Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy)

by Gretchen Galway

  Bev was disappointed he had such a stick up his butt. “They’re just treats. Like Cookie Monster says, ‘Cookies are a sometimes food.’ Sometimes doesn’t mean never.”

  “You’re quoting Cookie Monster?”

  Bev stared at him. “Somebody has to.”

  His mouth fell open. Then he covered his face with his hands and broke out laughing, and the tension in the room popped like a balloon with a four-year-old.

  “I wasn’t kidding,” she said, but he just laughed harder.

  When his mirth finally drained out of him, he leaned his head back on the cushions and stared at the ceiling. “Ed left Fite to a couch potato who quotes Cookie Monster.”

  He was too close. She could smell his laundry detergent, something clean and faint. Edging her thigh away from his, she focused on the pedals of the elliptical machine so she wouldn’t be tempted to stare at the way his veins snaked gracefully down his arm and over his wrists. “You’re just like my family. Worrying and obsessing all the time about what you eat and don’t eat, counting grams instead of tasting and living—”

  “It’s not food—it’s fitness. Fitness is deep. Not the way you talk about it, like it’s all superficial Hollywood bullshit—but in a spiritual, profound way. Listen, I’m not about looks. I’ve never been about looks.” He tilted his head away, an odd flush creeping up his neck to his cheeks. “I wasn’t the best-looking kid in the world, and everyone let me know it. I refuse to give a shit about how I look, but I do care how I feel.”

  Bev frowned, remembering the pictures he’s seen of him at his mother’s house. Big and blond, a junior Viking. “I thought you were a cute kid.”

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, silent for a moment, then said, “You’ve only got one body, Bev—” He turned to face her and ran an intense gaze down her torso, down her legs, then back up to her face. “It’s strong and . . . perfect. You should take care of what you have.”

  Heat flared in her belly. She pushed herself up and got to her feet, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t expose how vulnerable she was to what he thought. “You keep making it personal, and I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “Caring about physical health is part of your job. And the jobs of everyone here.”

  She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I can’t pretend to be a fitness freak or a fashionista like the rest of you, but I can show them I can be liked and trusted. I’m trying to be a leader, and not by force. Flies and honey, you know?”

  “Calling them fitness freaks is hardly the way to win them over. But forget it. If you were a jock you might have a reason to stay here.”

  Sucking in her breath, she pointed a finger at him. “Admit it. They liked me.”

  “Don’t depend on them liking you, Bev. It’s not enough, and it never lasts.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to fight me anymore.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” He ran his hand through his hair. “I spent all of this morning and all day yesterday trying to save you. I tried to postpone the meeting. I bought some samples, made a few boards, sketched out a few ideas for you to present, but you barged ahead with—with—”

  He spent all that time trying to help her? She put her hand on her chest, uneasy with how much that affected her. “Cookies,” she said quietly.

  “Which isn’t going to help you where you need it most. But you don’t want my help. I don’t even want to give it. So I won’t try.”

  “And where do you think I need help the most? It’s true I don’t know apparel, which is why I snatched up Rachel.”

  “Rachel won’t be enough. What are you going to do when they find out you think exercise is for losers? Think they’ll love you then?”

  Bev took a step back. “I don’t think exercise is—” She stopped herself. “It’s just not for me.”

  “Then they’ll wonder why you think owning Fite is.” He walked out.

  Chapter 13

  For the next couple of weeks Liam stayed away from her, hearing through the unavoidable gossip that Rachel had announced her future move and Darrin would be gaining not just one, but two new assistants, which led Jennifer to throw a tantrum in the middle of Engineering until one of the patternmakers tapped her on the shoulder to share gossip she’d heard, about Jennifer getting not only a new assistant but a promotion to Creative Director, too.

  Soon even George will be a VP.

  He started hearing about meetings—not that Bev called them that, but they were meetings nonetheless—gatherings with Bev and designers and patternmakers and cutters and assistants at all levels where she didn’t seem to do anything at all, but then paperwork was changed, and sketches revised, and color palettes tweaked.

  Bev made her mark in her smiling, underhanded way, and Liam clenched his fists and watched. Waiting.

  When a Saturday morning rolled around, Liam had made plans to get far, far away from his dilemma in San Francisco. Just after seven a.m., Liam slipped into his mother’s house in Oakland to round up the last of his backpacking gear and drag his brother off for a much-needed jaunt in the fashion-free wilderness. The house was already alive with music and spinning blenders. Not a rolling rack in sight.

  “Morning, Mom,” he said to her, kissing her soft cheek while she played the theme to “Hill Street Blues” on the piano. The small, lopsided upright was shoved up against the picture window overlooking the bay. He paused to listen, letting the notes chip away at his worries. Then, as he often did, he leaned down to say in her ear, “Please let me buy you the grand, Crazy Lady. You’re wasting yourself on this stack of kindling.”

  In reply, she switched from TV to Mendelssohn—the wedding march.

  “Dad would have wanted you to get a new piano,” he said, and she switched back to her original piece. Though he didn’t know if that was true. His father had been a difficult man. A man who’d demanded unreasonable loyalty and had the power of personality to get it. “We can put this one in the corner or something. Not get rid of it.”

  Mark walked in with a pair of knotted boots hung over one shoulder. “Bad news, bro. Mice got into the attic and chewed up your backpack pretty bad. Frayed nylon and droppings are all over the place.”

  Trixie stopped playing and got to her feet. “Darn it. Just like last year. I’d better go see where they’re coming in.”

  “No hurry,” Mark said. “It’s probably from the winter.” But Trixie was already gone, eager to butt heads with nature again.

  “How’s your pack?” Liam was suspicious. Mark had never been much of an athlete, and hadn’t been thrilled to hear about their weekend hiking plans.

  “Mine’s perfect.” He smiled. “It was inside my college trunk.”

  “Why wasn’t mine inside my college trunk?” He should have brought it to the condo, cramped though it was, even if Oakland was a convenient stopover on the way to the Sierra.

  “Probably because you’ve used yours since college.” Mark sank into a recliner next to the piano and stretched out his legs. “Tough break. Guess we can’t go this weekend after all.”

  “Nice try, you bum. I’ve got a rebate check at REI I’ve been meaning to use.” He looked at his watch. Still a couple hours before the store opened. “I’ve packed all the food and got everything else ready. We’ll load up the car and buy a new pack on the way. Even then we can still make the trailhead by midafternoon.”

  Mark sighed and lumbered to his feet. “Yes, Scout Leader.”

  “I’ll back up the car.” Liam walked outside. An unfamiliar late-model sedan was in Bev’s driveway; after a second’s hesitation he wandered closer to get a better look. He knew her sister had come up to stay with her, but with the break-in he didn’t want to assume anything. The old Chevy didn’t look like the kind of car a young L.A. girl would drive.

  He moved closer and peeked through the passenger seat window, relieved to see a make-up bag, Diet Coke bottles, and an MP3 player strewn over the seat.

  The
blow to the back of his head threw him face forward over the hood of the car. Gasping, he rolled to the side and lifted his arms to defend himself from the next blow.

  A woman’s voice came from far away. “Kate! Stop! I know him!”

  “Bev?” he asked. But the assailant kept at him, her second strike aimed at his groin. This one he deflected just in time and blinked away the stars from the first hit to focus on the short blonde in Fite’s second delivery for spring of last year, balanced on the balls of her feet preparing to strike him again.

  “Stop, Kate, damn it! That’s Liam! From Fite!” Bev’s voice was stronger now, but breathless, like she was running. Liam couldn’t risk looking away from the psycho to see where she was exactly, but it sounded like down the street, not in the house.

  “What the hell did you do to our house?” the psycho demanded, kicking him in the shins.

  “Quit—hitting—me—!” He lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug, trying to disable her without hurting her. “Listen to your goddamn sister!”

  But she slammed her head up into his chin, dropped several inches and tried to knee him in the balls again. Though he would have loved to return in kind, he grabbed her calf and held it tightly so she could have to focus on not falling over backwards instead of trying to unman him.

  “Kate! Jeez!” Bev came up and grabbed her sister around the waist and jerked her backwards. “You can let go of her now. I’ve got her.”

  Liam eyed the hopping, violent female with skepticism. She was small but packed with muscles. “You must be the little sister.” He didn’t let go of her leg.

  “You must be the loser who tried to scare us out of our house.” She thrashed in his grip.

  “Please, Liam. Let go of her leg.”

  “I want her to swear she won’t try to hurt me again.”

  Kate pursed her lips, but stopped struggling. “For now, anyway.”

  “Good enough.” He let go and braced himself.

  “He is not the one screwing with the house,” Bev said. “Why can’t you believe me?”

  Kate eyed him from head to toe then shifted her gaze and gave her sister the same once-over. “Because I know how you are with guys like him.”

  Curiously, Bev turned red.

  “Guys like me?” He started to smile.

  “He’s totally like Rand,” Kate said to her sister. “You lose all sense.”

  He had to admit he liked the idea of Bev losing sense over him. Though certainly not over some dork named Rand. “Is that so?”

  “My sister is going inside.” Bev, still holding Kate around the shoulders, tried to push her towards the house when Liam realized what she and her sister must have been doing when they came upon Liam looking into the car window.

  Running. Bev had been running. “Nice shorts.” He admired her round ass and felt dizzy. First her damn sister smacked him upside the head, now this. And they weren’t Fite, either, which explained why they fit her so well.

  “Now I get it,” Kate was saying. “He’s why you’re jogging. I knew it couldn’t be your job.”

  “He is my job,” Bev said, glancing over at him. He smiled, and she stopped abruptly in alarm. “You’re lip is bleeding!”

  Liam ran his tongue along the corner of his mouth, tasting blood, and nodded. “So I am.”

  “You hurt him,” Bev said to her sister. “You drew blood.”

  “He was spying.”

  “Go inside,” she said to her, eyes flashing. “You’re worse than a pit bull.” She pointed at her house until Kate took a step in that direction, then she came over to Liam. She cupped his cheek and peered into his face with those big blue eyes. He looked down into them and felt dizzy again.

  “He’s swaying,” Bev said, looking over at her sister. “Help me get him into the house.”

  Kate was sulking near the front door. “Bring him to his own house. Where he should have stayed.”

  “Your family is charming.” Liam lifted a finger to his lip that came away wet and red.

  Bev hooked her arm in his and rotated him away from her sister. “Let’s go to your mother’s. I bet she has a first-aid kit.” Then she peered up at him again, and he looked down and met her concerned gaze and wondered if it was the blood loss that made him feel light-headed.

  “She’s hunting right now,” he said.

  Frowning, Bev marched him down the yard. “Watch your step.” She threaded through the shrubbery.

  “How far did you go?” He slowed his stride, confident she wouldn’t be able to propel him on her own, and studied the damp spots on her t-shirt. She was drenched. “Your sister pushed you too hard. I can tell just by looking at you. That’s a terrible way to start an exercise program.”

  “We hardly got started,” she said. “It was running up the hill to save your life that nearly killed me.”

  He pretended to stumble and sagged in her arm, making her hold him more tightly. “Thanks,” he said, reveling in the feel of her soft hip digging into his, “but it’s your sister whose life you saved. If she’d kept that up I really would’ve had to fight back.”

  But Bev didn’t seem to believe him. She squeezed his arm and sighed. “Kate has anger issues. And too many years of kick aerobics.”

  “Really, Bev. I could have handled her.”

  “Of course you could,” she said in that preschool teacher voice that made him want to go back to her psycho sister and beat the crap out of her. But Bev’s body was an effective distraction. He lifted his arm out of her grasp and rested it across her shoulders so she was plastered up against his side, soft and strong and sweaty, and her steps faltered.

  “Did she beat you up too?” Liam asked.

  Bev chuckled, and the soft rumble tickled his senses and heightened his awareness of each inch of her next to his skin. “What were you doing in our driveway? Before eight on a Saturday morning?”

  They were almost at his front door, and he didn’t think he could slow his steps any further without looking pathetic. “Packing up for a backpacking trip with my brother. I saw the car and didn’t think it looked right.”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “You were worried about me?”

  Oh, boy. He had a shallow, tight feeling in his chest, probably from the strain of not peeling her wet t-shirt off of her. “I didn’t want to have to sleep on your couch again.” Then the image of him climbing into her bed struck him between the eyes, and he froze.

  “Here you go.” Bev extracted herself just enough to tap on the front door. She turned the handle and popped it open. “You’d better go first.”

  He didn’t let go. It was insane but he couldn’t, and Bev wasn’t helping. She rotated in his arm and faced him, though not meeting his eyes. The side of one full breast brushed against his chest. And just like that he lost it. He reached past her, pulled the door shut, and backed her up against the side of the house. His heart thrashed in his chest.

  Bev held still, eyes dark and blue, her body tense in his arms. He caught a strand of her hair in his fingers and pressed his thighs against hers.

  The devil in his brain told him he’d already crossed the line once—the damage had been done; he might as well—

  “You’re hurt.” She raised her hand to his mouth. The sight of blood on her fingers shocked him into sense, and he drew back.

  “Sorry.” Pressing his hand to his mouth, he broke away from her and went into the house, struggling to clear his head. What the hell was he doing?

  “Where’d you go?” Mark barged across the living room with a pack over his shoulder. He pushed past Liam and ran right into Bev standing on the landing. “Oh!” he yelped, jumping back. “Excuse me.”

  Liam sighed. “Mark, this is Bev, your neighbor. Her sister just beat me up for no reason.” True to form, Mark panicked at the sight of an unexpected female and blinked his eyes, saying nothing. “Bev, this is Mark, my brother. Show mercy and ignore him until he recovers.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mark.�
�� Her voice was unsteady but she waved a greeting. “There was a misunderstanding. My sister just has the wrong idea. Do you have a first-aid kit? I can’t tell how bad it is, because of the blood—”

  “Blood?” Mark asked weakly, swaying.

  “Now you’ve done it.” Liam grabbed his brother’s arm and pushed him down onto a chair. “Head down. Just don’t think about it.”

  Bev followed. “What happened?”

  “Faints at the sight of blood,” Liam said.

  “Christ, you’re dripping,” Mark gasped.

  “I’ll get a washcloth.” Bev ran off into the house.

  “Faints at the sight of girls, more like it, you sissy.” Liam said, rubbing Mark’s back. “Chill. Just us menfolk now.”

  Mark bent over and put his head between his knees. “Fuck you. Vasovagal syncope has nothing whatsoever to do with my masculinity. Father was the same way.”

  Oh, Liam remembered. Years ago, Liam had smacked his head on the starter block climbing out of the pool, and the sight of blood had brought his father to his knees. The humiliation of passing out in a chlorinated puddle of water in front of dozens of strangers—even just during practice—had inspired his father to take away fifteen-year-old Liam’s driver’s permit until he was eighteen. Liam had almost wished he could go back in time to when he was a fat seven-year-old nobody, far beneath his father’s notice.

  “Here you go, you poor guy.” Bev rushed in carrying a damp washcloth, but instead of coming to Liam she fell onto her knees at Mark’s feet. “It’s an awful feeling. I know. Just horrible.”

  Mark lifted his hand to take the washcloth while his pale cheeks flooded back with splotches of color. “Thanks, uh—”

  “Bev. Don’t exert yourself.” She twisted around and looked up at Liam, who was pointedly bleeding down the side of his face. “Liam, go clean yourself up before your brother sees you again.”

  Liam stared at her hand resting on his brother’s knee and felt an inexplicable rage bubble inside him. He could probably see right down her shirt from where he sat, the big faker. “Of course.” He didn’t pretend to hide his contempt. “If I faint from blood loss just leave me there. The mice can have my body.”