by Julie Kriss
“Jesus, Dane.” I cupped my chin in my hand. “We’re both the products of such fucked-up parenting. No wonder we freaked out when I was nineteen. Do you think we would have made good parents?”
“Is that a serious question?” He frowned at me.
I nodded, my heart suddenly in my throat because I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. “Yes, it is.”
He paused for a second, watching my face, and then he said, “If you asked me back then, I would have said no. No way would we have been good parents. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, about who we were. And yeah, it was a surprise, and it would have been hard. But I honestly think we would have been good parents. In fact, I think we would have kicked ass.”
I swallowed. I was sitting down, but my knees still went weak as my stomach fluttered. I remembered why I’d chosen Dane all those years ago, picked him from all the guys I could have had.
I’d pretended it was convenient. But it wasn’t. It was because he was Dane.
And in a week I’d go home, and we’d be finished all over again.
Nine
Dane
* * *
Ava was drunk. She’d downed her second margarita in record time, and she ordered a third when I went to the bathroom. By the time I got back to the bar a minute later, she was almost halfway done.
This wasn’t like her; she wasn’t a big drinker. Then again it had been so many years, and who was I to judge? She was a thirty-year-old grown woman, and we’d just dredged up a bunch of serious shit. If she wanted a few drinks, she was entitled. I kept it to one beer so I could drive her back to her hotel.
My best friend might be the devil, but at least he put his sister up in one of Chicago’s nicest hotels. I let the valet take my Lexus as I helped Ava out of the car.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she wobbled on her heels and her voice didn’t sound very confident.
“I’ll walk you upstairs,” I said, letting her lean on me as we crossed the lobby, a few of the rich snobs glancing our way. I glared at them until they looked away again.
We got into the elevator—alone, luckily—and as the doors closed Ava said loudly, “This doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with you.”
“I know,” I said.
“I’ve had three margaritas,” Ava said as if she was making an important announcement to the empty elevator as we rose to her floor. “I’m not sleeping with you, Dane Scotland.”
“Okay.”
“I’m really not.”
“I got that.”
“I might kiss you if you ask nicely,” she said as the doors opened. “Oops.”
I nodded at the elderly couple waiting for the elevator, looking at us in surprise, and led Ava past them. “That’s not necessary,” I said. “Give me your key card.”
She did. “You smell nice.”
Was she this drunk, or was she playing it up? If she was playing it up, it was kind of sexy, though I wasn’t taking the chance. “You’re not getting me in bed, you know,” I said as the room door closed behind us.
Ava rolled her eyes and made a pfft sound—it was actually kind of funny—then reached to her right hip and unzipped her dress. It gaped open, though she didn’t pull it off yet. The leopard-print fabric sagged, and I could see the smooth line of her waist, the curve of her hip, a strip of thin black fabric that was the hip of her panties. I tore my gaze away as she reached up and pulled the tie from her blonde hair, letting it fall. “Do you know how many guys I’ve dated since you?” she asked.
I felt the back of my neck stiffen. “I’m not interested, thanks.”
“Too many,” she said, as if I’d asked. “New York is full of guys. I was going to start a new life, be a new woman. It was going to be amazing.” She started uncertainly for the bedroom, and I followed her. She was going to kill herself on those heels.
“Ava,” I said.
She ignored me, counting on her fingers. “There was the bartender I dated. And the other bartender, the shorter one. The guy who said he was going to be a DJ, but I never saw him get any gigs. The guy I met on a set who wouldn’t admit he was gay, even to himself. The guy who was Amanda’s friend who turned out to be cheating on his girlfriend. The other guy—he was a bartender, too—who dumped me because he owed too much child support and had to move back in with his parents.” She sat on the edge of the bed and unfastened her designer shoes.
“I don’t need to hear anymore,” I said, walking over to the bed and pulling her shoes off.
“One guy said he was a real estate agent, but all he did was smoke pot,” Ava said. “Do you know how many guys smoke pot like it’s their job? So many. So many.”
I braced my hands on the bed, looking at her. “Ava.”
“The last guy just ghosted me,” she said, tossing her handbag to the ground. “He flunked out of law school. What does a girl have to do?”
I leaned in and kissed her.
She tasted like icy tequila and salt, like lip gloss and Ava. She kissed me back, arching into me and opening her mouth, running her hands up into my hair. It had been so long—so fucking long.
I remembered the last time I kissed Ava. I remembered the last time I’d touched her, the last time I’d seen her naked, the last time we did anything and everything. I remembered every second of it, while she’d probably forgotten. But she remembered me now.
She bit my lip and I bit her back, letting my teeth graze her as we fell back onto the bed. She wound herself around me as I braced myself over her, and we took the kiss deeper, deeper. I could smell her, the vanilla smell and something expensive she used on her skin mixed with her sweat and the smell of sex. I knew exactly how she liked it. I’d practiced with her dozens of times. I wondered if she still liked sex the way I did it, if she’d ever realized over the years that all of those losers weren’t me.
I wasn’t going to find out tonight.
I broke the kiss and we stilled, both of us out of breath. My entire body was on fire, from my head all the way down, deep into my balls. Ava’s legs were hooked over my hips, her ankles locked. The tie in my hair was gone and her fingers were wound into the strands, gripping me.
“You’re drunk,” I managed to say.
She said the two words that were the death of me, the two words that ripped into my gut, mixing painfully with the arousal: “Don’t go.”
I tried not to groan. I’d kissed her because I wanted her to stop talking, to stop thinking about those guys and only think about me, if only for a minute. But this… this wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to be Ava’s drunken walk down memory lane. “I have to go,” I said, gently disentangling myself from her.
She let me go reluctantly, her hands sliding out of my hair. “I’m not that drunk.”
“Yes, you are.” Three margaritas. She made out with me because of three margaritas. I had to remember that.
“Dane.”
“Get some rest.” I glanced at her unzipped dress, her bare legs, her bare feet with their painted toes. Every inch of her was perfect, even when her hair was messed and she was glaring at me with drunken annoyance. “Call me tomorrow.”
Ava pushed herself up on her elbows, scowling. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” I said. It came out casually, though I was gritting my teeth. I made my feet move, made myself stride out of the bedroom and toward the door.
She didn’t speak again until the door was closing behind me.
“Dane Scotland!” she shouted. “I’m not that drunk!”
Then the door closed, and I couldn’t hear anything else she had to say.
Ten
Ava
* * *
The next morning
* * *
Ava: We’re both going to agree that never happened last night, right?
Dane: Who is this?
Ava: Very funny, nerd. So it never happened. I’m glad we agree.
Dane: I didn’t agree to anything.
Ava: Agree, or the suit you’r
e wearing to this meeting will be crushed velvet. It’s making a comeback. I’m thinking periwinkle blue.
Dane: Fine. If it makes you feel better, I suppose I can pretend you didn’t make a pass at me.
Ava: Actually, you made a pass at me.
Dane: I distinctly remember someone who smelled like margarita jumping my bones.
Ava: And I distinctly remember a man with a man-bun kissing me. I’ll be at your penthouse in six hours, so be ready.
Dane: Why six hours?
Ava: I’m going to the hotel spa on my brother’s dime. And then I’m going shopping.
When I arrived at Dane’s penthouse—only forty-five minutes late—he was sitting at a desk by the windows, typing on a laptop. There was a second screen next to him and a couple of hard drives in a stack on the floor. He barely glanced up when the concierge let me in, but he was expecting me. The concierge had called up before we got in the elevator.
“What the hell is all that?” Dane said, his voice rough and annoyed.
“What do you think it is?” I led the concierge into the room, a stack of clothes folded over my arm. I directed the concierge to put the boxes and bags he was holding onto the sofa. “It’s your new wardrobe. Or part of it.” I held up a hand when he opened his mouth to argue. “You agreed, remember? The sooner we do this, the sooner I leave, or something like that.”
He grumbled something that sounded like “You’re not leaving anyway” and went back to his laptop, a scowl on his face. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a faded Batman logo on it and old jeans. His feet were bare. When he typed, the muscles in his arms moved. It was ridiculous that one man could be so nerdy and so hot at the same time.
I thanked the concierge, who had finished putting down his burden, and showed him out. Now I was alone with Dane again. This was going to be fine. Just fine.
I just had to pretend that we hadn’t kissed last night, that I hadn’t tasted him. That I hadn’t ended up on a bed with him, his tongue in my mouth and my hands in his hair. That I didn’t know now that his weight was different from before, his body bigger and harder.
“Time to get dressed,” I said, grabbing a couple of hangers.
He kept typing and didn’t look up. “There’s no way you got suits in less than a day.”
“These aren’t suits. These are pants and shirts.” I pointed at a bag of shoe boxes. “Shoes and socks.” I pointed at another bag. “Belts and ties, plus underwear.”
That made him look up. “You bought me underwear?”
“Underwear makes the outfit,” I told him. “I wear designer underwear all the time. Now, if you want to—”
“You wear designer underwear?”
“Yes, I do.” When they made it in my size, which was rarely. The best designers made a lot of size zero panties. I waved a hand at Dane’s laptop. “You can stop playing your Dungeons and Dragons video game now. We have work to do.”
A muscle in Dane’s jaw twitched beneath his beard, and his arm flexed. “I’m not playing a video game. I’m working.”
“Yes, I know, your geek stuff,” I said, though I knew Dane was a genius and I secretly found it pretty impressive. “The fact is, you’re going to meet real people, Dane. In six days. And real people require you to wear proper clothes.”
He took a moment to look me up and down. Despite the margaritas and the complete rejection last night, I felt pretty good today. I was wearing a green-and-white designer sundress, my hair tied back by a matching scarf. The dress was from last year’s spring line, which was how I got it on discount, and I’d altered the flounced hem to make it look more this year. I completed the look with hoop earrings and my usual strappy sandals, and thanks to the spa this morning, my fingers and toes were painted a lovely shell pink.
“What?” I said when the silence stretched out too long.
“You look nice,” Dane said.
The room got hotter all of a sudden. I took a breath. I could picture walking over to him, pushing away the laptop, and getting on Dane’s lap. He’d be big and warm, like he was last night. He’d ravish me like he used to do; maybe he’d even fuck me on the floor. We’d done that once, eleven years ago—had wild sex on his bedroom floor when I snuck into his room in the night, because his bedsprings would have made too much noise. Dane had put a pillow under my butt, because he was a gentleman.
There was no way I should have orgasmed, having sex on a bedroom floor with a pillow under my ass. But I had.
I’d been drunk last night, but not that drunk. I’d known exactly what was happening. And I’d been serious when I asked Dane not to go. But he had.
I cleared my throat and turned back to the clothes on the sofa. “Do you like sushi?” I asked, picking out a shirt and a pair of dress pants.
I glanced back over my shoulder to see Dane closing his laptop and frowning. “I’ve never had it. It’s raw fish, right?”
“My god, Dane. What century are you in?” I shook my head. I could see now why my brother had wanted me here for the full week. “Yes, it’s raw fish, and you’re going to have some tonight. And you’d better like it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re meeting a Japanese CEO and his Japanese team. You’ll be taking them to dinner. The least you can do is get familiar with their cuisine.”
“We don’t know that Kaito Okada even eats sushi,” Dane said. “Maybe he likes Italian or Thai. What century are you in?”
“I’m not stereotyping,” I said, opening shoe boxes until I found the pair I wanted. “Kaito Okada does, in fact, like sushi. One of his first ventures was a series of sushi restaurants placed near Tokyo train stations. So if you are familiar with sushi, and you like it, then you’ll have something to make a conversation about.”
Dane stood up, coming toward me. “How do you know that?”
“I researched him while I was getting my nails done.” I handed him the clothes I’d picked. “Put these on, please, because we’re having dinner at Nobu, the most expensive sushi restaurant in the city.”
Dane took the clothes and put them on a chair. “Fine.” In one motion he pulled off the Batman shirt and dropped it, then put his hands to the button of his jeans.
“In the next room,” I said too loudly, my heart in my throat.
“Why? You’ve already seen everything. Years ago, and yesterday. Most of it, anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m dying to see it again, thanks. Go into the bedroom or something.”
Dane sighed, but he picked up the clothes again and turned away. As he walked, he undid his jeans and dropped them, kicking them off. I watched him disappear into the bedroom, staring, my mouth dry.
“You’re not wearing underwear!” I finally managed to shout.
“I know,” Dane said from the bedroom. “I guess it’s a good thing you bought me some.”
Eleven
Dane
* * *
“Have you ever done this before?” I asked, tilting my chin and looking up at the ceiling.
“Sure I have,” Ava said. “It isn’t hard. Stop talking.”
“Your boyfriends had you trim their beards?”
We were in my bathroom, me sitting on the counter with a towel around my neck, Ava standing between my knees with barber scissors in her hand. She was very, very close to me, and I could have sworn her breath was coming a little shallow. Then again, maybe I had a big ego and she was just mad.
“The guys I dated did not have me trim their beards,” she explained, making a few careful snips. “Mostly it was models on set, needing a last-minute adjustment.”
That was just great. Now I had the mental picture of Ava and some sweaty, half-naked model, a guy from one of the covers of the romance novels she liked so much. “You know a lot of models?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Enough of them,” she said, her tone unimpressed. “They’re pretty, but the straight ones are flighty, and there isn’t a model alive who would date a stylist over a size four.”
<
br /> I blinked at the ceiling, processing all of that for a second. I didn’t know what to say to any of it, so I said, “What the actual fuck?”
The scissors snipped again. “You know, when you talk you move your jaw,” Ava said. “Not really the effect I’m going for.”
I sighed as she snipped along the line of my jaw. My beard really was a mess; even I could admit that. But I rarely left my penthouse, I didn’t meet a lot of women, and I hadn’t expected Ava.
I might have trimmed my beard if I knew Ava was going to show up.
“Why are you in the fashion business?” I asked, ignoring her sigh of frustration as I talked again. “It sounds like it’s full of assholes.”
“Because I like clothes,” she said, picking up a razor and tidying the edge of my beard. “I like the colors and the shapes. I like to put them together and be creative about it. I like it when people look good, that moment when they put on an outfit and it makes them feel fabulous. I love that moment. It’s my favorite thing.”
It was an honest answer. Ava was brittle and tough, snarky and independent, but deep down she was this woman: sweet, smart, passionate about her work. “You shouldn’t live in New York,” I said.
“Oh, really? And why not?”
“Because it’s full of assholes, just like the fashion business.”
She huffed a breath, which I felt against my neck. The sensation tingled all the way down my spine. “I’m very happy with my life, thank you,” she said.
“No, you’re not.” I knew her so well—so fucking well. And the more time I spent with the new Ava, the more I could read her, just like I used to read the old one. “You hate your life.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? Name one thing you like about it, then.”
