Chapter Fifteen
Theo
Tap, tap, tap. My head barely hit the pillow; it can’t be time to wake up already. Tap, tap, tap. There it is again. Crap. I untangle myself from the sheet and stumble to the door. This had better be good. A few good hours of sleep isn’t too much to ask for.
“Coming.” If it’s Mallory, I’m going to be pissed. She knows it’s over. She has shown up twice this week, and it’s getting annoying.
I swing open the door. Suddenly, I’m not pissed anymore. Darla is standing on the other side. I try to show how happy I am, but I’m butt-ugly tired. “Hey.” It’s all I can manage.
“I, uh…” she stutters and holds out my diabetic kit.
I glance down at my watch. It’s 11:45. Ka-ching! I scored two letters. I take it from her.
“Did I wake you?” she asks.
“It’s okay. Want to come in? Sorry about the mess,” I say, pointing to the stack of moving boxes in the living room as I retreat back inside.
I turn around to see her staring at my chest. Oops. I forgot to put on a shirt. I take a gander at my body to make sure I’m wearing pants. One never knows. Scanning the room, I spot a T-shirt on the floor. I grab it and sniff it to see how many days it has been lying there before I fling it over my head.
Darla’s lips slide downward a tad. Her disappointment over my covered body pleases the hell out of me. I would grin, but it’s almost impossible to smile and yawn at the same time.
“Thanks for my bag. I forgot I left it there. Have a seat. Want something to drink?”
She perches on the edge of the couch, and her knee bobs up and down. “No, thanks. A shot of whiskey might be nice.”
I rotate toward her, and my eyebrows shoot up.
“Kidding. I really should go.”
I collapse on the couch beside her and rub the sleep out of my eyes. Another yawn slips out. “Come on. You ruined a perfectly good snooze, and you’re going to leave?”
She scans my messy apartment. Maybe she’s trying to find all of her possible exit routes in case she needs to scram. “I’m sorry. I was trying to do the right thing, and I stopped by your clinic, and you were gone. They told me where you lived. I didn’t want you to be without your—”
“Calm down. I’m kidding.”
She blows a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“Why do I make you so nervous?”
She slouches and covers her face with her hands. “I don’t know, but you make my heart race every time I see you.”
This could be fun. I wiggle my eyebrows, and she rewards me with a whack on the shoulder. I act as if it hurts.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Bummer. She pinches my bicep.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“That was for telling Isaac that we had sex in college.”
“Oh. Actually, I didn’t say that. He read between the lines.”
She goes in for round two, but I block her.
She peers over my shoulder. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“What makes you think I have a girlfriend?”
“Mallory? I saw her on her first day of work.”
I shake my head. “First, she moves here. Then, she has to get a job at the same hospital as me.” Mallory is going to be the death of me.
“She’s quite delightful. She couldn’t wait to tell me about her boyfriend.” She holds up a finger. “No, wait. She said fiancé. So, when’s the wedding?”
“We. Are. Not. Engaged!”
She stares at the ceiling. “Will I be invited?”
Now, she’s making my heart race. “Again, we are not engaged. I don’t know why she told you that.” Dammit. This has to stop. Mallory thinks if she keeps pushing the issue, it will be fact, but that is not happening.
“Kind of touchy, aren’t you?”
I rub a hand through my hair. “No. Yes. Maybe. Jeez. Of all people, how did you run into her?”
Darla’s eyes dance. She’s enjoying this way too much. But it’s got her talking to me, so I’ll go along with the conversation.
“She says you’re working extra hours in the ER to buy her a ring.”
I chuckle. “I’m not surprised. It’s not even close to why I need the money.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah, that’s my style.” I close my eyes, but not for long, fearing I might fall asleep. “Mallory was not a good match for me. We aren’t together anymore.”
“Well, she wasn’t a good match for a college roommate either, but I survived.”
I almost break my neck, yanking it around to gape at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
I sit up, bury my head in my hands, and moan. “You were at the party together, weren’t you?”
“Yep.”
Suddenly, I remember something. I point my finger at her. She swats it away.
“You know, she talked about you a few times. She wanted to fix you up with some ugly-ass guy at her work.”
Mallory doesn’t have many female friends; she doesn’t like the competition. I could never figure out why she wanted to fix this particular friend up all of a sudden. If Mallory knew I had been with Darla at the party, she must have been attempting to mark her territory by trying to fix Darla up with some other dude. To think, I could have been with Darla this whole time. The thought of all those wasted years makes my stomach churn. Bile creeps up my esophagus.
She shudders. “That would have been awkward, huh?”
“No shit. But I wish she had.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Hey, at least it would have been a chance to get together again.”
She narrows her eyes.
Uh-oh. I’ve pushed the wrong button. “Not to do that, but hey, you talked me into it once before, or was it twice, so…”
Her eyes get big. “You’re awful.” Her ears are a nice shade of pink.
Talking about that night has me wide-awake now. I cover her hand with mine. Hers is so tiny and soft, I could hold on to it forever. Like a good boy, I let go. Her gaze floats from my hand to my eyes.
“I’m joking, but I wish things had been different. I really do.”
After the fire, I spent the next few days in the hospital for smoke inhalation and burns to my feet. My diabetes didn’t like that and was uncontrollable. By the time I got out of the hospital, everyone had left for the summer. All I had left was the memory of my Juliet and oozing blisters on the soles of my feet.
“And by the way, she doesn’t live here,” I say, pointing to my apartment. “Besides”—I lean in close to her ear—“she’s taller than me. I can’t have that now, can I?”
I swear she sniffed me. Sweet.
“That wouldn’t do.” She sighs deeply. “Actually, I know why you make me nervous. But I won’t say.”
“Why not?”
She focuses on her feet. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” If Mallory told her another lie, I might come unhinged.
She stares at me, and her jaw drops. She glances down at her tremulous hands. “I guess I have a secret. A really big one. I don’t know how to tell you.”
I nudge her shoulder. “I already know about your daughter, remember?”
She gasps. “You do?”
“Yeah, the picture on your desk.”
Her shoulders slump, and she lets out a groan. “This is so weird. Are you one hundred percent positive you do not know anything else?”
Women are so confusing sometimes. “I have no idea what you could be talking about. Let it spew. I can take it.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I thought this would be easy, but it’s not.”
This has to tie into the Hangman game. It has to. “How about you tell me in a Hangman game?” Not very subtle.
Her mouth drops. “Are you kidding me? No. Absolutely not. This isn’t a game to me. It’s so big, I’m afraid it will make you run away.”
“So, you don’t want me to run away?”
She shrugs and fidgets with her name tag.
Okay, this conversation is getting too serious. “You rob banks.”
She furrows her brow. “What?”
“That’s your secret. You rob banks.”
She giggles. “Uh, no.”
“Steal diamonds?”
“Nope.”
“You’re a chicken hawk.”
She bursts out laughing then stares at me, her face all perplexed. “I don’t even know what that is. I could be one and not even know it.”
I stand and strut around the coffee table. I am the dorkiest chicken impersonator ever, but if it makes her laugh, I’ll do it. I’ll dress up like a chicken if it keeps that expression on her face. “You know, from Looney Tunes. Foghorn Leghorn. ‘Ah say, boy, ah say.’”
She giggles and tugs on the hem of my T-shirt, pulling me down and giving me a chance to get a little closer to her. My leg brushes against hers. This time, she doesn’t bristle at my touch. She doesn’t jump away. I think I’m getting the hang of this.
“I am not a chicken hawk, and I can promise you that I have never done anything illegal.”
I lean in to her, and we make eye contact. “Well, how bad could it be?”
“Bad. I’m confused right now. I thought you knew. But when I get the courage to tell you after all this time, you’ll probably make a beeline outta here.”
“Nonsense. I live here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her jovial expression fades. “Are you sure there’s no conversation, perhaps by email, that we need to finish having?”
I throw my hands in the air. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
That stupid fire messed everything up. After that, it all kind of fell apart. I never saw her again. I wished every day that I had told her to wait outside on the sidewalk instead of telling her to go back to her dorm. That way, I would have spent the last seven years with the woman I am madly in love with instead of with a person that filled a gap.
I’m positive I saw her leave the burning building unharmed, so she couldn’t have been injured unless she came back in looking for me. If she did that, if she was in a hospital bed right down the hall from me, I think I’ll throw up.
“Ah.” I snap my fingers. “I get it.”
Those big, brown eyes make me weak in the knees. In my best French accent, I say, “You’re reeling me in with your seductive ways, and when I fall for you, you’ll snap the trap.” I snap my hands together in front of her face, making her jump. I snap them over and over.
She can’t contain her laughter. It’s great, infectious. She should do it more often. I want to make her laugh more often.
“That’s my MO, all right.”
“Trap snapper,” I say again, snapping my hands in front of her face.
She pushes them away, still laughing. “It shows how little you know about me. I’m about the least seductive person there is.”
All I want to do is take her to my bedroom and be with her. Screw sleeping. Sleeping is overrated. I swipe a strand of hair away from her eyes and tuck it behind her ear. She swallows hard.
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
She focuses on her trembling hands.
God. There I go again, getting too serious-sounding.
“But seriously, you tell me whenever you feel like it, or never. It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter,” she whispers. “Theo? The night at the party… any regrets?”
Hell no. No regrets. Is she kidding me? “Hmm.” I try to sound calm, cool, and collected. “I have regrets.”
She reaches for her purse and starts to stand.
Crap. That didn’t come out right. I grab her arm. “Let me finish.” I run a hand through my bedhead, making it even more of a mess. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” The words spew from my mouth like verbal vomit.
“That’s a girly thing to ask.”
I chuckle. “I guess, but I believe in it. My dad’s a minister, and he always tells me I will know when God puts the right one in front of me.”
Her mouth drops. “So, at the party—”
“I’m not talking about the party. I’m talking about microbiology our junior year.”
She leans back. “We had micro together?”
I nod. “I used to watch you play with your hair. You’d bring it over your head and twirl it around, like you’re doing right now.”
She stops and grins. “Sorry. Habit.”
“I had to meet you, but there had to be over one hundred people in that class.”
“Yep. It was in one of those big auditoriums.”
“You made me get a C in that class. I had to retake it in the summer, thank you very much.”
“Me? What did I do?” She leans in closer to me.
I blink to regain my thought processes. She smells like fresh laundry and baby lotion. I want to breathe her in deeper, experience more of her.
“I couldn’t concentrate, but I didn’t care. Do you know I asked to switch my lab time twice so I could be with you? But I never got in your lab.”
She snickers. “That’s because I took the lab a different semester.”
I lean back and groan. As red as her face is, she must be about to burst out laughing again.
“Go ahead. Laugh away.”
She leans over and puts her head on my shoulder then laughs until a tear trickles down her cheek.
I think I’m going to die, but I’ll die a happy man. I could get used to her resting her head on my shoulder. “You blew my theory about love at first sight. I couldn’t find you. It’s a big campus, so I sort of gave up. But when you waltzed into that party a year later, all those feelings came back.”
She moves away from me. Her cheeks are pink. She wipes her face and sneaks a peek at me between her fingers. “I think it was the beer-soaked dress. It was the latest from Calvin Klein.”
“Ah, that’s it. But I saw Stevens heading your way, and I was like, ‘No way, man.’”
“So why didn’t you ask me for my name?”
“Ma’am, your memory must be slipping. I did, but you wouldn’t tell me, so that’s when you became Juliet. But if I thought for a second it would be seven years before I saw you again, I would have pressed the issue a bit more.”
“So you mean it wasn’t another hookup?”
My mouth drops, and she gingerly pops my jaw shut.
“That’s what you thought?”
“Why else would someone like you”—she points to me—“be interested in someone like me?” She points to herself.
I sigh and close my eyes. “I saw you head to the bathroom. I made up that story about hiding from you-know-who. I needed something that would keep you hostage for a few hours.”
That didn’t come out right. I cringe, waiting for her response, which could be anything from a punch to a hug.
She puts her hands on her hips. Oh crap, here it comes.
“Okay, I didn’t plan on that happening.” Heat rises up my neck. “But to answer your original question, I don’t regret it. Not one single thing.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“I know our first… whatever you want to call it… was a bit rushed before it came to a screeching halt, but that wasn’t anyone’s fault, was it?”
She shakes her head. When she peers up at me again, her eyes sparkle.
My heart pounds through my chest, but I need her to know our night together was special to me, not a random hookup. “And in case you were wondering… you were my first.”
A beautiful pink blush spreads across her cheeks. She covers her face with her hands. “You were mine too.” She peeks at me through her fingers. “You were very talented.” She closes her fingers. “God, I cannot believe I said that.”
I peel one hand away from her face and hold it. On instinct, I rub the back of her knuckles with my thumb. “I could say the same thing about you. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I knew what felt right at the time.”
She leans back on the couch and focuses on the ceiling. A slow, deep chuckle comes out of her mouth. My shoulder touches hers when I lean back. Her hand rests on my thigh. A warm feeling that I thought I would never feel again rushes through my veins.
She leans her head on my shoulder. “Nothing like your first, huh?”
You got that right.
“So, why don’t we start over? I know you’re a single parent and that’s priority one for you. I get it. I respect that. But… I want to try.”
There. I’ve said it. It’s out there. Even though I have zero hours for a relationship and I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, I’ve put myself out there. No take-backs now.
It seems as though she’s holding her breath. She exhales slowly. “What about this secret of mine?”
“Tell me when you think the time is right.”
“Even if it’s a really, really big secret?”
I nod. Nothing she could tell me would change the way I feel about her.
“Okay, but what about Mallory?”
Whoa. She agreed with me. I thought I would get the runaround. Forget about sleep. Suddenly, I’m not sleepy anymore. But I can’t rush things again. This time, it needs to be right—slow, sweet, perfect. “I told you, we’re not a couple anymore. You see that box over there?”
I point to the large pile of moving boxes I haven’t unpacked.
Darla tilts her head.
“What does the writing on that one say?” I ask.
She squints to read my scribbling, then a very boisterous laugh bursts out. “You broke up with her by playing Hangman?”
“Yeah. I should at least get bonus points for originality.”
She rolls her eyes, but her smile doesn’t fade. “Only you would do that.”
“We’ve been growing apart for some time. I’ll be fine. She’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, might face the wrath of Mallory’s temper.”
She rolls her eyes. “Nice words of encouragement.”
I take her hand and help her stand then start down the hallway.
“Uh, where are we going?” Her voice trembles.
I try not to grin, but it’s hard to hide my smile. “The bathroom. Isn’t that where it all started?”
Stopping, she puts her hands on her hips and bites her lip. She’s trying not to smile, but she is failing miserably. I love that I’m able to put the smile back on her face. I get the impression she doesn’t do that very often. That’s a shame, because when she’s happy, her entire face lights up.
“I better let you get some rest,” she says.
I shrug. “If you must.”
I move toward her. She backs up against the wall. I take another step closer. We are only inches apart. All it would take is a slight tilt of the Earth’s axis, and I would be up against her. It’s taking all my willpower not to reach out and touch her face.
“See you tomorrow?” I ask. Please say yes.
She nods. I take both of her wrists in my hands and slide my fingers around until I find her radial pulse. She’s right. I do make her heart race. I lean down and kiss her on the cheek, and the years we’ve spent apart vanish. Her breath hitches. I want to make her do that and more all day long, but not so soon…
In her ear, I whisper, “I have a secret too.”
She blinks. “Huh?”
This is going better than I expected. She slides her hands up my chest. Now, I’m having trouble focusing, and my heart rate is way beyond my maximum target range.
I smirk. “I kind of left my diabetes bag on purpose.”
She snarls at me. “You are evil.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
She throws her head back and cracks up. She pats my chest and wipes her face with her hands. “I’ve got to get back to work. See you soon.” She moves to leave and runs smack-dab into the wall. “Ouch.”
“I’ve been meaning to get that wall removed.”
Her face is suffused with a pretty shade of pink, and she mumbles something under her breath.
“See ya.”
She picks up her purse and leaves. I watch her from the front door as she gets into her old Ford Escape. She waves as she backs out into the parking lot. I wave back.
After she drives away, I take out the Hangman puzzle I printed out from my front pocket. It’s like a drug calling my name. There’s no harm in finishing the puzzle. If she’s the one sending me the messages, we’ll get a big kick out of it.
However, if she’s not the one and someone else is trying to facilitate me in figuring out her secret before she’s ready to tell me, I risk hurting her. I should throw the puzzle away and enjoy the grand prize. I fold the paper and stuff it back in my pocket. I can’t let a game go unfinished.