She rolled her eyes and waved a hand. “That explains everything, D.”
He blushed at the nickname she’d given him, something only a lover… or a really good friend… might do. “What, why I’m so pathetic?”
“Exactly. You think love means pain, and that you must suffer. But it doesn’t mean that at all.”
“So what does it mean?”
She fixed him with her eyes. Or, at least, he thought she did. It was hard to tell behind those big, black sunglasses. “It means trust, Derek. The very fact that you’re here, pining away, means you either can’t trust her, or she can’t trust you. And we both know the latter isn’t true.”
“Well,” he hemmed.
“What, she can’t trust you?”
Derek sighed and plowed on with his confession, something he should have explained ages ago. “I kind of… cheated on her.”
“And now, what… you think she’s paying you back while you’re out of town?” Derek nodded. “From everything you told me about Sage, Derek, and it’s been a lot, she doesn’t sound like that type.”
“What makes you that type?” he asked.
Her mouth made a giant “O” and he knew he’d stepped in it. “Pardon me?” she gasped, only half-joking.
“I mean, I don’t think I’m flattering myself when I say you’ve been, well… throwing yourself at me, even when you know I love Sage. Why… why are you that kind of girl?”
“Maybe that’s because I know you’re unavailable,” she said, though they both knew that was far from the case.
Just then the waiter appeared, taking away their plates as he and Angel shared their seventeenth smoldering glance. When he went back inside, Derek teased, “And the waiter? Is he unavailable?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she chuckled. “That’s why I flirt. To find out.”
“And if he is available?”
She smirked. “Then I would wear ear plugs tonight if I were you, Derek, because you’ve given me a serious case of blue balls and if you don’t climb into my bed, well… I’ll have to find a worthy replacement.”
He chuckled, peering at his phone again. “I should let you get to it then,” he said, gripping the sides of his chair.
“Before you do, Derek, remind yourself that you haven’t done anything wrong… yet. And, if you trust her, you can believe that she hasn’t, neither.”
“That’s just it,” he sighed, standing at last and tossing a twenty-dollar bill down on the table for his half of the check. “I don’t know if I trust her anymore.”
She shook her head, finally sliding her sunglasses atop her head. “Then I feel sorry for you, Derek,” she said, their eyes meeting for a stolen moment. “Because it’s a long time until winter break.”
“You’re telling me,” he said, peering at the plastic pumpkin blinking inside the laundromat next door, Halloween having only recently come and gone. “You sure you don’t want me to walk you home?”
“It’s okay,” Angel said as the waiter returned and sank into Derek’s seat, hardly giving him a second glance. “I’ll… get a ride.”
Derek snorted and drifted toward the crosswalk, wondering if he’d ever hear from Sage again.
Chapter 9
Sage
“I’m not here to bug you.”
Craig looked handsome, and abashed, in the early morning light. He’d been standing in front of Sequels when Sage walked down to open the store that morning, and she’d been both shocked – and relieved – to see him.
“You could never bug me,” she said, reaching instinctively for his hand. He gripped it, gently, non-threateningly. “I’ve been meaning, I wanted to talk to you, about the other night.”
“I feel horrible.”
“Me, too.”
“I’ve been meaning to call.”
“Me, too!”
Their words jumbled over each other’s, frantic and relieved, as if two steaming kettles had just started to whistle right next to each other at the same time!
Mid-sentence they froze, hands in mid-air, and laughed. “I… I feel like an awkward teenager,” Sage confessed.
“I feel like a fool,” Craig said. “I… I don’t know what came over me. I told myself, having been cheated on in the past, I’d never be ‘the other guy’ and that’s exactly what I became.”
“I’ve been cheated on, too, Craig and… I never wanted to do that, either.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“Only if you’ll forgive me!”
They laughed and, suddenly relieved, Sage clung to Craig in a friendly hug. “I just… Please don’t stop coming into Shuckers,” he begged. “No one else there reads!”
“Don’t quit coming into Sequels,” she said. “I don’t want this to be awkward for either of us.”
She held out her hand. “Deal?”
“Deal,” he said, taking it then dropping it like a hot potato. “I’m so relieved, I… I haven’t been sleeping.”
“Oh my God, me neither,” she confessed. “The store doesn’t even open for another hour and I just can’t stay upstairs and pace anymore.”
He nodded and, as if suddenly exhausted, sagged before her very eyes. “Well, I… I just wanted to say all that, Sage. Thanks for listening.”
“Thanks for not being afraid to come by,” Sage said. “I’ve been… I’ve been wanting to stop by Shuckers and talk to you, but… It seemed too public.”
“Why do you think I’m stalking you here?” he asked. They stood awkwardly; after that, morning sun shone gently on his kind, young face. When the awkward grew too much, they both chuckled and said, “Well,” in unison making them laugh all the more.
“I’ll quit stalking you now,” he said, turning away.
“I’ll stalk you at Shuckers later,” she said, watching his lean, athletic frame drift down the street until it turned around the corner, pausing just long enough to peer back at her to make sure she was watching him. When he saw that she had, he smiled, did a little wave and then quickly hustled away.
Sage sighed with relief, thinking how much easier her life had been before Derek. In her earlier, mostly celibate days, she’d never had mornings like this! Then again, she’d never had nights like the ones she’d spent with Derek – and even Craig – either.
Sighing at her predicament, she unlocked the door to Sequels, surprised to smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Had she left the coffeemaker on last night?
“Morning!”
“Jesus!” Sage gasped, standing just inside the door, Colby standing with a fresh mug of coffee in hand, only inches away. “You scared me half to death. What… Why… Since when do you get here an hour before we open?”
“Since you forgot to order the nutmeg again,” Colby said, handing her the coffee.
“I did?” Sage followed her manager to the café bar and sat – slumped, was more like it – into her favorite corner stool.
“I saw it last night when I was closing up, so I ran by the Quick Mart on my way in this morning. They had a few jars, so that should hold us until the express shipment I ordered last night which comes in tonight or tomorrow.”
“Colby,” Sage said, shaking her head. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“That’s what managers are for, right?”
Sage nodded. “Not Sequels managers,” she said. “At least, not usually. I… I usually pull more of my weight around here. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately.”
“Was it… him?” Colby asked, pointing with her own half-empty coffee mug toward the front doors.
“You… you saw that?” Sage blushed to think what Colby might have seen and thought through the front doors of Sequels.
“Kind of hard to miss, Sage.” Colby wore a vaguely motherly expression, and Sage was shocked by how quickly their fortunes had reversed. Once upon a time, Colby had been the young harlot – now it was Sage’s turn.
“What’s going on?” Colby asked, leaning across from Sage. “What’s happening with
you?”
Sage felt her anxiety catch up with her; a week full of sleepless nights and a guilty conscience taking their toll. “Can I tell you something?” she blurted in a moment of weakness, almost desperate to get it out.
“Do I have a choice?” Colby chuckled helpfully.
“Not this time,” Sage said, sighing and taking a deep breath before spitting it out: “I kissed that man.”
“Out there?” Colby asked. “You mean, right now?”
“No, the… other night.”
Colby’s face fell. “Were you drunk?”
“I wish I could blame it on that, Colby,” Sage said, sliding her coffee away, her stomach suddenly upset. “But… I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to do more.”
“Jesus, did you?”
Sage sighed. “No, I stopped myself, but now I can’t stop kicking myself!”
Colby chuckled joylessly. “It’s not funny,” Sage insisted.
“I’m not laughing, Sage, I’m just… a little surprised, that’s all.”
“You’re surprised?” Sage blurted.
The two coworkers and, more recently, friends, shared a laugh. “So what are you going to do now?”
Sage shrugged. “I feel like, I feel like I won’t be able to rest until I tell Derek.”
“No, no,” said Colby, waving a hand. “Jesus, Sage… why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Why hurt him like that?” Colby reasoned. “I mean, he’s away, being a good boy, and you’re here kissing a strange man?”
Her tone was sarcastic, her face smiling, but they both knew the words were true. “But it’s the right thing to do.”
“I know, Sage, but sometimes the right thing to do isn’t the best thing to do. At least not in matters of the heart…”
“So what should I do?” Sage asked, hardly believing she was asking Derek’s former mistress for advice about her love life!
“Go see him,” Colby blurted, nodding aggressively.
“I can’t,” Sage said, thinking of the store and the inventory, the paperwork and ordering.
“Why? Because you’ve been so on point around here for the last three months? Jesus, Sage, you can’t even remember nutmeg and you think the place is going to fall apart if you spend a long weekend in California?”
“I couldn’t do that to you,” she said. “You can’t run the place all by yourself that long.”
“So ask your friend Marge from the beauty salon,” Colby suggested. “She can pop in and check on me, cover me for lunch breaks. You’ll just owe me a ton of overtime that’s all!”
Sage slumped in her barstool and sighed. “Well, I was hoping he’d come home for Thanksgiving break,” she admitted, “but he said they only get two days off and by the time he flew home, turned around and flew back, it would hardly be worth it.”
“Perfect,” Colby said. “So go see him instead. That way, at least, you can find some peace. Look at him in the eye, see how hurt he might be if you told him the truth. Or tell him the truth and hash it out in person, either way… You can’t do something like this over the phone or through a text thread!”
“Really?” Sage asked, her heart lightening for the first time in days. “I mean, I am due a break, and you have basically been running this place while I’ve been zoned out these days…”
More and more, the idea was looking realistic to Sage. “I should call him though, right, see if he even wants me to come?”
“Of course he wants you to come,” Colby said, “and where’s the romance in that? You surprise him, Sage. Get in the day before Thanksgiving, show up at his dorm with dinner and all the trimmings, and spend all that weekend making up. He’ll be thrilled.”
“Really?” Sage asked, the idea having a kind of romantic appeal to it. “I shouldn’t warn him.”
“What?” Colby chuckled, inching behind the counter to refill their mugs in advance of the long day ahead. “And spoil all the fun?”
Chapter 10
Derek
Derek buttoned his shirt and looked in the mirror, smirking at himself. He’d gotten so used to khakis and dress shorts in his “teacher mode,” he no longer felt “grown up” when “dressing up”. He combed his hair and found it too slick, so he just tousled it instead.
“Better,” he said, sighing and sipping his beer. It was Thanksgiving and Angel had invited the other traveling teachers to have dinner in her dorm suite. He thought it was a nice touch; a casual, low key way for the traveling teachers to hang out and get to know each other better.
Most of them were like him: Too far from home to go for a quick visit, particularly when the semester would be over in a few weeks anyway, and they’d be home for good.
He wrote a note and stuck it on his door, just in case any of the guests got the dorm number wrong, and smiled at the little turkey he’d drawn in the corner margin.
He grabbed the bottle of red wine he’d bought as a “hostess gift” for the occasion and finished his beer. Opening his door, he heard jazz music coming from inside Angel’s and smiled. He’d been pretty solitary throughout his semester, really focusing on his syllabus and his students’ writing assignments, to the exclusion of meeting his fellow professors. Now he hoped to rectify that.
“Knock, knock,” he said, pressing open the door and finding the spacious dorm suite aglow with flickering votive candles, tiny glitter turkeys and the smell of… Chinese food?
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Angel said, looking stunning in a maroon slip dress that was so sleek and sheer it was clear she wore little – if anything – underneath. “Am I the first one here?”
She turned, a glass of wine in each hand. “First?” she asked, then her face brightened. “Oh, yes… so far. A few have canceled, but… we’ll start drinking without them anyway.”
Derek sighed and traded her his wine glass for the bottle. She showed him the one already opened on the kitchen counter – it was the same brand. “Great minds,” she murmured, clinking his glass. “To being thankful for new friends,” she said, voice soft and eyes glassy, making him wonder when she’d started drinking. “And to new beginnings.”
“To new beginnings,” he murmured, nodding at the name on the containers covering her counter. “And… New China?”
She chuckled. “I hate cooking,” she confessed, joining him in the dorm suite where they took their usual seats: Her on the couch, him on the wing chair next to it. “So I ordered in. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I’m used to having Thanksgiving on the road, so… I can’t tell you the last time I spent one around an actual dinner table.”
“I usually go out,” she said. “You always meet so many lonely people that night.”
“You mean lonely men?” he teased.
She smiled. “Perhaps. Are you lonely, Derek?”
“Not this again,” he sighed good naturedly.
She chuckled, crossing her long, endless legs so slowly he could see the black panties she wore. “We only have a few more weeks left together, Derek. And then… poof… I’m back to my life, and you’re back to Sabrina.”
“Sage,” he corrected her. “You know that.”
“Of course I do,” she groaned, only half joking. “You’ve talked about her nonstop since you got here.”
“That’s what you do when you love someone,” he chuckled.
“Love,” she groaned, fierce eyes flashing. “And where is she tonight, if you’re so in love?”
Derek shrugged. “I... I don’t actually know,” he confessed. He’d been texting her nonstop since yesterday, but she’d dropped off the face of the earth – again! “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.”
“Even if she does,” she said, nodding toward the music coming from her wireless speaker, “she wouldn’t mind a little dance between friends, would she?”
Angel stood, statuesque and slinky in that dress. It was more like a slip, hugging her every curve, clinging to her naked breasts a
nd sheer, flat belly. “Friends?” he asked, rising, because… why not?
“Friends who dance on Thanksgiving,” she purred. Or was it slurred?
He grabbed her hands, unsteady on her feet, and held them close. “Have you been drinking your dinner?”
“A little,” she said, slumping against him. Her body was so slick and warm, he instantly grew hard. “Does it matter?”
“That’s kind of a tradition,” he said as they rocked, side to side, slowly, gently, in time with the music. Her body was warm against his, her breath warm against his ear.
He felt her hands slide south of his waist and chuckled, taking them and putting them back where they belonged. “You’re no fun,” she said.
“You’re no hostess,” he said, pushing her gently away despite the silky feeling of her skin against his own. “No one else is coming tonight, is there?”
She blushed and looked away, biting her lip. “No, I… I invited them,” she said. “Or maybe I forgot. I can’t… rightly remember.”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. “See?” she said, brightening. “There’s someone now!”
Chapter 11
Sage
Sage thanked the taxi driver and gave him an extra ten-dollar tip for stopping at the drive-thru on the way to campus. Not only was she in dire need of coffee after the Herculean journey she’d just had, but she wanted to bring Derek something now that it was actually Thanksgiving, and not the day before like she’d planned.
She stood, rolling her bag in one hand and carrying a large, handled bag full of Hamburger Hut in the other. It wasn’t gourmet, and far from turkey, but she’d gotten nearly everything on the menu just in case: Fried mushrooms and broccoli bites, cheese sticks and curly fries, hamburgers and fish sandwiches and every imaginable sauce she could think of. Frankly, she was only still on her feet because of the Double Mocha Mint shake she’d slurped on the way to Southern California Community College!
The food smelled delicious, and not just because she hadn’t eaten all day. It was because she knew in a matter of minutes that she’d be sharing it with Derek. As she admired the two-story brick dorms set around a charming main “quad,” Sage tried to imagine how he’d react to her big “surprise”.
Waves of Passion: Contemporary Romance (Holidays Beach Read Book 3) Page 5
