What shes having, p.26
What She's Having, page 26
Rose’s eyes go wide. She tilts her head to look down at her blouse, which of course is on properly, and the rest of us burst out laughing.
“They might not have known for sure before, Rosie, but they do now.” Angus tugs her close and kisses the top of her head.
She blushes and grins and changes the subject back to me and July. “I’m glad to see you two finally quit beating around the bush!” She frowns. “Wow, that sounded a lot worse out loud than in my head.”
Angus snorts into his water. July drops her head to my shoulder, laughing silently.
Rose tries again. “What I mean is, ’bout time. Everybody could see you belong together.”
July’s turn to snort. “You’re a fine one to talk, Ms. Had-a-Big-Beautiful-Dude-Practically-Living-Under-My-Roof-For-Months-and-Didn’t-Figure-Out-He-Was-Interested-until-He-Dragged-Me-Out-Back-and-Kissed-Me.”
I raise my eyebrows at Angus, who is blushing furiously. “Mr. Big Beautiful Dude, I presume?”
“Not how I usually introduce myself, no. And I object to the word dragged… Unless some other guy kissed you out back too, Rosie? And then I’d have to object to that.”
Rose waves this away. “Okay, okay. I’m just happy to see you two together, that’s all. And now it’s time for us to find somebody for Andi.”
July shoots her a look I can’t interpret. “I think if Andi ever decides she wants a partner, she’ll do just fine finding one herself.”
She’s not wrong. Andi’s great. And for all of her baggy softball gear and scraped-back hairdos, she’s gorgeous. If she ever unbanks her fire, god help the single people of this town.
***
July
Joe goes out to get Devon and his guys what they need while I reconcile the day’s receipts in the office. When I come looking for him a little later, he’s at the far end of the kitchen, whistling, his back to me as he mops the floor. The sight stops me in my tracks.
He doesn’t have to be here. There’s no money or excitement or anything in it for him. But here he is, looking relaxed and happy mopping a floor at the end of a fifteen-hour workday. He could be somewhere comfortable watching TV or reading one of his books or drinking a beer while he waits for me. But he just wants to be with me. It makes him happy to help me out.
Love and gratitude wash over me like a warm shower. How could I have gotten so lucky as to find this guy twice?
I am starting to believe in soul mates again.
When he finishes the floor and sets the mop back in the bucket, I’m there, slipping my arms around his waist to hold him, my cheek on his shoulder. His arms come around me, and he rests his cheek on my head. Presses his lips to my hair. “You tired?”
“Mm, only a little. You?”
He shakes his head. “I have something I want us to do, if you think you can stay awake a couple more hours.”
I tilt back to look at him. This sounds…structured. “Okay.”
“Let’s get cleaned up. Jeans and comfortable shoes, okay? I’ll be back for you in half an hour.” He heads for the back door.
“You gonna tell me what it is?”
His grin flashes. “Nope. Not yet.”
After I shower and brush my still-damp hair, I let Joe hand me into his truck.
He heads out of town but then pulls into the gravel lot at Woollybooger’s.
I eye him as he parks between a battered Ford and an equally battered Dodge pickup. Anxiety nibbles at my gut. “Joe, what’s your idea?”
He turns off the ignition and picks up my hand, stroking my knuckles with his thumb. “A do-over night.”
The only time we’ve been here together was the sexorcism night. I’m not sure how I feel about this. What good can it do? How could either of us forget the hurt I caused him that night? I’m not sure I should ever forget it.
He climbs out, comes around to open my door, and gently tugs me out into his arms. “C’mon,” he murmurs into my hair. “This is our chance to do what we wish we’d done differently that night.” His mouth lands softly and too briefly on mine. “Replace a bad memory with good ones.”
Okay, that has some appeal.
He can see my answer in my eyes. He grins, tugs me inside, and pulls me toward the only empty booth, sliding across the bench seat, still holding my hand so I have to slide in after him, and then he puts both arms around me and whispers in my ear, “I won’t ever forget that dress you wore. Wouldn’t mind seeing you in that again.”
I drop my head. “I almost burned it after that night. I shoved it way down into the bottom of the laundry hamper. Haven’t touched it since.”
He nods, his expression serious, but an unholy light dances in those eyes. “I understand. Gonna take some serious mojo to exorcise the demons from that dress. Maybe you should put it on later, and we’ll work on that.”
The server—one of Tina’s cousins—comes to the booth, and we order the same things we had that Very Bad Night: ribeyes, medium-rare; steak fries; and a frosty pitcher of beer. But this time when the food comes, we eat it all, with lots of laughter and talking and touching. Like last time, we get up to line dance, but this time we don’t let go of each other, and I’m not worried my world and I are about to crack apart over this man. Instead, I hold him close, feeling safer and warmer for being with him.
And when, on the way home, he asks if I’d like to see what Angus and Rose have done with his place, I say yes, and soon I’m upstairs in his apartment, with him handing me a beer as he did that other night.
But this time he’s showing me the great changes our friends have made. Angus has refinished the old hardwood floors to a warm, light natural color and put in great lighting and shelves. Instead of a lumpy love seat, Joe’s got a sleek purple sofa paired with a coffee table made from a battered old leather trunk on legs, courtesy of Rose.
He flips on a ceiling fan, dims the lights, and settles next to me on the sofa, close but not touching. “Scared?” He watches me as he tips his bottle for a drink.
“A little. I don’t know why.” I turn my beer between my fingers.
He moves his knee just enough to brush mine. “I know the first thing I wish I’d done differently. I wish I’d been the one to take our bottles and set them aside.” And he does, and then he puts his arm around me and pulls me close so that my back rests against his chest. He picks up my hand and traces my knuckles with his thumb. “I knew something was off that night. I could tell you were half somewhere else. I wish I’d taken your hand and asked what was wrong.” He squeezes my hand. “Would you have told me if I’d asked?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
He moves his hand to my nape and begins rubbing the back of my neck.
A groan escapes me and I relax against him. “If you’d done this, I might not have been able to speak. I was so exhausted and so upset, I probably would’ve either gone unconscious or burst into tears.”
He presses his lips to my temple and sets me away from him just enough to massage with both hands.
I let my head fall forward. Let him massage the last of the tension out of me. “I wish I’d told you I was scared.”
“Of?” He sweeps the hair away from my cheek, kisses me just beneath that ear, and softens the movements of his hands.
“Everything.” I sigh. “I wanted you so bad it scared me. But…the time before left me believing I was weak. Like, lacking any kind of coping ability for tough times. And everything was feeling so intense again…”
He combs a hand through my hair and keeps massaging, listening, so I keep talking.
“I was afraid the restaurant, the one thing everything I do hinges on—was suffering because of my…obsession over you. I was afraid I’d lose the one kind of strength I knew I had and be as wrecked and useless as last time, only this time I’d take a lot more people down with me.”
He wraps his arms around me from behind and lays his cheek on my shoulder.
“What are you thinking?” I turn my face to his. It’s his turn to confide in me.
His voice is as quiet as mine. “I’m wondering what I would have said or done if you had told me all that. I’m hoping I would’ve just held you.” He lies back on the sofa and pulls me down onto him. He strokes my hair and I nestle closer, tucking my head under his chin. Somehow he must have found time to shave, because his skin is smooth, his woodsy scent soothing and delicious.
We’re silent for a bit before he says, “I wish I’d offered to hold you anytime you need reassurance. And feed you anytime you forget to eat. I wish I’d offered to come work with you so my hands could make up for any distraction I caused. I just want…me being in your life to be good for you.”
I don’t want him to ever doubt that. “I can’t think of a single thing that could make me happier.” I spread my fingers to frame his face and bring him to me for a slow, soft kiss. “You asked, that night of the thunderstorm, what I wanted for me. I want you.”
Beneath me his body loosens as if I’d said magic words that eased his mind.
I wrap one leg around his. “What if, on the sexorcism night, I had told you how I was feeling and asked you to make love to me? Would you have said no?”
“July, I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could keep me from trying to give you something you need.”
I reach between us and tug the hem of his T-shirt up, pressing my lips to the bare skin over his heart. “Make love to me now?”
I laugh when he flips me on my side, laugh at him through kisses, but it’s a relieved laugh. I help him unfasten our clothing and push it down out of the way, and then he’s sliding into me, full and hard and hot and perfect.
I sigh with the joy of it. “Click.”
His laughter is brief, and then we’re moving together, my leg and his hands on my hips pulling us into our own perfect, irresistible rhythm.
“Oh god.” I skate my hand up his chest into his hair and hold on. “If only I’d known to just ask that night.” Because he is giving me every single thing I need.
Afterward we linger, kissing and touching. I outline a big heart on his chest with one fingertip. “Joe, what were you thinking and wanting and needing that night? And now?”
He strokes my hair back off my face. His eyes have never looked so dark or so determined. He locks his hands together at the small of my back. “I want…I want us not to lose any more years by being apart. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
There’s that warmth washing over me again. “When you imagine that, what’s it like?”
He closes his eyes as if to picture it. “Mm. Waking up every morning to realize I’ve been lucky enough to hold you all night. Knowing at the end of the day we’ll be together sharing stories. Laughing and kissing and holding each other. Celebrating good times with people we care about. Getting through bad times by holding on to each other. Lots and lots of holding on to each other.”
Yes, he is my soul mate.
“Click,” I say, and our next kisses are promises.
Epilogue
Not quite two years later
We’re at the lake, sitting on our rock. I’m leaning back against his chest, and he’s got his arms around me, his tanned forearms resting on his upraised knees.
“You’re going to ruin that expensive cap and gown, wearing them up here.” I’ve been teasing him about them since he put them on for his graduation this morning. The rental cost an arm and a leg, but they feel like they might have been made from a disposable tablecloth and one side of a cardboard box.
He’s not listening. His nose is in my hair, and he’s been teasing me too—about him and the kids being “graduation triplets” at their party, which is due to start in a few minutes—but now his voice gets quiet. “I’m full with you,” he says. “All my empty places fill up when I’m with you.”
And I don’t ask. Because I know just what he means.
Read on for a short look at how Rose and Angus fell in love in Curves for Days by Laura Moher
Chapter 1
Alice Rose
The world grew colder when Mr. Brown died. That was obvious to me.
What I hadn’t realized, when I was cradling his head on that hard sidewalk and he’d shoved the little bag with his weekly Altoids-and-lottery-ticket purchase at me, was that my world was about to implode.
I’m not saying all this money doesn’t rock. Hypothetically, it could, I guess. But not at this particular moment, as I’m elbow-deep in my ripe kitchen trash, trying to bury three hundred tiny pieces of a note from Timmy Johnson.
I’d waited till three a.m. to check my mail, to avoid my neighbors. I’d turned the key, eased open the box, and…another flood of letters and cards, from strangers, acquaintances, and people who were my friends in high school before the bullying started and they’d backed off to save their own asses.
I tucked it all into the folded-up hem of my sweatshirt and shuffled back to my apartment.
The eighteenth card I opened was the worst. I literally gagged when I saw Timmy Johnson’s signature. “Just wanted to say congratulations,” he’d written. “We had some good times in high school, didn’t we?” Uh, no, Timmy, that night might’ve been fun for you—your sadistic friends certainly enjoyed the story later—but not for me. “Give me a call if you’d like to get together and catch up.”
Reading that shit must’ve burst some dam of rage and revulsion inside me. Growling and panting, I tore that sucker into tiny pieces and jammed them deep into the trash bag, under the slimy salad remnants now sticking to my elbow.
And isn’t this just a perfect metaphor for what my life has become: bits of terrible, mashed in with the regular unpleasant stuff?
No, that’s not right. I’m fortunate. Winning the lottery was lucky. I’m being ungrateful.
I ease my arms out of the stinky mess and wash my hands three times because I’d touched something he’d touched.
There’s still a sizeable pile of unread mail, but the next card is almost as bad. Another former classmate writing to say he’d heard about my winnings, always thought I was nice, etc., etc., and to look him up if I want to go out some time. Pretty sure he’s the one who drew the caricature of me as a cow with a huge swollen udder on the board in homeroom.
I mean, it’s not like I don’t have a fucking mirror. No guy my age has ever shown interest in me without having plans to do something rotten. I wasn’t as big then as I am now, but I was never the pretty, popular type. Eighty million dollars may make them forget what really happened, but the money hasn’t damaged my memory or made me stupid.
I can’t make myself read any more of this stuff. Can’t even make myself drop it into the trash. I’m also out of food, haven’t had dinner, and can’t stomach the idea of seeing anybody, not even a delivery driver, if there’s even anything available at this hour. So after checking all my locks again and pushing a chair up against the door, I crawl between the sheets on my lumpy old couch, starving, drift off to sleep…and promptly have my Jesus Christ Superstar nightmare for the sixth night in a row.
In the dream, I’m outside surrounded by people, some familiar, many not, and they’re all reaching out, trying to touch me, asking, begging for stuff. Like the crowds around Jesus in the movie, everybody wants something, and they turn loud and grabby and angry and scary when I don’t immediately respond. I try to get away but two of them seize my arm and tear it off. A third trips me and they push me down. They rip me to shreds and run off with the pieces, all except my eyes.
As always, I bolt upright, frantic, my heart thudding in the silence.
I can’t take another day in this place—or anywhere else in Indy—hiding from all the people who want a piece of me. The media’s pretty much given up, but hopeful-looking strangers still drift by out front and neighbors hang out in the hall, ready to pounce if I so much as crack open my door. I’m trapped.
The people at the firm I hired for accounting and legal advice had suggested I look into a bodyguard service. Riiight. Where the hell would I put a bodyguard in my studio apartment?
I guess they didn’t expect me to stay here. And it’s true, the building is dingy and leaky and smelly, but it’s familiar. Every other option I’ve considered—a hotel, a new apartment, a house, a cruise—involves doing things I have no experience with, dealing with a million new people in strange places, at a time when everybody looks at me with, like, hunger. Or jealousy, or anger. I’m alone. I don’t trust anyone now, and certainly not anybody who knows about the money.
But this place has become a prison. I’ve got to break out.
So. Four thirty in the morning and I’m tiptoeing around this old place for the last time, looking for things I care enough about to take with me. Not the cast-off furniture and worn-out kitchenware Mom scrounged before I was born. Not the clothing and shoes I can’t get the restaurant smell out of.
I shove my Important Papers folder, the Yeats poetry book Mr. Brown gave me, a toothbrush and comb, and my two photos of Mom into her old sewing bag with a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and all my underwear. No way am I leaving my undies behind for people to paw through. Then I creep out the back entrance to walk to the bus station, slipping a check and a “Fuck this dump, sell all my shit, I’m moving to Hawaii, Sincerely, Alice” note under the landlord’s door on my way out.
’Course, I’m not going to Hawaii. And I’m not going by Alice anymore. From now on I’ll be Rose. Always liked that part of my name better anyway. Roses don’t take any shit. Gotta be careful grabbing a Rose. Might get a handful of thorns.
A Rose wouldn’t let herself be all alone at age thirty-two because of something mean kids did when she was sixteen.
A Rose wouldn’t have spent the last two and a half weeks cowering in her apartment as people tried to get at her.
A Rose would bust herself out and go after whatever she wanted.
So a Rose climbs off a Greyhound bus four hours later, halfway between Indianapolis and St. Louis, after spying a pockmarked Honda in a used car lot. She dusts off her driver’s license, changes direction to fool any would-be followers, and heads vaguely southeast, without a single soul giving her a second look.
