“What’d you end up doing about the nanny?”
“I’m going to pay her for the time. Sucks, but I promised her a March first start date, so…” I shake my head. “Jesus, talking about it all really stresses me out.”
Beau sips his drink. “So let’s talk about something else.”
“Like you. How the hell have you been? And where is Gretchen?”
When he pauses, my heart skips a beat, but I ignore it.
“We broke up,” he says slowly, looking at the fire.
Beau looks…sad, sure, but also kinda relieved.
He’s not one to wallow, and he’d hate my sympathy. So what do you say when you’re not that sorry to know he put the kibosh on his relationship with his extremely gorgeous girlfriend?
“That’s a bummer. I’m sorry.” I wince. That wasn’t very sincere, Annabel. Glancing at him, my eyes rake over his handsome profile. “It was the Prince Albert, wasn’t it? That scared her off?”
Beau lets out a bark of laughter and sets down his mug. “From my experience, girls liked the Prince Albert, thank you very much. Nah, I took that out a while ago.”
“I still can’t believe you pierced your dick.”
“It was spring break in Myrtle Beach, okay?” He takes off his hat and tugs a hand through his hair, giving me the side-eye. “Everyone was doing stupid shit. Like getting tattoos of butterflies on their hips that look like gremlins.”
My turn to laugh. “Hey. At least I have the courage to live with my terrible decisions. My gremlin is still there. Looking better than ever, by the way, thanks to all my loose post-pregnancy skin.”
“I’m sure your gremlin looks just fine.”
“Remember the—”
“Dutch Galleon?” I smile. “How could I forget that fine establishment? Myrtle Beach at its best. I’m still not over you getting us kicked out for, like, ever. ‘Sir, where are your pants?’”
Beau laughs, real and loud, and a curl of pure, poignant happiness spirals through my middle. It feels good, getting my sense of humor back.
Feels good, finishing my best friend’s sentences.
At the same time, we gesture rudely to our groins, and say, “ ‘I’m not keeping this junk in any trunk.’”
“Made absolutely no sense,” I say, laughing along with him.
“None whatsoever.”
“And then you pulled down the back of your little boxer brief things,” I say.
“And that girl slapped my bare ass?” Beau shakes his head. “Lord, we had that bouncer fixin’ for a fight.”
“Good thing I was there to pay him off with menthol cigarettes.”
“Oh my God! The menthols!”
“How bad do you miss those?”
“They’re so gross.”
“And so good.”
“So good.” Beau extends his knuckles for a pound. “You swooped in and saved me just in time, like usual. Damn, Bel. We were fun.”
I give him the pound. “I was fun. You were just trying to get naked all the time.”
“That’s fair. Thank God that was before we had cameras on our phones. Otherwise—”
“That junk you wanted to show off so badly would be all over the internet?” I arch a brow, even as I bite back more laughter. “Stop pretending you wouldn’t love that.”
“Hey. When you got it—”
“You should keep it in your pants when you’re in public. Just like everyone else.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?”
“Fun died the day you got us banned from the best damn nightclub in South Carolina. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that.”
Beau brings his first three fingers to his lips. He kisses them, then holds them up to the night sky in a mock Katniss salute. “RIP, Dutch Galleon. You are missed.”
“The waitresses dressed like wenches.” I look up at the sky. I’m smiling so hard my face hurts. “The creepy pirate skeletons in the bathrooms. Missed indeed. By the way, we should totally do a re-read of The Hunger Games.”
Beau nods. “I really enjoyed the YA phase of Word Porn. With the notable exception of Twilight. Loved Harry Potter, though.”
“What would Hermoine do if she had PPD?”
“Use a spell to cure it, obviously. Then she’d hit up the Dutch Galleon to dance and smoke menthols to celebrate.”
I laugh. “Obviously.”
A beat of companionable silence passes between us. I can tell he’s revisiting that trip in all its wildness, same as I am. He’s wearing that wistful expression I know so well, the smile more in his eyes than on his lips.
I burrow into my chair. The warmth from the fire, coupled with the warmth of being with Beau, is making me feel all fuzzy inside.
“Good times,” Beau says at last, sipping his drink.
“Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it does. Although sometimes I catch myself thinking I’m still twenty-two. Probably because I’m not one hundred percent sure I’m capable of doing this adult thing.”
I nod. “I know the feeling. Beau, I have a baby.”
He turns his head to look at me. “How wild is that?”
“Insane. It’s like the world’s worst joke, giving me a tiny human being to keep alive.”
“Some days I can barely keep myself alive.”
“I know, right?” I look down at my lap. “You ever think we’ll have fun like that again? The way we did back then? Maybe when we’re sixty-five and retired, we’ll get our second wind. Move onto a cruise ship or something and live our best lives gambling, drinking, and—”
“Getting naked? Because by then I’ll finally have rubbed off on you?”
“Sure,” I say, laughing. “There just so happens to be a lot of handsome sailors on this cruise ship, so yeah. Nudity and casual cougar sex for the win.”
“Hey.” Beau pulls back. “What about handsome fellow passengers? Don’t you want to have casual cougar sex with them, too?”
“Only if they have dick piercings intact. I’d like to think I’ll be experimental in my old age and craving novelty.”
Beau sticks out his bottom lip. “No cruise ship for me then.”
“I’m just kidding.” I reach over and grab his arm. “You know you’ll always be my partner in crime, right? Especially when we get old. Retirement cruises are probably way more fun with an exhibitionist sidekick, right?”
The laughter in his eyes fades. It’s extinguished altogether in a matter of heartbeats and replaced by that very deep, very real hunger.
Beau’s forehead is furrowed and his mouth is a straight line. I get the feeling he’s fighting something. Holding something in.
“Right,” he says at last.
The reply is soft and rough all at once. Tender words that are said in a voice like gravel.
Is it wrong that I like this new intensity? Lately, I feel like the world’s seen right through me. Right past me, more like it, to the baby in my arms.
But Beau’s eyes lock on my face and stay there. Almost voracious in their steadiness. He sees me. The person. The woman with dreams and needs and a brain and red blood.
Being the sole focus of my friend, a person who’s never been shy about how much he adores me as a human being, makes me feel funnier and stronger and more okay than I have in ages.
Makes me feel like I’m finally headed back to myself.
It’s wonderful in a way I can’t quite describe. And maybe a little…arousing, too, judging by the way another shiver darts up my spine.
Beau blinks, forehead smoothing. “You cold?”
“I’ll be oka—”
“Jimmy?” he calls, and a man immediately appears at this elbow.
“Sir?”
“Please get Miss Rhodes a blanket.”
“On it, sir.”
I grin. “Now you’re just showing off.”
“Damn right I am. Wouldn’t you if you had two hundred staff at your beck and call?”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.”
James returns with a blanket, which Beau stands up and takes. He drapes it across my legs. Our arms brush as he moves, our faces close for one heartbeat, then another.
Our eyes meet. Lock. A smile flickers across his lips but doesn’t stay in place very long. He’s looking at me again, seeing.
His gaze flickers darkly, and I imagine—I’m imagining this, right?—it’s desire. Raw and urgent.
My pulse skitters. I like it. I like feeling needed. Seen. Wanted.
I like it more than I should.
Standing abruptly, I break the spell. I tell Beau I’m going to get a drink refill and then take off before he can offer to do it for me.
My body feels light.
Light and hot.
I try my best to ignore the hot part. It’s not a friendly feeling, and it’s not something I’ve felt for Beau in a long time.
Back when we were in college, I definitely had a crush on him. But I kept my feelings in check—for a lot of reasons—and honestly, I’m glad I did. I didn’t want to risk losing him or damaging our friendship in some irreparable way.
But so much has changed since then.
The way he’s looking at me has changed.
When I come back—regular cider in my mug this time, no whiskey—Beau’s eyes follow my every movement in a way I don’t remember them ever doing before today. It’s almost as though he wants to tell me something. Confess something.
I get the feeling he’s memorizing me. Savoring me. Like this is the last time we’ll ever be together this way, warm with laughter and buzzed on friendship.
My pulse throbs now, loud and clear, and lands between my legs.
Chapter Five
Beau
Bel’s breath catches.
“You okay?” I ask.
Sitting beside me, she nods. “Yeah. Are you? You’ve just, um…you’ve been looking at me a little funny today.”
I clear my throat, tearing my gaze from her face. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m really tired. Long day, you know? Long year.”
Christ, what is wrong with me? I promised myself I wouldn’t get all weird with Annabel. But here I am, looking at her—hell, downright devouring her—like the biggest, perviest weirdo on Earth.
I just can’t seem to help myself. I have no idea how many more nights like this we’ll have together. What if this is the last one?
I want to remember her this way. The vacant look I saw in her eyes earlier all but gone, replaced by laughter and life and contentment.
I did that.
I made her feel those things.
She’s so damn beautiful with the light of the fire catching on her hair, gilding it in shades of bronze and silver. Long legs crossed, her full lips rest against the rim of her mug as she blows on the cider, trying to cool it.
My skin tightens. Blood hums with these little zaps of electricity. Maybe knowing my interactions with Bel have a new end date are making me hyper aware of my body’s response to hers. Maybe that’s why the tug I feel in my chest whenever I’m around her is especially poignant tonight, strangling my heart and making my own lips throb.
“I get it. I started my day well before the sun was up.” Her gaze flicks to meet mine, and my heart skips a beat. “This baby has turned me into you. An early riser. Someone who never sleeps.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It’s like the worst kind of torture you can imagine. I’m just waiting to start hallucinating or something.”
“Totally awful. Aside from the sleep, how are you feeling?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. “Mentally, I mean. It’s cool if you don’t want to talk about it. But I’m here if you do.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I should. Talk about it. I’m feeling—eh, pretty terrible most days.”
I want to reach for her. We’ve always confided in each other, right from the beginning. I love that about us: how comfortable we are together. How honest.
Only our honesty has never been this raw or this heavy before.
By some miracle, I keep my hands to myself.
“Bel—”
“It’s all right.” She blinks a little too quickly. “Well, no it’s not. My mind is suspended in this, like, constant fog.” She’s talking with her hand now, curling it in the air beside her head. “I have a million things I feel like I should be doing. But I get overwhelmed so easily that I don’t end up doing much at all, other than keeping my baby alive.”
My heart pounds in time to my thoughts. I know. I know.
I know all of this. Intimately.
“I imagine that’s a full-time job in and of itself,” I say.
“It is. But laundry still needs to get done. Meals need to be made. Bills paid. Life goes on, you know? Anyway. The whole thing just kind of snowballs, making me feel worse and worse. And then there’s the loneliness. Not just the physical isolation of being at home with an infant, but also the emotional loneliness of it. I was just thinking how I feel like I’m an island. A weird, one-off island who isn’t feeling the right feelings or doing the right stuff.”
I’m trying not to gulp my drink now. I need to be careful with the booze.
But it’s hard not to drown these very inconvenient feelings with very good whiskey. I’m not a parent, obviously, but I recognize myself in a lot of what she’s describing. I want it to scare me, knowing we’re going through the same shit.
But instead, it makes me feel warm. Relieved.
Does that make me a dick?
“People keep asking me if I love being a mom. And the truth is, I don’t. I love her. My baby. And I have moments of joy, like when she’s snuggly and warm and sweet in the mornings. But right now, motherhood just feels like a whole lot of thankless, never-ending work. I get so frustrated and so angry sometimes…” She sniffs. I want to say something—I have a million things to say—but I get the feeling she’s got more to tell, so I just listen. “I was telling Maisie’s doctor that I didn’t want to be the girl who got postpartum depression. I wasn’t going to be the girl who had to have a C-section, and I wasn’t going to get PPD.”
I sip my cocktail. As relieved as I am at feeling seen, I still fucking hate that she’s going through this. I knew she was in bad shape from talking to her on the phone. But now that I’m witnessing her suffering in person, I wanna put a whole world of hurt on…well, the whole fucking world. For both of us.
“That’s a lot of pressure you put on yourself,” I say.
“Pressure?”
“To be perfect. Have the perfect experience. You know you had no control over whether or not you got PPD or a C-section, right?”
She blinks. “I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
The sides of her mouth curl into a grin. “Shockingly, the perfectionist in me wanted to slay motherhood. Do it how we’re told it’s supposed to be done. Naturally and joyfully and all that.” She tilts back her mug. After taking a swallow, she wraps both hands around it and rests it in her lap. “I think part of the reason I feel so much pressure is because I wanted this baby, Beau. So badly I got artificially inseminated, for God’s sake.”
I wasn’t surprised when Bel told me she wanted to have a baby on her own. Her divorce left her scarred, and she understandably wasn’t rushing to settle down with someone new in her mid-thirties. She’d always wanted kids. And at that point in her life, she’d built a great support network—her family, her close-knit circle of friends—to provide the village she knew she needed to help raise a kid. So she went to a sperm bank (we had a lot of fun with that one), endured some turkey baster action (still have fun with that one), and nine months later, little Miss Margaret Mae, “Maisie” after Annabel’s paternal grandmother, arrived.
“You’re still allowed to feel flattened by parenthood, even if you wanted it that badly,” I say. “It’s okay to admit that it’s a lot fucking harder than you thought it’d be. Th
at doesn’t make you a bad mother. It just makes you honest. I bet a lot of people feel the way you do.”
“But no one talks about it. Not really. They just ask me if I love it. Motherhood.”
“And when you don’t,” I say, nodding, “you feel like you’re fucking it up. You’re failing. When, in reality, you’re just figuring out how to survive an insanely intense experience nothing could’ve ever prepared you for.”
Seeing the flicker of acknowledgment in her eyes is making me want to do things I cannot with this girl.
“Exactly. Yes. Yes, that’s exactly how I’ve felt. You know, for a dumb jock, you pick up on things pretty quickly.”
The old joke may be a bad one, but it’s a joke we share, and that makes me love it.
I reach back with my free hand and adjust the bill of my hat. “I thought we got past the whole Lizzie-Darcy-thinking-the-other’s-a-stupid-asshole thing the first week of school.”
“Pulling out the big guns tonight, huh? Casual Pride and Prejudice mentions? You must really want to make me feel better.”
I give my sleeve an obnoxious little tug. “You already said it’s working.”
“It is.” Her grin fades a little. “Thank you.”
“I’ve told you this before, Bel. You’re too hard on yourself—”
“Says the guy who pushes himself to be the best at everything, ever.”
“Hey. When you got it, you got it.”
“You really have to stop hanging out with Gronk.”
“And you really have to cut yourself some slack.”
She looks at me. Earnest. “Easier said than done.”
Right now, I’d sell my soul to make Annabel feel better.
The truth—a sliver of it, anyway—seems like the right move in the meantime.
Maybe I’ll regret it. In fact, I probably will. But I can’t let my girl suffer alone.
I don’t want to suffer alone.
“I can’t say I know what being a new mom is like.” I take a gulp of cider. It’s more whiskey than mixer, and it marks a trail of fire down my throat. A warning? “But I do know depression.”
Southern Seducer: A Best Friends to Lovers Romance Page 5
