Touch of Fondness: A New Adult Romance (Stay in Touch)

by Joy Penny

  “Oh, but that causes you pain?” She was shaking so hard, her limbs were trembling. “But me being nothing but supportive of you, fostering your art skills, giving up so much in my life to take care of you, me you don’t want around?”

  “I didn’t ask you to!” Archer found it difficult to stop the tears from welling in his own eyes then. “I didn’t ask to be a burden. I didn’t ask to be born this way.”

  “I never said you were a burden.” She wiped the tears from her face with two of her fingers squeezed together.

  “But I am. I get it.” He backed his wheelchair up to give her more space in his tiny kitchen. “Look. I think it’s healthier for the both of us if we see less of each other.”

  She sniffled, crossing her arms and not bothering to wipe her dripping nose. “You allow me to only see you once a week.”

  “I think… That’s a good amount.” Archer winced. He didn’t like hurting his mother, but damn it, she drove him crazy.

  She stepped past him, ignoring her mug of coffee. “I’m done paying for that maid you’re sleeping with.”

  His jaw dropped. “I’m not—”

  She swiped her purse off the counter, not noticing or caring that a small slip of paper fell out from the open top as she did. “You’re so independent, you can clean your own place.”

  “Mother, please.” Archer followed after her down the hallway to his front door. “Don’t be upset.”

  She twirled around to face him. “So what’s gotten you more upset? Me telling you to clean your own stuff or me being upset?”

  He felt as if she’d put him in a vice, asking him to choose two equally bad answers, not even recognizing half of the real issues at hand. “I don’t want you upset. I also don’t want you getting Brielle in trouble for something she didn’t do.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “What do you take me for? An idiot? Fine.” She opened the door quickly. “This annoying idiot will leave you alone, as you requested. But she’s not financing your intimacy, either.” She slammed the door shut.

  Although he’d dreamed of telling her off for ages—of saying worse things, even—he felt nauseous. It didn’t quite feel real.

  But a huge part of him didn’t care.

  He locked the door, even putting the chain up, which meant that she wasn’t going to be able to let herself back in.

  A thought struck him. The paper that fell out of his mother’s purse… Depending on what it was, he might just summon the courage to act on his impulses, screw the consequences.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Despite the terrible, terrible evening Brielle had wound up having the night before, she still felt like she’d had the best evening of any of her friends.

  One week away from graduation and already life was in shambles for her closest friends. She didn’t even have it in her to talk about Archer or the weirdness of getting a ride from his mom—neither of which was terrible, really, it was mostly how things went down with Pembroke that worried her—with Lilac, who was in tears on Skype. Lilac wouldn’t talk much about it, other than to lament the fact that she’d ever done such a reckless thing, that she wished she’d taken the summer off and stuck to the teaching job in Minneapolis like she’d planned, that she’d been stupid to do this stupid thing. Brielle had hardly known what to say other than to tell her to take a deep breath and wait until some more time had passed before she made another rash decision.

  Lilac had not taken kindly to the “another” rash decision and she’d cut the call earlier than planned, barely hearing anything about Brielle meeting up with Pembroke.

  Gavin sighed after she said goodbye. He looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept in days, and Brielle was fairly certain he was in a closet.

  “I’m sorry,” said Brielle, slumping forward on her desk in her room. She was fully aware the room looked like a mess behind her, complete with piles and piles of half-opened boxes (throughout the past week, she’d dig around for something and not bother to unload the rest). She just didn’t really care.

  Gavin shrugged. “I’m worried about Li,” he said. “But I’m also worried about Pembroke. And you too. What do you mean, she was dating Daniel?”

  Brielle tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “She was dating Daniel. Despite him having a different fiancée last week. But I think that’s over now.”

  “I wish she’d answer my messages,” said Gavin.

  “Mine too.” Brielle’s lips soured. “I told her she didn’t have to cut me off because she made the same mistake I did—albeit just a little bit shittier since she had a friend to clarify what a dick he was—but that’s it. I’ve got too much else to worry about. If she doesn’t answer, I don’t… I don’t need that kind of drama in my life.”

  Gavin smirked. “You did have a friend to tell you he was a dick.”

  Brielle grinned. “Shut up,” she said without malice. “Okay, but you didn’t literally have firsthand accounts to testify to that.”

  “Didn’t need to fuck a dick to spot one.” Gavin rolled his eyes.

  “Touché. And apparently I needed to screw him several times before I could see the light.” Brielle let her gaze wander to her bedroom door, but the house was eerily quiet on the other side of it. “But isn’t it… Just… Too weird? Did Pembroke even go on a single date all of college?”

  Gavin twiddled with what looked like a decorative piece of yarn at the end of a hanging scarf. “She was too shy, I guess.”

  “She never wanted to talk about it. I thought she might be gay.”

  “Not all late bloomers are secret gays…” Gavin shook the scarf toward his phone as if admonishing her. “I thought she might just be… Not interested? Or too scared to take a risk?”

  “After yesterday, who even knows. Maybe she dated all the time and just didn’t feel close enough to us to tell us.” Brielle ran a finger over the top of a framed photo on her desk of her and her high school friends, including her high school boyfriend she’d dated for a year and a half, once a huge part of her life and whom she hadn’t thought about in ages. Almost as if to signify that, the photo was covered in dust. She didn’t talk to any of these people anymore. Not really. No more than an occasional reaction to a Facebook post. Was that what was going to happen to her and her college friends?

  Brielle peered closer at her friend, trapped in a literal closet. “But enough about that. You worry too much about everyone else. Anything you want to tell me?”

  The scarf stopped flapping as Gavin squeezed it. “Nope. Just a bad date.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Brielle. “You were so excited.”

  Gavin shrugged and started tugging on the scarf again. He didn’t even flinch when it fell down over his face. “It’s fine. Maybe I don’t always have my dick-seeing glasses on.”

  Brielle laughed. “The image you just put in my head.”

  “Shush,” said Gavin, but he was smiling.

  “And the job? Still a nightmare?”

  “Yup.” His lips grew tight.

  “That all you have to say about that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay,” said Brielle, feeling a bit disappointed, but she knew Gavin didn’t like to talk much about his own problems. He almost never talked about his own problems. But he worried obsessively over his friends’, which made him a perfect match for Lilac, who was perfectly content to only worry about her own.

  Sure enough, he redirected the conversation back away from him. “Do you think Lilac was… assaulted?”

  Brielle felt the wind knocked out of her. She’d been so used to Lilac’s hysterics, she hadn’t even considered that Lilac might have had more than a wildly fluctuating fit of conscience to blame for it. “Has she told you—”

  “No,” said Gavin. “It’s just… a feeling I have. Probably that asshole Earl.”

  Brielle waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. She didn’t want the world to rest on his shoulders, but she didn’t feel like it was her place to intervene in Lilac’s case.
“Then keep at her… gently, okay? Let her know she can talk to me too.”

  “I will.” Gavin wrapped the scarf around his neck and shook his head as if to clear it.

  Brielle smirked. “Cold in that closet?”

  “It’s the windy city,” he said, posing for the camera. He bonked his head against the wall as he flung back and both Brielle and Gavin burst out laughing, even as Gavin rubbed his head. He smiled sheepishly. “There’s no other place for some privacy here.” Almost as if on cue, Brielle heard some muffled voices in the background of the video and the light trickling in under the door shifted slightly as someone’s shadow crossed in front of it.

  “What about the bathroom?”

  Gavin shook his head at her, like she was a poor, misguided child. “You have not spent time in an apartment with three hot gay guys, so I will forgive you for not understanding that the bathroom is practically the busiest room in the apartment.”

  “Other than the bedrooms?” said Brielle, feeling saucy.

  Gavin flung the edge of the scarf toward her in a parody of a femme gay stereotype. “Oh, you did not just go there.”

  Brielle raised both her hands outward, as if to apologize, but she was smiling all the while. “I’m just going off the picture you’ve painted for me.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not too far off.” His face soured. “But I don’t have a bedroom, so I can’t exactly be sure.”

  “You’re not the jump-into-bed kind of guy.”

  She seemed to have struck a nerve. “So everyone tells me.”

  Brielle winced. She waited for him to explain more, but he had nothing more to say.

  “Do you think—” she started.

  “But what about your comic book hottie?” said Gavin at the same time.

  Just as she got a text:

  It’s Archer. I got your number from my mother. Are you free today? Do you want to go on a date—just the two of us this time?

  “Uh,” said Brielle, minimizing the video chat and staring at the text. “He just asked me on a date.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t really have anywhere else to take you.” Apologizing for what had to be the twentieth time in the five minutes since he and Brielle had set off for the park, Archer rolled his wheels again and again with such finesse, it was practically a struggle for Brielle to keep pace with him.

  “I don’t mind.” Brielle caught sight of the tote bag on Archer’s lap, not for the first time. He’d offered to meet her at his condo and go with her to the park, where he promised a lunch. She wondered what he’d made—and if she was going to have to clean it up tomorrow.

  Why was that even a thought that had crossed her mind? She still wasn’t used to thinking of herself as anything but his house cleaner. Even after the chaotic comic book signing.

  “I’m sorry, too, if you thought it was rude of me to message you. I know you gave your number to my mother, but—”

  Brielle laughed. “You’re sorry you asked me on a date?”

  “No.” His face reddened. “I just thought… I should have asked you in person.”

  “Kind of more awkward to ask when I’m elbow-deep in yellow rubber gloves, right?”

  “About that…” Just as they finally reached the park, Archer slowed and turned around to face her. “I’m afraid my mother is canceling my service.”

  A warm breeze rustled through the late spring air, but Brielle still found herself shivering as she grabbed a chunk of her hair to prevent it from hitting her eyes. “Did I… offend her?”

  He grimaced. “No, I think I did.”

  “Does she think we…?” Brielle pointed to herself and to Archer, unable to voice the rest of it.

  Averting his gaze, he tapped his wheels again. “Maybe. But that’s not why. It had nothing to do with you.”

  If it had nothing to do with me, why does she think I’m dating you and then coincidentally decide to fire me? She pointed to a picnic table that sat under the shade of a giant oak tree. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Oh? Right. Sorry.” He pivoted and headed toward the table, gesturing toward his lap as he pulled beside it. “I’m already sitting, but I should have thought you’d be more comfortable if I didn’t make you stand…”

  Brielle felt a mixture of emotions as she took her place at the table. Giddy because of the date. Nervous about why his mother had canceled the cleaning service. Happy because maybe it was better if she didn’t socialize with one of the service’s clients anyway. Apprehensive about what her own mom might say when she found out. And she certainly hadn’t found out yet, or Brielle would have heard about it. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, to herself as much as to him.

  “Oh, wait!”

  She paused halfway crouched to the bench and watched as Archer dug into his tote bag and pulled out a vinyl tablecloth, followed by a blanket. He arranged the blanket nicely on the table bench beneath Brielle, patting it when finished.

  “Thank you,” said Brielle, tossing her hair behind her shoulders as she sat. She helped Archer lay the tablecloth out across half of the picnic table, grinning as she thought about how cute but pointless protecting the worn and weathered table from their mess was. Folding her fingers together, she leaned her elbows on the table and watched, wide-eyed, as Archer pulled a fake-looking candle out of his bag and turned it over, flicking it on with a switch. He glanced sheepishly out of the corner of his eye at her and placed it on the table as far as his arm would reach.

  “What else have you got in that enchanted bag?” joked Brielle, crossing her legs and staring at him. His cheeks were definitely a deeper, adorable shade. She couldn’t believe this was the same guy who’d almost frightened her last week. Suddenly, she felt more in charge, like he’d crumble at the slightest bat of her eyes.

  A burst of warmth spread through her abdomen all the way down to the bench beneath her. She uncrossed and crossed her legs again and took a deep breath, fighting the first thing that popped into her mind.

  “You sure are spicy under the sheets,” said Daniel, his hands practically pawing at her back. She was so hot at that moment, so lost in herself, that she almost didn’t hear him as she moaned and rocked, pulsating against him beneath her.

  “My little Latin lover,” he’d said, nuzzling into the crook of her neck.

  That memory was like a splash of cold water to the face. She was never going to tell another guy about her heritage again—although her last name kind of made it obvious. She had to clutch the edge of the tablecloth to will her heartbeat to slow as Archer pulled out two plates, two glasses, and a set of utensils from his wonder bag. You barely know him, she told herself. And you don’t even know how… If… How it would work with him.

  Still, there was a checklist of things she found appealing, so long as she pushed the memory of their first meeting to the back of their mind. Endearingly shy but able to stand up to jackasses when needed. Clearly interested in her without making her feel like a piece of meat at the market. Creative and talented—she’d almost cried reading Wheels, and she’d stayed up late to read his other books, even if he hadn’t written them—he’d brought the stories to life with his talent. A sense of humor at the right occasion. Likely well-to-do, although she felt guilty for even thinking about it. That made her think about how Mrs. Ward had promised to talk to someone about a Field Museum job, though, and how that would take her hours away, which also made her think about his mother, period. There were definitely hints of mommy issues.

  Although she was sure a therapist would tell her she had her own list of issues a mile long regardless.

  Besides, it’d been months. And if she were honest with herself, she’d stopped enjoying it with Daniel longer ago than that. He’d just been there, available. The second time they’d dated, she’d hardly even cared that his eye kept wandering.

  She didn’t mean to voice her thought as she watched Archer pull out two plastic sandwich bags and gently place each sandwich on a paper plate, but she did. “What…?”
Brielle covered her mouth.

  Stuffing the bags back into his tote, Archer’s lips twitched sheepishly. “I’m… not the best cook? I mostly eat sandwiches.”

  “No, it’s fine.” She poked her wheat bread with one finger. “I just… You went to so much trouble to set the stage, so to speak, it was a bit of a shocker to finally see the big reveal.”

  Archer tossed the tote on the ground beside him and buried his face in his hands. “This was a bad idea.” He thankfully didn’t sound so much devastated as embarrassed.

  “Oh, come on,” said Brielle. She picked the sandwich up between her hands and took a bite, not even bothering to ask what was in it. She typically would eat anything. To her surprise, it was pretty good. “Huh,” she said. “Looks can be deceiving.” It was toasted and there was chicken on it amidst some cheese and vegetables.

  Peeking back out from behind his hands, Archer laughed and picked up his own sandwich. “My own little twist on a chicken pesto sandwich,” he said. He paused, the sandwich halfway to his mouth. “But I should have asked if you have any dietary restrictions or allergies.”

  “No,” said Brielle, taking another bite of the sandwich. She stared at Archer as she chewed. “Really, you did fine. Relax. I think I could bounce a ball off those tense shoulder muscles.”

  That made his shoulders loosen and a smile appear on his face. “Now I’m picturing in what circumstances you could possibly be bouncing balls off my shoulders.”

  She nearly choked on some lettuce. “I’m getting the feeling that that was an entendre, but I honestly can say I’ve never used any bouncy balls in the bedroom.”

  Archer’s face looked permanently burnt at this point, his blush was so profuse. “That was…” He put his sandwich down and cocked his head. “I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?”

  She grabbed her empty cup and held it out to him. “Not bad, per se, but… Should I go fill this up from the water fountain or…?”

  “Tea!” Archer bent over the side of his chair to grab at the tote. “I almost forgot.” Unscrewing the top of the large bottle, he poured some unsweetened black tea into both cups. “Sorry if you’re more of a sweet girl,” he said, picking up his own cup and about to take a sip.