Memories of You: A Stark Security Novella

by J. Kenner

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that, but I have a feeling that’s more to do with the janitorial staff than me. I was definitely a sweaty boy back then.”

  She looks at me, then grins. “He’s got a good aura,” she says, then adds, “I would tell you to come out and sit with me and have some wine so I can interrogate you both about your childhood, but I have to blow off tonight’s drinking session. Turns out that I have a date.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. With a charming little man who has a thing about clownfish.”

  I laugh. “Babysitting?”

  “All night. My cousin and her husband are doing their anniversary at a hotel. So be as loud as you want,” she adds with a sly look at Renly.

  She lowers her voice, as if whispering a secret. “Abby’s bedroom shares a wall with my living room.”

  To his credit, Renly barely reacts, but I see the way his eyes brighten with humor, and the corner of his lip twitches. I shake my head as if in exasperation. “Lilah. You know we’re just friends. Like friend friends.”

  “Friends with benefits. It’s the only way to go. Way less messy than a relationship.”

  I shake my head, then glance sideways at Renly. “Lilah’s a great friend and I love her, but if you want to demonstrate how you can kill her with your bare hands I won’t hold it against you.” I shift my attention back to Lilah. “All that SEAL training, you know.”

  “And that’s my cue,” she says. “Seriously, you two have fun catching up. I want to hear everything about how you found each other tomorrow,” she adds, pointing to me before she picks up her wine and pushes open her front door.

  I unlock my door then usher him inside. I’m about to step in myself when Lilah pops her head back out and mouths, He’s hot.

  “He’s a friend,” I whisper, but I can tell by her expression that she doesn’t believe me. Unlike me, Lilah is more than happy with the friends with benefits thing.

  I give her a stern look, then head inside to find Renly leaning against the wall of my entryway. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her back in high school.”

  “Her family lived in Los Angeles until they moved to Castaic. They bought that ranch that went into foreclosure. She’s cool, but she’s also a pain in my ass.”

  He laughs. “I’m glad you found such a good friend.”

  Happiness blooms in me. Because Lilah really is a good friend, and it’s clear that Renly still knows me well enough to realize that.

  “At any rate, I like her.”

  “Thank you for the seal of approval.” I sweep my hand, ushering him into the rest of the place. It’s small, only a two bedroom, one of which I use as an office. The living room is roomy, though, and the kitchen is open and flows into the space.

  The back door is an actual door, not glass, but the yard it leads to is awesome. Open and grassy with a picnic table and flowers lining the fence. Lilah tells me that when her parents bought the place, there was a fence dividing the two sides, but she took it down when she moved in. She planned to put it back up again once she found a tenant, but since the tenant turned out to be me, we’ve left it down. It makes for some great parties.

  “I’ve got a pair of my dad’s old pajamas that I wore when I painted my bedroom. That and one of my T-shirts should do you, right?”

  “Sounds good,” he says, and I lead him into my bedroom. I pull out the blue-and-white striped bottoms then grab an extra-large Disney tee that I often wear to sleep.

  “Minnie Mouse?”

  I shrug. “You’ll do her proud.”

  “Right,” he says as I point him to the bathroom.

  While he’s changing, I grab a loose maxi dress and change in the closet, then toss my wet clothes into a basket and wait for Renly to emerge and give me his. He does, and then he follows me to the laundry area off the kitchen, where I start a load of cold.

  I’m about to offer him the full tour when I see him rubbing his temple, one hand pressed against the wall.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a headache.”

  “Oh. I think I’ve got some ibuprofen. I should probably offer you that instead of the drink I was planning to suggest.”

  “Actually, bourbon if you have it. Believe it or not, whiskey helps.”

  “But when doesn’t it, really?”

  He grins. “We always did think alike.”

  I bring us both drinks and sit on the opposite end of the sofa, then shift around to get more comfortable. He pats his thighs.

  I laugh, then put my bare feet in his lap, so that my back is against the arm rest. It’s comfortable and easy, more so than I would have expected after so many years. But we’ve sat like this a hundred thousand times before, talking late into the night or watching television or just gossiping about school.

  I realize that he’s watching me, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “What?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, “but I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw you.”

  Happiness spreads through me like warm thick syrup. “Yeah,” I say. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Chapter Five

  She’d been wearing sandals, and now her feet were bare in his lap. They each had a glass of bourbon, and there was a full bottle on the coffee table.

  And Renly was very, very aware of the pressure of her heels on his thighs. He lifted his glass and took a sip, enjoying the burn as he swallowed. He felt the fire spread through him, and he tried to blame it all on the drink.

  It wasn’t just the drink.

  It was seeing her again. The eagerness with which she’d flown into his arms.

  It was teasing her, the water fight at the car wash, and the way his cock had stiffened when that wet tee had strained against her breasts.

  It was the smell of her on the shirt he was wearing, and the pressure of her feet on his thighs. The heat seeping through the cotton PJ bottoms, then sliding into his veins, coursing through him and reminding him of those last few months before he’d left Castaic. The months when all he’d been able to think about was Abby, even though he’d never worked up the nerve to tell her. How could he? They’d been friends. Friends. And no way was he going to screw that up by telling her he’d been jerking off every night to the fantasy that she’d sneak over and into his room the way they’d used to in sixth grade.

  He hadn’t told her then, and he wasn’t going to tell her now, even though he longed to pull her down on the couch, then silence her gasp of surprise with a hard, punishing kiss, wild and deep enough to erase his fantasies. Or fulfill them.

  “Renly.”

  Because why the hell would he need them if he had reality?

  “Renly!”

  He shook himself, turning to her and praying he hadn’t said any of that aloud. “Sorry? What?”

  “I said that tickles.”

  He realized he’d been stroking the ball of her foot with the pad of his thumb. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. It felt nice. At least until it started to tickle.” She cleared her throat, and her cheeks turned a little pink, and he had the feeling that she was bullshitting. That it didn’t tickle at all, and she just wanted him to stop stroking her skin.

  And that was a damn shame.

  He cleared his throat and shifted on the sofa, using the movement as an excuse to pull his hands away. “So tell me about these calls,” he said because that seemed like the safest possible topic.

  “It’s probably just paranoia,” she said. “I told you on the street. Heavy breathing. Hangups. A real pain.”

  “Any texts?”

  She shook her head.

  “Voicemails?”

  “Yes, but just silence. The breathing’s only when I answer, but I don’t answer my cell. Just the office phone. It doesn’t have caller ID. And during business hours, Marge takes the calls at the front desk.”

  “Any bad dates recently?”

  She made a snorting noise. �
�Nothing but bad dates,” she said. “But not very many of them. And I don’t think any of the guys seem like the type.”

  “You never know. Tell me about them. Names, where you met them, all the details. I’ll check them out.”

  “Yeah, well.” She drew in a breath. “God, this is embarrassing.”

  “Dating?” He nodded sagely. “Yeah. Pathetic.”

  “You’re so not funny. No, the details. It was, you know, one of those apps. A friend of mine designed it, so I’m in the beta program, and—”

  “Your friend’s name?”

  “What? No, it’s not him.”

  He stared her down until she conceded, and he wrote Cedric’s name and details in his phone to follow up on tomorrow. “And the actual dates? Or were they just hookups?”

  “No. No, no.” She shook her head. “I’ll forward all the information I have later,” she promised. “It’s not like you’re going to track them down tonight. But they were not hookups.”

  “Right,” he said, a bit alarmed by her tone. “Sorry for misunderstanding.”

  “Oh, hell,” she said, then shifted on the sofa and pulled her knees up, which had the unfortunate side-effect of removing her feet from his lap.

  He turned so he was looking at her more directly. “Abby, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t do hookups,” she said. “I mean, I know that makes me some sort of prehistoric weirdo, but it’s not my thing. I’m not interested in hookups or friends-with-benefits or any of that. I want—” She shook her head. “Never mind. Getting off topic.” She drew in a breath. “The point of the app is to let folks have it both ways. Tribe Find. You can search for romance or hookups or just friends.”

  “And you were looking for friends?”

  She lowered her eyes, her neck and ears turning pink as she said, “Romance. But it didn’t work out. Not even a smidgeon of a spark. I don’t know…”

  “What?” He was genuinely interested. He wanted inside her head. He was fascinated by what she wanted and what made her tick.

  “I just—I’d had such shit luck in the real world, I guess I hoped that filling out a profile would help. But it didn’t help at all.”

  “The real world. Who?”

  “It’s—there was this guy named Travis who worked with me. And we started going to dinner sometimes, and then we started sleeping together.”

  With every word, Renly felt a tightening in his gut, and he realized that he really, really didn’t like this Travis guy. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “I don’t mean physically.”

  A smile flickered on her lips, and her voice was softer when she said, “No. Thanks, though. No, it wasn’t that he hurt me. I guess it was that we didn’t understand each other. We started hanging out together, then sleeping together. And I thought it was going somewhere, and he thought it was friends with benefits. But it got to where we couldn’t even go to a movie without ending up in bed.”

  “And that was bad?”

  She lifted her hands. “I wanted a relationship—something real, you know. He just wanted fun. I finally told him that we had to stop.”

  “He was okay with that?”

  Something that might have been pain flashed over her face, but she nodded. “Eventually, yeah. But it was hard getting back on track. I shouldn’t have ever slept with him in the first place.”

  “Do you think he—”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  She was adamant, but Renly wasn’t convinced. He nodded, but at the same time he made a mental note to check this Travis guy out.

  “How about you?”

  He didn’t have to ask what she meant. Of all the friends he’d ever had, it was always Abby he understood perfectly. This time, though, he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. But he did, because she deserved to hear the truth, just like she’d told him the truth. “I guess I’m the opposite. I’m not a big fan of relationships. Sex I like, though. So the concept of friends with benefits suits me just fine.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  That was not a subject he was getting into now, so he just shook his head and asked, “You really didn’t know I was in town?”

  “Not a clue. I already told you that. And why are you changing the subject?”

  He exhaled, then decided he’d rather she hear it from him. “You know I’ve been working in Hollywood. Well, I’ve been dating there, too. Francesca Muratti and Marissa McQuire. A few others, but those were the ones that landed my picture all over social media.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never really paid much attention to celebrity gossip, but I know the names. They’re both huge. You’re saying that you dated both of them.”

  “More like fuck-buddies,” he said. “I’m not really the relationship type.” It was who he was—who he always had been, at least since high school. Before that, he’d been sure he’d marry Abby and they’d move to Hawaii. He’d never been to Hawaii, but it seemed exotic, and at eleven the idea of marriage had seemed exotic enough that Hawaii made sense.

  Now he knew how foolish he’d been. Getting serious with Abby would have been a mistake. Hell, they wouldn’t even be here now, having this conversation, because it would have invariably fallen apart, and then they would have lost everything, this perfect, easy friendship most of all.

  “Why not?” she asked, and it took him a second to realize that she was asking why he didn’t do relationships.

  “It’s just—I don’t think it ever works out the way people think it will.”

  “Wow. Well, that just makes me sad. Why?”

  He lifted his hands, then let them fall. Then flat-out changed the subject, easing back to their childhood. At first, he thought she was going to protest. But soon enough they were both on their third glass of whiskey and laughing their asses off remembering the time they’d tried to build a treehouse. “The look on your face when you fell though that flooring.”

  “Hey, I could have killed myself.”

  “Nah,” she said with a grin. “You’re indestructible. That’s why you make such a great military guy. And Stark Security guy. What?” she added with a frown, apparently noticing something in his expression.

  He forced a smile. “Nothing. I’m just thinking you make a good point. I wasn’t built for either architecture or constuction. Construction,” he said, realizing he’d had just enough whiskey to be pleasantly buzzed.

  “You should stay here,” she said. “It’s silly to take an Uber home only to come back to the area tomorrow to get your bike. Plus, this couch is super comfy.”

  He patted the cushion, hoping she couldn’t tell the way that her suggestion that he stay had perked up every cell in his body, only to have them sagging in disappointment when she made it clear that he’d be camping on the couch.

  “I don’t know,” he began.

  “Oh, come on. It’s getting late, but I don’t want to stop talking. Do you?”

  “No,” he said honestly. Right then, he felt like he could talk to her forever. More, that he wanted to. “Do you remember the time we decided to run away?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course. Third grade and we had different teachers. It was horrible.”

  “And you had a friend who was homeschooled, and when our parents said no way, we decided to homeschool ourselves.”

  “It seemed reasonable at the time,” she said, and he chuckled with the memory.

  “We each took an encyclopedia, water, and potato chips,” he said. “I had X-Y-Z.”

  “Because it was the thinnest and you were lame,” she said, and he really did laugh.

  “Not lame. Just lazy. Not like you. I had to talk you out of taking three because they were heavy. You said we’d sneak back for others after we read each one, and by the time we came home, we’d know everything there was to know.”

  “It was a good plan,” she said. “Just missing some key pieces of, um—”

  “Reality?”

  “That about covers i
t,” she admitted.

  They shared a smile, and he felt so damn settled. It was a good feeling, and terrifying too, because he knew so well that it could all evaporate in an instant. It had with his parents, after all. His mom going deaf. His father packing up and leaving. Being dragged to Houston when he wanted to stay firmly at home. And in Iraq as well. Close friends, gone in an instant. His own life changed in the blink of an eye.

  “Hey?” Her gentle voice pulled him from his dark thoughts. “Did I lose you?”

  “I miss those days,” he said honestly.

  “Me too.” She took another sip of her drink. “I’m a little tipsy, or I probably wouldn’t say this, even though I’m sure you already know.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “I had a total crush on you freshman year.”

  “No way.”

  She nodded firmly. “Oh, yes. But you were so popular, and I thought you’d forgotten I existed.”

  Her words were like a knife to his heart.

  “God no. I kept—I was afraid to hang out with you.”

  “What? Why?”

  He drew a breath. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking of you. I had this fantasy that you’d knock on my window one night, and I’d let you in, and—”

  He shook his head, cutting off the words. “But we’d never been like that—we were friends—and I thought if you saw it in my eyes, I’d lose you. The same way I lost my dad. He didn’t even try to work it out with my mom. It just got hard and he couldn’t deal and he left.”

  “You thought that would happen to us?”

  “I wanted you as a friend more than I wanted you in bed—hell, back then I didn’t even know what that would be like. Not really. But I imagined it in living color.”

  “Yeah?” She scooted closer, her knees pulled up inside that pale pink dress. “So, um, how was I?”

  He swallowed, trying not to look at the way her nipples were tight against the thin material. Or the way her pulse was beating in her neck. He needed to stop this. Needed to back it down, because this conversation had taken a dangerous—enticing—left turn. Keep going, and he’d regret it. He knew it.