“I had fun last night.”
Liv made a gagging noise.
Gavin looked over his shoulder and curled his lip. Liv narrowed her eyes. He bared his teeth. She waggled her fingers and hummed P!nk’s “U + UR Hand.”
Thea turned around with another sigh. “You two need to get over this.”
“She started it.”
Thea tilted her head. “I don’t even let the girls get away with that excuse.”
The twins, who’d been silently poking dribbly spoonfuls of Cheerios into their mouths, must have picked up on the weird tension in the room, because they started griping about who got more cereal. Gavin tore his gaze from Thea and intervened. “You each got the same amount, girls.”
“I’m done,” Ava said, pushing her bowl away, pouting for no good reason.
“Wait for your sister, and then we’ll go get you dressed,” Thea said, walking to where the girls sat. She started wiping mouths but paused when her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She made an annoyed noise but pulled it out.
She froze.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin asked.
“It’s an email from Vanderbilt.”
Liv set down her coffee. “Shit.”
“Open it,” he said.
With a deep swallow, Thea swiped the screen a couple of times. Gavin held his breath as her eyes skimmed the screen.
A smile broke out on her face as she turned the screen around.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “You got in?”
“I got in.” She raised her arms and let out a victory whoop. Liv did a dance around the island as the girls laughed at the hijinks. Gavin wanted to join in the celebratory melee. He wanted to wrap his arms around Thea and congratulate her with a kiss, but he chose restraint.
“That’s amazing, Thea,” he said from a safe distance. “Congratulations.”
“When do you start classes?” Liv asked.
Thea looked at the email again. “January 18.”
“We are sooo going to celebrate tonight,” Liv said, hugging Thea from behind.
Gavin bristled but fought it down. She and Liv already had plans together tonight to help Liv’s friend with the café. He’d save his celebration for another night, when they could be alone.
She looked up, and her cheeks flushed under his gaze. He must not have been very good at hiding his thoughts. “I have to get dressed,” she said.
Gavin cleaned up the girls’ cereal and helped them down from their chairs. Then he walked to the whiteboard, dug out a dry erase marker, and circled January 18 on the calendar.
“I wouldn’t plan too far out, Gavin,” Liv said, coming up behind him. “Your calendar ends at Christmas.”
Not if he could help it.
Last night had been a turning point for them. He could feel it. She’d revealed some things to him that she’d never told him before. She’d danced with him. Kissed him.
The guys were right. He needed to be patient. But Liv was right too. The calendar was not his friend, and her news about getting into Vanderbilt was a new plot twist he needed to figure out.
It was time to get serious.
Gavin hammered out a text message to the guys. Emergency meeting tonight. My house.
* * *
• • •
After dropping the girls off at school, Thea ran home to quickly shower and dress. Gavin, thankfully, was gone for his morning training session. She couldn’t handle any private conversations with him. Not after the way he’d looked at her this morning. Not after that sweet little kiss and all it implied.
Liv was right. She was caving. From a couple of tender kisses and one thoughtful date and— Thea shook her head. The email from Vanderbilt had arrived at the perfect time. He’d been spinning cobwebs in her brain, but getting notice from Vandy was like a sweep of the clarity broom.
She had too much to do, like drop off the paperwork that had been requested in her acceptance email, register for classes, and stop at the bookstore. A lot of it could have waited until later, but she’d been waiting almost four years to go back to school. She was tired of waiting.
The Vanderbilt campus was a half-hour drive from Franklin. Thea found a metered spot across from the administration building, poured a handful of quarters into it, and went inside. The admissions office was on the third floor. A secretary with cat-eye glasses gave her a quizzical look when Thea handed her the paperwork.
“You know, you can do all this online,” the woman said.
Thea shrugged. “I know. But I wanted to come in.”
She’d missed this. Missed the vibe of a college campus. Missed the creative rebellion of the arts and theater majors, the bleary-eyed straggle of all-night studiers, the sardonic wit of cocky professors. Thea had never felt more like herself than she had when she was in school.
After visiting the administration building, Thea popped into the on-campus bookstore. On a whim, she bought a couple of Vanderbilt T-shirts for the girls.
Shit. The girls. Thea dug out her phone to check the time. She was going to be late picking them up. Unless Gavin did it.
Thea hesitated but sent him a text to see if he’d get the girls from school, because Thea was going to go straight to Alexis’s café. Gavin responded quickly that he would and then asked how things were going on campus. She ignored the question and simply replied that she’d be home by ten.
Thea grabbed a sandwich at an on-campus deli and then returned to her car. The drive to Alexis’s café took forty minutes in the afternoon traffic. She pulled into the row of parking spaces behind Alexis’s building, where a door had been propped open.
Thea poked her head in. “Hello?”
Hearing nothing, she slipped inside and tried again. Still nothing. The kitchen was full of boxes and piles of bubble wrap, with shiny pots and pans hanging from a row of hooks above a new range.
“Liv? You guys here?” Thea dodged boxes as she walked through the kitchen. A swinging door led to what Thea assumed was the café area beyond. She pushed open the door and . . .
“Surprise!”
Thea squeaked and slapped a hand over her heart. Liv and Alexis stood in the center of the café by the one and only table that wasn’t covered with boxes and stacks of dishes waiting to be put away. Instead, it bore a bottle of champagne, three flutes, and a massive card that read “Congratulations.”
“What is this?” Thea laughed.
“I told you we were going to celebrate!” Liv said. “Surprise!”
Alexis grinned. “Liv told me your good news. That’s so awesome. And it’s perfect timing, actually.”
She and Liv shared a glance.
Thea walked in farther. “Perfect timing for . . .”
“Well,” Alexis said, drawing out the word. “I have some super-plain walls that are in desperate need of artwork. I was just thinking that it would be awesome to be able to show some original pieces from a local artist.”
Thea stopped and stared. Liv rolled he eyes. “She means you, Thea.”
“You want me to hang some of my pieces here?”
“Are you willing? I want to regularly showcase local artists, give them a space where they can sell their work.”
Thea almost pinched herself. In the span of one day, she’d been accepted back into art school and been handed a chance to showcase her work. She didn’t believe much in signs, but this felt like one.
Thea surveyed the café. “So what do we do first?”
Liv walked closer and shoved a glass of champagne in her hand. “First, we toast.”
Thea accepted the champagne.
Liv raised her glass. “To new beginnings.”
Thea matched Liv’s pose. “New beginnings.”
But when the champagne touched her tongue, the bubbly and the sentiment left a sour aftertaste.
&nbs
p; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Can we get down to business, please?”
Gavin opened a beer and plopped onto the couch with as much dignity as any grown man could muster while wearing a red feather boa and reindeer antlers. Ava, Amelia, and Jo-Jo had demanded the men play dress-up with them before settling down in the girls’ bedroom with a movie while the men “worked on the wall.” But the choice of The Little Mermaid had sparked a debate back downstairs, and now things had gone off the rails.
“She has to literally change from one species to another in order to be with a man,” Mack said, waving his hands around to finish drying his nails. Ava made him paint them alternating green and red for Christmas. “What kind of message is that for little girls?”
“It’s a movie,” Del growled, defensive because he had been the one who suggested it.
“Del makes an excellent point that we shouldn’t overlook,” Malcolm said calmly. The mini jingle bell ornaments dangling from his beard made a festive sound as he spoke. “We shouldn’t assume that women and girls don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. We don’t fear that men who read murder mysteries and thrillers are going to have a hard time not becoming serial killers, so why should we assume that a girl won’t know that she doesn’t have to change from a mermaid to human in order to find love just because of a movie?”
“Because that’s the only message girls get sometimes,” Mack argued. “It’s not one movie. It’s, like, every fucking movie.”
Everyone nodded in silent agreement. The Russian lifted a hip and farted.
“True,” Malcolm said. “But we must find a way to produce and enjoy content that celebrates the fierceness of women without, at the same time, belittling a woman’s ability to decipher fact from fiction.”
“Like romance novels,” Gavin grumbled.
Mack covered his heart with his hand. “Our boy is growing up.”
“Our boy is growing angry,” Gavin said. “It’s getting late. We’re running out of time.”
The Russian stood with a look on his face that said he was running out of time too. “Where is restroom?”
The room erupted in a loud chorus of noooo. Mack jumped up and headed for the kitchen. “Don’t let him near your bathroom, Gav Man,” Mack said, opening the fridge like he owned the place. “You’ll never get the smell out. The man grows toxic waste in his colon.”
“I have digestive problem,” the Russian said.
“Use the bathroom in the basement,” Gavin grumbled. “And you, get the fuck out of my fridge.”
Mack emerged with a take-out container. He peeled off the top using the tips of his fingers to avoid smudging the nail polish. “What is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I eat it?”
Gavin shrugged. “Yes, whatever. Can we get started, please?”
Each guy had arrived with a bag full of books for him and unceremoniously dumped them out on the floor. Gavin picked up the first one he saw—a dark cover featuring a shirtless man holding a gun. “What the hell is this?”
“Romantic suspense,” Del said.
“Romantic suspense?” he repeated skeptically.
“Yeah, you know.” Mack held up a fist and spoke dramatically to the ceiling. “Is this guy ever going to get laid? Story of your life, dude, amirite?”
Gavin threw the book back on the pile. “I’m being serious,” he grumped. “We made a lot of progress last night, but she got weird this morning when she found out she got into Vanderbilt.”
“Tell us what happened,” Malcolm said.
Gavin summarized the key moments of their date and the morning.
“You’re in the dreaded middle of your story, man,” Del said. “It’s going to feel like one step forward, two steps back for a while, just like in the book. Remember when Irena finally opens up to Benedict about her sister, how they wanted to escape to America?”
Gavin nodded.
“Well, that left her feeling vulnerable and even a little pissed off when he left.”
Gavin covered his ears. “Spoilers! I haven’t read any further than that.”
“The fact that Thea opened up to you a little about her dad is a good sign, but that kind of progress is also scary for her,” Malcolm said. “You made her talk about things that hurt. The G-spot is most tender before it starts to sing.”
“I will pay each of you a million dollars to stop saying G-spot,” Gavin snapped.
“The point is, you chipped away at her walls last night. That’s going to leave her feeling exposed, vulnerable.”
“Yeah, well, so do I,” Gavin admitted quietly.
The room stilled.
“Keep going, man,” Mack said. “This is the good stuff.”
Malcolm leaned back. “Gavin, we spend a lot of time talking about what she’s afraid of, her resistance. What are you afraid of?”
“Losing her.”
“Bullshit,” Del said.
Gavin whipped his gaze to Del’s. “Excuse me?”
“That’s surface-level bullshit,” Del said. “Of course, you’re afraid of losing her. That goes without saying. But if you think all you have to do is win her back to be happy, you’re wrong. You might as well quit now.”
“I don’t—” His mouth froze for a moment. “Can you just stop speaking in riddles and fucking tell me something!”
“What Del is trying to say,” Malcolm said, “is that she can’t be the only one revealing scary things. Have you opened up to her? Really opened up to her?”
“I don’t . . . I d-don’t know.” His armpits began to sweat.
“Then start with opening up to us,” Del said. “What is the one thing you think you’d never, ever be able to do? What scares you more than anything? What don’t you want to talk about?”
The guys stared pointedly.
No. He couldn’t tell them. Not that.
He shook his head.
Malcolm sighed with atypical frustration for the Zen master of book club. “Gavin, we can’t help you if you’re not willing to help yourself.”
“You don’t understand. It’s personal.”
Del grunted and stood. “I can’t waste any more time on you if you’re not going to—”
“She faked it.”
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. He’d said it out loud. He braced for the laughter, for the jokes, the sky to fall.
But it didn’t happen. He looked up and found nothing but sympathetic faces.
“She faked . . . orgasms?” Mack asked.
“No, genius. The moon landing.”
“Wow, man. That sucks,” Del said. “I’m sorry.”
“She faked it all the time?” Malcolm asked. “Or just sometimes?”
“All the time.” Bitterness stung his tongue. “As far as I know, I’ve given my wife exactly one real orgasm our entire marriage.”
Mack swore under his breath. “Shit, man. I’m sorry. All the fucking jokes about sex . . . I didn’t know. I’m a fucking prick.”
The apology was surprisingly heartfelt. “There’s no way you could have known.”
Del coughed discreetly. “So, I’m assuming that you figured out she was faking it because . . . ?”
His neck got hot. “Because one night she didn’t fake it, and it was obvious.”
“I don’t understand,” Mack said. “She kicked you out because you gave her an orgasm finally?”
Gavin bristled at the word finally. “No. She kicked me out because I didn’t react well to learning the truth.”
“Meaning?” Del prompted.
“Meaning I moved into the guest room and stopped talking to her.”
The room finally erupted like he knew it eventually would. Every man jumped to his feet. Del began to pace, punching his fist into his other hand. Malcolm stroked his jingly bear
d and starting chanting like a monk. Mack shoveled angry forkfuls of brown noodles into his mouth, alternating between eating and pointing a silent, angry finger in Gavin’s general direction.
“You dumb fuck!” Del finally said.
“I know I didn’t handle it well,” Gavin said, defending himself instinctively. “I tried to apologize when I went to the house after she asked for the divorce.”
“Gavin, you have a lot more to apologize for than that,” Malcolm said. “Women don’t fake orgasms unless they’re faking other things too.”
Christ. Back to the fucking riddles. “Just . . . just tell me wh-what to do.”
“You need to stop focusing all your attention on the fact that she faked it and start asking yourself why the fuck you didn’t notice.”
Malcolm’s words landed with a thud in his gut.
“Yeah,” Mack said, wiping his forearm across his grease-covered lips. “And why you didn’t have the fucking balls to talk to her when you learned the truth.”
“And then you need to open a vein,” Del said. “She might have been dishonest about the orgasms, but how honest have you been with her? You can turn this around, but not if you don’t take the same kind of emotional risk that you’re asking of her.”
“She’s moving on without you, man,” Malcolm said. “She has plans. Goals. She’s starting school again, and she doesn’t need you. Not unless you give her a reason to trust that you—”
A sudden yellow glow through the front curtains stunned them all into silence. Then a collective oh, shit sent them scrambling.
“I thought you said she’d be gone until ten,” Del barked.
“That’s what she said!” Gavin looked at the floor. “The books. Hide the fucking books.”
Gavin and Mack dropped to the floor and started grabbing and piling paperbacks.
The headlights went dark outside. “Under the couch,” Gavin hissed.
“My nails are still wet,” Mack whined.
Gavin glared and started shoving books under the couch. Thea’s footsteps sounded on the porch.
“Put some behind the cushions,” Del hissed.
The Russian farted and held his hand to his stomach. “I need bathroom again.” He ran to the basement.
The Bromance Book Club Page 19
