by Mia Ford
“Well, I’m pretty sure we both know that you have, but I don’t care. I’ve always liked Eli.”
“Shit, I’m not talking about that,” she shot back. “I’m up to that kind of no good plenty. You sound like you think I did something sneaky. That’s what I’m getting at.”
“No, I’m not saying that,” I said frowning. “But now that you mention it.”
“Just what? Spit it out, Turner. You’re killing me!”
“Did you do that, somehow?” I asked. “Like, did you get Neil to come to the bar?”
“Ha! Nope, but it worked out pretty perfectly, didn’t it? I totally wish I could take credit for it, believe me, but no deal. Just a freaking happy coincidence, at least for me.”
“What do you mean, at least for you? Why not for me, too?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like things went very far. You got up and left him sitting there like a total jackass!”
“And what was I supposed to do instead?” I asked in annoyance.
“Oh, I don’t know, go back to that massive house of his? Not to be insensitive or anything, but it’s not like there’s anyone else there to have a problem with it anymore.”
“Courtney!” I almost shrieked, actually kind of horrified. My voice was loud enough to make Courtney wince. “That’s a terrible thing to say! And it shouldn’t surprise you that I didn’t go home with him. It’s not like him being back in town magically changed who I was, right?”
“Right, but come on! Isn’t this sort of the one you’ve been holding out for? After all of those freaking Prince Charming kinds of books, isn’t he yours? The ridiculously hot ex comes back into town under tragic circumstances? You both happen to be in the right place at the right time? Tell me that isn’t the perfect scenario for you to pop your cherry.”
“Sorry, but no.”
“What more do you want, Fay?”
“For him to prove it’s about more than just getting me into bed, for starters. He was drunk, Courtney, and I was, too. If we’re even going to think about going there, I’m going to need a little bit more than that.”
“Like what, a diamond ring?” she asked.
“No, but some conversation might be nice. A little bit of time to get to know each other.”
“But you two dated all through high school!”
“That’s right, and that was years and years ago. I mean, after all this time, we need to get to know who we are now. I told him very clearly that if he wanted to see more of me, he knew where to find me.”
“Yeah, well don’t get your hopes up, lady. I wish I were wrong about this, but I don’t think men like the one you’re holding out for exist. Not even when they’re hot exes.”
“They may not. Then again, they may. We’ll just have to see.”
I thought I was doing a pretty good job of sounding sure of myself, but inside, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. The night before, I had felt so good about what I was doing. I’d felt sure that it was the right move. But in the cold, gray light of the next day’s afternoon, I wasn’t so sure.
Neil had probably only been expressing interest in me because he was drunk, and he knew I might still have an emotional tie to him. Maybe he was also a little bit surprised that I hadn’t freaked out on him yet. If that was the case, he wasn’t the only one.
Even though I was the one living inside of my own head, I still couldn’t quite understand how it was that I was so okay with the fact that Neil had completely bailed on me and was now acting like nothing had ever happened at all. I was maybe a little extra cautious, but whether or not I should have been, I found that I couldn’t make myself be angry. Part of me even wanted to be angry. It felt like it would have been a hell of a lot safer than whatever it was I was doing instead, but I couldn’t do it.
What I could do was make myself half-crazy. Courtney and I opened up the diner. I waited to see if Neil would come and see me, or if it had only been his drinks talking. Courtney’s words kept replaying in my mind over and over again, like a tape on a loop. I couldn’t help wondering if everything she’d said to me was right. Maybe it had always been right, maybe all of it had been, and I had only been wasting my time on stupid dreams of life being a certain way that didn’t really exist.
“Hey! Hey, dreamy, pay attention!”
I looked up so suddenly that I almost dropped the salt shaker I had in my hand. Courtney, who had actually done some work for a change and wiped the tables down, was groaning and laughing at the same time. Jesus, I really did belong in one of those fairytale movies, one of the ones where the main princess was so full of daydreams that she could hardly navigate the world around her.
I had been so busy thinking about Neil and whether or not I had played things the right way that I had managed to dump a not inconsiderable amount of salt all over the counter top. I cursed to myself under my breath. That struck Courtney even funnier than the spillage itself and got her laughing in earnest.
I began to set about cleaning my mess up. I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I completely ignored the sound of the door’s bell dinging. Courtney stopped laughing and, instead of greeting our customer, remained totally silent. That was odd, so I looked up, already on the verge of being pissed off at her for making my afternoon harder than it needed to be.
“Neil!” I exclaimed.
“Fay,” he said, smiling. He looked tired and a little worse for wear. But somehow, he managed to look completely gorgeous all the same. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“What? No! No, you didn’t. We’re just getting everything set up.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the salt go inside of the shakers and not on the countertop?” he asked with a grin.
“Ah, is that where I went wrong?” I said, feeling embarrassed. “Good thing you were here to tell me.”
“Definitely,” he agreed, smiling wider as he took a seat right in front of where I was still trying to clean up my mess. “Dodged a bullet if you ask me.”
“Well that’s good. Don’t want to do the opposite.”
Neil laughed a little, and then there was silence. I could feel him looking at me while I looked down at the salt. At the same time, I could feel Courtney’s eyes boring into the side of my face. It was such an intense stare that I was sure that giving her super powers would have meant my death. I wanted to look right back at her and tell her to back off already. She cleared her throat and tapped the coffee machine.
“Oh!” I said.
“What?” Neil asked, sounding like he might be genuinely considering my well-being. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” I said, scrambling. I wished that I was a much better liar than I really was, for probably the thousandth time over the last couple of days. “Just a cut on my hand that salt didn’t help with at all. Also, can I get you something? Another cup of coffee?”
“Nope, I already had my coffee for today.”
“Something else then?” I asked. “Are you still a Dr. Pepper fan?”
“I am, but I don’t want one of those, either.”
“All right, but we’re reaching the end of the things I know for a fact you like. Maybe it would be easier if you just told me what you’d like?”
“I came here for you, actually,” he said.
“For me? I don’t get it.”
“You told me last night that if I wanted to see more of you, I knew where to find you. You did say that, right? Please tell me I didn’t hallucinate that because that would be so embarrassing.”
“No, you didn’t. I just, I guess I didn’t expect you to show up here.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “Is it that you didn’t want me to show up? You can tell me if that’s it. I’m a big boy, I can handle it.”
It was such a shockingly honest question that it caught me completely off guard. The Neil I had known before he’d left Ashville for good had always had his eyes forward. He’d always been looking to move forward. It was the thing that had made
him almost frighteningly ambitious, but it had also made him sort of blind to the way the things he did affected other people.
I didn’t have time to sit down and think it all through with him sitting there and looking at me. It didn’t help that Courtney was staring me down from behind. But I was pretty sure there had never been a time that Neil had asked me anything that pointed to any level of introspection. I didn’t think that he had ever asked me something as simple as whether I wanted him around or not. It wasn’t a bad question to be asked, but I also had no idea how I was supposed to answer it. I was so thrown off that I was actually grateful when Courtney spoke up for me.
“Nope, not to worry, Neil. There’s no issue there.”
“You sure about that?” he asked Courtney, laughing like it was no big deal but not quite able to get rid of the weird little shake his voice had taken on. “I can’t say this is how people usually act when they’re happy to see me.”
“Well, she’s not your average girl, now is she? You’ve known her for as long as I have, buddy. You should know that full well.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “She’s certainly not average.”
Even though we were smack dab in the middle of Alaska, I felt myself growing hot all over. The way he talked about me gave me goosebumps. And those eyes. It felt like his eyes were reading everything about me, and I was sure he hadn’t blinked once since this strange conversation began. I’d told him to come and find me if he wanted to see more of me, not to try and take me home from some bar. Now that he’d actually done it, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. You would have thought he was a total stranger, and in a lot of ways, he kind of was. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, stranger or not. I wasn’t even sure what he wanted. So far, he hadn’t told me anything aside from the fact that he’d come there to see me and only for that. Once he made it clear that he didn’t even want something as simple as a Dr. Pepper, I was pretty much at a loss as to what I was supposed to do.
“So are you going to ask her out or what?” Courtney asked.
“Courtney!” I practically shrieked, totally mortified that she would come right out and ask a question like that.
She was talking like I wasn’t even there in the same room, which made me feel like a total idiot. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Apparently, whatever was going on here didn’t even need to involve me. I was almost afraid to look at Neil. I didn’t want to see what his face must look like with Courtney talking to him like that. When he spoke, I was about ready to go back to hiding behind the countertop, just so that I didn’t have to be a part of whatever awful thing was about to happen.
Neil grinned. “You know? That’s what I was trying to get to, but I guess I can see your point. I wasn’t doing a very good job, was I?”
“I don’t know,” Courtney answered in that sly, falsely innocent voice she had, that always made me think she was up to no good. “That sort of depends on how many months you were planning on taking to do it. If you were trying to really draw it out, then you’re right on track.”
“All right, all right. I see what you’re saying. Do I have your permission then? To take her out?”
“My permission?” Courtney asked gleefully. “Oh man, I like the sound of that. I wish more people would ask me that kind of thing.”
“Um, guys?” I interjected. “You know I’m standing right here, don’t you?”
Courtney only laughed again, which was good for lightening the mood. But it also kind of made me want to kill her. Neil had the good grace to flush a little, which made me feel better for some weird reason. If I was going to be uncomfortable, it only seemed fair that somebody else had to be also. He cleared his throat and looked at me again, this time with his eyes that were serious enough to bring my goosebumps back.
“I’m sorry, Fay. I’m not doing a very good job of this. If you want to know the truth, I don’t spend much time asking women out.”
“Ha!” Courtney snorted from behind us, making her opinion on the truthfulness of that statement easily known.
I thought Neil might look away from me and go back to bantering back and forth with my friend, but this time, her words didn’t even faze him. As far as he was concerned, she might not even have existed. Nobody did, aside from me, which was a pretty weird feeling when I reminded myself that this was Neil Driscoll I was talking to.
“Fay?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“I came by because I wanted to ask you to come to dinner with me tomorrow night. No pressure or anything. I realize it’s short notice, and you might already have plans.”
I waited for Courtney to expel that snort of laughter again. I was so sure it was going to happen that I was pretty sure I could hear it, even though she kept quiet. I wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg when he said he didn’t spend much time asking women out, but I was positive that however much experience with it he had, I had even less. After Neil had left, I had pretty much bowed out when it came to going on dates. It wasn’t an intentional decision, but it was what had happened, whether it had been planned or not. The fact that it was Neil doing the asking now made things feel so surreal that I couldn’t even manage to get my mouth open. Once again, it was Courtney who came to the rescue and gave the answer I couldn’t seem to give.
“She’d love to. Pick her up at seven, okay? And don’t be late, whatever you do.”
Chapter 10: Neil
“What the fuck? What the fuck is going on with me?”
I stared into the mirror at myself, trying to figure out why my nerves were such a mess. What I had told Fay was true, or at least, I considered it to be true. I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time asking women out, at least, not to take them on dates. But asking a woman out to dinner wasn’t the only way to spend time with her, and when it came to spending time with women, I was a bit of an expert.
I had honed my skills over the years so that I hardly even had to talk to most women to get them into bed with me. It was almost as easy as breathing. That made me see the dating part of things as pretty much pointless. Honest to God, I wasn’t even sure why I had asked Fay to go to dinner with me the way I had. I knew that I hadn’t liked her telling me she wouldn’t spend any more time with me after the bar. I knew that much. I knew that I’d lain awake thinking about her, too.
I’d woken up the previous morning and showered, dressed, and gotten into my truck before I had even really figured out what I was doing. Even when I had been sitting at the counter right in front of her, I hadn’t really known I was going to try and take her out. The words were actually out of my mouth before I had time to think about them, and then I had been waiting to see if she was going to let me take her anywhere after everything I had done.
Just a date, man. Cool it, okay?
I nodded to myself, intent on taking my own advice if it killed me. It was just a date, and it was with a girl I had been on plenty of dates with before. I had known Fay for almost all of my life, and if I’d taken off for a year or nine, so what, right?
She had obviously forgiven me enough to hang out with me again. Unless she was planning on letting me have it in the middle of the restaurant, which seemed unlikely. It was also probably exactly what I deserved.
These were the things I tried not to think about and couldn’t get out of my head while I finished getting myself ready. I downed a whiskey while I waited for it to be time to show up at her front door. It was kind of killing me that I could see her house from my front porch. I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on inside of her head. Since I had gotten ready too early, I was left with too much time on my hands to think things through that didn’t need thinking on.
By the time I got into my truck, I felt like I had somehow turned into a girl when I wasn’t looking. I was acting like somebody I didn’t recognize, and since I couldn’t figure out why, I blamed it on the town. I had known that being in Ashville was going to mess with my head, and here it was, doing exactly that.
That had to be the reason I felt as messed up as I did. I felt nervous the way I might have when I was still a kid, watching the pretty girl living down at the base of the hill. It was just another reminder that I needed to get out of town as quickly as possible. Fay was a great way to pass the time, but she wasn’t going to make me stay. This time was no different than the time I’d left before. As soon as I could get my shit together, I was gone. I just had to hope that was something she already understood.
“Hey, stranger,” Fay said.
“Hey! Shit, sorry. I didn’t even come up to the front door.”
While I had been sitting in front of Fay’s house in my truck and contemplating just what the hell was going on here, Fay had quietly emerged from her house, making it all the way to my partially unrolled window before I noticed she was there. I was definitely off my game. Getting a look at Fay didn’t help me to regain it.
I had already seen her a few times since returning to Ashville, but this was the first time I was seeing her where it wasn’t a surprise for her, and the first time when she’d been able to get herself ready the way she wanted to. Even after all these years, I thought she was beautiful, no matter what. But tonight, her confidence was sky high, and I could tell.
Everything about her was sexy and sweet and crazy seductive. Again, like a high school kid, I could feel myself hardening in my slacks at the sight of her. It turned out to be a good thing I hadn’t gotten out of the car to greet her. The last thing I needed was for her to see an erection popping up to greet her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, laughing. She seemed totally oblivious to the mess going on inside of my head. “It’s not like you had much of a chance of sneaking up on me. I could see your truck coming down the way.”
“Ah, so you were spying on me, huh?”
She laughed, then headed around the truck and let herself in before I could even pretend I was going to get out and open her door for her. In thirty seconds, she was sitting beside me, her hand landing briefly on top of my own before she fastened her seatbelt. She gave me one of her million dollar smiles.
