Jason
I stared at her house a few more seconds before turning around to the sound of clapping.
Max was leaning against the door. He picked up his wine glass from the ground along with the bottle and lifted them to me. “Might I suggest some vino after that little… outburst?”
I snorted and took the bottle. “You heard?”
Max whistled. “Your grandma heard, and she’s in a home, hours outside of the city, with a pair of noise-canceling headphones and an addiction to Riverdale.”
“Noise-canceling headphones?” I just had to ask.
“Oh, I never forget Christmas, and she’s such a good receiver — just ask Reid.” He winked while I literally felt my balls tingle with fear. A few years ago, the woman had attacked Reid with nothing short of super-human strength and a tube of ChapStick. She was basically the poster grandma for good-touch-gone-bad.
The guy still had nightmares — just another thing Max liked to discuss in his book and also, film for his blog.
“I didn’t chase her,” I admitted out loud, “but I was in shock, and by the time the shock wore off, I was so pissed, so angry, so sad—”
Max pulled me in for a hug. “Get it out, big guy.”
I shoved him away, causing wine to slosh out of the goblet. “I’m not hugging it out. I’m still pissed. I’m confused. I’m—”
“Horny.” Max nodded. “Because you’ve tasted, and now you’re addicted.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But probably a bad idea to do that again until you have all this shit cleared up between you guys. Sex rarely makes things easier.”
I just stared at him in shock. “I hate it when you make sense.”
“Read my book!” He threw one hand up in the air. “Seriously, I’m your best friend—”
“Colt’s my best friend.”
“—so you should have already read it, memorized it, and left a five-star review on Amazon. Seriously, that’s how you feed authors. You give them stars.”
“Stars,” I repeated, my mind wandering to Maddy, lying in her room, looking up at the stars. My curiosity was killing me to find out if they were still there.
“Staaaaars…” Max dragged out the word. “You know, the things in the sky…” he pointed up, then sighed, “…at least, during the night.”
“Yeah.” If she’d kept the stars, did that mean she still felt something? Hell, I was acting like I was a teen again. Circle yes or no!
“Look…” Max wrapped his free arm around me, “…it sounds like she freaked out, bolted, and that you, in all your anger and — let’s admit it — pride, decided to just move on to the next psychotic bitch who gave you bedroom eyes.”
“Jane?”
“SHHH!” Max shoved me away. “Do you want her to appear?”
I frowned. “She lives in the city now.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Max trembled. “Never matters.” He grabbed the wine glass and threw its contents over his shoulder. “Let’s just hope this vino works like salt, since it contains alcohol.”
“None of what you just said makes sense,” I pointed out.
“I can’t be brilliant all the time. Even God got a day.”
And back to making sense again.
“You guys have one more day to get your closure,” Max explained, “but might I suggest another option?”
“You’ll share, even if I say no.”
“Only a best friend would know me that well.”
He smiled while I cursed myself for having spoken.
“You could always kiss and make up, ride off into the sunset, or… grab the ring I know you probably kept in the left side of your underwear drawer, and propose.”
“Back up. How the hell did you know that?”
“Best friends.” He grinned and then grabbed the bottle of wine from my hands. “And I got bored and snooped. Didn’t take you for a man-thong sorta guy, but if that’s what gets your gun all snappy, who am I to judge?”
I groaned. “It was a gag gift!”
“The tag was off.”
“There never was a tag!”
“Dude, calm down. I don’t judge. You should see what’s in Reid’s drawer. Actually, it’s under his bed. The spreader bar didn’t fit in the drawer.”
“Thanks, man.” Reid appeared in the doorway and gave his head a shake. “So cool of you to hack into my Amazon account and send me screenshots of all my own purchases while on set.”
Max shrugged. “Not my fault the director was looking over your shoulder when I sent the shot of the Zip Ties and Fifty Shades Your Way, Mr. Grey.”
“It was for Jordan.”
“Good sexual appetites are never reason for judgment.” Max held up his hands innocently. “At any rate, this isn’t about Reid’s weird 2:00 a.m. Amazon purchases of sex toys, or even about my ability to hack his account every time he changes his password. It’s about Jason either getting closure, or getting his girl.”
Colt poked his head outside. “You bitches gossiping?”
“I am APPALLED!” Max pointed at him. “I’ve never been anyone’s bitch—”
“Max!” Becca yelled, and honest-to-God, the man jumped into the air and ran into the house so fast he almost tripped over the rug.
“Sometimes I think we just keep him around for the constant entertainment,” Colt said to himself and then gave me the look — the look best friends give other best friends when they have free advice to offer. “Jason…” he rubbed his lips together, “…I think— Wow, I’m going to need to ask you to run me over with your truck later, but I think Max has a point.” Air whooshed out as he slapped his chest with his hand. “Why was that so damn hard to say?”
“The universe doesn’t like it when we take his side.” Reid shuddered as a swift summer wind picked up.
None of us moved.
It stopped immediately and we all sighed in relief.
“My point exactly,” Reid muttered. “And as much as I hate myself for agreeing… why not see what’s there? I mean, the reunion’s tomorrow night. You guys still clearly have chemistry…”
The wind picked up again. And I had the sudden urge to duck and cover to avoid more lightning.
“Go, young grasshopper!” Max was back in the doorway with Becca behind him. “Find your truth!”
Becca groaned, while Colt and Reid just shrugged and nodded toward her bedroom window.
“And try to be romantic.” Max snorted. “None of this almost-getting-hit-by-a-car-or-lightning-strike shit. Also…” he pointed to the house, “…real men climb.”
“Climb?” I repeated.
The guys all grinned.
“Find yourself some rocks, then search around for your balls, since you’ve clearly lost them,” Max smiled wide, “and shimmy up that damn house and tell her how much you’ve missed her, and then, when she’s primed, naked and—”
Becca clapped a hand over his mouth and winked at me.
With a sigh, I waved to everyone and limped across the chalk line and onto their property.
It was a little after nine, now. The lights were dim in her room as I knelt, grabbed a few rocks, and tossed them up at her window.
The curtains pulled apart.
And then the window was raised, and she poked her head out. “Jason?”
“Can I come up?”
“You aren’t a teenager anymore, Jason. What if you fall and break a hip?” she teased, leaning over the windowsill with nothing on but a white racerback tank and a wide smile that had my body tightening in all the wrong places, if I was going to attempt climbing to her second-story window. Her white teeth sucked in her bottom lip as tendrils of strawberry-blond kissed her shoulders.
Like hell was I going to stay on the grass a second longer.
“You’ve got this!” Reid.
“I believe in you!” Max.
I muttered a curse and started scaling the tree outside her window like I used to in high school. I was stronger now, so pulling myself up to the first branch was cake; though somewhere in my heavy, lust-filled brain I realized that I’d been struck by lightning, so maybe climbing a tree and stumbling across an old roof hadn’t been the smartest choice I could have made, but she was smiling at me, and I could see in her bedroom window, and it just felt — right.
I stepped away from the tree and onto the roof.
Easy street.
I sent her a wink as I took another step.
And then made it all the way to her window without falling through the roof or tumbling off it.
“The universe agrees!” Max yelled.
“What’s this about the universe?” Maddy asked, holding out her hand as I ducked into her bedroom.
“Ignore him. He used to buy holy water in bulk, just in case my ex came back to haunt him.”
“Seriously?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I think he just wanted an excuse to put in a bulk order from the Vatican.”
She laughed.
“I’m serious!” I did a slow circle.
The posters were gone from the walls, and the pink had been covered over with a mute tan that made the room look more grown up. Everything was different.
A jolt of disappointment hit me as I tried to keep my smile in place when uneasiness pulsed through me.
Nothing was the same.
What the hell had I been thinking?
That I would crawl through that window like old times and step into my senior year with Maddy?
I sighed and sat down on her bed then said the only thing I could say that made sense, “I missed climbing into your window.”
“I missed watching you climb.” She sat down on the bed next to me and put her hand on my thigh. “But I think I missed you more.”
“You think?”
She grinned. “Maybe a tiny, small bit more.”
With a sigh, I lay back and put my hands behind my head then let out a little gasp as the hundreds of stars twinkled down at me in all their cheap glory, right along with a picture of Maddy and me at prom.
She cleared her throat. “I didn’t… I couldn’t…”
I gripped her hand tightly. “You kept them.”
“They’re a part of me,” she whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Jason?”
“Yeah.” I kept them closed, afraid if I opened them, I’d see her, see how beautiful she was, and do something insane like try to seduce her in her old bedroom with her parents sleeping across the hall.
“I know ten years is a long time. I know that you can’t possibly forgive me for what I did… But do you think maybe you can try? So we can be friends again?”
My eyes snapped open, locking on hers as I whispered, “No.”
Her face fell.
“Yes to the forgiveness, yes to moving on, yes to everything, but, Maddy, I can’t — nor will I ever be able to — be just your friend.”
She swallowed slowly as her eyes darted between my mouth and my eyes.
I leaned up on my elbow then reached for her with my free hand. I tugged her close, until our foreheads touched. “Forgive me for not chasing you with every ounce of strength I had, for not screaming your name until you came back. Forgive me for letting my anger and hurt cripple me into less of a man. Forgive me?”
Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded her head yes. Her breath fanned against my face; she smelled like coconut. Her skin felt hot and smooth. I cupped her cheek and closed my eyes. “I’m going to kiss you now, and then I’m going to go so I don’t do something I can’t take back.”
“You already did something you can’t take back,” she pointed out. “Or at least we did. What’s one more time?”
I groaned. “I’ve never had self-control when it comes to you, Maddy, and now that we’re adults and we make our own choices, my self-control is even less because I don’t give a shit if your parents walk in on me licking between the valley of your breasts while squeezing one of your nipples between my fingers, just to hear your sharp intake of breath. I really don’t. But I would hate a repeat of last time…”
She shoved me and laughed. “When my dad chased you with a shotgun?”
“I almost died that day!” I said, earning a pillow to the face. “Do you know how freaked out I was? I literally hid in the tree house for five hours while he searched for my body with a gun, flashlight, and one of his hunting dogs — all of this because I was making out with you in the basement!”
“Hey now.” She laughed harder. “You had your hands up my shirt.”
“They were cold.”
“Sticking with the same story, huh?”
“It’s ironclad. He couldn’t prove they weren’t cold, and he couldn’t prove your body was warm.” I shrugged. “Damn, I was even a good cop back then.”
She tilted her head, a wide smile forming across her lips. “You were a lot of good things, Jason. Still are.”
I leaned in and brushed a kiss across her soft lips then stood, trying like hell not to show her how hard I was for her, how much I wanted to slam that bed against the wall, pin her body against the mattress, and forget about the world.
“Maddy?” Her dad called her name.
I felt actual fear of her father even at twenty-seven.
With another quick peck, I was out the window and walking back to the tree. I was almost to the first branch when I heard his voice get louder, as if he was ready to look out through the curtains, and when he finally did, I was under the cover of multiple branches.
“I heard voices,” he said in that same voice that, to this day, gave me chills, and I loved the guy. He ate breakfast at the diner every morning with his paper and cup of coffee and, most days, even bought me my own breakfast.
But when it came to his daughter?
I was still eighteen.
And he still had a gun.
Then again, so did I.
“Hello?” he called out the window.
“Daddy,” Maddy said in an annoyed voice, “I was on the phone with Liza. Seriously, go back to bed.”
“Hmmm.” He pulled the window down with a jerk.
I exhaled and waited a few minutes, trying to guess what she felt, where this was really going, then turned on my heel.
And walked right into a body.
I knew that smell.
I knew that body.
I looked into his steely-blue gaze and cleared my throat. “Nice night.”
“You climbing into my daughter’s room like a coward, Officer Caro?”
“No, sir.” I wasn’t a coward. “But I was climbing into her room like a man. You got a problem with that?”
He stared me down.
I stared right back.
And the wild, wild West suddenly came into that yard, each of us reaching for our non-existent sidearm, as a tumbleweed rolled past. Hell, I could even hear Max singing the theme from Tombstone.
“All right then.” He stepped back and scratched his bald head. “But the roof’s a bit old — patched it up last year. Next time, use the door like a human.”
“Yes, sir.” I smiled as he walked off.
He paused and called over his shoulder, “Still got that shotgun, Officer. Law says if your dead body’s on my property, it’s self-defense.”
“That it does.”
“Nice night, though. Real nice night.”
The screen door hit him on the ass on the way back into the house, and I exhaled as if I’d just been through war and come out unscathed.
I had a smile on my face the entire way to the house and until I made my way upstairs and saw a naked Max just sauntering down the hall as if it was normal.
“CLOTHES!” I roared.
He stopped, looked down then up, and shrugged. “I’m not going to put on clothes because I intimidate you. So hey, how’d it go?” He started biting on a carrot.
“Becca!” I yelled.
The door to one of the guestrooms opened. She poked her head out and sighed. “Stop sleepwalking and get to bed.”
“He’s sleepwalking, and he has conversations like this?” I asked, confused.
“He does his best work at night, trust me. The guy writes out crazy plans on his laptop, goes to sleep, and then he wakes up, remembers absolutely nothing. How do you think that last health-care bill was concocted? This guy had sex, fell asleep, got hungry, went to the kitchen, slipped, and thought, ‘You know what would be great?’ Weeks later, it was passed in Congress.”
Max just kept chomping down on his carrot.
“I think it’s God’s way of protecting humanity, making sure Max’s genius only exists when the world is sleeping, and he has no recollection of his own awesomeness.”
“Huh, good point. All right then, I returned the stray. Have a good night.” I reached for the bedroom door about the same time Max shouted,
“Self-driving motorcycles! Eureka!”