Head Over Heels

by Serena Bell

  “Beer is not all you need. We should have wine and something sparkly and nonalcoholic…”

  And Thursday night, ten minutes before our first guests show up, we fight about the music.

  “No. No fucking way.”

  Katie, obviously, is not on the patio with us.

  “It’s good background music.”

  “No jazz.”

  “What do you have against jazz?”

  “That it sucks,” Chase says.

  “You can’t damn a whole genre like that. Maybe there’s some you would like, if you gave it a chance.”

  Chase raises both eyebrows at me. “Maybe,” he says. “But I’m sure as hell not going to do my research at the expense of my closest friends.”

  I let Chase win that round, which is how our picnic comes to be backgrounded by classic rock and ’80s and ’90s hits.

  We have agreed on nothing, and yet, when the party starts, through some strange alchemy, it is seamless and fantastic.

  Our guests drink and talk, mingling and chowing and chatting. Chase and I move among them, refilling drinks, replenishing food, flipping meat on the grill, chatting up each other’s friends.

  It’s past dusk, now, and candles glow on every surface I could stash them on, illuminating smiles and bright eyes. There’s a sweet tidal wash of conversation and laughter. Katie and her friend race off to play complicated games out of sight, then return, mingling at thigh height, charming adults into giving them food and drink. When she passes me, I bend down to ask if she’s having a good time.

  She nods vehemently.

  “What’s the best part?”

  “The woot beer,” she says, with a big smile.

  “How much root beer have you had?”

  “Four cups.”

  I close my eyes. “Who poured it for you?”

  “Daddy!”

  I’m not sure whether she’s answering my question or greeting the man who is suddenly standing at my side.

  “Great party.”

  He’s wearing cargo shorts and leather sandals and a T-shirt that says Just another beer drinker with a camping problem and he’s got a beer in one hand. He looks maddeningly sexy. It’s the wine. Alcohol always makes me loose and a little warm, and the instant Chase stepped into my personal space, I got a few degrees warmer—and tinglier.

  “We did good,” he says.

  “It was the salads.” I fight to keep the smile off my lips.

  “It was the classic rock.”

  Faced off, feigning dead seriousness, we both begin to laugh.

  “What’s so funny, Daddy?” Katie asks.

  I’m about to try to explain the joke to a five-year-old when he says, “I like Liv.”

  He says it with no particular significance—not, definitely, the way middle school girls say like—but my heart speeds up anyway, and I glance nervously at his face, but he’s looking at Katie, his gaze rich with affection.

  Damn the wine—it’s making me paranoid. The last thing I need is anyone getting in over their head here.

  I mean, I’m in a little bit over my head already. I’m in deeper with Chase than I ever meant to be. I almost think, if I let myself, I could fall for him. But I’m still clear with myself that I’m not going there again, or at least not with a guy who has a preexisting (anti)commitment condition.

  “I like Liv, too,” says Katie.

  Brooks saunters up. He’s a head taller than Chase, with lots of shaggy brown hair and a full beard—very mountain man. “I’m Brooks. I think we’ve met once? Or maybe I just ogled you from afar. Great party.”

  “Thanks, I think,” I say, laughing.

  “Those salads are fu—”

  We both look down at Katie.

  “—awesome.”

  “Why, thank you, Brooks.” I give Chase a long, hard look, and he holds his palms out in surrender.

  “The salads were a tough sell for Chase,” I explain, when Brooks looks confused. “As were the candles, the tablecloths, the wine, the sparkling juice—”

  “Just be glad I didn’t let her pick the music,” Chase says.

  “The music is the best part,” Brooks says.

  “You see?” Chase demands.

  “Liv, important question for you,” Brooks says, oblivious to all of it. “Who is the woman sitting at the end of the picnic table?”

  “That’s my friend Eve.” I’m used to answering that question. Guys always go after Eve, who is five eight and is built like a supermodel—the bathing suit kind, not the bony kind that looks best draped in a cabled sweater.

  “Ah.”

  “Do you need an introduction?”

  “No,” Brooks says. “I just need to know you won’t kill me if I go home with her tonight.”

  “No, but I might kill you if you get me in trouble by association,” Chase puts in.

  I laugh. “Eve can take care of herself.”

  That’s an understatement. Eve never wants to get married and doesn’t do relationships. Her parents made each other miserable, and after they divorced, Eve’s mom and stepdad made each other miserable and Eve’s dad and stepmom made each other miserable, and her dad is currently making Eve’s second stepmom miserable…so yeah, Eve has opted out. She prides herself on having sex like a man: “no regrets, no repeats.” I’d warn Brooks—but based on what Chase has told me about him, Brooks follows the same motto.

  “Excellent news,” Brooks says, his face lighting up. “See you later, then.” And off he goes, a moment later at Eve’s side, whispering something in her ear that I can see—even from this distance—makes her smile.

  “Huh,” Chase says. “That should be…interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “Like, irresistible force meets immovable object.”

  “I was thinking more two people clad in sumo wrestler suits. Big bump, and then off in totally different directions.”

  “Matter and antimatter?” he suggests.

  “Only if by that you mean there will be nothing left afterward to suggest anything happened.”

  I have barely gotten the words out when a vast quantity of honey hair—enough to merit its own zip code—suddenly appears in my peripheral vision.

  “Liv! This is the best party ever! And can I please, please, please, please have the recipe for the pesto salad?”

  It’s Eve. “You see?” I say to Chase. “They love the salads.”

  He rolls his eyes and drifts away as I start listing the ingredients in my salad to Eve.

  As soon as he’s gone, she grabs my arm. “Liv! What’s going on with you two?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She rolls her eyes at the transparency of my evasion. “You can’t fool me.”

  Eve waits patiently, until I can’t stand the silence and say, “Okay. Yes. Things have…um, happened. And it’s—” I grope for words and fail. I close my eyes, swoon-style.

  She raises one perfectly curved, salon-tweezed eyebrow. “Really.”

  “Yeah. But it’s just that. Friends with benefits. We talked about it. We agreed. It’s really not a big deal. Riding the coaster.”

  Eve raises her eyebrows. “Mmm-hmm.”

  I punch her arm. “It is. Speaking of which, Brooks?”

  She looks in his direction. He looks back, smiling, one eyebrow raised.

  “I might take that for a spin later,” she says, grinning at him and then at me. “But we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. So, just sex and barbecues? And then you go to Denver, and that’s it?”

  “We’re going camping this weekend, and then, yeah, I leave.”

  “Camping?”

  I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but her eyebrows creep even higher.

  “Eve, quit it. It’s not like tha
t.”

  “But maybe it could be,” she says quietly.

  “He’s so not that guy.”

  “What guy?” Eve asks. She touches my shoulder, her eyes gentle.

  I shake my head.

  “The kind who could tell you he wants you forever, and actually mean it?”

  All I can do is nod. I’m too choked up to talk.

  “Are you sure?”

  Chapter 32

  Chase

  Late in the party, I escape to the edge of the yard and stand, nursing my beer. I’m tired of doing the polite host gig, and all the small talk, and I just want to watch for a few minutes. So I do. I watch Katie, playing some elaborate make-believe game with her friend Cho, and it already feels hard to imagine a time when she wasn’t in my life every day. I watch Brooks chat up Eve, the two of them leaning in toward each other, faces bright. I watch Rodro say something to his girlfriend that makes her blush. There’s a lot of sex in the air. You can feel the charge. Or maybe it’s just me. This week, I feel like I’m constantly on simmer.

  Mostly, though, I’m watching Liv. She’s wearing a red dress covered with daisies and those yellow daisy-things with black centers and black sandals with straps that criss-and-cross her ankles and make me want to peel them away.

  I wonder what she’s wearing underneath her dress.

  Simmer to boil in two seconds flat. Now that I know what she smells and tastes and sounds like, what her face looks like when she comes—I’m a man obsessed.

  “She’s amazing, right?”

  It’s Eve. She’s come up beside me, a glass of wine in her hand, and her eyes are on Liv, too.

  “I’m going to miss her so much when she goes.”

  She says it casually, but I know there’s subtext. She’s baiting me. I don’t say anything.

  “Chase. Can I give you some advice?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Eve laughs. I’ve only met Eve a couple of times, but she’s a real straight shooter.

  “She’s more complicated than she seems. She’s very tough, which I think you know. But she’s also—I hate it when people say broken, so I won’t say it. Healing. She’s healing. Five foster families in eleven years, and they were good people, but nothing stuck…”

  “Yeah. She told me.”

  “Ever noticed how when she talks about them, she ticks them off on her fingers? Like it’s the only way she can remember all of them?” She demonstrates, counting off on her fingers. “And she’s still moving around. Two different colleges, jumping from house to house in her nanny job. Can I ask you something?”

  I nod.

  “Has she ever mentioned Zeke?” She watches my face carefully. “You don’t know that story, huh? Ask her. Just—” She holds up a finger. “Brace yourself. You’ll want to rip his guts out afterward. I just think you should know the whole big picture, before—”

  She turns and looks at me. Eve has these dark-gold eyes, eerie. They look like they can see right through you. Through me. And maybe she can, because she says, “—before someone gets hurt.”

  It wasn’t what I thought she was going to say.

  “I’m not going to hurt her.”

  My eyes find Liv again, kneeling to hug Katie, kissing Katie’s head, her copper-penny hair bright against Katie’s gold, and my chest splits down the middle at the sight of them together. Damn it, I was never going to do this again.

  I turn back to find Eve watching me. And I suddenly understand what she’s trying to say.

  “You’re not worried I’m going to hurt her, are you?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “You’re worried she’s going to hurt me.”

  “She won’t do it on purpose,” she says, quietly. “It’s just—when you’ve never really had a place to call your own, it can be hard to stay put.”

  “You don’t think she’ll stay.”

  She watches Liv, who has taken both Katie’s hands and is dancing her around to Journey’s “Any Way You Want It.” Then she turns back to me, those eerie eyes steady on mine.

  “I think if anyone could make her want to stay, it would be you.”

  Chapter 33

  Liv

  I sit bolt upright in bed.

  This time it doesn’t take me as long to remember where I am or to figure out what’s woken me. Katie’s crying.

  I drag myself from the bed—mine, because Chase and I have been careful not to let Katie catch us sleeping in the same bed—pull a hoodie around me, and hurry down the hall.

  Her door is open a little ways, and as I get closer, I hear something that stops me in my tracks. A second voice, interwoven with Katie’s still-panicked cries. Chase’s, deep and husky from sleep.

  I stand in the shadows of the hall, listening. I can’t hear his words, only the rhythm and texture of them, soft and soothing. A sound you can wrap yourself in, and that’s what I do. I lean against the wall and wrap myself in the sound of Chase.

  Katie’s voice quiets, more and more intermittent until I don’t hear her at all. Now I can only hear Chase’s voice.

  What he’s murmuring, over and over again, is I love you.

  If I were not me, and he were not him, and I were not leaving, I think it would be incredibly easy to fall in love with him.

  The thing I’m learning is that there is a lot of Chase that no one knows. Everyone knows bits and pieces. But maybe now I know the most bits and pieces. And they add up to so much more than I’d thought. To this amazing man, with so many dimensions, who has worked hard to be the best person he can be, despite the forces arrayed against him.

  “Jesus, Liv!” Chase says, emerging from Katie’s room and jumping a foot, startling me out of my reverie.

  He’s wearing nothing but pajama pants. It’s a good look for him.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just thinking. She was wrong. Thea.”

  “What?”

  “She was wrong to try to keep Katie from you. You’re a great dad. The best.”

  He looks pleased. And embarrassed. He shrugs me off.

  “Liv?” he asks.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Who’s Zeke?”

  My stomach lurches. “How do you know about Zeke?”

  “Eve said I should ask you.”

  Irritation twists in my stomach. Giving him too much power again. I wish she wouldn’t.

  “He’s an asshole guy I dated a long time ago. He’s no one.”

  “Well, if it’s no big deal,” he says lightly, “then you shouldn’t mind telling me about him.”

  He takes my hand and leads me away from Katie’s room, down the hall and into his room. We stop inside the door. “Shoot,” he says.

  I shrug. “Seriously. It’s nothing. I dated him after college. We moved in together. Pretty soon after that, I caught him kissing someone else. You see? Classic story of an asshole.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  It is the last, the very last, question I was expecting Chase to ask. I hesitate, then nod.

  “A little? Or a lot?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters.”

  I turn away. There’s a crack in the hallway paint that looks like the letter J.

  “Liv.”

  My chest is tight. “A lot. Way too fucking much.”

  “And you thought he loved you back?”

  I pull the hoodie around me and cross my arms.

  “He knew about my mom and that I’d grown up in foster care.”

  I’m not sure why those words decided to come out of my mouth right then. Or the next ones:

  “And that I never got to stay anywhere.”

  I have the choky sensation of tears rising in my throat, behind my eyes, but I battle them back. I w
ill not give him the satisfaction.

  “What happened?” Chase asks quietly. “What did he do to you?”

  His voice is steely. I think maybe if Zeke were here, Chase would hurt him. And I like that, just a little.

  “The night he asked me to move in with him, I’d woken up with a nightmare. It didn’t happen a lot anymore, but sometimes. It had happened a few times when he was there. This time, he held me, and then he asked me to move in with him. He said, ‘That way, I’ll always be here. You’ll never have to wake up alone again.’ ”

  My voice is shaking.

  “You know what makes me the maddest? I’d known better for years. It’s not that people are bad. They’re not bad, they’re just weak. They can’t keep their promises. They change their minds, they fall off the wagon, they give in to temptation, they get themselves arrested, they fall for someone cuter, younger, sweeter—whatever. But you’re an idiot if you think otherwise. That’s the thing. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise. I was an idiot.”

  “Not all people.”

  “All. People.”

  “Liv, that’s not true.”

  “All people make mistakes. All people are fallible.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  I talk over him. “He owned a small house, and I moved in there with him, and I remember when I was decorating, I remember thinking, This is it. I’m doing this for real this time. Permanent. I didn’t have to think about how I’d dismantle it for moving, or any of that.”

  Chase looks stricken. “Liv.”

  “It’s okay. I want to tell you the rest. Pretty soon after that—six weeks? Eight weeks?—I came to his office to surprise him with lunch and caught him kissing—like, passionately kissing—one of his coworkers. The worst part—I know this is crazy, but I swear, it’s true—the worst part was packing up my things. Not because the house was anything special, but because I’d been dumb enough to think it was mine.”

  He’s never taken his eyes off my face the whole time I’m talking. Now he says, “You weren’t an idiot. You’re not an idiot. Trusting people doesn’t make you stupid.”

  He puts one big, warm hand on my hair, slides it down around my jaw, and even though he’s wrong, I don’t argue. I lean into his touch. He drops his hand, brings the other one up, and pushes my hoodie off my shoulders. He pulls me into his arms. It feels unbelievably good, the heat of his bare torso soaking straight through my thin pajamas.