervene. You’ll pretend to come in, and you’ll stop me, right?”
The corner of Lola’s mouth came up. “Why are you stressing about this?”
“I like him as a Twitter-friend. I like how easy we are together. Skype...” Avery held up her hands and spread her fingers. “It could go well, or it could be a disaster, or it could be kind of flat. No matter what it is, our relationship will be different. We’ll never be able to go back to what we had earlier in the evening. It’s changed. What if Skyping is awful, and then our friendship collapses?”
“Holy Mary, you have it worse than I thought,” Lola said.
“I don’t,” Avery countered. “He’s a Twitter-friend.”
“Prove it,” Lola challenged.
Chapter Seventeen
Rowan
Monday Night
Alexandria, Virginia
Rowan sent Avery a smile. He hoped Avery sensed the warmth that fuelled that smile. When the Skype image filled his screen, she’d seemed pretty nervous. As they spoke, Rowan watched for body language tells, and was glad to see that she was growing more comfortable.
Avery wouldn’t be nervous if she didn’t care what he thought, Rowan told himself. That was good. He wasn’t the only one that had feelings sparking. He wiped damp palms down his pants. He, in fact, cared quite a lot about what Avery thought of him, and he was working hard at not working too hard and being obnoxious as he tried to make a good impression.
It was first date kind of nervousness, and that’s why he was smiling. She felt something between them too.
And he liked that.
He also liked that they’d already moved their conversation to the point where they were checking on each other’s relationship statuses. It felt good to say he was single. Not that Rowan wanted to stay single, but he wasn’t entangled, free to date. Free to get to know Avery.
He'd listened as Avery explained that it had been a while since she’d been in a relationship. Her mother’s health made things problematic. Rowen understood that she was laying it out for him from the get-go. If he wanted a relationship with her, it would be complicated.
Well, same for him. His job being his job and all.
She was now telling him her breakup story from the last guy she’d dated.
“Anyway, I was standing there in a bog with mud up to my hips and a leech sucking at my neck when I decided that was enough. I’m not sure if or how they every dragged his truck out of there.”
“Big truck?” Rowan asked.
Her brow flicked with amusement. “Massive tail pipe.”
“Compensating?”
She held up a pinky, and he winced. “I don’t know if this will win me any points,” he said, “but I drive a Volt.”
She did it again, she sent laughing eyes over to the side of the room.
“You keep looking off to the left. I'm guessing that we have a chaperone.”
“We do, my best friend Lola is here with me.”
When Avery said that, no one moved into the camera view, so Rowan called out, “Hey, Lola. I've heard about you over the years. You’re the one who torments poor Father Pat?”
“Oh, he loves it. Father Pat is the priest who baptized both Avery and me, performed our first communions. He’s family. You know, I’ve heard a lot about you, too, over the years.”
That meant Avery was talking about him. And it also meant that what Avery was saying hadn’t thrown up any best-friend to the rescue vibes. At least he wasn’t getting that from Lola’s tone. He’d lay bets Lola was hoping that things went well here. That she was an ally. “Thank you for helping Avery to feel safe by being here.”
“Absolutely,” the voice called, warm and jovial.
Rowan would also bet good money that these friends had hit the bottle before Avery got on Twitter.
“You know what would really make Avery feel safe?” Lola asked.
Avery shot a wide-eyed, shut-up look her friend’s way.
“If you showed her your FBI ID badge. That way she knows you’re not just a pretty face making up shit.”
Rowan blushed. Pretty face, huh? “My ID badge? OK sure. It's upstairs. Give me a second.”
After he stood and left the computer screen, he paused for a moment out of the camera’s view. He could hear Avery say, “Lola, how could you?”
“He understands. Here I’ve given him the chance to prove he’s a good guy. You won't have any worries that he's not who he says. No one wants to think they’re being catfished.”
Rowan wanted to call out, “I'm not catfishing you!” but he jogged up the stairs instead.
Lola was the dragon at the gate that he’d have to go through to have any chance with Avery. If Lola had a hoop that needed jumping, Rowan wanted to jump through it.
After all, Lola knew Avery, knew her history and what she’d need to feel safe. Lola setting up an obstacle course for him to navigate actually was really helpful. It meant that he could prove himself in all the relevant ways he needed to prove himself to be a worthy man for Avery. And with that thought, Rowan realized that was exactly what he wanted to be.
First proof required? That he was who he said he was and not some hound dog making up credentials to impress the lady while really working at a box store and living in his mom’s basement.
He sat back in his seat and opened the badge wallet, holding it up to the camera lens. The top was his picture—albeit taken a few years before, with a clean-shaven chin and a tighter haircut—and his
signature. There was a certificate and expiration date, and there was his badge.
“Can you read it okay?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.” Avery sounded mortified by her friend’s antics.
He grinned as he closed the wallet and laid it on the table.
“That was nice of you,” Lola called out.
“I'm glad that we could make Avery feel safer.”
“All right,” Lola said. “Now that I know she's in the hands of an upstanding citizen, I’m going to scoot on. I need to make lunches and get them in the fridge for the morning. Avery, I'm going to let myself out.”
“But you didn’t eat dinner.”
“I’ll eat a sandwich at home. Love you.”
Avery’s focus was on her friend. “Love you, too. Bye.”
Rowan had passed the dragon test, and he was elated.
Alone, Avery and Rowan sat in silence looking at each other. It was surprising how comfortable this silence was.
Avery tipped her head to the side. “Hey Mr. FBI-man, are you assessing me? Have you been reading my face instead of listening to my words?”
“It becomes an innate skillset. I can’t say that I turned that off for this conversation.”
“It seems an unfair advantage.” She offered up the sexiest little pout Rowan thought he’d ever seen. His body stirred in response.
“Can you use your FBI skills in other ways, too? For example, can you find out things about me on the computer? Did you research me?” Then her face flamed red. “Wow. That sounded egotistical. Like you are interested enough in me that you’d to want to do something like that.” Her eyes wouldn’t land on his.
Rowan found her discomfiture charming. He was used to working with hard people, asking hard questions. By his standards, what she’d just asked was a data point that needed to be addressed. Her sensibilities were softer. She felt things and hadn’t cornered off her emotions. In his career, Rowan had found emotions inconvenient to getting a job done. The same for most of his friends and colleagues. Even for Jodie and her job as a business executive.
