Sugar Moon (Vermonters Forever)

by Ali Dean

  I’ve been studiously avoiding looking at Tanner but flick my gaze in his direction now, and find his eyes on me. “You’re doing the Vermont Marathon?”

  “Yeah. It’s what all the cool kids are doing so, why not?”

  Morgan huffs. “Grace, we’re cool too. We don’t need to run twenty-six miles to prove it.”

  “Will you guys sit down already?” Grace says. “As long as you let us have our girl time when we run you can hang with us after. Deal?”

  I can feel Mia and Jamie having a silent conversation, and Tanner watching me from where he sits on the other side of the table. With Jamie eventually taking the spot on the bench seat between Mia and me, and Oliver next to Morgan on the other side, Tanner pulls up a chair at the head.

  “Are you still sore?” Tanner asks me quietly.

  “Not much, no.”

  He’d totally babied me on Sunday as he took over the kitchen, and I’d loved every second of it. Normally I detest being doted on, but when it’s Tanner Moon coddling me? It’s now one of my favorite things ever.

  The last thing I expect the conversation to turn to is Virginia Rose. All my friends started reading her when they learned about my little obsession. Grace asks which book Morgan and Mia are at in the most recent series.

  Mia leans forward. “Jane was telling me there’s this air of mystery about her because she’s never made a public appearance, and doesn’t have any pictures of herself on her website or social media.”

  “Is that unusual for an author?” Grace asks.

  “I guess so. At least one that’s famous.”

  I glance at Tanner, and to anyone else, he would appear only half-interested in the conversation. But I’m not anyone else. I know his secrets, and his tells. There’s a distinct tightness around his shoulders, and his eyes drift away, refusing to meet anyone’s at the table.

  Is it because they are talking about his great-aunt’s secret identity, or because they are talking about him? After reading the manuscript he sent me last week, I’m confident as ever Tanner is Virginia Rose. The book is practically the story of us, at least at the beginning when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Just because it takes place one hundred years in the future and the characters have super powers doesn’t mean I can’t see the similarities.

  “Doesn’t Jane go to book conventions?” Morgan asks. “What do they do there, anyway? Like, read together in a big circle?”

  I laugh. “No, it’s to meet the authors. They sign books and take pictures with their readers.” I’d heard Jane talking about it and seen her post pictures of herself with her favorite authors on social media.

  I’m sort of glad Tanner doesn’t go to book conventions. With most of his readers women, they’d be all over him. He’d have to get a bodyguard. I would gladly volunteer for that position.

  Tanner’s eager to change the subject, not surprisingly. “You’re still doing the marathon, right?” he asks me.

  “You think I’d bail? No way.”

  He smiles. “No, I didn’t think you’d bail.”

  “She’s basically finished all the training for one already,” Jamie tells him. “So by the time she’s got the cast off it will be like training a second time.”

  “I’m going to be running before the cast comes off, buddy. I’ll only lose like two weeks.”

  “What about your sweating problem?” Mia asks, and Morgan spits out some of her beer laughing.

  I have to laugh too. “I don’t have a sweating problem, Mia, just because I produce a lot of it.”

  “But it will get your cast all wet.”

  Jamie shoots me a look of disapproval. “Yeah, maybe that’s another good reason to hold off on those twenty-milers until it’s off, since my warnings about injury and muscle burnout didn’t seem to make much of an impression on you.”

  “Fine. I’m going to swim as cross-training then. I can put a plastic bag around the cast and the doctor even said it’ll help recovery.”

  “Tanner swims,” Oliver tells me as if I don’t already know. “You could go with him.”

  “I know. But I’m proud to report that I have, in fact, learned to exercise by myself. I can even sit on the couch by myself for hours at a time.”

  I dart a look at Tanner, who’s smirking.

  “Only if you’re reading,” Grace calls me out. “Or listening to an audiobook.”

  “And only if it’s a book by Virginia Rose,” Mia adds. And we’re back to that. I have a feeling Tanner won’t be joining us for any more happy hours if he has to endure this. But he surprises me, and is back the next week, and the week after that.

  Running with my arm in the cast is pretty miserable. Too miserable to do it on my own, despite my commitment to this marathon. Once I get the okay to run – on flat surfaces at an easy pace – I only go on Wednesdays with the girls, and once on the weekends with Mia. The rest of the days I swim, which is already starting to get boring after a few weeks. The doctor says it’s probably helping me heal, but as soon as this cast is off, I’ll be moving on from swimming and returning to running in the evenings.

  I like to go to the pool as late as possible, an hour before it closes, to avoid being bored at night of course. I can’t go much earlier anyway, with the swim team in there all afternoon and other programs and lessons taking up the pool in the evening. It’s also when I know Tanner won’t be there. Being around him in a busy tavern with my friends is hard enough, I really don’t need to run into him all wet in a bathing suit.

  Over the next few weeks, Tanner comes over to make me food sometimes and walk with me and Donut. Wanting him hasn’t lessened one bit. I know he feels it too. We both find ourselves drifting too close, and I don’t know how long we can keep doing this friendship thing while keeping our hands off each other.

  In some ways, the ache for him isn’t as painful because he’s part of my life again, but there’s a new, possibly more torturous sensation that never goes away. It’s a burning that starts in my chest and permeates my skin. I’m not only on fire for his touch, it’s his heart, his trust, his damn soul I want. I’m learning that when I fall, I’m greedy as hell. I want every single piece of this man. And settling for less is killing me.

  I reach the end of the lane one day in March and look around, noticing the pool is empty now and it’s time for me to get out. After pulling my goggles off and releasing my hair from my swim cap, I notice from the corner of my eye that there’s one person still on the pool deck. I’m pulling myself out of the water when I do a double-take.

  “Tanner?”

  He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Hey.”

  I walk over to him, grabbing my towel off a chair and wrapping it around my shoulders.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I stopped by the house to drop off some meals and pre-made smoothies for you. Seth told me you were here.”

  That still doesn’t explain why he’s here, not really.

  “Thanks. Why are you so nice to me?” I mean it to come sounding light, like a joke maybe, I’m not really sure. But it doesn’t come out like that at all. It sounds like I’m asking about a million things with that question. And when he answers as if he really hears what’s underneath it, his response finally breaks me.

  “Because I like taking care of you, Charlie. I want to take care of you when you’re injured or sick.” He digs his hands deeper in his pockets, and lifts his eyes from the ground to mine. “I miss you, Charlie. I miss you so much it physically hurts. My entire body aches for you, and I never should have moved out in the first place. I want to be with you all the time. Not only as friends.”

  “We did have a good thing going as roommates with benefits.” But the attempt to act unaffected is pointless. I’m already crying.

  “I really was just planning on dropping off food tonight, and then before I knew it, I was driving here. I just, I can’t let you believe that being with you meant so little to me. I don’t know if it meant as much to you
but I need to be honest about this, at least.”

  I don’t know how to tell him how I feel about him, but I’m thinking the tears still streaming down my face convey some of it. All I can get out is, “Same.”

  “Yeah?”

  A door opens on the other side of the pool deck and we look over. “Oh, you’re still here.” It’s a high school kid. “Uh, I have to turn off the lights in here and lock this door. You can still leave through the locker rooms. But the building closes in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay, we’re heading out,” Tanner tells him.

  The kid hesitates. “Just so you know, if you stay in here after we close and then leave, it will set off the alarm and the cops will show up. I know because I tried it once with my girlfriend.”

  He then shuts the lights off and the door closes behind him. We’re in the dark now.

  “I better go change.” We start walking to the locker rooms, but when we reach the alcove, neither one of us can take it anymore.

  We turn to look at each other and in the next second, our mouths are smashed together. My towel drops to the ground, and his hand wraps around my waist, pulling me to his chest. I can’t get close enough, the taste of him, his smell, the feel of his hard chest as he practically lifts me off the ground. His back hits the wall and his hands slide around my backside, underneath my Speedo, kneading my bottom. He draws one of my knees up, sliding his back down the wall just enough so my center is right on his erection.

  Tanner’s lips start to move along my neck as I press deeper into him, but suddenly his mouth freezes, and his hands stop too. Slowly, he removes them from under my suit, and shifts to his full height until my leg slides down and my feet hit the ground. He bends down to pick up my towel and wraps it around me.

  “I have to tell you something.” There’s no preamble, and his voice cuts across the darkness. It sends shivers down my spine, but it’s the good kind. Because I know exactly what’s coming next.

  He takes a deep breath and through the darkness, I can see he’s looking me straight in the eye.

  “There is no great-aunt. I made her up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tanner

  Charlie didn’t flinch. She didn’t frown.

  I braced myself for all of the potential reactions I’d imagined. Confusion. Anger. Disbelief. My timing was bad, so I even braced for annoyance or frustration.

  Instead, she gave me this knowing smile and said, “I know.”

  “You know?” What was she talking about? What did she know?

  “Do you realize you never said her name?”

  “My great-aunt’s name?” She knew. She knew there wasn’t a great-aunt. That meant …

  “Yeah, your great-aunt who doesn’t exist.”

  I thought back. “I guess I didn’t.” I paused, wondering how I ended up being the one confused. This was not one of the potential scenarios I’d played out. “So, do you still think I’m a drug dealer then?”

  She laughed, and grabbed both of my hands in hers. “No, I think you’re Virginia Rose.”

  I squeezed her hands and dropped my forehead to hers, for comfort and because my head was now spinning so hard I could barely keep myself upright. “How long have you known?”

  “I started suspecting it a few days after you left. I’ll tell you how I solved the mystery. But first we need to get out of here so we don’t set off the alarm.”

  She disappeared into the locker room before I could stop her, and I was left standing in a dark pool area alone. It took a few seconds for the shock to wear off before a grin took over. I never would have imagined she would be the one shocking me when I finally told her.

  And then panic set in that I’d somehow misread or misunderstood the situation. I almost barged into the women’s locker room before going through the men’s and waiting outside the women’s exit on the other side. She was out two minutes later, and when she grabbed my hand and dragged me out to the parking lot, I got that sensation again. Just like that one from the night by the fire pit, when we kissed for the first time and she threw her head back. Reality and fantasy colliding.

  “Can we go to your place?” Charlie looked up to ask. “I want to be loud and I have a roommate now.”

  I wanted to make her be loud right here in the parking lot, but instead I opened the passenger side of my truck and lifted her inside. Totally unnecessary, but something I’d always wanted to do. Her head fell back on the headrest, and I almost dropped my lips to her exposed neck but headlights from another car in the lot nearby illuminated us. I couldn’t wait to taste her again.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” I jogged around to the other side and started the engine. “The walls are too thin at the apartment building.”

  “So where are we going? Ooooo can we go park somewhere and do it on the bench seat? I’ve always wanted to do that with you in here.”

  I loved that she had fantasies of her own about us.

  “We can park at Stony Brook. And I’ve already got the barn in decent shape. It’s still a project, but there’s a space heater in there.”

  “You know I love an adventure. Do you have sleeping bags?”

  I laughed. “We’ll sleep in my apartment.”

  “Oh. Wow, you’ve got a lot planned for tonight.”

  “I tried to warn you what would happen if I saw you in a bathing suit.”

  The rest of the ten-minute drive was verbal foreplay, and by the time we reached the property I was hard as steel and she was soaking. My hand was already down her pants as I put the truck in park and pushed the bench seat back all the way. She scooted to lie vertically on the bench and made fast work of releasing me from my jeans. The entire truck rocked as I plunged into her in one hard stroke.

  And Charlie wasn’t kidding about wanting to be loud. It was my name on her lips between cries of pleasure. I didn’t hold anything back. There were no secrets between us and the liberation was soul deep as I thrust harder, deeper, pulling out at the last second as I remembered we forgot a condom. I came over her bare stomach, one hand between her legs as she rode out her own release.

  “I can’t believe I forgot a condom. I’ve never done that.” It sucked for that feeling to be quickly replaced by remorse. “I’m so sorry.” Just because it was like my entire soul was set free, didn’t mean the rules of biology didn’t apply to me.

  “It’s on me too, Tanner. And I’ve never forgotten either. But I take birth control too, so we’re fine.”

  I got the towel from her bag to help clean her up, and found myself casually mentioning that we could maybe ditch the condom again sometime.

  “I’ve never done that either, but I trust you.”

  The weight of that sat on my shoulders. It should have felt good, but it was undeserved. “But I lied to you.”

  “I would have lied too, if I were you.”

  She pulled her shirt back on, and when she was dressed again, opened the door.

  We walked through the snow, the moon the only thing lighting the way.

  “Tanner, you knew you had to give me some sort of explanation, and when that happened, you’d only just started being my roommate. This is a secret you’ve had for how long now? Ten years?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “My parents know, and my lawyer who acts as the agent for the Virginia Rose LLC so my real name isn’t connected.”

  “Yeah, that was one of the clues for me. The agent is in Burlington. But it wouldn’t have helped anyone else who hadn’t come across that document in your printer.”

  “I never thought you’d consider I was Virginia Rose. You acted like it all made so much sense when I said it was my great-aunt.”

  “And then you told me you were moving out the next day.”

  “I couldn’t take lying to you anymore while sleeping with you. I would have had to keep making up new lies.”

  We’d almost reached the barn when she stopped walking and turned to me. “Tanner
, this isn’t just about sleeping together anymore. It’s not to me.”

  My hand reached for her, cupping her face and remembering the first time I did this on top of the staircase outside our bedrooms. I’d ached for her then, and it only grew deeper, this yearning.

  “Can you help me with the house? I could use your help picking finishes.”

  “Tanner, I’m trying to talk to you about something important. This is a big deal for me. We never really talked about what was between us before, but if this is really happening again, we need to do this. Talk about it.”

  “I’m asking you about the house because, I’m hoping by the time it’s ready, you’ll want to move in with me.”

  Her eyes softened, and she was quiet a moment before saying, “You don’t have to make such a grand gesture, Tanner. That’s at least six months from now.”

  “I want you to be my roommate again,” I told her the plain truth. “I want to live together.”

  “And I’m trying to tell you, I don’t want to be roommates with benefits again.”

  “I think we’re on the same page.”

  Charlie lifted her chin and looked at the sky. “Are we talking about settling in together? Like as a couple?” She lowered her chin after a beat but still looked off in the distance. “Because I don’t know if I’m mature enough to be such an adult like that.”

  We both knew it wasn’t about maturity. “You don’t have to decide right now, but now you know this isn’t a roommates or friends with benefits situation for me, got it?”

  I’d gotten a little carried away, getting greedy with making my fantasies reality. I had pictured her in our new house on this property with me way too many times since I’d bought the land.

  I started walking, leading her into the barn.

  “I want to. But helping you pick out finishes for your new house with the idea I’ll live there too, and then moving into it together, it just feels so permanent.”

  “That’s because it is permanent. I want it to be, at least.”

  “Doesn’t that scare you?”

  We walked into the barn, and I turned on the string of lanterns I’d put up to light the space temporarily.