Chapter Seventeen

 

~ FREYA ~

 

My fingers trace reverently along the hard cover of an early twentieth century reprint of Dickens’ Great Expectations before wrapping it in tissue paper.

“This will be a wonderful birthday gift,” I assure the woman, even though she’s already confessed to me that her twenty-one-year-old son would probably get a bigger kick out of receiving Dr. Seuss’s Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

Of course, what she doesn’t realize is that at twenty-one, he’d probably prefer a keg of Natty Boh rather than any book, whether Seuss or Dickens.

I smile at her when she leaves, but inside I’m dying.

My best friend is leaving tomorrow. That would be bad enough. But now that I know what it’s like to have sex with him, the dismal feeling I should be feeling has morphed into something near catastrophic.

 

Desolation assailed Genevieve. She could feel the emptiness swell inside of her with each echo of her heartbeat. With each agonizing tick of the clock, desperation consumed her, watching the final moments of their fleeting affair dissipate.

Time was unforgiving; there was no going back, no slowing it down, and every instant with him away from her was a loss that would never be regained.

 

My frown deepening to canyon-like proportions, I stare at the clock on the wall. It is simple and round, an exact replica, I’d bet, of the one I’d watched in Mr. Bingham’s eighth grade algebra class. The one where he’d taped a mocking sheet of paper alongside it that read, “Time will pass. Will you?”

Fuck Mr. Bingham. Fuck time. And fuck Genevieve and her entire romance with Zander that can easily be rewritten with a few clicks of my keyboard. Even so, I grab my iPhone and start tapping in a few words because I love the way they sound in my head.

 

Desolation assailed Genevieve…

 

Desolation assails me. Me, not Genevieve. Because right now I realize that without Mason, Genevieve has no Zander. He is my inspiration. My muse. (Though he’d cringe if I ever associated that word with him in his presence.) For all the time we’ve spent plotting and editing, every word I’ve revised or rewritten or dreamt up has somehow been inspired by him. He turned my lackluster hero into someone real to me, whether Zander was mutated into a cowboy or a shapeshifter or a billionaire or Bigfoot (because that’s really the only thing left for me to try). At the core of Zander beats Mason’s heart.

And I’m in love with him.

Oh my God. I’m thoroughly, completely, incomprehensibly in love with him. I probably was long before we ever even had sex. That was just the icing on the cake (and a satisfying icing it was).

As I type in my latest notes, my phone chirps in my hand when a text comes in. It’s probably from my mom, but I dare to hope it’s Mason telling me that he’s come to the same conclusion as I just have—that we’re meant to be together.

So my face falls when I see it’s from Harris.

“Still up for coffee next week?” it reads.

Coffee. Damn. I had kind of agreed to meeting him for coffee sometime. But the idea of it now seems wrong somehow.

“Timing might not be the best right now.” I type in the words and hit send, wondering how exactly to explain my situation. I can’t say I’m seeing someone else, exactly. I’m not sure how to even define what I’m doing with Mason. But Harris is a nice enough guy that I feel he deserves some kind of explanation.

“Damn,” he writes back before I get a chance to follow-up. “I got the all-clear sign from Mason a few minutes ago. I already missed my chance?”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Just ran into Mason, and he said you’re a free agent.”

Shoulders sagging, I lean against the counter. Is that what he said?

Of course it’s what he said. Since when does spending one night and a roll in the back seat with Mason construe a relationship with him? I’ve been witness to his dating pattern long enough to know that.

Dammit. I’d be mad at him, but I can’t. I’m too mad at myself for forgetting that Mason, though my best friend, plays the field like an all-star.

He’s probably not even thinking about the sex we’ve had. In his memory, I’m just part of one giant amalgam of conquests. It’s not like I’d particularly stand out in the crowd seeing as I can’t even write a damn sex scene without consulting Mason for advice first.

“I guess I am. But my heart’s a little chewed up for coffee right now. Do you mind?” I tap in. Chewed up isn’t the most eloquent term for an aspiring author to use, but I’m unable to find better words for it.

“Totally understand. The invitation is there when you want it.” He adds a smiley face, which is sweet because most guys who look like they can bench press twice my weight generally don’t use the cutesy emojis that we girls favor.

But even the smiley face doesn’t cheer me.

I leave my texting app and go back to the notes that I had started, and type into my phone:

 

Desolation assailed Genevieve… when she realizes that she’s nothing more than a fuckable friend.

 

I press my fingers against my temples, trying to remember the romantic words that had danced in my brain only minutes ago. But they’ve escaped me.

Stupid.

Stupid me.

I feel like such an idiot as I stare at the door, waiting, hoping, that some customer will walk through it and distract me from my self-flagellation.

But there’s little rescue for me, even as afternoon rolls into evening and the most challenging question I’m posed by a customer is whether Moby Dick is classified as fiction or non-fiction. Seriously?

Closing up at eight, I’m having a struggle even looking forward to dinner with Mason. I feel somehow embarrassed by the fact that I’d had sex with him in his SUV. If I’d avoided that, I could have fallen back on the old “Oops! We made a mistake last night. Won’t happen again. And now we return to our regular broadcast, already in progress.” Then, we could go back to being the friends we’ve been for the past two years.

But no. I had to go and fuck the guy senseless today, high from the exhilaration that comes from conquering a longstanding phobia.

I click off the final lights and lock the shop up behind me. Couples are hand-in-hand around me, almost like something out of a scene in Twilight Zone, with me coming out of my shop after a long day’s work and discovering that every person on the face of the earth had coupled up while I’d been at work today, and I’m the lone single.

Their presence annoys me more than it normally would. I’ve never had an issue with being single. I’m not one of those twenty-three-year-olds who sees the quarter century mark fast approaching and thinks I need to race to acquire a husband, two kids, a golden retriever, and a profitable career before a particular date. Patrick, may he rot, would say I lack ambition. But actually, I have plenty of that. My ambitions are just wrapped up in dreams that seem unattainable these days, with agents rejecting me left and right.

My mind flits toward that newspaper article that Mason had given me this morning before my harrowing journey across the Bridge. He’s mentioned self-publishing to me a dozen or so times, usually accompanied by a similar article or link or simply a success story someone had told him by word of mouth.

Each time, I’ve never let my brain rest on the idea for less than an instant. I spend forty hours a week in a store surrounded by books. It’s hard for me to not want to be one of the authors who overcame the time-honored tradition of rejection upon rejection until they finally make their mark for posterity.

But right now, I’m trying to picture the antique stores of the future, and wonder if any of them would carry my book in its current state with Genevieve tied to a bed.

God, I hope not.

Mason’s words haunt me. “When’s it going to stop, Freya?” he’d asked me. And he was right. If an agent right now emailed me and asked me to turn Zander into a firefighter, would I? Because everyone knows firefighters are smoking hot.

But what if they asked him to be a SEAL who’s a male stripper on the side (which I guarantee is against regulations), or a pimp, or a fucking leprechaun?

For the past two years any time an agent asked me to bend over, I’ve just said, “How far?”

Maybe this is far enough.

After pushing open the brass-plated door, I spot Mason at a small table close to O’Toole’s aged mahogany bar. I know this place so well, I could maneuver through its sea of tight tables blindfolded.

He stands and pulls my seat out for me. I love how he does that. I’ve seen enough Navy guys do it that I wonder if they take them aside in their plebe year at the Academy and teach them the maneuver. Or more likely, they just talk among themselves about how the use of the gentlemanly gesture is a sure-fire way to get laid.

The noise of the crowd comforts me. Hoping it will camouflage the quiver I feel in my voice, I say my first words to him as he slides my chair underneath me. “Hey. Thanks.”

“How was work?”

“Not bad. I sold a couple second edition reprints. Nothing to write home about, though. Are you ready for the movers tomorrow morning?” Tears threaten as I say it, but I tamp down the emotion.

We’re friends.

Nothing more.

Heck, if Mason’s giving Harris the thumbs-up to have coffee with me, I shouldn’t need any more proof than that.

“All set. They should be there at oh-six-hundred, but who knows? Shouldn’t take too long for them to load the boxes into the truck.”

“Will they be in Little Creek when you arrive tomorrow afternoon?”

“No. Definitely not. Us single guys always end up sharing the truck with a family or two. So they’ll probably make a couple stops before even getting to my stuff.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“In my new apartment. I’m packing a sleeping bag in my SUV. It’s all I need.”

“So you’ll just sleep on the floor?” I frown.

“It’s better than a lot of places I’ve slept, believe me.”

The waitress stops by to take our drink orders and tell us the specials. Her eyes flirt with him as she speaks. She probably doesn’t even know it. All women do that unconsciously when they’re around Mason. But tonight it irks me.

“Chicken parmigiana,” he repeats one of the specials she’s mentioned, cracking a smile as he does.

“Your favorite. Nice of them to offer that on your final night in Annapolis.” I force a smile.

He orders the burger instead, telling me, “Theirs could never be as good as yours. I’d pay serious money for that recipe. Anyone would.”

I smile. “If I gave you the recipe, how would I entice you to—”

“—edit your book?” he finishes for me. “Yeah, you always say that. But you must know by now, I’d edit it even without the free meal attached to it. God, Freya, I—” He reaches for my hand and then pulls back as though the touch of my skin on his burned him. “I want to see you succeed at this. You know that.”

“I know.” My voice is soft, and I’m not sure if he can hear me over the cacophony of conversations around us.

For all the meals I’ve shared with Mason—far too many to count—there’s never been an awkwardness between us. The conversations have always been easy—a kind of free-flow of ideas and snarky comments that never lulled, and never failed to bring a smile to my face.

Except this one, and it kills me because on his last night here, I want things to be back the way they were. I want to feel that same certainty that I’ll always have him in my life—my friend, my confidant, even if he’s not my lover.

It’s amazing how sex should bring a couple closer together, but it seems to be pulling us apart. “That’s what happens when you have sex without getting married first,” I can hear my mother say, as she has so many times. (Good Catholic that she is.)

But Mom never met a guy like Mason.

He walks me back to my apartment and stoops to pick up the flower that fell from my landlord’s wreath on the door. Sticking it firmly back into place, he says, “I like your landlord.”

The statement is so random that it has me furrowing my brow. “You’ve never met him, have you?”

“No. But it’s nice. Him carrying on his wife’s tradition. I’d totally do the same thing if I were in his shoes.”

I chuckle a little.

“What?” he asks.

“Oh, I’m just trying to picture you in love to the point where you’d make flower wreaths.”

“Is it really that hard to picture?” He’s smiling but his eyes seem almost hurt by my statement.

In that instant, it isn’t that hard to picture. Hell, if I dropped dead tomorrow, I swear the guy would take my manuscript and try to get the damn thing published for me.

And he doesn’t even love me.

“No. It’s not, actually,” I reply quietly. “It’s pretty easy to picture.”

After walking up the staircase to my apartment door, I fumble with my key nervously. “Look, I feel like we should talk about last night before you go.”

His face contorts into one of those Oh, Shit expressions that guys get when a conversation deviates from sports and TV to emotions and future plans.

“No, no. Don’t panic, Mason.” I attempt a laugh which sounds a little too loud and a little too forced.

“I’m not panicking. I’m just—I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure some things out. Last night didn’t exactly unfold the way I thought it would.”

“Right. Me, too.” I feel slightly better, like we’re at least starting the conversation on common ground. “I mean, look, I don’t want you to get big-headed about this, or freak out or something, but you’re my best friend, Mason.”

“Why would I freak out about that?”

“Oh, come on. You’re not really the best friend type. You keep most people at arm’s distance.”

“I don’t keep you at arm’s distance.”

“No.” I shake my head, reaching my hand up to his cheek and daring to touch it lightly. Foolishly. Not what I meant to do, I remind myself, dropping my hand to my side again. “No, you really don’t. And I don’t know what I’d do without you. But you’re leaving tomorrow and I couldn’t have picked a worse time to throw myself at you. And then today in the SUV—” I shake my head, words failing me momentarily. “I just don’t want things to change between us.”

“I don’t want that either.”

“So, should we just pretend it didn’t happen?”

A smile perks up his face. “Freya, I could never pretend sex that good didn’t happen.”

I can’t help that my ego is slightly bolstered. “So I wasn’t half bad? I wasn’t sure. I’ve been told I’m too vanilla,” I can’t resist adding.

He reaches for me, a reaction I hadn’t expected, and pulls me flush against his body. I can feel his erection pressing against me.

No, definitely not the reaction I was expecting.

“Vanilla has its merits,” he says, a wry grin sliding upward on his lips.

He ducks his head toward me and kisses me, sucking my lower lip slightly into his mouth. Oh my God, the man kisses like a professional. His fingers slide up the sides of my arms, to my neck, and then bury themselves in my hair.

Not the way I’d planned things at all. And I’m not complaining. Because even if he considers me a free agent and has given his Navy friend the “all-clear” to date me, I can’t help reveling in the idea that tonight, right now, he wants me.

After all, if we spent one night together without jeopardizing our friendship, what harm would a second night do?