Chapter Five
Will never realized he was a masochist until this moment. Why was he flirting with a girl who played hot and cold games on an Olympic level? Sure, she was funny, sexy, and odd in the best way, but he was ready for something real and it wasn’t going to happen here.
When she came back, he’d tell her it was mistake and that they should just part ways right now. And what did it mean, that stuff about a relationship she didn’t want to get out of? He considered himself broad-minded, but when it came to dating, he didn’t share. If she had something open going on, he wanted no part of it.
She walked back into the waiting room wearing jeans that showcased those mile-high legs and a smile more incandescent than the overhead lights. “I’ll drive,” he said. “Are you in an open relationship?”
She sputtered, “What? Where did that come from?”
“You were being cryptic.”
“Women are allowed to be mysterious.”
“About stuff like bathroom habits, not whether they’re polyamorous. That’s stuff that should be disclosed up front. That’s the rules.”
“Are the relationship police going to arrest me?”
He grinned. “Would you like to be cuffed?”
“Are you offering?” she asked in a way that could only be described as purring.
It made him want to haul her into the nearest broom closet. But he wasn’t that guy anymore, he told himself firmly. “My truck’s out front,” he said.
Once they were in his truck and he was pulling out of the parking lot, she asked, “So, where are we headed anyway?”
“Medford. I need to pick up a picture from my parents’ house.” As part of his anniversary gift to his parents, he was going to paint a portrait from one of their wedding pictures. “That cool?”
She shrugged. “It’s your afternoon.”
“Ours now,” he said.
“You’re pretty smooth, aren’t you?”
“I used to think so.” Now he could better be classified as just plain dumb. But then again, he was the guy who ran into the burning building instead of away from it. And she was a five-alarm fire.
Being in an enclosed space with her was a mistake. The very air felt charged with her particles, like if he took a deep breath he’d be tasting her essence. He shot a glance over to where she was pulling the elastic from her hair. The motion pushed her breasts forward. Red lights flickered in his peripheral vision.
Those are taillights.
“Fuck.” He stomped on his brakes, almost rear-ending the car in front of him.
He managed to keep it together the rest of the way there and pulled up in front of the small three-bedroom house he’d grown up in. Despite the mild weather, the first few leaves on the maple tree in the tiny front yard were beginning to turn colors. In a few weeks, the rest would follow in a blaze of yellow and orange and red.
The front door was unlocked and he let himself in with Elizabeth following. He’d only taken a few steps into the front room when he heard the music. “Quick, we’ve got to get out of here!”
“What’s going on?”
“Enya.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door after him.
“What is Enya?” she asked, but didn’t resist.
“A New Age singer from the ‘90s, but that’s not what’s important.” He hauled ass down the porch with Elizabeth’s hand still in his. He reluctantly dropped it when they reached his truck. “My parents are—” he paused to give a full body shudder, “—getting it on. Enya is their doing it soundtrack.” He climbed in the truck and turned the key.
She buckled her seatbelt and asked, “Why is that gross? I think it’s sweet that your parents still have an active sex life. How long have they been married?”
“It will be thirty-five years. MacGregors are like swans—we mate for life.” He gave another exaggerated shudder. “Very horny swans.”
“Then why aren’t you mated?” she asked as he pulled away from the curb.
“I need the right swan.” One that would look past the surface. “Why aren’t you mated?” Maybe she would give a real answer this time.
She looked out the passenger window, and he figured she was ignoring the question. But just as he was about to break the silence, she spoke. In a serious voice, one he hadn’t heard from her yet, she said, “I don’t want to be the sidelined love interest in someone else’s story. Her life, purpose, and value are tied to some hero and her happiness is dependent on another.” She shook her head. “Nope. Not for me.”
“Two people can share a story,” he said gently. He’d been amazingly lucky in his life to have been surrounded by examples of love everywhere he turned. From his parents right down to his siblings, he’d witnessed how opening yourself up to the right person made you more, not less.
She turned back toward him, her face once more a canvas depicting sunshine and cheerfulness. But he felt as though there was a picture painted beneath. One of pain and loss hastily painted over but the traces remained. “So how many people are you expecting for your parents’ party?” she asked brightly.
He shrugged.
“You don’t know? How do you not know?”
“We didn’t talk about it.” The texts and calls between him, Brian, and Emily this week had been long but not particularly decisive. They’d had a little trouble with consensus.
“What did you talk about?”
“We got in a fight over whether we should ambush our parents with the minister so they could renew their vows.” He spied a spot only a few feet down from the Thistle, the neighborhood pub where his parents had escaped their kids for the occasional pint—and as one of their kids, in retrospect, he wondered why they hadn’t been there more often. He pulled in and cut the engine.
“That’s probably something your parents should decide.”
“That was my position, but my brother and sister always think they know best.”
“Not like you,” she teased.
“That’s right. I’m the one who knows best.” He jumped out of the truck and circled to open the passenger door for Elizabeth, but she didn’t wait. She opened it just as he touched the handle. But she allowed him to hold the Thistle’s front door open. “They wanted it to be a surprise party and asking about vow renewals would ruin the surprise,” he said as he walked in after her.
The fireplace and warm wood paneling gave the Thistle a cozy atmosphere. Elizabeth halted right inside the doorway. Will took her arm, trying to not react at the tingle that went up his arm from the skin on skin contact, and steered her toward the bar.
He slid onto a stool and Jimmy the bartender slapped coasters down in front of them. “Hey, Will. How’s your Pops?”
Really happy right about now. He turned the automatic grimace at the thought of his parents having sex into a smile. “Doing good, thanks.” Elizabeth sat down next to him. “You want a beer?” he asked her.
“It’s only one o’clock.”
“That’s why I said beer, not whiskey. And after what I almost witnessed, namely my parents going at it, not having a drink is not an option.” He swiveled back toward the bar. “Two Guinnesses, Jimmy, and I need to talk to the manager about hosting a private party.”
“Manager should be in in about a half an hour if you want to wait,” Jimmy said, pulling down two pint glasses.
“How do you even know I like beer?” Elizabeth asked.
“What makes you think one of them is for you?”
She was perched on her barstool with her body turned toward his. She leaned in slightly. When Jimmy slid the first Guinness in front of her, she picked up the glass and licked a bit of foam off the top.
Images rushed into Will’s brain, and he shifted uncomfortably against the sudden pressure of his zipper against his hardening cock. She put the beer back down with a sly grin. She knew exactly what she was doing.
In twenty minutes, tops, they could be back at his place tearing each other’s clothes off with their teeth. He wanted to be inside her, those long legs of hers wrapped around his waist as he drove her to a breathless orgasm.
And then it would be over. This would be over, and he was enjoying just being with her. He took a long swallow off his beer.
“Do you want to play darts while we wait?” she asked. “Unless you’re afraid to get your ass kicked by a girl.” There was a challenging gleam in her blue eyes.
This Valkyrie liked games. He gave her a sly grin of his own. “Care to put your money where your luscious mouth is?”
Good thing he liked to play, too. Now he just needed to tease her enough that she’d want to keep spending time with him. After all, he could be irresistible when he tried. All he had to do was ignore the demands of his body until she wanted him for more than one night. And the way she was smiling at him, that wouldn’t take too long. They’d be spending Sunday morning shopping at Costco in no time at all, which was an image that once would have horrified him and made him run for the nearest exit. But with her, he might even enjoy picking out dishtowels.
* * *
The earlier bout of phone sex aside, it was becoming clear that Will was a relationship guy. They’d spent all afternoon together and he hadn’t even tried to kiss her. She’d done everything short of launch herself at him and hump his leg. During their game, she’d deliberately dropped a dart and leaned over in a manner worthy of the highest caliber stripper to retrieve it; if he’d bothered to check out her ass, he’d been covert about it. Whenever he said something funny, she’d touched his arm and laughed. She’d flipped her hair more times that afternoon than in the whole two years she’d been in a sorority. Apparently, sex wasn’t on the table without dinner.
Despite her mounting sexual frustration, she was having a fantastic time with him, though. After Will was done talking with the manager at the Thistle about the possibility of a private party, he suggested pizza, which was dangerously close to a date.
“Pizza is not date food. Bros get pizza together,” he said. “Unless it’s pineapple, because that might challenge their heteronormative view of the world. Fruit on pizza upsets the natural order.”
“What about bros who want to mess around but not date? Do they get pizza?”
“They skip the extra garlic. So, Pizzeria Regina?”
He was right. It was only pizza. And she had been the one to invite herself along in the first place. “I want sausage and pepperoni.”
He nodded. “Bros love meat. No homo, though.” He sighed. “Sorry, I spend way too much time with dudes.”
At the tiny pizza shop in the North End, they’d mostly discussed planning for the party, but she could tell by the way he spoke how close to his family he was. She’d had to push down a sudden wave of sadness. If things had been different, would she be coming home for Sunday dinners?
The arrival of one of his friends jolted her from her increasingly sad thoughts. A short, dark-haired guy wearing an extremely tight T-shirt called out a greeting as he approached their table. Will jumped up and they exchanged some sort of elaborate fist bump thing.
“This is Tony,” Will said. “He works with me over at the firehouse. Tony, this is Elizabeth.”
Tony sat down at their table and gave her a blatant once-over. “You might know me better as Mr. December,” he said. His smile had more cheese than the slice of pizza on her plate.
Across from her, Will rolled his eyes and she tried not to laugh. “Sorry, not familiar with your work,” she said. She’d never flipped past Will’s page of the calendar.
Her cell phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her bag with every intention of silencing it. But when she picked it up, she saw Megan’s name on the caller ID. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got to take this.” She gave Will an apologetic look as she got up from the table.
She didn’t answer until she’d stepped outside onto the street. “Hey, everything okay?”
“I need some money,” Megan said. Her voice sounded strained.
“What’s wrong? There should be enough in your account to get you through the rest of the month. Did you need another textbook or something? I’ll just call the bookstore and charge it. That way you can pick it up.”
“Can you just put some money in my account?”
“Why?”
There was a long pause, but Elizabeth had practice waiting them out and stayed silent. Finally Megan said in a small voice, “I’m hungry.”
“Is there something wrong with your dining hall account?”
“I haven’t been eating in the dining hall.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth had paid for the full meal plan just so she wouldn’t have to worry about whether Megan was eating.
Megan’s voice grew quiet. “I don’t like eating alone in front of everyone. They’re all staring. I feel like such a loser.”
“So you’ve been buying all your food off campus?”
Megan said yes in the same tone she used when she’d admitted to cleaning her room by shoving her dirty clothes under her bed, or when Elizabeth had caught her trying to shoplift lip gloss from CVS, or when she’d rolled in past her curfew. Shame barely masked by defiance.
Maybe she’d been pushing Megan too hard. Turning eighteen hadn’t magically transformed her into an adult. It wasn’t too late for Megan to transfer to the UMass Boston campus. Then she could live at home with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth squashed those tempting thoughts. Her baby bird needed to learn to fly.
“You’re not the only person who doesn’t know anyone,” she said. “Almost everyone in your freshman class is in the same exact situation and they’re probably looking for friends, too. Just walk into the dining hall with your head high and a smile on your face. Trust me. It might take a little time, but you will make friends. You just need to be open to it.” And she had to let Megan go.
Everyone left eventually.
* * *
Will watched Elizabeth walk out of the pizza shop clutching her phone. Who was calling that she had to drop everything and talk to them right away? And why didn’t she feel she could take the call in front of him?
Tony reached forward and grabbed a slice. “Hitting that?”
“It’s not like that,” Will said, except it kind of was. Elizabeth had been completely up front that she wasn’t interested in anything more. But she was spending the day with him. He sat up a little straighter and smiled.
“You gotta strike while the iron’s still hot, man. Just a couple more months and this calendar isn’t going to be on every chick in Boston’s wall anymore.”
“I don’t think it is now. And I can’t wait.” If anyone had told him last year that he’d hate being constantly checked out by women, he’d have told them to go screw themselves.
“I’ve gotten more ass than a toilet seat in Fenway Park thanks to this calendar. And you’re seriously complaining?” Tony brought both fists up and mock rubbed his eyes. “Oh, boo hoo. Women only see me as a sex object. Can’t they see that under these muscles, I’m just a sensitive artist.”
“Shut up,” Will said, laughing even though Tony wasn’t wrong. He was complaining about a situation most guys would be thrilled with. But he’d had eight months of no-strings-attached sex since that calendar went up on the wall of every woman in Boston, and it had gotten very old. Was it really so wrong to want to wake up next to someone who knew his name? The last woman he’d had sex with called him Bill. That’d been a boner killer, but only part of the reason he’d sworn off one-night stands.
The other reason conjured memories of flames licking at his protective gear, the slight weight of the elderly woman cradled in his arms, and the crash of the ceiling collapsing on his heels, debris hammering against his back, forcing him forward...one second slower and he wouldn’t be sitting here arguing with Tony. Nothing like a brush with your own mortality to alter perspective.
“So you’re saying you don’t want to meet some Patriots cheerleaders?” Tony asked. “Tomorrow night at the Thorny Rose—I’ve been chatting with this one chick and I’ll tell her to bring her friends.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Have you seen how high they can kick their legs?” Tony wasn’t going to quit. He simply couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept of Will not being interested in a cheap hookup and was reveling in his own new in-demand sexual status.
To change the subject, Will gave an exaggerated leer and asked, “How’s your sister?” He’d only met Angela once, because Tony didn’t like her coming around the firehouse, but bringing her up was a sure way to bust Tony’s balls. He had that old-school macho Italian thing going on that Will found funny. Even though he didn’t know Angela, he felt confident she probably wasn’t as amused by it.
“Not getting anywhere near you,” Tony said.
“No woman can resist me, I’m Mr. October,” Will said. It was meant to be self-deprecating, maybe even a bit ironic because women seemed to have no problem saying no to him when it came to the important stuff. But he looked up to see Elizabeth standing there. Her smile was just as bright as ever, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“It was nothing,” she said. She sat back down. “I’m taking the last slice.”
But he was left wondering if she was upset about her phone call or if she’d overheard the tail end of his conversation with Tony and thought he was the type of guy who was only running game on her. But as he watched her blot her pizza with a napkin, he felt more confused than ever, because wasn’t that what she wanted? Someone like Tony, who didn’t let his emotions get tangled up in his fun? Someone that Will was discovering he couldn’t be.
* * *
After they’d finished eating, Elizabeth had asked Will to drop her back at her car. She had to get away and clear her head. He was dangerously easy to be with and the longer she spent at his side, the less she wanted to leave it.
Now, sitting at her kitchen table in her empty house on a Friday night, she tried to envision her new life. The page in front of her was nearly blank. The only thing she’d managed to write so far was the header: Things I Want to Do Now That I’m Free.
She tapped her pen on the table. There’d been a time when she had dreams. Lots of them. She was going to live a life of crazy adventure. She sipped her cooling tea. Tonight she’d decided to live life on the edge by adding a teaspoon of sugar to it. Somebody stop me! She snorted.
What to do? Hike the Pacific Crest Trail? Too cliché. Run with the bulls in Pamplona? Too cruel to the bulls. Move to Paris, live in a garret, write poetry, drink wine, and take lovers? She wasn’t sure what a garret actually was and her poetry sucked, but the taking lovers part...that sounded good.
Except she kept picturing Will.
Who she needed to stay away from. But who hadn’t committed to renting out the Thistle. He’d been concerned it wouldn’t be large enough to fit all the potential guests. Apparently Will had a large extended family. Not like her little family unit, just Megan and her. Only now Megan was becoming an adult who would leave her.
She found herself with her phone in her hand without ever forming the intention of picking it up. She tapped out a text to Will. Have you thought about renting a hall instead of having it at a bar? You could just hire a caterer and get a few kegs and some champagne. Make some playlists on your phone, hook it up to speakers, and you don’t even need a band or a DJ. It’d be a lot cheaper. And you’re not stuck with a bunch of rules. As long as you don’t trash the place, you’re golden.
She dropped her phone. What was she doing? She wasn’t supposed to imprint on the first hot guy she came in contact with like some sad little baby bird. No, she was a tigress or some sort of sexy jungle cat stalking her prey. An independent woman.
She snatched her phone back up from the table. Time to download one of those apps that people used to hook up. Right now. She swiped her phone and instead found herself looking at Will’s calendar photo again. Oh God, she had a problem.
When her phone beeped, she almost jumped out of her skin. Will’s text read, Good idea. You want to help me?
She shouldn’t. I have Saturday off, she sent back.
Cool. It’s a date.
Nice try. She couldn’t help but smile at his unswerving optimism. Although, she wondered if she was just a challenge to him. A woman who didn’t want to pin him down. After all, she’d heard him bragging to Tony about his irresistibility. It would be the height of stupidity to become attached. Just enjoy the ride while it lasts.
Have to hit the laundromat tomorrow so probably be a little later. I’d give my left testicle for a washer dryer hookup.
I’ve got a washer and dryer.
Nobody likes a bragger.
You can bring your laundry over. What are you doing? But her fingers kept flying over the keyboard. We’ll brainstorm while you’re doing laundry.
Where do you live?
Weymouth.
Aren’t you a little young for the ‘burbs? Live with your parents?
Just in her parents’ house. See you tomorrow, she sent, ignoring the question.