by Anthology
"See? There ya go."
"Can I give you a ride somewhere, darlin'?"
"Nah. I'm good."
I hadn’t even thought before I’d responded. Turning down help, not to mention turning down anything to do with Sebastian Winters, was simply second nature to me. I'd never really stopped to think about why, I’d just followed the instinct to keep him at arm’s length. However, now that I was faced with actually needing his help, I was forced to take a closer look at my knee-jerk reactions.
"Come on, Miche." He grinned, nudging me companionably with his elbow. "Give me a chance, why don'tcha? Where were you headed?"
Well, damn it. That's where he had me. I needed to get those groceries to my grandma, so I could definitely use the ride.
"Don't laugh, okay?" I prefaced. Damn, asking for help was not easy!
"No promises," he teased.
"I have to go to the grocery store to get food and then bring it to my grandma's house."
The jovial demeanor disappeared from Sebastian's face, and his expression turned to a mixture of concern and puzzlement. "Honey, why would you think I would laugh at that?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. It just seems like the kind of thing that jock types would look down on."
The wide, bright smile returned, bringing back with it the warmth that shone from his eyes. He slung his arm easily around my shoulder as we started across the parking lot together.
"Well, then, I guess I just need to make it my business to show you that I'm not the typical jock type. Besides, if there are two things Southern boys take seriously, it's their mamas and their grandmas. I would never look down on you for taking care of yours."
I relaxed a little at the warmth and acceptance in his tone. "Okay. I have to warn you though. For when we go over there. She's kind of...a character."
"All the best grandmas are." He pulled a key ring from his pocket and pressed the unlock button on his fob.
The horn and lights on a large, shining, red pickup a few cars down from where we were went off.
"That's your pickup?" I asked.
"Oh, hell yes, darlin'. I forgot to mention the other thing Southern boys are serious about—their trucks."
CHAPTER FOUR
Sebastian
"So, did you grow up around here, living with your grandma?"
Michelle shook her head. "No. I wish. My grandma didn't even live here while I was growing up. She was kind of a nomad. But being with her would have been better than my mom and stepdad."
"They were kind of a nightmare?"
She stilled, avoiding my eyes as she examined the label on a can of creamed corn. "No. That would be putting it too strongly. They never beat me or anything. My stepdad is just kind of passive-aggressively manipulative. You know? He has this surface charm thing going on, but underneath it are all of these intense expectations nobody could really meet."
"Sounds stressful, living with that day in and day out."
"It was. I think the worst part was that he always put my mom in the middle. If I did something he didn't like, he'd turn to her and say, 'Charlene, please tell her that we don't...’ fill in the blank. Whatever I’d done that he didn’t like. ‘Not in this house!' He'd always end it that way. 'Not in this house!' Like he was some monarch or something. Like he had a lock on what civilized behavior was supposed to look like."
"Damn. Sounds like a real bastard."
She looked up at me, delight sparkling in her eyes. A small, slow smile spread across her face, and my heart swelled from knowing I'd put it there. Even better than the smile, though, was the fact that she was opening up to me. Most girls would blurt out their entire life stories within minutes of meeting a person. Michelle wasn't like that. With her, I had learned that her trust was not something she handed out freely. It had to be earned. And, apparently, I was now doing that.
She put the creamed corn into the basket, and we moved farther down the aisle. Her opening up to me, even a little, gave me food for thought. Hell. Maybe Jackson was really onto something. Maybe I didn't need some big strategy. Maybe the whole "be yourself or some shit" thing was actually working.
"He was a real bastard, as a matter of fact. But the thing that made it weird was that it wasn't out of mean-spiritedness. He wasn't just a plain old, garden-variety asshole. He was more like this very straight-laced citizen-of-the-year type. He’s a lawyer, you know? Very orderly, upstanding, keep-up-appearances-and-keep-up-with-the-Joneses type. And he had this vision of how a perfect, normal, traditional family should be. And, as you might have guessed, 'perfect,' 'normal,' and 'traditional' certainly don't apply to me."
I rested my hand on the small of her back, and she abruptly stopped walking. A rush of sensation at the contact zipped up my arm like steroids had been injected into my veins—or how I would imagine that felt, at any rate. Like a huge ball of power and strength and energy, all rolled into one, shooting out through my entire body from the point of contact. I leaned down to her ear, my lips close enough to brush the hot-pink strands of hair curled above it.
"I disagree," I whispered. "Traditional? No, that's not you. Or normal. And that's a good thing. You're an individual. You stand out. But perfect? Hell yes, you are. You're the most perfect thing I've ever seen."
She stood stock-still. I could hear the sped-up rhythm of her breathing. I could sense the beating of her heart, in time with mine. Time slowed. My vision tunneled down to just her face. Sounds faded away until they seemed like they were coming from another place. No. Another dimension. The world shrunk to nothing but Miche and me and the blood rushing through our veins in perfect synchronicity.
She turned her face to me in what seemed like the slowest of slow motion. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her waist, pull her warm body to me, and crush my lips to hers. Need filled me. I shook with it. My head spun. With every last bit of control I possessed, I made myself step back from her. I was just starting to earn her trust. There was no way I was going to fuck it up that quickly.
Her cheeks flushed, and her china-doll eyes widened behind her glasses, making her even more adorable than usual. And that was really saying something.
I racked my brain, trying to think of what to say next. Something casual. Something that would move the conversation on before I had to walk through this damn grocery store sporting wood.
Nothing came to mind.
Then, just as quickly as it had started, the moment came to a crashing halt. Michelle spun back around and pushed the cart up the aisle with a distracted, "Only two more things on the list. We should hurry. Gran's waiting for me."
Her knees trembled a little as she walked away from me. I smiled. That was good. Very good, in fact. It meant that I’d gotten under her skin, too. At least a little. It was a useful tidbit to know.
I jogged down the aisle to catch up with her, my muscles taut and alive from the adrenaline rush I'd just experienced. "Well, damn, girl," I teased. "Stop holdin' us up, then. We've no time for nonsense! Let's get this shopping finished."
Her lips twitched the way they did sometimes when she found a joke of mine amusing, and fireworks went off inside my brain. Hell, in my baseball-playing career, I'd hit my share of home runs. I'd easily loped around the bases, keeping my pace steady and even so that I could soak in the sound of the stadium full of cheering fans. I knew what victory felt like. I knew it with every fiber of my being, right down to my bones, and there was no mistaking it.
When I made Michelle Mitchell almost-smile, the feeling that flooded through me was pure, unadulterated victory with a capital V.
And I couldn't get enough.
CHAPTER FIVE
Michelle
It should have felt good to smile. No, it should have felt great.
Forget should have though. What it actually felt like was terrifying. All I could hear inside my head as my lips curled up as if of their own accord, was my step-douche saying in that oily way of his, "Now, smile like a proper young lady. Nobody likes a frown."
Whether we were going to church or a school function where there would be other parents to impress, or having some of his colleagues over for dinner, it didn't matter. Douchebag Dan, Stepfather Extraordinaire, could never resist the opportunity to remind me that I just didn't quite measure up.
I shivered as I remembered his words, hearing them play through my brain as clearly as though he were right next to me. I had the same reaction to the memory as I’d had when I was in high school and had continued to have subconsciously ever since: Fuck him! If he thought I should smile, then I'd frown. If he thought I should wear frilly dresses, I'd wear skinny jeans and studded belts. If he thought I should wear a floaty, floral, button-down blouse, I'd dress all in black.
Not all of the rebellion had been terrible for me, of course. Some of it had left great stuff in my life. For instance, all of my pushback on the pretty, sweet "proper young lady" clothes he had tried to foist on me had led me to experimenting with fashion choices and aesthetics, and now, I loved my look. I felt comfortable in my own skin.
Also, trying to escape all the constant pressure to socialize and make nice with the people he wanted to impress had led me to seek escape in books, and books had been my salvation. They had opened up a world I never could have dreamed was possible. They had made the bad times better then, and they made the good times sweeter now. I was even devoting my life's work to books. As a library science major, I hoped to one day become the person who led others to discover the mind-altering and, in many cases, life-saving power of books.
So, even though I was happy to keep some positive parts of my miserable childhood’s legacy, I was ready to let other parts go. Like the part where it was hard for me to smile, trust people, or let them into my world because I was so afraid they were going to judge me or try to change me. I wanted to free myself of those walls, but I felt powerless to do it.
I glanced over at Sebastian. His hand was casually slung over the top of the steering wheel as he maneuvered his truck down the road. Damn. What was it about his easy charm and his quick wit that penetrated my barriers so effortlessly, like a hot knife through butter? It scared me. But, oh, God, it thrilled me, too!
"Make the next right. My grandma's house is the green one," I told him.
"Your wish is my command, darlin'." He winked and expertly palmed the wheel to turn the truck onto her street. He parked at the curb in front of her house, turned the engine off, and opened the door to get out.
"Wait one second." I put a restraining hand on his arm to keep him in the truck. Then I took my glasses off and stuffed them in my bag. "I don't wear these into the house because it worries her. She thinks I'm losing my sight or something. I just wanted to tell you ahead of time so you wouldn't say anything."
Oh, God. There was that warm, confident grin again. The one that made me feel like we were in on a secret together. The one that made me weak in the knees and tingly in places slightly north of there.
"Now, wait just one minute, Miche. Are you trying to tell me that you don't need those glasses? They're just for show?"
"They're an aesthetic choice," I defended, trying to sound unaffected even if it was the furthest thing from the truth.
"So, did they come prepackaged with some vintage tees, Doc Martens, and a selection of beanies in your hipster starter kit? Or were they a one-off purchase?"
"Hey! I'm not a hipster." My voice lacked the conviction I had planned to make that declaration with.
"Oh, really?" he said in his lazy, seductive drawl. "Because, last week, you wore a T-shirt that said 'The things you like, I liked five years ago.' Now, if that's not the very definition of a hipster, I don't know what is."
I smiled. It was nowhere near the full-wattage grin Sebastian regularly lit up the room—and my libido—with, but it was a start. I paused for a moment to absorb the sheer awesomeness of the fact that he noticed what I wore and remembered it.
"Touché,” I said. “I don't really consider myself a hipster, but I concede the point. I do know a joke about hipsters though. Want to hear it?"
He dramatically slapped his palm against his chest as if the shock were giving him a heart attack. "A joke? From you, my serious girl? Abso-freaking-lutely. I have to hear this joke. Go for it."
My smile stretched wider. "How many hipsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
"How many?"
I leaned back and shrugged, adopting an air of blasé indifference to perform the last line. "Oh, it's, like, this really obscure number. I'm sure you've never heard of it."
Sebastian threw his head back and laughed from deep in his belly. He looked at me and shook his head, his eyes still shining with amusement, as his laughter died down. He took my hand and smiled, looking into my eyes as if he could see right down into the depths of me and liked what he found there.
Warmth and satisfaction spread through me—things I hadn't felt in such a long time that it took me a minute to place the unfamiliar emotions. When I recognized them, I sighed with contentment. What I was feeling was acceptance, and it was incredible. I hadn't even understood how deeply my soul had missed it until it flooded through me, making me dizzy and drunk with its sweet intoxication.
Part of me wanted to stay there, bask in the glow of Sebastian's honeyed laugh and shining eyes forever, and savor the way he looked at me like I was a precious treasure. Like I was important. But another part of me simply couldn't handle that. It was too close. Too intimate. Too tempting in its invitation to lower my walls and trust another person, to believe they could see me for who I truly was and value that. That sharp and jagged corner of my soul, though small, was strong and hard to crack. And, in this case, like it had so many times before, it won out.
I opened the truck door and jumped out, slamming it behind me. Then I scurried up the walk as fast as I could. "We'd better go in," I called behind me without even looking back.
CHAPTER SIX
Sebastian
I hopped out of the pickup, grabbed the grocery bags from the backseat, and hurried after Michelle. I was stoked with how this was going. A couple of hours ago, I had been getting nowhere with her. Now, I was making her laugh and meeting her family. Sure, it wasn't like that was entirely due to me and my suave debonairness—a broken-down car was in the mix. But what of it? By my way of thinking, that just meant fate was on my side.
Now, my one and only job was to not fuck it up.
We climbed the porch steps, and Michelle raised her hand to knock on the door. Before she could make contact, however, it was violently flung open. Standing on the other side was a woman holding a tumbler full of amber liquid in one hand and a burning cigarette with a long and precariously trembling ash trail at the end of it.
She was in her sixties or seventies, as far as I could tell—but it was difficult to judge because of the heavy layer of makeup covering her face. Her lips were a bright orangey-pink color, and her eyelids were solid blue all the way up to her eyebrows. Her hair, piled high on top of her head, was stiff from all the hairspray holding it firmly in place.
She was wearing a housecoat of brilliant blue to match her eye shadow, and her feet were covered with fuzzy black slippers. When she spoke, her voice was low and whiskey-soaked with a thick East Coast accent.
"There you are! I was starting to think you got eaten by a bear in this godforsaken wilderness. Come in, come in." Michelle's grandmother gestured wildly as she spoke, and I was amazed that the liquid stayed in the glass and the ash didn’t fall off the end of her cigarette. It was mesmerizing to watch.
"Hello, ma'am," I interjected.
She turned, noticing me for the first time. She looked me up and down for a long moment and then nodded decisively, apparently approving of what she saw. "Right. I get it," she said in a wicked tone, swiveling back to face Michelle. "That's why you're late. You're finally having a little fun. Well, good for you, kid. You deserve it." She gave Michelle an affectionate pat on the cheek with the cigarette hand as we walked past her and into
the house.
"Grandma!" Michelle sounded scandalized. "Nothing's going on. Sebastian just gave me a ride."
Her grandmother chortled dryly. "I think that's pretty much what I just said."
Michelle's cheeks flamed, and I didn't think I'd ever seen her so embarrassed and uncomfortable. I should have felt bad for her, but I couldn't help it. It was cute as hell, and I loved it.
I set the bags on the counter and extended my hand to her. "Sebastian Winters, ma'am. I sure am pleased to meet you."
Michelle, her face still as bright red as a harvest sunset, said, "Sebastian, this is my grandma, Trudy. Grandma Trudy, Sebastian. He's a friend from class."
Nice. I'd been upgraded to friend! Tonight was turning out to be made of win.
Grandma Trudy set her drink next to the grocery bags and then snuffed out her cigarette in the olive-green, glass ashtray next to the cabinets. She grasped my outstretched hand. "Pleased to meet you, doll. You can call me Grandma Trudy if you like. You be good to my girl, now."
I said, "That's the plan, ma'am," at the same time that Michelle was exclaiming, "Grandma! It's not like that!"
While Trudy laughed, I got the distinct impression that she liked pushing Michelle out of her comfort zone and watching her squirm. I suspected she thought it was just as cute as I did.
Michelle, her voice firm and frustrated, said, "Grandma, seriously. The Chevette wouldn't start. Again. Sebastian saw me in the parking lot, trying futilely to whip its ass into shape, and offered to give me a ride to the grocery store and then here. That's it. I swear."
Her grandmother didn't miss a beat. "Well, what a nice young man. You could do worse, Michelle. And you have." She cackled again in her dry, rattling way.
Michelle closed her eyes and shook her head.
As for me, I couldn't do anything but grin. Grandma Trudy had done more to lay my cards on the table in the last three minutes alone than I'd managed to do over the course of the entire semester. I gave the swell old broad props.
"Come on," Grandma Trudy said. "Let me fix you two kids some dinner."
