by Blair Holden
No, you idiot, you’re the love of my life, but I can hardly say that, so I kick him out of my room and begin getting ready.
***
“What is that?”
“What? This little thing? We call it a dress.”
“Little? It’s so minuscule it’s nonexistent. Did you pick this up from the toddler section?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s Cami’s.”
“Of course it is, no wonder it’s so short on you.”
“Hey! I’m not short!”
“I’m just saying that that thing you’re wearing is a little high, isn’t it? No one’s going to have to try very hard to look up your skirt if they wanted to.”
My cheeks warm but I don’t let him see it. “It’s the only clean piece of clothing between our shared wardrobe and I’m not changing out of it, so you better be ready to deal with it.”
He grumbles but we continue walking toward his car. He had gone down to wait for me and when I’d come out of the elevator wearing this dark red, almost burgundy wrap dress that admittedly did come up a little short on me, he’d gone all slack-jawed. And as much as it pleases me to know that I still have a certain effect on him, this night isn’t about me seducing him or him flirting with me, and it’s a struggle to remind myself of that when his fingers keep brushing mine as we walk together.
He helps me get into his new car that his parents helped him buy, a preowned Range Rover that’s monstrous in size and honestly scares the crap out of me. I have the same kind of SUV, but Cole’s new ride is almost majestic looking, fit for the person who drives it.
Cole helps me up into the jeep and he groans as I’m seated. “I could totally see up your skirt.”
“Did you even try not looking?”
“Would I really be me if I did that? Trying to give me an existential crisis now, Shortcake?”
I roll my eyes as he laughs and gets into the driver’s side. I don’t know where he’s taking me but as long as we’re together, not fighting, and open to discussing things with civility, he could take me to Hades and I’d be down for it.
“So what did you tell the others?”
“Same thing I told you. I didn’t feel right leaving you alone like that.”
“But you knew I wasn’t sick, sick.”
“Maybe that was why I was worried. I didn’t know why you’d refuse to go with us, and I knew it was because I’d upset you the other day.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty about that, Cole. Everything you said was valid.”
He grits his teeth. “It wasn’t. I was upset about something else and took it out on you.”
“Don’t you dare backtrack, Stone. You were honest with me for the first time in God knows how long, so don’t you fucking dare tell me you didn’t mean it.”
His mouth gapes open at my surprise, but I force him to focus his attention on the road.
“There’s so much I need to talk to you about, and that’s why I came here, not to stalk you like a lovesick girlfriend but because I wanted us to talk. I hope we can do that tonight.”
He swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple bobs, and his hands seem unsteady on the steering wheel but he tells me, “We can.”
Cole pulls into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant, which is filled with luxury cars, and given how eager the valet is to park Cole’s jeep, I realize that we’re fine dining tonight.
“So this isn’t the Cheesecake Factory.”
“Clearly,” Cole says dryly as he places his hand at the small of my back and leads me inside the super luxe, super fancy restaurant where the manager falls over his feet to greet us.
“You’re lucky I wore a dress and not my jeans; they have rips in places there shouldn’t be rips in the first place.”
He groans behind me as we’re seated in a secluded corner. It’s obvious that this is a romantic restaurant where people either go for first dates or anniversaries. Since it’s neither, and most things on the menu in front of me look way too expensive to be food items, I look at Cole.
“It’s not my birthday.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not yours, either. Why are we spending a small fortune on food?”
I know the answer, though; he feels guilty and a fancy dinner is his way of apologizing.
Being in college has made me appreciate the benefits of being frugal, and I’ve found several spectacular ways of saving money. Since I don’t like asking my parents for financial help more than I already have to, I like to only go to restaurants that have a kiddie menu and chicken nuggets available, because you can bet that they’ll be cheap.
“Can you just enjoy the meal in peace? We can argue later, if that’s what you’re missing so much.”
“Calm down, Grumpy, I’m just trying to save you some money here. How about we split the bill?”
“Are you purposely trying to emasculate me? Do I have to grovel for your forgiveness, Tessie, is that what you want?”
“While that would be nice, I’m not mad at you.”
“Come again?”
“I said I’m not mad at you! What you said needed to be said, and while I wish it didn’t get to the point that we had to yell those things at one another, I guess I’m happy that it’s all out in the open now.”
He still doesn’t seem convinced. “I made it sound like I hated our relationship. I don’t, I…God, I don’t even know how to say this, but maybe the reason I try to not talk about my own shit isn’t because I think you don’t pay attention but because I was being selfish.”
“You don’t get to blame yourself for me being self-absorbed. That’s not how relationships work, and I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out.”
He attempts to cut me off but the waiter appears to take our orders. The menus are leather bound and don’t mention prices, so I’m fully aware that I wouldn’t ever want to pay the amount they’re asking. We also decline the wine list, for obvious reasons. Cole looks amused as I nearly attack the waiter for insisting we try their special wine. I’m not even all that hungry anymore, my stomach squirming with nervousness because I’m not sure whether to broach the topic of his knee or not. On one hand I want to take it a step at a time and work on fixing our relationship, on the other, I need him to know that he’s got me if he wants to talk to someone. He’s going through something major and he’s shutting out the people who care about him the most. I hurt for him so much that I’ve never even considered being mad at him for keeping it a secret for so long.
We both order pasta dishes and, knowing that our food will take up to twenty minutes to get here, we’re finally able to talk about the important things without the fear of being interrupted. I’m the one who begins the conversation.
“I have a lot to apologize for, starting with how I acted back home. I shouldn’t have let all those things that Cassandra said come between us. Maybe she pointed us in the right direction—”
“She didn’t! She should never have interfered.”
“But if she hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here now, and I’m terrified to think about just how long we’d go on without you telling me that you needed more from me. Why, Cole? Why didn’t you just sit me down and tell me that you’d like me to be there for you the same way you were for me? I…I know it kinda goes with the territory of being in a relationship, but I can be a little clueless about something that’s staring me right in the face, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He smiles. “I have noticed, and if you remember correctly, I decided to do something about it when I went after you.”
“Exactly!” I slap the table. “You pursued me like a madman, you made me see things that I’d been blind to for so long. So why now? Why let me walk around like a clueless idiot while you’re the one running this?” I point between the two of us.
“Because I love you and my first instinct is to protect you, always.”
“That’d make you my parent, not my boyfriend. That’s not how a romantic relationship works. There’s give
-and-take on both sides, a little compromise, some sacrifice. Both partners have to be equal. I want to be the Meg to your Jack White, but right now I feel like I’m the Kevin to your Joe and Nick Jonas!”
He tries to refrain from laughing, but I guess I really should’ve tried to phrase what I meant in a more sophisticated manner?
“So you want to be the Cher to my Sonny.”
“Exactly, there you go! Now you’re getting it. Like the Gabriella to your Troy.”
“Shortcake, we’re not even great singers. I think we should stop.”
“But you get my point? Equality? We tell each other everything, absolute honesty.”
I’m slightly pleased when he pauses for a second, looking conflicted. I wait for him to at least bring up the topic, try to hint at it in some way, but he doesn’t.
“Absolute honesty, I promise.”
He’ll come around, I know he will.
***
After dinner, which Cole refused to let me pay for, we get ice cream from a truck parked near Elizabeth Park. We’ve actually parked his jeep near Lan’s apartment complex and walked our way here. Despite being summer, the night is cool, not muggy and humid. Cole and I stroll down the cobbled pathway in silence, finishing our ice cream.
I’m so wrapped up in trying to figure out how to best approach the topic of football that I miss his words.
“The day I left, I fought with Dad and Cassandra over wanting to pay for college myself.”
I bite my lip and let him continue, tangling my fingers with his. He squeezes them as if wanting to seek comfort from me.
“They’re paying for whatever the scholarship doesn’t cover, right?”
“Yeah, it was important to my parents that they pay for college, for both me and Jay. I didn’t even ask them to chip in with the Jeep but they still did.”
“Why’d you tell them that you’d like to pay?”
“I was mad at Cassandra, mostly. She shouldn’t have said the things she said to you or ambushed you without me being there. I’m sick of people thinking they have the right to interfere in our relationship when it’s none of their fucking business, and I guess with her it was the last straw. She started talking about college and how she thinks I should think about what I want to do with my life after college outside of football. I’d actually just been talking to Dad about changing my major and she brings up law school. She was pushing it so heavily that I just lost it.”
“I…I’m sorry.” I know he hates it when he fights with his father, mostly because it’s taken them such a long time to fix their relationship. “I’m sure it must have been hard for the sheriff to be in that position, to have to take a side.”
“He chewed me out for being disrespectful toward her and wanted me to apologize. I would have if she hadn’t…she said things that weren’t for her to say, and that was it for me. I was tired of people thinking they knew what was best for me, trying to control my life, and I just packed and left.”
I’d been one of those people because I thought I knew what was best for us, I’d tried to push him away because I thought it would help us, and now I realize that I’d made him feel weak, powerless. I promise myself to never do that again.
“Do you want to tell me what it was that Cassandra said?”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders and pull me into his chest. “Not right now. Right now, all I want to do is be with my girl, because I’ve missed her. I’m sorry for being such a dick to you, Tessie, but…”
“It’s only made us stronger, and you more than deserved the opportunity to act that way since I know I’ve put you through a fair share of the same. I’m the queen of isolating myself, why shouldn’t you get to do the same?”
“Because it’s lonely and because when I let myself put up walls, the voices inside my head nearly drive me crazy.”
I launch myself at him then, arms around his neck, chests crushed together. His arms go around me almost immediately, like he’d predicted my move. I know that I’d wanted to keep my distance tonight but when he’s hurting, I say screw the rules.
“You’ll never feel lonely ever again, not if I have something to do with it. If you want to be alone, kick me out for a while and have some peace and quiet, sure! But not lonely, never lonely because that’s a feeling that I’m well acquainted with, and I’d never want that for you. You somehow barged into my life and made me realize just how much I’d been missing a person, my person, someone whom I knew with absolute certainty would be there to catch me whenever I fell, offer a shoulder if I needed it, and would be there to hold me at night, to wake up to in the morning. I never realized that I needed that security of being so completely in love with someone, with you, until you taught me that I could have all those things, if I just let you in. So Cole, this isn’t me trying to return a favor, this is me telling you that you do not deserve to feel lonely and you never will, not when I’m there.”
We’re both breathing harder, clutching each other as if afraid that the other person will disappear if we let go. I’ve laid out all my cards on the table and now all I want is for him to realize that he doesn’t need to hide any part of his life from me. We’re partners, we’ll get through this together, but only if he trusts me.
Which is why what I do next nearly kills me.
Cole cups my face in his hands, his thumbs tracing the edges of my mouth, my lips. He looks at me so intensely, with so much heat in his eyes that I could spontaneously combust there and then.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I kissed you?” he rasps and I shake my head. My brain has left the building, folks.
“It’s killing me, I dream about the taste of you.” His head bends toward me, his breath fans my face. “I can’t wait to have you in my bed tonight.”
And that’s when I have perhaps the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life. “Cole…I…” Gripping the tops of his arms, I push him away slightly. He stumbles back as if lost in a trance; I feel the same way, all breathless with bones that feel like jelly.
“I…I think we shouldn’t kiss or do anything else until we fix us.”
His eyes grow to the size of saucers and I don’t miss it when he adjusts his pants. “We’re fixed, Shortcake, we Bob the Builderered it just now. We’re golden.”
“Can you promise me that you’re not hiding anything from me? That there’s nothing else you’d like to get off your chest?” I couldn’t have given him a bigger or better opening if I’d had a shovel in my hand and started digging.
He’s back to looking conflicted, his expression so torn it’s almost funny. Withholding physical gratification might be a low blow, but I don’t want this to turn into one of those times when we use our bodies to solve our problems.
“Fine,” he grits out, “there is something, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
“Well,” I stand there awkwardly, “I’ll be there when you are.”
“Oh no, Shortcake,” he begins closing in on me again, “I’m not waiting that long to kiss you. It might take me a while to open up to you about that one thing, but I don’t have the self-restraint or patience to not touch you.”
I gulp. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means game on.”
Chapter Sixteen: I Look Like a Perverse Polly Pocket
Cole and I are playing the most torturous kind of hide-and-seek. Take an innocent playground game and turn it into something entirely deviant, where the stakes are much higher than losing. Because your standard first grader wouldn’t want to be caught. They would do everything in their power to win, to be the last man standing. But me? I’m not doing that great of a job.
Exhibit A, Last Night.
The minute we got back from our not-so-innocent stroll through the park, I should’ve rushed up to my apartment, locked the door, and pulled up videos to see how abstinence worked. I’d been a virgin, never even kissed till the age of eighteen, so how hard could it be to resist one guy?
But there lies my problem; h
e’s not just one guy, he is the guy, and running away from him is the cruelest form of self-torture. He bewitched me into joining him for coffee and as I settled into the plush leather couch, I could see that it’d been kept for one purpose only: to be so comfortable as to not let the sitter want to move, ever.
So I did, I’d made myself comfortable and told myself that I had some amount of self-control, which I prided myself over. I wouldn’t relent to Cole’s seduction until he came clean about his knee. Then and only then would I surrender. But as I watched him give me hot looks from the kitchen, I told myself that just because I couldn’t give in, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t enjoy it. Perhaps I’d give him a taste of his own medicine. Whatever sultriness I had I could use it to my advantage and make him fess up. The sooner it was out in the open, the sooner we could come up with a plan. I had everything ready, the paperwork, the figures, a perfect ten-year plan, if only he’d let me talk to him about it.
And as I’d started imagining that future, I hadn’t noticed the steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of me, or the steaming hot hunk that had somehow sidled up to me.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
The smoldering looks, the half-smile, the careless way he’d tossed an arm around the back of the couch and angled his body toward me. Oh boy, Cole Stone was giving his full-blown seduction treatment. I gulped and took a rather large sip of my coffee, which in turn burned my throat. So while I was hacking away, Cole’s arm slipped down my back, stroking and comforting.
“Are you back to physically endangering me while you try to woo me? Isn’t that so fourth grade?”
“First grade to seventh grade, actually, but who’s counting. Also kindergarten, I had such good game then.”
“I would disagree; your playground bullying isn’t what I call game.”
“But I was memorable to you, isn’t that all that matters? How much of Jay can you actually remember through the years?” He smirked and I sighed, annoying, irresistible, but stubborn jerk.
And he was right, of course he was. All those memories of Jay I had treasured growing up were now lost, not even in some long-forgotten corner of my brain, where I had some memories of Nicole. But with Jay, it was almost as if they had never existed and Cole had somehow swept in and erased everything to do with my former crush.
