Exclusively Yours

by Shannon Stacey

  God, he looked sad, sitting on the bench by the playground, elbows propped on his knees as he stared off into the dark. His shoulders slumped a little, and he looked somehow defeated.The smart thing to do? Go back inside and let him wallow in the misery he’d created. If he was sad and lonely, it was his own damn fault.

  But her heart ached watching him and there was no master kill switch for love. She didn’t have it in her to turn away from him. Cursing herself for a fool, she made her way to the playground as quietly as possible, not really caring to have any of the family wake up to watch.

  “I can’t sleep with you a few sites over,” he said when she sat next to him, far enough away so they wouldn’t be accidentally brushing body parts. “That whole so close and yet so far thing.”

  “You’re the one who walked out.”

  “Another cliché—couldn’t live with you, can’t live without you.”

  Terry leaned back against the bench and folded her arms over her chest. “If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

  “Sure as hell didn’t expect any from you.”

  Jerk. “Why did you come here?”

  “Because you missed me. I tried to get to you before the feeling faded. Guess I was too late.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she let the silence drag on. Crickets chirped. A guy in a tent close by snored so loudly she was surprised his wife didn’t smother him in his sleep. She watched a skunk meander from site to site, looking for tidbits of dropped food. If it was smart it would head to Mike and Lisa’s site.

  “I love you,” he said quietly, staring down at the grass.

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me that.”

  “But I do.”

  “You told me you loved me before you patted me on the ass and fell asleep one night, then walked out on me the very next morning. Forgive me for thinking the words don’t mean shit to you.”

  “Hey, at least you don’t have my dirty socks laying around anymore.”

  He started to get up, but her hand shot out and stopped him. She knew him too well to miss the pain he was trying to hide with his smart-ass tone. “Why did you really come up here?”

  “Like I told you earlier, you said you missed me and I was trying to get here before you stopped.”

  “You haven’t made much of an effort for a guy who cares if I miss him.”

  “You haven’t gone out of your way, either.”

  “I’m not the one who left.”

  “Somebody had to.”

  There was just enough truth in that to keep her from lashing out again. She’d thought herself, more times than she cared to admit, that she had no idea how their marriage would survive Steph going off to college. Or even if it would. Without her to keep them together and giving them a reason for conversation, she wasn’t sure they had much left.

  “You didn’t think talking about it might be the way to go,” she said quietly. “Maybe discussing a separation. You thought telling me…what you said, and walking out the door was the best thing for our marriage?”

  “Would you have listened?”

  Probably not. “You could have tried.”

  “Then it would have gone on and on and we both would have said a lot of stuff we couldn’t take back.”

  “Instead of just you.”

  His hand moved in such a way she thought he might put his arm around her, and then he let it fall. “I wouldn’t take back what I said even if I could. I meant it. That’s how miserable I was, and I won’t go back to it.”

  “Then you should have saved your gas money. I can’t magically change because you got pissed off and walked out.” She stood up because, no matter how sad he looked sitting alone, this wasn’t going to help.

  He grabbed her wrist, keeping her from walking away. “I know you’re not going to change who you are. But sometimes you could stop worrying about controlling every aspect of everybody’s lives and enjoy a few minutes with me. We’re not even friends anymore, Terry.”

  Again, there was more than a grain of truth in what he said, but she didn’t know how to fix it.

  He stood up, too, without letting go of her hand. “I love you, Terry, but I don’t like you very much most of the time.”

  Her breath caught in her throat and she turned her face away so he wouldn’t see the shimmer of tears his words caused.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “but we can’t get through this without admitting where we are now.”

  “For three months you haven’t seemed to give a damn if we got through this or not. Now of all a sudden you think coming up here and dumping on me will save our marriage?”

  “I was gonna blow up if I didn’t make a change. I was hoping, with some distance, we’d be able to talk things through, but instead we barely talk at all and it’s still about Steph.”

  She yanked her hand away from his and shook her head. “I don’t know what there is to say.”

  “Let’s go out for dinner when you get home,” he said. “Someplace nice, like a date, and we can talk about us. Not Stephanie or work or whether or not the garbage disposal sounds funny.”

  She wanted to tell him she didn’t think it would do any good. The things that were wrong with them couldn’t be solved with a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. But she made the mistake of looking at him—really looking at him—and it was all there on his face. How hard the last three months had been on him and just how much he wanted that dinner and wine to work.

  “Okay,” she said. “Dinner.”

  “A date,” he corrected, with just a hint of a smile.

  She returned it, much to her surprise, and then walked back to her camper alone. Maybe it wouldn’t work. Maybe she’d never be able to get his voice saying hurtful things to her out of her head.

  But maybe, if they could remember what it was like to be friends, she wasn’t facing the rest of her life alone.

  Slap. “Rise and shine, babe!”

  Keri groaned, swore and burrowed under the covers. “Being slapped on the ass isn’t a good way to start the day, you know.”“Beats a bucket of cold water or shaving cream. Having brothers, I know that for a fact. But I have a surprise for you.”

  “No surprises until after I’ve wrestled a pancake away from Kevin.”

  “No wrestling for your food today. The waitress will deliver it right to our table.”

  The blankets flew and a crazy-haired, sleepy-eyed and deliciously naked Keri emerged. “A restaurant? A real one?”

  “Maybe not by your big city standards, but it’s real enough so you don’t have to pour your own coffee.”

  When she flew out of the bed and starting yanking on clothes, he wished he’d waited a few minutes to give her the news. “We don’t have to run right out. We could—”

  “No we couldn’t. I’m starving and I want to… Wait. Who’s going?”

  “Just you and me, babe.”

  He appreciated how hard she tried not to let her relief show. She smoothed her hair with her hands and shoved her feet into her sneakers. “I’m ready.”

  “You want to take a run up to the bathhouse first?”

  “No.” She draped a hoodie over her arm and went to the door. “We need to go now before your family comes looking for us and sucks us into their vortex. And I’m going to wait and use the restaurant’s bathroom. No bugs and no trying to hold the hem of my pants off the muddy floor and sit down at the same time. I’ll brush my teeth when we get back so just don’t kiss me, okay?”

  He would have tried to kiss her anyway, morning breath or not, but she was already on the porch, heading for the SUV. She was either really hungry or really afraid Kowalskis were going to descend upon them and ruin their plans.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were tucked into a corner booth at the local diner, the kind of run-down looking Mom and Pop operation that always served the best home-cooked meals. The waitress delivered menus and big, steaming mugs of coffee, then left to deliver an
other order.

  “You’re ruining me,” Keri said after she’d fixed her coffee and taken the first sip.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Look at me! I just went from sound asleep to out in public in less than a half-hour.”

  “That’s a bad thing why?”

  She gave him a look that said men and shook her head. “My skin regiment alone takes twenty minutes, never mind hair and make-up and everything else.”

  “I told you to run up to the bathhouse first if you wanted.”

  “Oh please,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “The bathhouse isn’t exactly a day spa, you know. I’ve been going downhill since the minute I got here.”

  “Would you kick me under the table if I say you look more beautiful now than you did the last time we were in a restaurant and you were all shiny and polished?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “I’ll risk it, because it’s the truth.”

  The waitress returned before she could do bodily harm to his shins, and they both ordered more food than they could possibly eat.

  “Will your family be mad we left?” she asked when they were alone again. “They won’t worry when we don’t show up for breakfast, will they?”

  “No. I’m sure they saw us leave and they’ll figure it out.”

  “If your mother comes after us with her wooden spoon, I’m totally throwing you under the bus.”

  He laughed again, but he hadn’t ditched the rest of the Kowalskis and brought her here alone so they could talk about his family. “You didn’t ask me a question last night.”

  Pink tinted the apples of her cheeks. “I was a little busy.”

  “Maybe we should do the questions in the morning from now on.”

  She leaned back against the booth, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup. “Implying that I’ll be a little busy at night from now on?”

  That was the question, yes, regardless of the roundabout way it was asked. While her mad scramble to escape the campground had alleviated any morning-after awkwardness, it had also robbed him of the opportunity to gauge how she felt about the night before. “Hope abounds, babe.”

  When she seemed to divert a little too much attention into drinking her coffee, he feared hope was about to be squashed, but then she looked him in the eye. “As long as there’s no question that when fun time’s over, I’m going back to Los Angeles, where I’ll write my article and get my promotion and this little…interlude will join high school in the nostalgia file.”

  “No question at all.” For now. A week was a long time.

  “Okay, then. I guess I need to come up with two questions for this morning, since you owe me one.”

  “Not sure this is the best venue for asking my questions, though,” he pointed out and her cheeks were still flushed when their plates arrived.

  “Oh, good lord,” Keri said when she got an eyeful of the food.

  “That’s my plan. The full belly stupor will interfere with your ability to come up with tough questions.”

  “You made so much of your life off-limits, there aren’t any tough questions to come up with. I’m sure Spotlight readers will be fascinated by the fact you put ketchup on your scrambled eggs.”

  “There’s always the fact I like mayo on my hot dogs.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Kowalski. I’ll remember you fondly when I’m proofreading help wanted ads for an Internet weekly.”

  It was easy for him to forget this wasn’t a game they were playing. When she went back to L.A., she was going to hand an article about his life to Tina Deschanel—a woman his publicist liked to refer to as a boil on the ass of journalism. The stories in the magazine she’d helped build into a supermarket powerhouse were personal, invasive and usually written with a scandalous slant. And, even if Keri used his former drinking problem to hook readers in, there wasn’t a lot more than that to spill.

  “I’m sorry I’m not a more interesting guy,” he said sincerely. “I sit at my desk for hours a day, then I kick back and relax. Hang with the family. Lift some weights. That’s about it.”

  She wanted to bring up Lauren and the lawsuit. He could tell by the set of her mouth how badly she wanted to point out that he did have a very interesting scandal in his past, but she wasn’t allowed to bring it up.

  Instead she bit the end off a piece of bacon, which transformed her look to one of contentment. “You know, none of my clothes are going to fit me when I get home.”

  “You can’t live on salad alone, babe.”

  She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “Okay, let’s see if I can make this all into one question. With the movie premiere looming on the horizon, how much input, if any, did you have in the screenplay, as well as involvement in the filming and, whether you were hands on or not, how pleased are you with the finished product?”

  He laughed and raised his coffee mug in a toast to her. “Such a finely crafted question, so I’m going to let you get away with that. Little, none and I haven’t seen it.”

  Her fork hit her plate with a clatter. “Stop that!”

  “Stop what? I answered the question. Or should I say questions plural, since you snuck three in there?”

  “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Make something up?”

  “You’re the fiction writer, not me. Could you elaborate a little?”

  He hated this stuff. Whatever people thought, he didn’t avoid publicity because of some deep, dark secret he feared being revealed, but because he absolutely despised talking about himself or his work or anything else, for that matter.

  “Since you really asked three questions, which I answered, if you want me to elaborate, it’s gotta count as two questions.”

  “That’s not fair. Those were barely answers.” She took a bite of her bagel, but he didn’t say anything, just leaving the offer hanging out there. “You may get two-for-one, but you can still only ask me one question in return.”

  “I’ll have to make it a really good one, then.” When she looked around, as though to see if anybody was sitting close enough to overhear, he chuckled. He’d have to come up with something really embarrassing if she was that worried about it. “Contractually, nobody had to send the screenplay to me, but the guy they hired to do it happened to be a fan. Because he wanted to respect my work, he sent me drafts as he did them and asked how he was doing. He really seems to get my work, though, and in the end he did pretty damn good all on his own.”

  Over the course of their meal, which Keri wasn’t able to finish despite giving it one hell of a try, he talked about the movie. There wasn’t a lot to tell, but he gave her a little insight into how he felt about knowing his words were going to be a major motion picture.

  “There’s a part of me that’s disconnected,” he told her over a final coffee refill. “I wrote my book—people can read my book as I envisioned it. The movie’s a separate thing. But there’s another part of me that’s going to want to pick it apart. He wouldn’t wear a shirt like that, or that’s not what the killer looked like.”

  “But you’ll go see it, right?”

  He shrugged. “I promised Joey and Danny I’d take them to see it with Mike and Kevin. I’ll go in trying to pretend it’s just some random horror flick, but I’m sure as soon as it starts I’ll stress over every aspect of it.”

  She set her empty cup down and leaned back in the booth with a sigh. “I’m stuffed. And that was a lot more interesting than putting ketchup on your eggs. The insight into your conflicted views about the movie will fascinate readers.”

  “Will it fascinate Tina?”

  “Probably not,” she admitted reluctantly. “Human interest to her means human drama.”

  “Scandal.”

  “Pretty much. But you’re just not a scandalous kinda guy.”

  “Only with the right woman, babe,” he said, and when he winked at her, she blushed.

  But as he paid the bill and waited for her to emerge again from the ladies’ room
, he couldn’t forget the somewhat defeated look on her face when she acknowledged Tina probably wasn’t going to be satisfied with what she was going to hand in.

  He couldn’t give her what she needed. The only thing even remotely scandalous in his background was the lawsuit with Lauren and she couldn’t print anything about that even if he didn’t mind. But in the back of his mind he was a little worried about what would happen when she was back in her world, facing off against the woman who could ruin her career. She wasn’t exactly seeing his family at their best, and he’d told her things about Kevin he wasn’t even supposed to know.

  And all he could do was hope she wouldn’t betray his trust.

  He waited until they made it back into the cabin without being pounced upon by his family before backing her up against the bunk bed. “I’m still waiting for a good morning kiss.”

  She turned her face away. “I told you you have to wait until I go up to the bathroom. Morning breath with a side of bacon and coffee? No thanks.”“I’ve thought of a question. A very serious question, as a matter of fact.”

  Her eyes were wary, but amusement played with the corners of her mouth. “A serious one, huh?”

  “Very.” Since she wouldn’t let him kiss her, he bent his head and nipped at her neck, just below her ear. “After you left for California, did you ever pretend guys you were with were me?”

  “Yes,” she whispered as he kissed his way down to the vee opening of her shirt. “And sometimes you were even battery operated, too.”

  And damn if the perennial erection didn’t return. “I can’t think about that too much or I won’t be able to walk.”

  “How about you? Did you pretend other women were me?”

  More than he cared to admit, and not just when it came to sex. “Only the blondes.”

  “Very funny.” She sighed when he flicked his tongue over the hollow at the base of her throat. “Too bad New Hampshire and California are so far apart or we could schedule some booty calls.”