by Tasha Jones
“Was Noah involved?” I asked. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get into it. I wouldn’t make it weird. I didn’t care.
“Not really…” Aaron said, his sentence trailing off. I shook my head and poured us each a glass of soda.
“I’m sorry, I’m being ridiculous. I shouldn’t have asked.” Aaron wanted to say something but I cut him off. “You’re here to talk.”
We walked back to the lounge and I sat down on the couch, curling my feet under me. I took a bite of food so my mouth would be occupied and I wouldn’t say anything else that was stupid.
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior in Ingram, actually,” Aaron said, studying the food in his bowl instead of looking at me. “I behaved like a child when I should have been one of the grown-ups. I don’t know what came over me, and I was an absolute jerk.”
I shook my head and swallowed. “Please, don’t,” I said. I’d messed up so much it was hardly his fault everything had gotten bent out of shape. “I couldn’t even deal with my past, how unprofessional is that? You really weren’t that bad. I left you stranded with a busted nose in a strange town, for god’s sake.”
Aaron chuckled. His black eyes were mostly healed up now, and he just had a thin plaster across his nose. Judging by the way he ate I could tell it still hurt like hell. No one knew that a broken nose meant that eating hurt unless they’d had one, or they’d had to take care of someone who’d had one.
“For what it’s worth, it makes you look like a badass,” I added.
Aaron grinned at me and we sat together in companionable silence for a while, eating.
When we finished our food Aaron collected the empty packets and put them in the trash while I rinsed out the bowls in the sink. It was quick work, doing it together, and I wondered if this was what it was like having someone who could share the load.
As a single businesswoman I didn’t have much of a load in general. What I didn’t have time to clean myself I hired someone else to do, and I wasn’t home a lot. But if I was going to have a family…
I stopped myself from going down that road. I didn’t want to think about it now. If I ignored it, I could still pretend it didn’t exist. There were no reminders.
The pills behind the closed cabinet door mocked me while I made coffee. I was acutely aware of them being there. Aaron sat in the lounge and I brought the cups through. He blew on his and took a small sip, tasting it.
“You still make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted,” he said and took another sip. We sat together on the couch, my knees pulled up with my feet tucked under me. He sat with his feet on the ground but leaning back a bit, slouching. I was close to him, and I was aware of how little space there was between us, and only two pieces of clothing.
I leaned forward and kissed him. He was surprised. I didn’t expect anything else. He was rigid under my lips, and for a moment his body was frozen with no response. But then his lips softened under my own, and I imagined it was a reversal of what had happened between us in the hotel room. When I opened my eyes, still kissing, I saw that Aaron had closed his.
I closed my eyes too, and kissed him like I meant it. It started off sweet and innocent, two people kissing. Tentative tongues, smooth lips that asked questions more than taking action. I lifted my hand and traced his jaw with a finger. The other hand was still wrapped around my coffee cup. Aaron breathed out against my lips, leaned towards me.
The kiss became more intense, and I threw myself into it. I stretched for the coffee table to put down my cup without breaking the kiss. I only managed to find the edge, and my cup teetered for a moment before it fell on the carpet. The coffee fell in an oblong splash of brown along the carpet. I didn’t care. I wanted this.
I needed this.
Aaron put his hands on my shoulders, and pushed me away, breaking the kiss. My neck was craned forward, my face having left his when my body had been pushed away far enough.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice was gentle, but the sharp feeling of offense stung deep into my chest.
“What?” I asked and my voice sounded as thin and trembling as I felt.
Aaron sighed, his body collapsing in on itself with it. “You don’t want this. I know you don’t.”
I looked at him, my mouth slightly open. “Well, no one has tried that reverse psychology technique with me before,” I said. I was defensive. I was angry. I was scared. I was hurt.
Aaron shook his head and placed four fingers between his eyebrows. It looked like it hurt him to think.
“That’s not how I mean it.” He looked up at me. “But I have a feeling you know that. What’s going on? When I was throwing myself at you, you pushed me away. You didn’t want it then. I’m not going to believe you suddenly want it now.”
“Am I not allowed to change my mind?” I asked and I sounded a lot more pleading than I’d wanted to.
“You’re not the kind of woman that just swings from one thought to the next. I know you, and I know you’re deeper than that.”
I looked down at my hands, and suddenly I couldn’t stop it. It was like a dam wall had broken, and every bit of emotion I’d shoved away came crashing down on me at the same time.
I burst out in tears.
Aaron looked like he didn’t know what to do. He squirmed on the couch. I tried to stop, but it just made it worse, turning the crying into hysterical dry sobbing. It felt like I was going to crack open and every last bit of me was going to spill out onto the floor. If I wasn’t careful I was going to end up like my coffee.
“Shit, Tamika… I didn’t mean… Dammit. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.”
I sniveled and hiccupped, trying to stop the tears. I kept wiping my cheeks with my hands to get rid of the tears but every time new ones replaced them.
“It’s not you,” I said through the sobs.
“It’s not me, it’s you?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. How many women have fed him that line?
I shook my head. My body was still convulsing with sobs that I couldn’t control. I’d never lost control like this. I had a feeling this was seven years’ worth of cry coming out all at the same time. I bit the bullet and managed to speak through my meltdown.
“I’m pregnant,” I cried. Saying the words out loud made it all worse. It made it all real. The tears kept coming and I felt like I was going to break in two. When I looked at Aaron, a blurry Adonis through my tears, his face was a blank slate.
“Is this what it’s all about?” he said after a while. I shook my head. Then nodded. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment, and then he did the last thing I expected. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me onto his chest. I sobbed against him like a child, hoping he had the strength to chase my nightmares away. He sat like that with me until my crying finally calmed down, and I was reduced to a few random hiccups here and there. My eyes were puffy and my skin and nose burned from rubbing it so much, but I felt like I could breathe again.
“You love him, don’t you?” Aaron asked, and the question was so out of the blue it smacked me full on in the face. I pushed up and looked at him.
“In case you were wondering, it is kind of obvious. But no, I don’t think he knows it the way I see it.” Aaron let me go so I could sit up, and he looked down at his hands, suddenly finding them very interesting.
“There was a time, not very long ago, actually, that I wished you would look at me the way you look at him. And I was jealous like you can’t believe, that that scruffy cowboy could have your heart and I couldn’t, with all my money and charm.”
“Aaron…” I started but he waved his hand so that he could finish.
“The thing is, he looks at you the same way. And no two people who love each other like that should be kept apart. And I realized that you’re an amazing friend, but unless a woman looks at me like that, she’s not for me.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My chest was a void, a hole that couldn’t take in air. My
ears were ringing.
“He doesn’t look at me that way,” I said. Aaron hadn’t said that. It wasn’t true. I was going to deny it until it all went away.
“You guys are ridiculous, you know that? The whole world can see what’s going on between the two of you, except you and him. And Vanessa, obviously, but she’s a whole different kind of thick.”
I giggled involuntarily when he said that. It was true. I’d thought it too, and we were both too professional to admit to it. My laughter faded and turned into a sigh.
“He doesn’t love me like that. No anymore. Not since I got pregnant.”
“Does he know?”
I shook my head. “I don’t mean this time. I mean the first time. That’s why I left. Because I’d gotten pregnant and he just didn’t want to be a dad.”
Aaron thought about it for a moment. “A lot of things are making sense now,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’d managed to carry on without him. I hadn’t needed him. And then Larry made me go back there, and he turned my whole world upside down. And now I’m right back where I started. And Noah has Vanessa. He’s managed to replace me again.”
Aaron cleared his throat and I frowned. “He’s not dating her anymore,” he said. “He broke up with her.”
“What?”
“Yeah, just after you left. She was torn up about it, and then she came onto me. Maybe she thought I didn’t have taste.”
I chuckled. “Something gives me the idea you don’t really like her.”
“Can you tell?” he asked and smiled. “Honestly, though, I think you need to go back and talk to him. I think you’re fooling yourself thinking you can just carry on like nothing happened. And I think it’s unfair that you’re trying to get with another man when you’re so obviously head over heels for that one.”
“I’m sorry…” I said but Aaron shook his head.
“I meant unfair to yourself. I’m fine, I’m not going to get all torn up about it. I’ll always care about you, but not like that.”
“What if he doesn’t want me back? What if we can’t sort it out and fix it?”
“Then at least you’ll know for sure, instead of running away without having a lot of answers or any closure.”
I put my forehead on Aaron’s shoulder and sighed.
“I’m scared,” I said.
“I know. But this time you’ll have a place to come back to if it fails. And if it doesn’t, you’ll have a home.”
We sat together for a short while longer, and then he got up and left. I was alone in the apartment, and I sat on the couch, staring at the coffee stain on the carpet for a long time before I finally got up and got ready for bed. Just before I crawled under the covers I headed to the kitchen and took the packet of pills out of the cabinet. I read the instructions and took them, swallowing them down.
If I was going to do this, I had to do this right.
Chapter 10 - Noah
A hell of a storm raged outside, with rain rapping furiously against the windows like it was begging to drive into the house, too. The rain was welcome, things had been running dry for a while. But it could turn into something worse, and I didn’t need extra complications.
One of my breeding bulls had gotten into a fight and it looked bad. The vet was supposed to come out again today, but with this weather I doubted he would make it. If the rain carried on like this, the road would be flooded close to the ranch entrance, and the vet wouldn’t get past.
That was if he even made it out in the first place.
I swore and stomped around the kitchen. I had nothing to do but wait it out, and I was getting impatient. I didn’t like having nothing to do. I had to keep distracting my mind if I didn’t want to think about Tamika.
She’d left again. And she’d been pregnant again, probably, although this time I didn’t know for sure. She hadn’t told me the verdict. I prayed for her sake that her period had just been late, and it hadn’t been anything more than that.
I didn’t want her to go through all that again.
I paced the kitchen. I stopped in front of the fridge and opened the cabinet above it, eyeing the bottle of Jack. It was an answer… I shook my head. It was just another door to a life I didn’t want. After I’d woken up at O’Malley’s with a headache that felt like a thousand chisels against my skull I’d crawled out of there. Jake had been real nice about it, not saying something or making it feel like a twisted walk of shame. I’d come home and realized that alcohol would be the death of me if I didn’t watch out.
Losing Tamika again was also a life I didn’t want, but that was something I obviously hadn’t been able to help before, and couldn’t help again. I closed the cabinet door. I could beat this. I didn’t have to drink to deal with anything.
Why did I feel like that statement wasn’t true?
The wind blew the rain against the house in waves. I sat down at the kitchen table and drummed my fingers on the wood. I heard the front door slam and frowned. I got up and walked down the passage.
Vanessa stood in my hallway. Her clothes were dripping with rain water and her hair was plastered to her face. Her makeup was smudged like raccoon eyes and her skin had red blotches on it from the cold.
“What are you doing out in this weather?” I asked.
“I left Kerrville before it got this bad, I just thought it was a bit of light rain. By the time I realized it was getting worse and worse I was too far to turn back.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since we’d broken it off almost three weeks ago. I’d hoped that I wouldn’t see her again, in fact. I’d already had to sit with the knowledge that I’d ruined one woman’s life. I didn’t want to see that I’d ruined another one’s.
“Oh, I think I left a file here. I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find it anywhere. This is the last place it could be.”
I sighed and gave in. It was something important, and I couldn’t just kick her out into the storm anyway. Either we she’d have to wait it out until the worst blew over.
“Go on through to the bathroom. The help put clean towels in the cabinet. I’ll bring you something you can wear until your clothes are dry.” I looked at her dress suit. It was soaked, and I doubted it would dry well. It looked like the kind you had to dry-clean.
Vanessa went through to the bathroom, leaving wet footprints behind. In the bedroom I found a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants with a drawstring that would stay up despite the fact that it would be way too big for her. I took the pile of clothes and put it down outside the bathroom door.
I walked back to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I might just as well have offered her tea. By the looks of things she was going to be around for a while.
The front door slammed again, and I threw my arms up. Was I going to entertain the whole of Ingram in this storm? If I had to it had damn well be the vet. At least he would have a good reason to sit in my kitchen and wait for the storm.
Maybe I could even get him to the barn in this weather.
I walked to the front door. It wasn’t the vet standing dripping in my hallway.
It was Tamika. Her skin glistened with the wetness of the rain. She wore jeans and a collared blouse, and sneakers. She was soaked too, but she made it look classy.
I was frozen in the doorway. She was like a mirage. She looked at me, her eyes deep and hypnotizing, and I didn’t know what to say or do.
“Noah,” she breathed. She was emotional, her business mask forgotten. She looked like the Tamika I knew. It was like the past had come back perfectly to give me another shot. Or another hit. I wasn’t sure which yet.
“Did you put away any of the papers in the cabinet? I think my file might be in there,” Vanessa said behind me. Tamika looked over my shoulder, and looked Vanessa up and down. When I turned, Vanessa’s hair was damp, towel-dried, and she wore my clothes. She looked like she’d just gotten out the shower.
“Oh… Tamika,” Vanessa said when she saw her. She looked at me.
“I didn’t realize this was a bad time,” Tamika said, her voice like ice, and when I looked at her again she was closed and stone cold. She’d blocked me out again. The glimpse of the girl I loved had only lasted a moment. How many times was she going to let me in only to push me out again?
“This isn’t what you think..." I started but Tamika turned around and walked out the front door again, slamming it behind her. She couldn’t go out in that storm. She was crazy to come here in the first place. I stormed after her, yanking open the door. The weather hit me in the face with its force.
“Noah!” Vanessa called after me, but I didn’t care.
“Stay inside. I’m not going to run after you too,” I snapped at her. The door closed behind me, falling shut on an expression on her face that I didn’t care to decipher.
Tamika was here in a small white car. Another rental, I guessed. She’d clambered into the car and she was reversing out now, pulling back up the driveway that led to the gate. I could barely see the end of the garden that surrounded the house through the sheets of rain. It was dangerous to drive and wind rushed past me in waves.
“Tamika!” I shouted but she couldn’t hear me. I watched as she peeled out. A heavy gust of wind shook past me and I took a few steps to the side, trying to keep my balance. The storm was turning dangerous. The little car swerved on the road.
I took off after her. The rain beat against my face like needles, and I was soaked to the bone in a matter of seconds. I couldn’t see the car anymore. I knew I was crazy, but I would run all the way to the gate if I had to. Maybe even further.
When I rounded the bend the road in front of me was empty. I looked toward the gate. She was gone.
I was just about to turn back when something caught my eye to the side. The car's taillights were visible, but the rest of the car was in a ditch, nose first. All the air sucked out of my chest and my world spun. I bolted for the car, slipping on the mud twice before I reached it. I scrambled into the ditch. It was muddy and half full of water from the storm. Inside Tamika’s head was on the steering wheel. I hammered on the window but she wasn’t moving.
