Chapter 4
‡
A hug should not feel this good, this right, and this perfect.
That’s what Marco was telling himself as his arms tightened around Sydney. It wasn’t helping that each and every one of her generous curves were molding against him like a missing piece of a puzzle. Or that he heard her sigh softly as her breath fanned his neck as she exhaled. Or that the silky softness of her long hair was brushing against his bare forearm.
He dropped his chin and his lips lightly touched the crown of her head as he spoke in a low, raspy voice. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve miss—”
Sydney’s response was cut short when the door beside them slammed open. Startled by the loud noise, she jumped from his arms as two servers rushed past them into the kitchen.
Sydney pulled her full bottom lip between her teeth as her chin dipped and her eyes were cast to the floor. “I guess we should probably head back in.”
“Oh…um…”
The last place that Marco wanted to go was back into the reunion filled with people he had no interest in knowing anymore. He’d much rather continue the reunion he was having right now. He was about to ask if Sydney would be interested in going to The Sunset Diner and getting a milkshake and fries. It had been her favorite combo in high school. He’d never understood the appeal of dipping french fries into ice cream but she’d loved it.
“Unless?” She motioned to the door that had smacked him in the face. “Were you going to…” Her head turned back toward him and he saw the most adorable crinkle in her brow as she asked, “Are you leaving?”
Instead of telling her that he had planned on escaping but now wild horses couldn’t drag him away, he shook his head and held out his arm. “Shall we?”
The corner of her lips lifted and the smile reached all the way to her glossy, amber-tinted eyes. He could get lost for hours staring into them, he had gotten lost for hours in them. They were so expressive. The depths of her emotions were hidden there and the longer he looked the more he uncovered.
She reached for the door, but he beat her to it. “I think you better let me. For my own safety.”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” she said, but the twinkle in her eye told a different story.
They’d barely made it through the doors when she wrapped her fingers around his arm and squeezed. “Oh! Have you gone over there yet?”
Marco turned his head to where she was indicating and saw that in the far-right corner of the ballroom there was a sign that read: “Memory Lane.” There stood a maze of Plexiglas sheets hung from the ceilings covered in photos highlighting their four years at Crestview.
“Nope.” He’d rather take a long walk off a short pier than one down memory lane.
It wasn’t that he’d had a terrible time at Crestview. His high school experience was idyllic. He just didn’t want to relive it.
Her fingers squeezed. “I’ve wanted to go over there since I got here.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her lips pursed as her shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I didn’t want to look like a dork looking at the pictures alone.”
She smiled as she tugged on his arm and took a step forward. He didn’t budge. Not because he didn’t want to go. His feet just weren’t taking cues from his brain at the moment.
Marco watched as Sydney’s eyelids closed and opened and her lips moved in what felt like slow motion. Time was standing still.
A small flash of confusion flickered in her gorgeous gaze, but it was swiftly replaced with a glimmer of mischief. She dropped her arm and shrugged. “Never mind. Don’t come.”
Then she walked away. It took Marco a beat for the shock of what he’d just experienced to wear off, but the moment it did his feet started moving.
He was by her side in seconds trying to figure out a way to explain his odd behavior when he looked down at her and saw that she was rocking a full-on cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.
“What?” he asked.
“It still works.” Satisfaction dripped from every word she spoke as her nose crinkled.
“What works?” He didn’t have a clue what she was referring to.
“Nothing,” she sing-songed innocently. “Nothing at all.”
That reaction triggered several flashbacks in his mind.
Their teenage selves sitting on her couch after studying and her casually stating, “You wouldn’t like Sex in the City, so you shouldn’t watch it.”
So he watched.
The mock concern that filled her tone after the last day of freshman year when they’d walked home. “I don’t think you can handle a sunrise hike up to Sunset Cliffs. So you should probably sleep in on Saturday morning.”
So he hiked.
After he’d gone and seen her favorite movie a dozen times at the drive-in theater the summer between junior and senior year only to have had her inform him on the last night it was playing, “You can’t go to the drive-in movies with me tonight to see The Princess Bride because you’re just going to fall asleep. And you snore.”
So he went and stayed awake.
It went back a lot further than that though. One of Marco’s first memories was when he was three years old and he and his mom were baking cookies. He could clearly recall standing in the kitchen and his mom telling him not to touch the front of the oven because it was hot. Before she’d told him not to touch the oven door he’d had no desire to, but as soon as the words left her mouth he had an overwhelming impulse to do just that.
So he did.
And that was his first visit to the emergency room. Throughout his childhood he’d ended up at the hospital a dozen more times due to his adrenaline junkie tendencies but the first time had been purely because his mom had told him not to do something and then he’d had to do it.
Marco had made the mistake of sharing with Sydney his innate impulse to do the opposite of whatever someone told him to do. She’d always seemed to enjoy thinking that she could use reverse psychology on him when the truth was, he was the Westley to her Princess Buttercup. Her wish was his command.
But she’d always gotten a kick out of thinking she was somehow gaming the system and he’d never had the heart to tell her otherwise. By the time they’d reached the corner of the room he’d decided he wasn’t going to burst her bubble now, after all these years.
“Oh, look,” Sydney said as soon as they reached the first hanging display and her eagle eye spotted a picture of the two of them.
She lifted her hand, running her finger along the edges of a photo. It was of the two of them in the library huddled over a text book. It must’ve been twelfth grade, because that was when she tutored him. He’d failed Spanish his freshman, sophomore, and junior years and had to complete two years of Spanish as a senior. If it weren’t for Sydney, who was fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian, he wouldn’t have graduated at all.
It was always a source of embarrassment that he’d never learned his father’s native language. Half of the blood running through Marco was Latin. His dad liked to joke that his son may not have mastered the language but he had the lover part down.
Sydney let out a slow breath of air and he felt the exhale like a physical brush along his arm. With a sigh she said, “I still get a thrill whenever I hold a highlighter.”
Marco had forgotten her borderline obsession with highlighting things. It was just another one of her quirky little idiosyncrasies that made her so damn adorable.
He took a step forward and studied the photo. Rays of sunlight poured in from the window they had been seated in front of. The light shining in on them gave her strawberry-blonde hair an ethereal glow. Her expressive eyes were staring up at him as he pointed at something in his notebook.
It blew Marco’s mind that he’d ever gotten anything accomplished around Sydney. Between her intoxicating whiskey-tinted eyes, plump cherry-stained lips, silky golden-red hair, and smooth china-doll skin, she was the definition of beguilement. And that was just due to her external beauty, it didn’t even take her disarming charm, insightful intelligence, or razor-sharp wit into the equation. Hell, as a grown man just being around her was driving him to complete and utter distraction.
“¿Cómo está tu español actualmente?” Her caramel eyes danced with feistiness as her eyebrow rose.
He understood enough to know that she’d asked how his Spanish was these days, but he still responded that it was no good, because that was about the extent of what he’d retained. “No Bueno.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the disapproving sound fell from her pursed lips as her head shook back and forth.
When he was younger, he’d safely stayed in the friend-zone Sydney had placed him in. As much as he’d hated just being her friend, the truth was she was his best friend and he’d never wanted to risk losing her.
But now things were different. He still considered her a friend, but they hadn’t been in touch in years. He had nothing to lose by stepping out of the box that she’d put them in.
He cleared his throat and swallowed over the knot that was lodged in it. “So, where’s your boyfriend tonight?”
“No boyfriend.”
“No boyfriend?” He parroted her response. Not because he hadn’t heard her, but because he couldn’t believe what he’d heard.
“Nope.”
Marco noticed her shoulders tense as she turned back to the pictures.
It was clear she didn’t want to discuss it. He should’ve dropped the subject. But finding out she was single was like being handed a lottery ticket; he had to at least try and scratch it off to see if he’d won.
“You and the doctor broke up?”
Her head spun around and her eyes widened in shock. “How did you know he was a doctor?”
“Facebook.” Marco knew that he was being about as subtle as a bull in a china shop but he didn’t care.
“Right.” She nodded in understanding before turning her attention back to the display. “Yeah. We did.” She shifted her weight. “It’s kind of…recent.”
Recent he could work with. Current would be a problem.
“Recent, huh?”
*
You have no idea, Sydney thought to herself.
“Mmm hmm,” she confirmed. “Recent.”
“Sydney?”
At the sound of her name, she turned and saw Caleb Dawson. Well she saw Caleb Dawson’s chest. All of the three Dawson brothers were tall, but at six foot six, Caleb was the tallest.
Devon had briefly dated Caleb’s older brother Sam in high school, but her sister had always had a secret crush on the youngest of the Dawson men. Devon had never acted on it because she believed dating someone younger was beneath her. Only Sydney had been privy to her sister’s feelings and she couldn’t wait to tell Devon that he was here tonight.
“Hi, Caleb.”
“Wow…you look…incredible.” His eyes scanned her from head to toe.
She had to admit that the way people had responded to her tonight was beginning to give her a complex. It was as if she was some kind of troll in high school. Yes, she’d worn baggy clothes and no, she hadn’t worn make-up, but that was it. She was about the same weight, she hadn’t had work done on her face, or her body. Not that Simon hadn’t offered, he had. But she was finally happy in her own skin and not even a plastic surgeon boyfriend could change that.
“Thanks, so do you.”
She wasn’t just saying that. Caleb was always good looking and the past ten years had been kind to him. Not as kind as they’d been to Marco, but she might be a little biased there.
“Everyone said… but I mean, you’re…stunning.” He spoke with respect but it still made Sydney’s shoulders tense.
This entire night was starting to become a classic example of be careful what you wish for. When she’d hoped that people would see her, she hadn’t thought about what that kind of attention would actually feel like.
It was embarrassing enough having people treat her like she was the swan from some tragic ugly duckling fairytale, but to have them do it in front of Marco was downright humiliating.
Marco’s hand rested on her lower back as he said, “She was always beautiful and she still is.”
Her face flushed. She wasn’t certain if it was due to his complimentary words or the warmth and weight of his palm at the base of her spine. She was sure, however, that her rosy-cheeked reaction was evident because she’d inherited her mother’s pale Irish skin.
Caleb glanced up and blinked as if he were just noticing Marco for the first time. “Oh, hey, MVP. It’s good to see you. How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been good.” Marco’s tone wasn’t exactly friendly but it also wasn’t aloof. It was neutral. “How about you?”
“Can’t complain.” Caleb gestured between herself and Marco. “Are you two together?”
“No.” The word flew from her mouth in the same knee-jerk reaction she’d always had whenever anyone asked about the two of them.
It had started out of embarrassment in sixth grade. They’d been working on a lab together and Richie asked if they like-liked each other. She’d been mortified that he could see through her and she’d said that they were just friends.
Over the years, shutting down any kind of insinuation about what might be going on between the two of them had developed into pure self-protection. She needed to beat him to the punch because hearing him say that they were “just friends” was a rather unpleasant and gut-wrenching experience.
“We’re just friends,” she quickly explained.
Marco’s hand dropped from her back to further demonstrate her claim. It shouldn’t have bothered her. There was no reason that his hand should be on her back, but she wished it still was.
Caleb’s eyes bounced between the two friends before changing the subject. “Hey, how’s Devon?”
Besides everyone being totally slack-jaw flabbergasted at Sydney’s apparent swan transformation the only other thing anyone wanted to talk about was Devon. It wasn’t surprising. Devon was a bright shining, star that everyone, including Sydney, gravitated to.
“She’s good.”
“Good.” Caleb rocked back slightly on his heels. “She’s married, right?”
“Yep. And she has two little rug rats.”
“Oh, that’s…” He looked down but not before she saw a small flicker of something. When he lifted his gaze back to her it was gone. “That’s great. Tell her I said hello.”
“I will.” Unlike everyone else she’d promised to pass along a greeting for tonight, she had every intention of letting her big sis know that Caleb had asked about her.
“All right, well, it was good seeing you both,” he added as he acknowledged Marco, almost as an afterthought.
“You too.” She lifted her hand in a wave as he turned and walked toward the bar.
She lowered her arm and shifted back to Marco. He was staring down at her with a small grin on his lips.
She’d forgotten what it felt like for him to look at her like he was now.
Everyone else looked through her or past her, but not Marco. When he looked, he saw her.
He’d noticed that she’d got her braces off before she’d even smiled after coming to school late from the dentist. She’d walked into third period, set her backpack down and he’d said, “You got your braces off.”
She still didn’t know how he’d been able to tell without her mouth being open.
Her lack of mouth gear wasn’t the only thing that Marco had noticed back then. He commented on every haircut, even if it was a trim. Every new shirt and most nail color changes. He pointed out when she’d lost weight during junior year with concern. After that, he’d eaten lunch with her every day. At the time, she’d just thought she wasn’t hungry, but looking back now she knew that she’d been depressed. Her parents moved without even so much as a conversation with her and her sister about how they felt about being left behind. She hadn’t even realized that she hadn’t been eating.
“What?”
“Caleb Dawson,” he said as if the name held great significance.
“Yeah…” Her eyes shot to his retreating back then back up to Marco, still not understanding what he was insinuating. “What?”
“Caleb. Dawson.” He repeated.
“Oh, right.” Until this moment, she’d completely forgotten that she’d once told Marco that she had a crush on him. He’d found a paper that had Mrs. Caleb Dawson scribbled on it. She’d said it was hers to cover for her sister, but it became an easy out whenever Marco asked if she liked anyone. Caleb had been her go-to.
It was confession time. “Right, so, funny story, I never had a crush on Caleb.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I didn’t. The paper you found in the couch cushions was Devon’s.”
“But every time I asked who you liked you said…”
“I was just…” she started to say, covering up for the fact that I was in love with you, but she figured one confession was enough for now. “I was just covering for Devon.”
“So you never wanted to be with Caleb? But that’s why I…”
It surprised her how serious his tone was. “That’s why you what?”
“Oh my gosh!”
“Sydney!”
“You look amazing!”
Sydney turned and saw three women that she’d barely spoken to in high school. Three women she’d already spoken to tonight. Their reaction was notable since earlier when she’d greeted them they’d treated her like she had the plague. They were clearly here to see Marco, not her.
“Hi.” She wasn’t cold but she certainly wasn’t warm.
They went on and on about how amazing she looked before blessedly, Marco saved Sydney by telling the trio that they were headed to go get a drink, but it was nice to see them. You could cut their disappointment with a knife, but they took the hint and left.
Before they even got two steps he moved in front of her, so close that he was blocking the rest of the room. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.
“That was smooth.”
He grinned, accepting the compliment, but then turned the attention back to her. “How does it feel to be the talk of the reunion?”
“I’m not.” She rolled her eyes.
Her dress might be, but she wasn’t. No one even knew her here. Except Marco.
“Yes. You are.” He stated firmly as he leaned down, stopping only slightly before their foreheads touched. With their mouths only inches away, she felt like the oxygen was being sucked from her lungs.
All of her life she’d been an observer and she was comfortable in that role. Her older sister was the star of the show and she was her audience. Devon was an attention magnet. She drew everyone’s focus onto her and that suited Sydney just fine.
Tonight was the first night in her twenty-eight years that she’d hoped that people would take notice of her and now she just wanted things to go back to the way they were.
Marco was the only person that always noticed, always saw her. If they were in a classroom with thirty people or a mall with hundreds, it always felt like just the two of them. Like now.
Neither Marco nor Sydney made any effort to put distance between them and they never broke eye contact. They remained perfectly still except for the rise and fall of their chests.
His lips turned up and the dimple in his left cheek appeared and its potency was greater than the Lemon Drop shot she’d gulped down for liquid confidence to face her classmates.
From the first time she laid eyes on Marco that dimple had been known to weaken her knees and tie her tongue.
“You’re all anyone is talking about tonight.” The raspy quality of his words vibrated through her, making it impossible to think straight. “Do you know what they’re saying?”
She winced at the thought. Most of the time when people talked behind someone’s back it was even blunter than what they said to their face. And so far, everyone tonight had already been pretty blunt.
“You really don’t, do you?” His brow furrowed and his voice was tinged with concern.
“No.” It shouldn’t matter to her what anyone was saying, but she found herself asking, “What are they saying?”
“That you look incredible. That you are the sexiest woman here. That you’re so much hotter than you were in high school.”
The first she could handle. The second was just an outright lie. And the third was a backhanded compliment, at best.
“But they’re wrong.”
Marco had a reputation for being direct. Some had accused him of being an asshole, but she’d always appreciated his brutal honesty.
Sydney couldn’t help the small bark of laughter that escaped from her chest. “Wow. Tell me what you really think.”
He inched closer.
Sydney’s heart was beating so loud it was all she could hear in her head. It was louder than the hum of conversation around her and the music the DJ was playing. Each thump was louder than the last.
His left brow rose slightly. “Do you want to know what I really think?”
Nerves tumbled in her stomach like tennis shoes in a dryer. “Yes.”
Marco didn’t answer right away. She could see a storm of emotion rioting in his tropical green eyes. A tropical storm, if you will.
Each second of silence that hung between them was like a rubber band being stretched further and further. The tension was building to an almost unbearable level. She wasn’t sure exactly how they’d gotten here. The conversation had started out innocent enough but it had taken a turn down a road she wasn’t sure she was ready to travel.
As much as Sydney was tempted to end the suspense, she resisted. The ball was in Marco’s court. She’d answered his question and was waiting with bated breath, in a very literal sense, to see what he served up next. But their conversation was intercepted by a spectator.
“Marco! There you are!”
Sydney looked over Marco’s shoulder and saw Richie Leon.
She stepped back and away from the two men and made her way through the maze of pictures. She used the interruption to attempt to collect herself and try to refocus her brain on anything other than how she’d just felt. It didn’t help that the maze was covered in pictures of the very man she was trying to distract herself from.
As she took the stroll down memory lane, she had to admit that she was feeling a very foreign sensation filling her chest. Sydney didn’t consider herself sentimental or nostalgic. She put those emotions in the same category as being a romantic. Her brain simply wasn’t wired that way, at least it hadn’t been.
She turned a corner and found herself face to chest with Marco. He wasn’t as tall as Caleb, but he had to be around six foot two. Tonight she was standing a respectable five foot six, but that was only because of the heels.
Her eyes lifted. “Hey.”
“Do you want to get a drink?” The casual tone of his voice and the hint of a smile on his lips were in direct opposition to the intensity in his stare.
“What happened to Richie?” She looked around.
She’d love to continue spending time with Marco but she had no interest in hanging out with his crew. Those guys were barely tolerable in high school and either they’d grown even more intolerable or her tolerance level had lowered. Either way, she wasn’t about to subject herself to spending any time with them tonight. Even if that meant her mini-reunion with Marco was over. It made her sad to think that she hadn’t found out how he was, how his mother and grandfather were, or what was going on in his life.
And although she was enjoying the new dynamic between them, she missed the easy banter that had been the trademark of their friendship. Things had always been easy and fun with Marco. They’d had a rhythm. A sync. They were tuned into one another like they had their own frequency.
Tonight, it was definitely not on the regular channel.
“He’s not going to bother us.” He sounded so serious.
“He’s not going to bother us,” she lowered her voice, mimicking him with the hopes of lightening the mood. “Okay, tough guy.”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are.” He boomeranged her words right back to her and smiled.
As his lips turned up and that damn dimple appeared again, it almost derailed her attempt to put them back into their zone. Their friend-zone.
“Funny is in the bone of the beholder…get it?” She grinned. “Funny bone.”
“If you have to explain it, it’s not as clever as you think it is.” His grin widened and the storm clouds in his eyes dissipated.
She wasn’t trying to be clever she’d just wanted to get them back to them.
Mission accomplished.
They’d always been able to say anything to one another. She wanted to be able to joke around. To tease him. To get teased back.
Hmm, teased.
Her mind started thinking of all the ways she’d like to be teased by Marco, but she quickly pulled the e-brake on her mental detour out of the designated zone.
“No,” she reprimanded herself.
“No?” Marco asked. “No, what?”
“What?” She shook her head.
“You said no.”
“I did?”
Sydney had a tendency to say things out loud without knowing it. Devon used to joke around that she was blissfully unaware of herself. Unfiltered and unaware were her exact words. In Sydney’s opinion, there was nothing blissful about being either.
“You did,” Marco confirmed. “Was that no to a drink?”
“No.” She shook her head and his eyes narrowed slightly. She knew that the next question he was going to ask was what the no was referring to. Before that happened she rushed out, “A drink sounds great.”
He offered her his arm and as she slipped her fingers around his bicep she couldn’t help but notice the bulge of muscle that had her feeling all kinds of funny low in her belly and heat beneath the thin layer of cotton that separated their skin.
Tonight might be a Cookies and Cream night after all.