The breath held in my lungs escaped without permission, and it erupted from my lips with a gasp. My tongue poked at my inner cheek as all thoughts of meatloaf fluttered to the ground. “Because he’s …” Suddenly emotion came to choke me, clotting my throat and halting my words. I swallowed. “He’s everything to me, you know that. I don’t want to lose him—I can’t lose him, Brooke.”
“Honey,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t lose him. You’d only be gaining the man you deserve. Instead of these lame assholes you find at the bank or wherever the hell you pick them up.” I bubbled with a water-logged giggle. “And you’d finally be getting some good sex, and holy shit, you really need some of that.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kylie
It was a meatloaf. Undeniably, a meatloaf.
Sliced and ready to serve, I put the plate on the table. I turned, ready to grab the bowl of mashed potatoes, when a key slid into the lock on the front door and my stomach bottomed out.
Devin stepped into the room and I noticed the daisies in his hand.
Immediately, his eyes rolled to the back of his head. “Holy fuck, that smells good,” he said, groaning as he closed the door behind him. Eddie ran to figure-eight around his ankles, and Devin bent over to stroke a hand over his back and tail. “Hey buddy.”
When he stood up, he caught sight of me and walked around the table to hand me the flowers. My tongue glued itself to the roof of my mouth, making it difficult to speak, but I smiled and took them from him.
“Thank you,” I managed to say while Brooke’s words coaxed the butterflies in my stomach to erupt in a cluster of panicked flutters. “But you just got me daisies yesterday,” I reminded him, glancing at the dozen in the center of the table.
He nodded, eyeing the blossomed petals. “Yeah, I know.” His voice rasped in his throat, weighted down by something he was withholding.
I encouraged myself to continue smiling, to not focus on his lips or the fact that my heart felt like it could burst through my chest at any moment.
I turned with the bouquet gripped in my fist and hurried into the kitchen to find something to put them in. “God,” I laughed nervously, “I don’t think I even have another vase.”
I opened a few cabinet doors as Devin walked in behind me.
“These potatoes going to the table?” he asked needlessly. How was he sounding so calm? How was he not shaken by the obvious chasm that had formed in our friendship, opened up by all of these feelings of romance and sex?
I looked over my shoulder with a quick nod. “Uh, yep.” He responded with a nod of his own, grabbed the bowl, and headed back to the table.
My heart was wrestling in my chest, ringing around the feelings that were suddenly too much for me to handle on my own. It was as though my emotions had manifested into something impossible, obsessive, and completely out of control. I leaned my back against the counter, closed my eyes and focused on taking one, two slow, relaxing breaths.
“KJ?” My eyes snapped open to see Devin standing in the doorway, an expression of concern blanketing his face. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m … fine.” My eyes flickered over to the refrigerator and noticed a dust-coated vase on top. I pointed toward it. “Hey, can you reach that?”
“See, I knew this is the only reason you keep me around,” he teased, grabbing the vase off the refrigerator with ease. “I’ll wash it after dinner. Come on, let’s go eat before it gets cold.”
With a sigh and a nod, I placed the plastic-wrapped bouquet on the counter and followed him to the table, stopping in my tracks when he pulled out my chair.
“What are you doing?” I blurted without thinking.
“I’m pulling out your chair,” he said so simply, I could have smacked him. Like it was nothing and like I wasn’t supposed to read into it. But how could I not when he had never done that before? Not once.
“But why?”
He dropped his gaze to the table, furrowing his brow. Considering his answer before he finally replied, “Because we’re having dinner.”
“But you’ve never—”
“Kylie,” he said, looking back to me. “I really just want to have dinner with you, okay? So, please. Just sit.”
My eyes fell to the chair he held in his white-knuckled grip.
His grandfather had given us the small maple dining set when Devin first moved into the apartment, after Brooke took hers. It was an old thing, something Billy had in his breakfast nook. We’d protested initially, saying he needed it and that we could buy our own. But he insisted, with the blunt assurance that, he no longer gave a shit about having breakfast in the nook, when he could no longer sit there with his late wife.
Six months later, he had moved into the nursing home.
The table had been the spot of many memories for Devin’s grandparents, sharing meals overlooking their beautiful backyard in a small neighborhood in middle Connecticut. I was sure it was where he used his own musical talents, to serenade her over tea or coffee or whatever they drank, and after the guilt of taking it had subsided, I had grown to cherish that we were making our own special memories at that table.
Friendship and double dates. Conversation and meals.
And now, it appeared it would hold the memory of our first date.
I found myself nodding, stepping forward to a meatloaf I suddenly wished I wasn’t wearing my pajamas. I wished my hair wasn’t piled on top of my head in a purple birds’ nest. I wished I had thrown a little more makeup on, wished I had made more of an attempt at looking human—attractive—and as I sat down, and he pushed my chair in, I wished it had all happened sooner.
“You better be washing your hands first,” I said in a quiet voice, glancing at him before he could sit, and he relaxed with a grin.
“Fine,” he grumbled, chuckling as his boots carried him into the kitchen and the water was turned on. Thirty long seconds later, he came back to the table and pulled his chair out, sitting as he flashed his clean hands at me. “I used soap and water. Would you like to smell them to make sure I’m not lying?”
“No, I think I can trust you,” I said with a gentle eye roll as I reached for the mashed potato spoon, only to have Devin grab it first. “Wow, what happened to ladies first?”
He smirked as he reached across the table for my plate, and my heart continued its base drum imitation as he scooped potatoes, green beans, and a slice of meatloaf onto my plate. After placing it back down in front of me, I stared at my food with anxiety festering in my stomach, and I wondered, how was I going to eat all of this? How the hell was I going to eat at all?
“So, I saw Billy today,” Devin said, commencing small talk as we normally would during dinner.
“How is he?” I asked without pause. I could handle our casual chatter. Casual chatter was comfortable and familiar.
“Still grumpy as fuck,” he said, quirking his mouth into a half smile as he poured the pitcher of iced tea into my glass.
Then, his brow crumpled at the sight of the glasses and tea, and he shoved his seat back. “Hold on a second,” he said, and walked into the living room.
I knew the apartment like the back of my hand—I had lived there for even longer than he had, after all—and when he took four steps and stopped, I knew he was standing in front of the Bluetooth speaker. It wasn’t unusual for us to listen to music in the apartment. Melodies and lyrics carried me through the day-to-day to such an extent that, without it, the staccato of the world had the power to drive me crazy.
But it was the song he chose.
My hands covered my mouth and blocked my silent scream, as I listened to the beginning acoustic notes of “Walking After You” by the Foo Fighters. It was mood music, a sexy backdrop, and my heart thumped wildly, as he came back to the table and sat down.
I watched as he grabbed his glass of iced tea and saw the tension of his bicep as he lifted the glass to his mouth. I watched his Adam’s apple bob with each swallow, watched him lower it back to t
he table, and I watched him lick his lips.
And then, he watched me.
“What are you looking at?” he asked over Dave Grohl’s rasped voice.
“Nothing,” I lied, diverting my gaze to my drink. Grabbing it, I focused on the cold, sweating glass under my palm. I begged it to chill the flame that was threatening to swallow me whole.
“Liar. You’re looking at me,” he said, lifting the corner of his mouth into a grin. “It’s like you’ve never looked at me before.”
I wasn’t sure I had.
I suddenly felt like the twenty-year-old meeting the cute older boy again. The devilishly handsome hero who pretended to know me and saved me.
Except now … it was like meeting him without having my sick father to worry about. It was as though none of that time had passed in between then and now, and I couldn’t quite remember what kept us from being together.
“Anyway,” he said, brushing it off, “Billy’s a cranky fucker as usual, but he did say to tell you hi.”
I smiled weakly, wishing my stomach would finish its gymnastics routine. “Maybe I’ll come with you next time.”
Devin picked up his fork and knife and smiled at me. “He’d really like that,” he said, and just before he began to cut up his meatloaf, he added, “I would too.”
I took his cue, as though I had been waiting for it, and I began to slowly eat my dinner. Taking small bites and coaxing myself to swallow, despite the panicked butterflies in my gut.
“Fucking hell,” he groaned after taking a bite. “Now, that’s a meatloaf. I should call Britney up right now and tell her.”
I snorted, annoyed at how my laugh seemed to tangle with my nerves. “I’m sure she’d love that.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure that would make her night, to hear from me. She didn’t want to split up,” he mentioned casually, and I glanced up from my plate. “I think she thought things might go somewhere between us or something.”
My fork dug into my mashed potatoes, it prodded little holes between the lumps and specks of pepper. “That would’ve been weird.”
“What would be weird?”
“You in a relationship.”
A barked laugh rang through the apartment. “It would’ve been weird if I was in a relationship with Britney, but the right person?” He shrugged, still grinning. “I don’t think that would be weird at all.”
Wetting my lips and dropping my gaze to the table, I listened as the song ended. I braced myself, holding onto hope that the next song would keep me grounded, but then there was Peter Gabriel’s cover of “Book of Love.” And there was me, afraid to listen to the lyrics and search their meaning. Afraid to wonder if he’d done this on purpose.
“Billy told me today, that I do everything half-assed,” he said before I could find the ability to speak. “He said that I live half a life, and I realized he was right.”
I was taken aback. “That’s not—”
He shook his head. “Don’t tell me it’s not true, Kylie.”
I sank lower into my chair and took to pushing my beans around the plate, ignoring Peter’s haunting voice. “I just don’t understand how it’s true.”
Devin lowered his fork and placed it on the table. He grabbed a green bean and bit it in half, snapped it between his teeth, and chewed slowly, watching me shuffle mine into a neat little row. I waited for him to speak again, I wanted his voice to fill the air that was too thick with an unknown tension.
“I never wanted a girlfriend, you know. I liked not being tied down,” he finally said, shaking his head. “I think it broke my parents’ hearts when they realized how disinterested I was with the idea of being exclusive to anyone. Actually, for a little while, they thought I was gay, and that I was suppressing it with casual dating.”
Unsure of where the conversation was heading, I laughed lightly through my nose. “You? Gay?”
He shrugged while a faraway smile lifted the corners of his lips. “Once, Pop pulled me aside and told me I didn’t have to overcompensate, and that I was free to be myself.” He laughed, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. “I straight-up told him my desire for dick was about as strong as Elton John’s desire for pussy, and I never heard about it again.” He leaned forward, folding his forearms on the table. “But you know what I’ve had to hear about for the longest fucking time?”
I shook my head, swallowing against the tangle of nerves and butterflies. “No, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
He smirked, and with a slight tip of his chin toward his chest, he pointed the second half of the green bean in my direction. And my heart, oh, my fucking heart … if it beat any harder, any louder, any stronger, I would have died right there in that chair, where his grandparents had shared decades of breakfasts.
I couldn’t help myself as I dropped my fork and pressed both hands to my face. I breathed hard and loud through my nose as the song changed to “Murder of One” by Counting Crows. And Devin … he just leaned back in his chair, popping the other half of the bean into his mouth. He tipped his head back, elongating his neck as he chewed and swallowed.
“Oh … fuck,” I so articulately responded into my hands, as I tried desperately to process what exactly was happening.
Devin brought his head forward, crossed his arms over his chest and dropped his eyes to the table, fixating on the plate in front of him. “You know … the thing is, when I was younger, I was just a stupid kid, and I could chalk it up to that. But, I’m a grown-ass man now, and I’ve wasted so much time on these women who don’t even know what a fucking meatloaf is. All because I’ve been too scared of losing the woman who makes me the best fucking meatloaf I’ve ever eaten.”
“It’s what friends do,” I said, dangerously on the verge of crying. Dangerously on the brink of throwing up. Dangerously, so dangerously close to jumping over the table into his arms.
“No.” He shook his head with resolve. “What you and I do? No. Friends don’t do this shit, and I don’t know why it’s taken me so fucking long to come to terms with that.”
His words mirrored my recent thoughts and I found myself bending over my plate, exhaling a sob that begged to be released.
“I know,” I whispered.
Needing the security of distance, I jumped up from the table, crossing the room towards the couch. It was happening so quickly, too quickly. Everything was changing at once, and I needed time to catch up, time to process.
I heard the scraping of his chair against the floor, the heavy footfalls of his boots against the wooden planks. “Kylie,” he said, as I covered my face with my palms. “I want to tell you the truth.”
I stood unmoving, as he rounded to stand in front of me. He took my hands, eased them back to my sides, and I let him, staring at his chest. He tucked a finger under my chin and forced me to look up.
“I stared at you for twenty minutes at that party, before I had no choice but to rescue you,” he said, so plainly. “From ten feet away, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And up close, I realized you weren’t just beautiful. Beautiful is only one word, and there are hundreds to describe you. I should know—I’ve spent years stringing them all together. And I wish so fucking badly that I’d asked you out then, instead of writing songs about what’d I do if I had.”
My throat constricted around a hearty lump, and I swallowed repeatedly to no avail. “Why are you telling me this now?” I croaked.
“Because I’ve focused so hard, on helping you achieve your dreams, that I’ve forgotten I have one of my own,” he replied, and I shook my head.
“Your music is your dream, Devin,” I said, my voice hoarse and trembling.
His eyes settled into mine as he replied, “No. I traded that dream in for another one, a better one, the day I met you.”
He released my chin and sat down on the couch. He looked to me expectantly, wanting me to sit beside him, and I did. I kept some safe distance between us, and he only smiled. “It’s still me, Kylie. We
’re still us.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?” he asked, watching me intently.
I leaned forward, rubbing my hands against my face before dropping them to my lap. “Devin, I don’t know. I really just … I don’t know.”
“That’s fine,” he said, nodding, as he pushed a hand through his hair. My fingers ached to mirror the action and I sat on my hands. “I don’t need you to know right away, but I’m making no secret about how I feel anymore. It’s out. We can’t go back now.”
An agonizing truth rang in those words: we can’t go back now. He’d made sure of that by walking into the apartment with every intention of putting a stop to what we had been. The good, comfortable thing we had, and suddenly, I was angry. Sad, even.
Hot tears pricked at my eyes and I tugged my lower lip between my teeth. “I didn’t …” I began, only for my emotions to strangle my words. I swallowed. “I didn’t ask you to do this. I didn’t want things to change. I was happy, I was—”
He barked with laughter, shaking his head. “You’re happy? Really? What—no, wait—who, who made you happy? Nate?”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“No, it doesn’t have anything to do with him. It never had anything to do with any of the guys you’ve dated, and I can’t believe I never saw it before.”
“Saw what? What did you see that you had to come in here tonight and ruin everything?” I glanced at him through the corner of my eye, hating myself for being angry. I despised myself for not giving in to everything I had felt for years, but I had been too used to fighting. Too accustomed to the war to surrender so easily. I was so scared of giving in, of giving up, only to lose him when it went tragically wrong.
“That it’s been me making you happy. Me! Fuck … I mean, we have been with other people, fulfilling some … some need we convinced ourselves we couldn’t get from each other. But I always came home to you, and you always came home to me,” he shook his head and gestured out toward the apartment. “I mean, this isn’t two people cohabitating together, Kylie. This place is us, together. I mean, no wonder your boyfriends hated me so much. I didn’t see it then, but now?” He bit the corner of his lip and chuckled. “Kind of hard to be with a chick when she’s committed to some other guy, you know?”
Daisies & Devin Page 14
