Chapter Eleven
“I’m not saying that Bilbo’s story is better than Frodo’s,” I said. “I’m just saying that there is a lot more readers could learn from Bilbo’s story than they can from Frodo’s.”
Liam shook his brown plastic spoon at me. “Frodo is the one hobbit that changed the course of the universe. Come on, it’s in the log line.”
“Without Bilbo, Frodo would have ended up in an orphanage surrounded by country hobbits that would have only taught him how to get fat and settle on his ass.”
Liam scooped more frozen yogurt into his mouth. “Nope.” He shook his head and laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
I shrugged. My frozen yogurt wasn’t so frozen anymore and I stared down at the puddle wistfully. “I like winning arguments.”
“Remind me not to argue with you again.”
“You won’t need reminding.” I winked at him.
Our gazes met and held. Again, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t a date, even though I desperately wanted it to be one. Compared to the dates I’d gone on recently, this “hang-out” with Liam was much more preferable.
We had opted for a casual burger at the amazing stand around the corner from our building. For dessert, he’d suggested we stop for frozen yogurt, which was the perfect thing to complete the night.
I had no idea that Liam could be so fun. I supposed it was kind of unfair to make that judgment, considering the only time we’d spent together up until now had been in bed, in a fight, or in avoidance.
I learned that we listened to the same type of music. That both of us loved to watch old movies and had read a lot of the same books. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he liked to read. Bryan hated books, saying that he didn’t have time for reading, choosing to spend his free time shouting at the TV or with his hands glued to his video game remote.
“What are you thinking about?” Liam asked me.
I wondered if I should try to hide it from him, but I decided that I’d had enough of keeping my thoughts to myself. “That I wish this was a real date. I’m having fun.”
To my surprise, he didn’t seem put off by my admission. A smile curved his lips. “What would your ideal date be?” he asked. “I can imagine all the crappy ones you’ve been on lately, considering the jerk-offs you’ve been seeing.”
“Hey,” I said. “In my defense, if I knew where to find the decent men, I’d be happily married to one now.”
He shrugged. “That’s true, I guess.”
“My ideal date...” I nibbled on the inside of my lip. When I looked up, I was shocked to see him staring at my lips. I ignored the flip in my stomach. “Have you ever been to the Long Beach Harbor?” I asked instead.
“Of course.”
I nodded. “It’s one of my favorite places in the world.”
“Why?”
“There’s this lighthouse there.”
He nodded. “The Lion’s Lighthouse.”
“I love the boardwalk that leads up to the lighthouse. It’s beautiful at night. The lamps are lit and they play soft music on the speakers. The view of the ocean is amazing. The walk is about a mile, but it’s so romantic, and when you get to the lighthouse, to the very top of that hill, the view is just...beautiful.” I smiled to myself.
“Sounds really nice.” He leaned back in his barstool.
“I would go by myself even.”
“Why don’t you?”
I shrugged. “I’ve seen it so many times. It would be nice to share it with someone else.”
We were quiet for a long moment. “We’ll go,” he said. “Together.”
I laughed. “Really? Why would you want to drive all the way there just to see a lighthouse?”
“You have me convinced of how beautiful it is.”
“But it can’t be a date.”
He shook his head from side to side dramatically. “Not a date.”
“Just a hangout.”
“Just two friends walking to a lighthouse.”
“On a romantic boardwalk.”
“Exactly.”
I laughed and shook my head. “What about you? What’s your idea of a perfect date?”
“Guys don’t have perfect dates, sweetie. Only perfect nights.”
I tried not to let his use of an endearment affect me. “What would a perfect night be, then?”
“As long as the chick is in our bed towards the end and gone in the morning, it would be perfect.”
“Liam,” I said. I swatted his knee.
“What?”
“That’s so unromantic.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I can’t be in a relationship.”
“No. The reason you can’t be in a relationship is that you don’t want to be in one.”
“No argument there.”
I leaned my elbow on the edge of the bar. “Do you mind me asking?”
“What?”
“Why you’re so against them. Relationships.”
He contemplated my question. “Relationships are messy. They’re hard work. And sometimes it all goes down the drain. Not for any reason other than it wasn’t meant to be.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Isn’t that just life?”
“I’d rather spend my time on something worthwhile.”
“And you don’t think relationships are worthwhile.” It wasn’t a question.
“I spent two years with one girlfriend,” he said.
I almost choked. “Really? You? Two years. With one girl.”
He smirked. “See? I’m capable of commitment.”
“I would’ve never guessed.”
“Her name was Sarah.” He looked serious then, and I straightened.
“What happened?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. “I asked her to marry me.”
“And?”
He shifted more securely in his chair. “We were engaged for a long time. But...then, I don’t know what happened.” His shoulders grew taut. “Sarah was...depressed. She’d had a bad childhood and she suffered from mental issues.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Did she see a therapist for it?” I asked.
He nodded. “She was pretty good for most of our relationship, and she told me that her problems wouldn’t come between us. For the most part, I thought she was a normal girl. She took medication sometimes until she went off it again. And sure, she would get upset and frustrated about certain things, but so do most people. She wasn’t half as bad as some of the other crazy chicks I dated. But once we got engaged.”
He shrugged.
“She was just different. Depressed. Crying for no reason. Angry at the smallest things. Everything I did seemed to bug her and she would always be bitching at me for every little thing.”
He laughed, but it was humorless.
“It wouldn’t have been so difficult if she had been consistent with what bothered her. The way I coughed would make her blow her top one day but it wouldn’t the next. She hated how I drove, said that I turned too sharply. But the next, she said that I went too slow. After a while, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the problem wasn’t her. It was me.”
“Liam,” I said. “Of course it wasn’t you.”
“I know that now.” He coughed into a fist. “But it wasn’t easy to live with when everything I did bothered her. It felt like I had to apologize for existing, you know? And I would’ve put up with it.” He sighed. “I thought it would be worth it. I wanted to spend all my life with her. I wanted the house, the yard, and the dogs. Even the kids.”
My chest expanded with a peculiar sensation. “So what happened? Did you leave her?”
He shook his head. “One day, she woke up and decided she didn’t love me anymore. That she had never loved me. Too bad she told me after I’d already closed escrow on our house.”
I made a sympathetic sound and touched his shoulder.
“Anyway, we called it all off.” He shrugged. My hand dropped. “And that was the end of it.”
He straightened on his stool and averted his face from my gaze. I wanted to say something comforting. I wanted to erase the tension from his shoulders, to ease the tautness in his jaw. But I had no idea what to say and I also knew that Liam was not the type to invite pity.
“Bryan broke up with me because he thought I was a prude,” I blurted.
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. But it was worth it when Liam turned back towards me. His expression was conflicted between a frown and a smile.
“What? Seriously?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t say so in those words. But he implied it.”
“What the fuck.” He turned back to me. “I have no idea what he was doing, but I can personally attest to the fact that you are not a prude.”
I released a huge sigh. “Well, thank God for that.”
The corners of Liam’s lips twitched. “Come on, joking aside. Why would he say that?”
“I have no idea.”
“That cannot be the reason you two broke up. No sane person would say that about you, Misty.”
The way he looked at me sent a jolt of awareness into the pit of my stomach. Awareness that made the hair on my arms rise and a suspicious moisture dampen my panties.
“It wasn’t the real reason. The real reason we broke up was that I caught him cheating on me.”
He settled back in his chair. “Ah, I see.”
“What do you see?”
He smiled knowingly. “He was only being defensive. That prick cheated on you and his explanation for it was to place the blame on your shoulders. You were the reason he was a dick in other words.”
“No.”
A part of me wanted to believe him, but another part couldn’t help but wonder if Bryan was right. If I hadn’t been such a prude, I might’ve been able to keep him happy. “I worked too much. I let my career get in the way of our relationship. I didn’t give him enough attention and—”
“Bullshit.”
I looked at him with surprise.
“Stop defending him,” Liam said. “So what? You worked a couple late night shifts. Yeah, if he had a problem, he had every right to speak up about it. But nothing gives anyone license to sleep with someone else. I don’t care what the issue is. If you’re in a committed relationship and you both agreed to be exclusive, then you have to stick with the agreement.”
“Agreement.” I smiled ironically. “You talk about being in a relationship like it’s a contract.”
“Well, yeah. Both parties agree to a certain set of terms and if one person disrespects those terms, then the other has every right to act up.”
“Jeez. What are you? My legal advisor in relationships?”
He cocked his head sheepishly. “Sorry. That’s the ex-law student in me speaking.”
“You went to law school?”
He nodded. “Got my degree but never took the bar.”
“Why?”
“Wanted to open my coffee shop instead.” He said it as if it was no big deal. “Being a lawyer never appealed to me. I only went to school because I was good at it, and then I applied to law school because Sarah encouraged me to. And I wanted to make enough money to give her the house that she wanted.”
“Wow.”
My fingers twitched around my yogurt cup.
“But then we broke up.” He looked straight at me. “And I realized I didn’t want to live my life for someone else. And you shouldn’t either.” He switched gears. “If Bryan cheated on you, thereby breaking the bonds of the relationship, I don’t see why you can’t pop him a good one in the face and call it even.”
I tried not to laugh. “That was very tempting, I must admit.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did it.”
“The one thing about a bad relationship,” I said, “is that you can walk away and hopefully not repeat your mistakes in the next one.”
Which, I realized, I had been very close to doing when I slept with Liam.
“What did you learn about being with Bryan?”
“At first, I thought it was because I had to...you know...up the level on my sexiness.”
His jaw tightened. His gaze moved over my body, lingering at my breasts, the flare of my hips, and the length of my legs.
“That’s not possible.”
I tried not to read too much into that statement. Despite my stomach doing a happy little somersault and my heart rate kicking up a notch.
“Well, I certainly thought it was,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “What did you do?”
“I bought a ton of lingerie, for one thing.”
He didn’t say anything to that, but his eyes darkened in response.
“And I came up with a bucket list.”
“Yeah?”
“A sex bucket list.”
His mouth dropped open. He leaned closer to me. “What was on it?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”
“What? Why?”
“That’s an inappropriate conversation and we shouldn’t discuss it when we are friends without benefits.”
He grinned. “Come on. Don’t tell me you didn’t tell your friend about it...what’s her name?”
“Tammy.”
“Yeah. You and Tammy probably came up with this together.”
I blushed. “What if we did?”
“You have no problem talking to Tammy about your sex bucket list, but you don’t want to tell me? What’s the difference? I’m your friend. Tammy’s your friend. And I’ll bet a million bucks you guys don’t share those kinds of benefits.” He paused, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Unless you do. In which case, I’d rather talk about that.”
I groaned and punched him on the chest. He rubbed it, but his smile didn’t lose its brightness.
“I don’t want to tell you about my sex bucket list.”
He leaned closer. “But I want to know.” His hand felt too warm on my knee. “Come on. I’m your friend, remember?” His grin was infectious.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
He leaned back in his chair. “What was the first thing on your list?”
“Sixty-nine.”
He choked and almost spit out his drink. His face went red and he struggled for breath through each cough.
I waited calmly while he tried to fight down the coughs. I poured him a cup of water from the provided pitcher next to the napkins. After he downed the glass, his eyes were teary and red.
“Why are you so shocked?” I asked. “It’s not like it’s a highly taboo act. Not like...other stuff.” I felt my face grow warm.
“That’s exactly the point. You’ve never done sixty-nine?”
“Hush,” I hissed.
I buried my face in my hands as his voice echoed in the large store. No one turned to look at us, but it was still embarrassing.
“Seriously, though,” Liam said in a quieter voice. “Never?”
I shook my head.
“None of your boyfriends have tried?”
I didn’t have to answer him.
“Wow.” He couldn’t stop looking at me. “Wow.”
“Yes, you said that already.”
“That makes me want to rethink our friends without benefits agreement.”
I flushed. “Why?”
“Because no one should have to go—how old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Yeah. No one should go that long without doing sixty-nine at least once in their lifetime.”
“That’s why it’s on my bucket list,” I pointed out.
“True.” He leaned towards me. “What else is on it?”
“Sex in a pool.”
He smiled. “I know where there is a pool. What else?”
“On a boat.”
He nodded. “That’s a good one.”
“What about you?”
He pretended to contemplate my question. “I definitely want to do it in public. The higher the risk of getting caught, the better.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t done that already.”
“Have you?”
I didn’t answer him, instead pressing my lips together.
His smile was slow to spread on his face. “Bryan was wrong about you.”
“What else?” I asked, ignoring the flush of heat through my body.
I shook my head. “I regret discussing this subject.”
“We’re still not done talking about your list.”
“Oh, we’re done.”
“No, we’re not. Come on, sixty-nine, in a pool, on a boat. You’re quite the adventurous one, aren’t you?” He nudged my chair with his foot. “I promise I won’t laugh. Or judge. What’s on the rest of your list?”
“There’s no way I’m telling you now.”
“Is handcuffs on there?”
I gasped. This time, I gave him a real punch, on the shoulder. Hard.
He rubbed the sore spot with a grimace. “Okay, handcuffs are not on there. Forget I mentioned it.”
“I’m not telling you anymore.”
He clasped his hands together and made a pouting face. “Please?”
I pressed my lips together. “Nope.”
“Not even if I beg?”
“Not even if you offer to help me cross off an item on the list,” I said.
Yeah, right.
If he offered, we would be back in his bed before he finished his sentence.
He grinned. “What if I offered to cross off two?”
My heart skipped a beat. I pressed my lips together. “What are you suggesting?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Have I mentioned that I own a boat?”