“Harley,” I say, my disappointment resonating around the tiny apartment. He slides into his pants and throws on his shirt, and then he leans over and gives me a quick peck on the lips before heading for the stairs. “Harley,” I say again, with a little more anger coloring my voice.
“Break a leg tomorrow,” he says, his own voice thick with emotion I can’t place. Then he’s gone, down the stairs and out the front door, and I’m left lying on the bed we just made love on, clutching my chest as if all of my insides might fall out if I don’t hold them in place.
Chapter Seventeen
Rose
Age eighteen
Being separated by state lines sucks. I’ve just closed up the cash register, switched off the lights and stepped out onto the pavement when my phone starts ringing, and because I’m juggling keys and rummaging through my bag, which is full of books, notes, and the laptop I’ve been using to type up my latest assignment for my business management course, I missed the call.
“Damn it,” I whisper to the late September fog and rest my head against the shop window—a window I’ll be cleaning first thing in the morning because my boss is a colossal bitch. I lock the door and stuff my keys in my bag, finally locating my phone. Harley’s number shows up on the screen as my missed call, and I want to cry because school was stressful, the internship I’d wanted so badly was even worse, and he isn’t here. Life is sucking with a capital FUCK right now and I really need to hear his voice.
I hit the call-back button. The phone rings out, but I don’t bother leaving him a message. Since he left a month ago it hasn’t been unusual for us to play phone tag every day. Sometimes I don’t get to talk to him at all between his classes and mine and football, but we make it work. It is hard, but we do it. I hate being away from him, and I’ve been marking down the days on the calendar until Thanksgiving, so when he told me last week that he wasn’t coming home like he’d promised, I’d been gutted.
We all did. Instead of spending the weekend in Carmel, walking through the stone-paved alleyways, past the cottages that are now home to art galleries and boutiques, or sinking our toes in the white sand after Thanksgiving dinner, he is heading to some special football retreat just outside of Louisiana, where the best candidates are chosen and get to rub shoulders for the weekend with previous Tigers who’ve since been drafted to the NFL. I am so damn proud of him, but I won’t lie—I’m heartbroken too. I missed him. So much so that when he told me, and then whispered through the phone that he loved me, I broke down sobbing.
All this time I’ve tried to keep to myself how much the distance between us affects me, but one thing I know about Harley is that no matter how much he wants this, no matter how many years he’s worked his ass off to get to exactly where he is right now, if I told him I wanted him to quit, he would. There isn’t anything he won’t do for me, and I know it, and I’ve worked so hard not to let him see that what he is doing destroys me, because it is his dream, and who am I to take that from him?
I unlock my car and climb in, hitting the keypad on my phone again. It rings three times before he answers, shouting into the phone along with a barrage of sound—a frat party. “Rose?”
“Hey, you’re at a party?”
“Just hold on a sec, okay? I can’t hear a goddamn thing. Don’t hang up.”
“I won’t,” I say, and press the phone closer because I need him. I need him here with me. I don’t want to hear the sound of his voice through a tinny, crackling phone line. I want him beside me, in my arms. Fat tears escape my lashes and I close my eyes, resting my head against the seat back. I cover my mouth so he won’t hear my sobbing.
“Baby?” he says, “Shit … Rose?”
I sniff and clear my throat in an attempt to keep him from discovering that I’m losing it. “I’m here.”
“Thought I’d lost you for a second there,” he says quietly.
“Never.”
“Never is an awfully long time,” he whispers, and I can tell his full lips are curved into a grin the way they always are when we say those words to one another. I sigh, wishing I could see them, wishing I could kiss them and taste him once more. “Long day?”
“The longest.”
“God, I miss you so fucking much.”
“I miss you too.” I clear my throat of the thickness threatening to choke me. “So your frat house is throwing another party?”
“Er … no, it’s a cheerleader thing.”
“A cheerleader thing?” I might have said this with the smallest amount of incredulity.
“Yeah, they had some championship on today. We couldn’t be there because we had practice, so coach made us attend this fundraising party they’re having.”
“Wow, sounds … like a real punishment.”
“Come on. Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” I snap, wishing I was a smoker because I sure could use a cigarette to calm my nerves right now. Screw the nicotine—I’m going to raid the shit out of my parents’ liquor cabinet the second I get home, and if anyone gives me shit about it, I’ll cut someone.
“All pissy and shit.”
“Well, I wasn’t aware I was being pissy and shit.” Okay, so maybe I am, but I don’t need attitude from him about it. While he is partying with his frat brothers two thousand miles away, I am here in SF, working my fingers to the bone with school and my internship, and I’m startlingly alone. My best friend is halfway across the country, I live with my parents because I can’t afford the rent in this city as well as text books, and I miss him. I don’t want to fight, but I don’t want to do this anymore either.
“Rose,” he says softly, in that way that always tells me without words that I’m being irrational.
I sigh. “I just miss you, is all.”
“This isn’t forever, love.”
“Harley, I’ve been looking all over for you,” a slurred female voice says from the background, and jealousy twists like a knife in my gut.
“Hey Cheyanne, can you give me a minute? I’m talking to my girl.”
Cheyanne? What is she, a fucking Garth Brooks song?
“I’ll be your girl. You know long-distance relationships never work out anyway. Besides, I’m right here, and I have great tits. See?”
“Don’t do that … come on … that’s not.” He sighs. “Time to go home.”
Time to go home? Oh hell no, it is time for that bitch to step the fuck off. And why the hell is she showing him her boobs?
“Rose, I gotta go.”
“What the fuck, Harley?”
“I … I gotta help her out, take her home. She’s drunk, and I love my brothers, but I don’t trust them not to take advantage of her in this situation.”
I laugh as if he’s joking, because surely this is a bad joke, right? Surely my boyfriend who is currently across not one, but three—four, if you count Nevada—state lines isn’t offering to take some drunk cheerleader home after she just showed him her boobs.
“And why are you suddenly responsible for her, Harley?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Oh she sounds real friendly,” I bite out.
“Hey, I’m just trying to do the right thing here. If it were you in her situation, I’d want someone looking out for you.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, and that is why I am so damn angry. Because even though this stupid bitch has just tried to talk my boyfriend into cheating on me by flashing her boobs at him, this is bigger than my petty jealousy. A woman has every right to be as drunk as Cheyanne is and walk through a frat house without any man touching her or taking advantage, but that isn’t the world we live in, and I may have the last true gentleman standing, but I know he’s doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean I have to like it though.
“Rose?” Harley says softly.
I huff. “Just go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah, me too,” I say and hang up. I start the car and pull out into traffic, heading eas
t on Hayes Street to Masonic. My tears fall all the way to 29th Street where I open the door to my parents’ home and trudge up the stairs without a word to either one of them.
I expect Harley to call later that night, but he doesn’t. The silence is deafening, and I’m swallowed up by it. We drown in it, in pain, in guilt, and distance, and I’m not sure when or if we’ll ever come up for air again.
Chapter Eighteen
Rose
The next morning is torture. The makeup crew show up at 0330 hours to set up, not four like Gray Suit—whose name is Aras, as I’d learn from my email when I finally checked it after Harley left—had said, and I am barely even out of the shower when I hear them knock. I haven’t been over the paperwork, but I’ve signed it anyway, and I hand it over to a flustered Aras before he commandeers my couch to make some necessary phone calls. Then it goes from bad to worse. I’m thrown into hair and makeup and poked and jabbed and forced into clothing that I’d never wear to work in a million years. When Dale Tutela and the rest of the crew show up, I get two words out before he silences me with a look as he pinches his fingers together in a “zip it” motion.
What’s that thing they say about meeting your idols? Oh yeah, that you shouldn’t, because they never live up to your expectations. Dale Tutela is no exception to this rule. In fact, he is an A-grade asshole. And I am crushed.
I’m also trying to forget about what happened with another asshole just a few hours earlier, but I’m failing miserably. I don’t understand it. Harley had been the one to instigate the whole thing. He’d been the one to start it, and he’d been the one to finish it at midnight when he left my house like he couldn’t wait to be rid of me. I should never have let him take it that far, but I’d wanted it. I’d wanted him. God, how I want him.
Even now as I’m hit with flashes of our sweat-soaked and sweet entanglement, the feel of him inside, hitting the end of me and making me dizzy with that delicious way he gripped my hips and drove into me as if he knew I wasn’t going to break beneath him … I want him. He’s always been like that, ever since our first time together. He takes me like a wild man, and he’s been the man I measure every other by. Every touch, every kiss, every thrust, with any man I’ve let inside my body since has paled in comparison to the way that Harley makes love to me.
That rat bastard. As if my memories haven’t been torture enough, he had to go and give me a refresher course in pleasure that has put all our other times to shame.
A hairy knuckled finger snaps beneath my chin, and I reel back from the shock. “Cut,” Dale yells, and I glance between him and the director, unable to believe that I’ve just been thinking about Harley when I should have been focused on the right here and now.
“Alright, take five,” the director says, as he stands and heads toward us.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to them both, and then I give the cameramen, who’re setting down their equipment, a tight smile. Graham, who I met last night, gives me a chin nod, and they both venture outside for yet another cigarette.
“Honey, you might be a genius with floral arrangements, but there ain’t a whole lot going on between those eyes the rest of the time, is there?” Dale says, craning his neck left and right as if working out the kinks. “I need a drink, a tan, and a man. And can someone please do something about this hot mess of a woman.” He waves his hand in my direction and turns to the bride, whose flowers I’ll be creating. He’s right; I am a hot mess. He really doesn’t need a tan though, because he already looks like an Oompa Loompa.
God he is an asshole.
“Okay, Rose, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have Dale say his lines again, and then we’ll record yours separately. Cutting room will cut it together and voila, it will be as if the two of you are actually having a conversation. So I’m going to get the boys back in here, and we’ll go from there. Rachel,” the director says, squeezing the bride-to-be’s arm. “You’re doing great.”
“Thank you.” She smiles coyly, and her gaze shifts to me. The smile dims like a light gone out. “You’re not going to screw up my wedding, are you?”
“I … no, of course not,” I assure her, a little shocked at her bluntness. “I do this all the time. It’s my job. I’m just not cut out for TV.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would be with that bone structure.” She smiles as if she didn’t just insult me. My face goes blank and Izzy—who was so excited when I’d messaged at six a.m. to tell her not to bother coming in today that she arrived ten minutes later and made coffee for the whole crew—gives me a plastered on smile and a thumbs up, and then we’re rolling again.
I do much better at saying my lines when Dale isn’t around, and thank god, because I could be at a real risk of losing this job, and I really need this job. Designing an event featured on My Wedding Affair could put my small florist on the map, so I really have no choice but to get it together and pull off the most exquisite arrangements any orange-tanned, egotistical, narcissistic, reality TV-show wedding planner has ever seen.
***
After the filming has wrapped, Aras sits down with me to go over what’s needed, and when I’ll be expected to deliver mock ups for my designs and a floor plan. He tells me the other vendors associated with the show will provide everything I need in terms of flowers and supplies, and Dale will oversee everything from linens to music and the cake, but the ceremony, and the reception are all me. Even the bride doesn’t get a say.
I’ve done the floral arrangements for hundreds of weddings and events around the San Francisco Bay area, so this is nothing new, but designing for an event of this magnitude, worries me just a little, not to mention my terrible filming debut. I’ll likely have to close the store, and the lost revenue will suck, but I know it will be good for business in the long run. I love him for laying this opportunity in my lap, but I also hate him at the moment.
I could really use my best friend right now.
I have a mountain of work to do after everyone has left. The shop remains closed, but that doesn’t mean I can go upstairs to bed. Izzy is still here, and she pitches in to help clean up without me asking. She’s been a godsend, and I honestly don’t know what I would have done without her. She is a good friend.
Izzy sweeps the floor as I polish the glass surfaces of my shop until they sparkle. It seems like making television is a messy business.
“So where’s Harley today, I thought you guys kissed and made up?” She glances up from the pile of dirt and debris the crew had left behind.
I flinch. Izzy doesn’t know how ironic that statement is. “I think he had a job out of town.”
She frowns and continues sweeping. “Oh, I’m surprised he didn’t reschedule. That boy would move heaven and earth for you.”
Someone who would move heaven and earth for you usually doesn’t rush out in the middle of the night after you’ve just had sex, unless it’s to bring back ice cream.
I glance up from the counter I’m cleaning and stare at my employee. “Hey Izzy, can I talk to you about something?”
She stills, her sweeping coming to a complete halt, and stares at me. “It’s not me getting fired, is it?”
“What?” I make a horrified face. “Oh god no!”
“Oh, okay then.” She shrugs. “Shoot.”
I take a deep breath, unsure of how much I want to tell her, and then it just tumbles out of my mouth like word vomit. “I had sex.”
“Well done.” She gives me a thumbs up.
“No, I mean I had sex with Harley.”
“Oh yeah,” she says scrunching up her nose as if she finds this adorable. “You guys used to date, right?”
“No, I … we had sex last night.”
“Get outta town.” She squeals in delight. The broom clatters to the floor and Izzy rushes towards me, leaning on the counter I just finished wiping down. “Oh my god. I need details.”
“Well, there isn’t much to tell, I guess. We were celebrating the show with a few drinks and then w
e were kissing, and then we were—”
“Getting naked.” She waggles her eyebrows. Izzy has great eyebrow game, but this just looks ridiculous.
“Yeah, only he bailed on me afterwards.”
Her eyes grow wide as saucers. “Nooo.”
“Yes.” I nod, making one of those “I know, right?” faces. “I don’t know what to do. Should I call him? Do I go over there?”
“No,” Izzy says, seriously scaring me with the scowl she shoots my way. “Do not do either of those things.”
I grimace. “Really?
“Really,” she assures. “Maybe he’s just freaking out about it, you know? Like exes are super familiar, and it feels so wrong, but it can feel so right, too.”
“Maybe,” I agree, but Harley and me have been at this game for close to seventeen years now, and I know he felt everything I felt last night because I saw it on his face, I felt it in his touch, and I heard it in the words he whispered to me. I just don’t understand why he ran.
“You really care about him, don’t you?”
I shrug. “He’s my best friend.”
She makes a face and gives me her best Mae West accent. “Not any more he’s not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Best friends don’t screw one another,” she stoops to pick up the broom and continues sweeping. It’s in the handbook.”
“Alright, well we’re best friends who’ve screwed one another in the past, and now we’re best friends who’ve accidentally done it again,” I say, but I know those words aren’t true, because last night was no accident. I puff out a breath of air that sends my bangs flying. “Why don’t you put that away? I’ll clean up the rest.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Go home, Izzy. I got this.” I take the broom handle from her and make a shooing gesture with it, as if I’m going to sweep her up if she doesn’t move. “Thank you for being here today.”
Harley & Rose Page 13
