Love Is

by S. E. Harmon

  Figured Jules would’ve told him about that. Jules had been willing to front me my half from his trust fund, but it hadn’t seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t want it to be his business, I wanted it to be our business.

  “It’s important to know how to stand on your own two feet,” I told him starchily.

  “It’s also important to know how to accept help.” He shook his head. “So independent, we should stick you on a pole and fly you on the fourth like a goddamned flag.”

  That startled a laugh out of me. “Shut up.”

  He poured us both another shot, and we clinked glasses before we tossed them back. Man, the burn. It was a good burn, though. A distracting burn.

  “Jules and I were fortunate that way. The house we grew up in was just that…a house.”

  “It was beautiful,” I said, thinking back on the McMansion they’d grown up in.

  “It was that. But it was just a house. And there were certainly no memories I wanted to relive there.”

  “None?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “My father was an exacting bastard. He wanted things done a certain way, and if you didn’t do them that way, then there was hell to pay. That pretty much made us all steer very clear. My mother had her charities and projects to keep her busy. And Jules and I were the kids who didn’t come home from boarding school on breaks unless we had to.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Trips and parties, mostly. Aspen for Christmas. Mexico for spring break. I did a summer in Paris…” He looked off. “I certainly can’t complain about all the experiences we had.”

  I would rather have had a home. It didn’t seem like the thing to say, though. And judging from the set of his jaw, so tight it looked like it might shatter with a slight tap, he already knew that. There was something I had to ask, though. Something that I had to know.

  “Was he ever physical with you guys?”

  He laughed a short laugh that was anything but humorous. “Physical violence is for the brutish and unintelligent.”

  The way he said it, I could tell it was a direct quote.

  “My old man preferred psychological warfare. A constant diet of being disappointed in everything we did. Jules rebelled and coped with it in typical Jules fashion—he went for the gold in pissing our father off. I wasn’t even sure he was actually gay until I walked in on…” Even in the dark, I could tell he was blushing. “Well, anyway, I thought that was just one more way to piss our father off.”

  I knew that Jules and his father had never really gotten along that well. I’d never known the exact reasons why. Now I did. “And you?”

  “I tried to be better. Tried to conform into what he wanted. The harder I tried, the more he wanted, and the more spectacularly I failed.” He let out a pent-up, frustrated breath. “So in short, no, I don’t understand. When our parents died, I sold that house within three months.”

  I bit my lip. Here I was carrying on about getting rid of my childhood home. At least I’d had one. I couldn’t imagine looking at my childhood home and thinking good riddance to rubbish.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said.

  He gave me an exasperated, fond look. “How is any of it your fault?”

  Despite my mood, I was still a tad amused. “You need to learn how to accept someone’s ‘I’m sorry.’ I think they have local classes at the Y.”

  He looked at me for a moment before smiling, shaking his head. “I’m glad opposing counsel doesn’t have your secret weapon.”

  “Which is?”

  “You always know how to make me smile.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. But I knew I really, really liked having that weapon.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Jackson asked, his voice a little choked with laughter.

  I looked up to see Lane and Art holding hands and skipping along the beach, singing something I couldn’t quite pick up from here, Uno cards long forgotten. I shook my head. “I don’t know but it looks like fun.”

  I tried to stand on wobbly legs and plopped back down. Jackson chuckled and stood, wiping sand off his pants before offering me a hand. He clearly forgot how strong he was because when he pulled me up, I wound up crashing into him. We went down hard, rolling down the steps into the sand below.

  We looked at one another for a moment, blinking in surprise. And then I giggled. Which sent us into full-blown laughter. Stomach-hurting, gut-busting laughter as we rolled in the sand like idiots.

  “Oopsie,” I said through my giggles. Ooh, that rum was starting to really kick in. “Why’d you Incredible Hulk me?”

  “Is that a verb now?”

  Which set us off again.

  “Drunken fools,” he finally managed. “The whole lot of us.”

  I watched Jackson stagger up out of the corner of my eye, but then it hurt too much to focus in one on thing, especially something in my peripheral. I stopped trying to strain my eyes and he disappeared from my vision, so I laid there, blinking up at the night sky. Looking at all the stars.

  God, the stars. They didn’t look like that at my house. Not that I ever bothered to go outside at night and look at them, but with all the streetlights and house lights and city traffic that never seemed to stop, I knew they wouldn’t look like this. All glittery and shiny like someone had plastered a star stencil up in the sky and colored it with moonbeams—

  “Argh!” I shrieked as Jackson picked me up and the world went topsy-turvy. He righted me in his arms and I grabbed on to his neck. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Down to the beach,” he declared. “We can’t let them cavort alone.”

  He began heading for the beach, but I shook his arm like a dog with a bone. “Wait. Wait!” I shook his arm some more even though I already had his attention. “I gotta grab the rum. You don’t go onboard a vessel without bringing rum.”

  “There is no…never mind.” He looked amused, but dipped me enough to grab the bottle from the deck. And we joined our fellow revelers in the sand, acting foolish and forgetting about everything that made us sad under the watchful eye of the stars and the moon.

  *

  Light. Cursed light streamed through the windows. For a moment, I was afraid I had gone blind, and then I realized that no, I was just looking directly into a shaft of pure sunlight. I blinked and my eyes watered furiously.

  God. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Holyfield. Maybe that was because my brain had officially liquefied. Then someone had mixed it with rum before dumping the contents back in my skull. “So this is what it’s like to be dead,” I murmured conversationally.

  “No.” Art’s voice came from behind the couch, somewhere on the hardwood floor. “I think death is supposed to be pain free, so…yeah. Definitely still alive.”

  I lifted my head again, craning my neck to peer over the couch. “You look hungover,” I informed him.

  “You look embalmed,” he said candidly.

  “Where’s Jackson?” I wanted to know.

  “I think he went to sleep in a bed, like a normal human being.”

  “And left me?” I tried to scowl, but any facial formations were causing my headache to worsen. I tried to smooth out my face like I’d had an aggressive round of lunchtime Botox. “Anlefme?” I repeated without moving my lips.

  “You pushed him off the couch twice,” Art informed me. “It was for his own safety.”

  “Gooooood morning,” a voice boomed from the doorway, the volume making my eyes water. I squinted at the doorway as our dad strolled in, looking like the very picture of health. I almost chucked a pillow at him.

  “What’s so good about it?” Art groaned.

  “I think I’m going to make a nice healthy breakfast,” Dad said, patting his stomach. “Maybe power down a smoothie so I can eat crap for dinner.”

  I didn’t know what he was worried about. Clearly the man was going to live forever.

  I groaned and rolled over. My dad proceeded to go around the room, checking each o
f us for vital signs. He lifted my wrist and felt for a pulse before nodding. When he got to Art, he waved a hand in front of Art’s nose.

  “Still alive, but just barely,” he concluded. Satisfied, he gave Art’s cheek a healthy smack, and Art whimpered. With a grin, he went on. “I think we can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

  “Dad,” Art said with a pathetic whine. “Jesus, have pity.”

  “Jesus does have pity,” Dad said kindly. “He died on the cross for our sins.”

  A groan came from the other side of the couch and Lane covered her eyes with her hand. “Talking. Too. Much. Talking.”

  “It’s so good to have all of my beautiful children under one roof,” he said, beaming.

  “Aw,” Lane began. “That’s so—”

  “That being said, I want all you drunken louts out of my den in the next five minutes. I want to watch TV,” the king of Siam announced primly before heading off to the kitchen.

  “That’s it,” Art said. “We’re putting him in a nursing home.”

  “I heard that!”

  “You were meant to!” I informed him.

  But to be fair, I didn’t think any of us really meant it until he started up the blender.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The second time I woke was much better than the first. I could have attributed that to some of the alcohol settling or the fact that I was no longer sleeping on a lumpy couch. But mostly, I’d have to say that was because I was all wrapped up in six-feet-two inches of pure muscle, leg to leg, my back to his chest, my butt to his…well, everyone knew that if you share a full-sized bed with a full-sized male, at some point you might wind up with a full-sized boner against your backside. So statistically, we were probably okay.

  The feel of him pressed so intimately against me should have made me uncomfortable. Annoyed. Instead, there was just awareness…that familiar pull low in my stomach, something wicked and wrong that made me push back instead of inching forward. He muttered sleepily in my hair and slid a hand across my stomach, nestling me even closer. A soft sigh escaped my lips as I rocked back on him again, and that low pull was rapidly turning into a pulse. The part of me that wasn’t involved in dry humping a sleeping human being realized it was time for me to get up. Take a shower. Recover my sense of decency.

  But easier said than done. I tried to ease parts of me away one at a time, but every time I moved, he followed like a heat-seeking missile. All I managed to do was turn in his arms, so now my stomach was treated to a trip to Bonerville. After a few minutes of struggling, I gave up, resigning myself to the arduous task of having to stare at his gorgeous face.

  I didn’t think I’d really had a chance to look at him so close before. Not unobserved, anyway. He was just so…ridiculously beautiful. Flawless, really. The golden, naturally tanned skin, the stubble-lined square jaw, and the long, straight nose. Thick gold lashes lay artfully on high cheekbones as he slept peacefully, mouth parted slightly, breathing soft and even. I had to admit that seeing him so comfortably sprawled in my domain, looking the most unbuttoned I’d ever seen him, had me feeling a certain kind of way. I had to face an undeniable truth. Mostly because I didn’t enjoy lying to myself. I was good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it. So here goes.

  I want him.

  There. I said it. I wanted Jackson. And not in that abstract, let’s-hold-hands-and-run-through-a-field-of-daisies, kiss-in-the-rain-under-a-colorful-umbrella kind of way. I wanted to do…such dirty things to that man. Hell, I wanted him to do dirty things to me. I wanted his mouth on me. His hands on me. His tongue on me. In me. And then, when I couldn’t stand it one more minute, I wanted him to pin me to the bed and fuck me hard. There was no way to pretty that up. Just thinking about it had my nipples hard and aching. Before I worked myself up into a ridiculous lather, I needed to remember there was no way any of that was going to happen.

  With that thought in mind, I finally yanked my arm free and rolled off the bed. He yelped as the sheets came with me and reached blindly for some covers, eyes still firmly closed. I admired the way his gray boxers stretched nicely across his ass as he felt around the bed like a blind hedgehog.

  “Good morning, dear,” I said sweetly.

  “Tell me it’s not time to get up.”

  “It’s not time to get up,” I repeated obediently. “I’m just hungry.”

  “Good,” he muttered into his pillow, giving up on finding any sheets. “Go be hungry someplace else.”

  “Is that how you treat your dates in the morning?”

  “Fake ones, yeah.” Despite the fact that I couldn’t see any part of his face, somehow I could hear the smile in his voice. “If this was real, you’d be getting waffles right about now.”

  It was almost enough to make a girl wish. Almost. “Don’t forget, you promised to go golfing with my dad at noon.” He didn’t so much as twitch and I grinned. “And Art is taking you out for drinks before dinner.”

  “Ugh.” He sighed, puffing air out into the pillow. “Has anyone in your family ever heard of sleeping in? Isn’t this supposed to be a fucking vacation?”

  “Noon,” I reminded him, and he groaned.

  Despite his grumpy morning attitude, I graciously covered him with the sheets. I couldn’t help trailing a hand over the back of his tangled mess of hair before I left to get first dibs on the bathroom. I was pretty sure fake girlfriends did that kind of thing.

  I completed my bathroom ritual as quickly as possible—showering, putting on lotion, and brushing my teeth—and threw on a sunshine-yellow sundress and a pair of sandals. I was still only half-done, wringing my damp hair with a towel, when the polite knocks began. Man, I missed having my own bathroom.

  I finished blow-drying my hair to less polite knocks. I ran a straightener through my hair to dispense of some of the waves to a door kick that was probably Art. I was finally forced to vacate the bathroom when I overheard the villagers discussing where they could find torches.

  I opened the door with a dramatic sigh and glared at the line of people—Bree, Brit, Art, and Rick glared right back.

  “We’re imparting a new rule,” Britney said. “Seven minutes per person.”

  “Seven minutes?” I scowled. “When was this decided? I didn’t get a vote.”

  “We created and voted on the new rule in the twenty-five minutes you were in the shower, and it was unanimous,” Rick said, glancing at his pricey watch. “You could have voted if you hadn’t decided to go for that last chorus of ‘Wildest Dreams.’”

  He didn’t understand. Because of my paper-thin townhouse walls, I’d been conditioned to hearing certain songs in the shower. Like someone in a torture camp. Now I heard a shower running and I thought of Taylor Swift music. My neighbor had trained me like a Pavlovian dog, for crying out loud. Shouldn’t she be in jail? I didn’t bother to enlighten my judging audience of my mitigating circumstances.

  “Looking good takes time, people,” I informed them.

  “Then you’re not done,” Art said sweetly. “But unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”

  I scowled. “Bite me.”

  “Not even if you were made of sugar,” he called after me as I headed downstairs, my hair still a little damp against my neck.

  I was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, eating a yogurt and watching the under-cabinet TV when my father passed through. He stuck a mug and a pod in the Keurig and hit the start button.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Morning? It’s practically the middle of the day.” He proceeded to stare at me for a moment, watching me pick around the toppings on my YoCrunch yogurt.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  “Why don’t you just admit you buy it for the candy on top?”

  I shrugged. “So.”

  “So buying a yogurt for ten M&Ms is insane.”

  “It’s my reward for doing something marginally healthy.” I pointed a spoon at him. “So mind your own Yoplait business.”

  He leaned bac
k on the counter as the coffee began to brew. “You have plans today?”

  “Not really. I’ll probably go down to the beach a little later on, but nothing big.”

  “Never could keep you guys off the water. Any time after school, I knew where to find my kids.” His mouth quirked. “It’s good to have you here, Avery.”

  “It’s good to be here. I’m glad I came, especially since you guys are…selling the house,” I finished awkwardly. I hadn’t meant to bring it up, but it was definitely on my mind.

  “You didn’t have much to say about it at dinner. None of you did. That’s certainly not what I expected from my opinionated kids,” he said.

  That steady gaze was non-accusatory, but I felt defensive. I stabbed my spoon back in the yogurt. “What is there to say?”

  “Something other than plastic platitudes might be nice. I’m a forthright man, and I’ve taught you guys to speak your mind. I like to know where I stand.”

  I snorted. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what I think.”

  “Then why would I ask? What’s the big hairy deal with saying exactly what you’re thinking?”

  “Because some things can’t be unsaid,” I said to my yogurt.

  What could I say that he didn’t already know? That it felt like he was moving on too soon? I was going to be a supportive daughter, support his decision, and that was it.

  He silently stared at me for a moment before the Keurig sputtered. He pulled his cup of coffee from under the spout and began to sip it. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but the unspoken words floated between us like motes of dust—not intrusive, but visible if we look hard enough.

  Lane came bustling in, looking restored from our midnight binge. She was wearing tailored jeans and a button-down blouse, and her hair was brushed to a shine. She smelled faintly of Gucci Guilty and her pearls were firmly in place.

  I couldn’t help but grin. Someone had fully utilized her seven minutes in the bathroom. “Don’t you look spiffy.”

  She did a little turn to model her jeans. “That I do.”