CHAPTER NINE
I pulled into the trailer park at exactly 4:55 p.m., waving at Miss Gerry, Carmen’s mom, as she swept the steps of the office trailer. She owned the place now. That was wild. Miss Gerry had gone from selling handmade hemp necklaces out of their trailer when we were little, to working at the Feed Store, the drugstore, the Walmart in Denning, a paper route for a time, and I think she’d done a stint bartending at Rojo’s. Throughout all that was various other private little industries I’d hear about her trying out, mostly through my father, who thought her to be a supreme flake and yet he bought every single thing she ever tried to sell him.
I didn’t know what to think when I heard that good old Larry was selling her the park after the land sold to Sully. I was a little worried that I’d have to move my father out of there, that she’d forget to pay the note or the maintenance on the rentals, and something would shut down or blow up while she was making candles out of pine cones.
I’d been pleasantly surprised. Miss Gerry had stepped up and formed a clean-up committee, had landscaping done with some pretty trees to fancy up what was just a bunch of trailers on concrete, had new lamppost lighting put in, upgraded the playground, and started a monthly potluck picnic by that playground for those who wanted to participate. It was pretty cool. People who barely talked to each other were now hanging out and eating good food, watching their kids play. And she was there for everything. It was like she’d wandered for decades just to find what she was supposed to do, and it was right there all along, right where she lived.
I was happy for her. I wish my dad had had that much luck. I wish I did.
Pulling up to his trailer at a couple minutes till five, I turned off the ignition and absorbed the quiet. I had to wait till exactly the top of the hour, or he’d get all bent up in a tizzy over the change, but that was fine. I happily took the three remaining minutes to breathe and calm my nerves.
Sell Lange my portion of the diner? My diner? I couldn’t believe the audacity. Or I could, but it was almost too over the top to be imagined.
And then there was Bash coming over tonight. Then Mr. Mercer from the drugstore came up to the counter to say he needed to talk to me privately about something. Whatever the hell that meant. On top of that, I knew I couldn’t put off coming to see Dad any longer. I had to face him, without being able to say a word about what he did.
My phone dinged with a text from a number I didn’t recognize, telling me whoever it was, was about to call me.
“Okay,” I said, glancing at the clock. Four-fifty-nine. “Get on with it.”
The same number filled my screen seconds later and I answered with all the intention of saying I needed to go. I opened my door and turned to sit sideways.
“Hey Allie,” said an older man’s voice. Mr. Mercer. Who evidently got my number off an old prescription order. Wasn’t that crafty of him.
“Hi, Mr. Mercer,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Well, like I said, I need to talk to you about something,” he said. “It might be nothing, but it might not be nothing.”
I sighed and checked the clock. Five o’clock straight up. “Um, I hear you, but can it wait? I’m about to go visit my dad, and—”
“Sure, but it’s about Angel,” he said.
The words already on my tongue dissolved. “Angel,” I echoed. “Is she—” A million scenarios played through my head, and none of them resembling I just wanted to track you down twice today to tell you that your daughter is the best thing since sliced bread. “Did she do something wrong? Oh my God, she didn’t steal from you, did she?”
I wanted to throw up. She’d never done anything like that, but every day was a new day and a new age, and a new opportunity to give me gray hairs.
“No, no,” Mr. Mercer said. “Nothing like that.”
I let go of a breath. “Oh, good,” I said, chuckling nervously. The clock read two minutes after five. Crap, I was going to have to field drama for that. “So then, what’s the issue?”
“Well, I hesitate to put my toe in other people’s business,” he said. “You know, people’s private lives are their own.”
Yeah, and a few months back, you announced to a field full of people that your cousin was a transvestite, so your sense of private is a little skewed.
“I understand, Mr. Mercer,” I said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re getting at unless you tell me.”
“Well, Allie,” he began. “Angel was in the store yesterday afternoon with a young man.”
“A young man,” I echoed. “Let me guess, blond hair?”
“Yes, so you know him then?” he asked.
I shook my head, not that he could see it. “No, but I’ve heard about him.”
“And—you know he may be a little older than our Angel?” he asked.
She was our Angel now. Okay. As in this boy is an outsider, and something really bad was about to be revealed. My stomach found everything I’d put in it today and went on standby.
“I might have heard that, too,” I said.
There was a pause, and I swear if I could have reached through that phone, I would have yanked him through it.
“They bought condoms, Allie.”
For the oddest, longest moment I had an entire conversation with him in my head that included a good laugh when he realized it wasn’t Angel and this boy, but some other random kids…or that it wasn’t really condoms they bought, but a package of sour gummy worms. They were innocent.
My baby was still innocent. My diner was still mine. My best friend was—
“They—” I attempted. “She—that can’t be right. You had to be mistaken.”
“I talked to her,” he said.
My belly contracted. “You talked to her? She—she didn’t even try to hide it?”
“Oh no, she acted like she was alone, but I saw them come in together,” he said. “And they met back up outside the door.”
I was sweating and in need of more air. Maybe I was having a heart attack. I looked around for something to fan myself with, but there was nothing. If I started my car back up for AC, my dad would hear and know something was up. If I got out and stood outside talking on the phone in the brisk air, he would know that, too, and come outside in his underwear and ask me just what the hell I was doing on his little patch of grass. Because there were days he didn’t know me.
But right now that didn’t matter. Because his stupid, idiotic, moron of a granddaughter was probably banging another moron.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Mr. Mercer said. “But I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes—absolutely,” I said absently. “Thanks for calling.”
Thanks for putting the rotten cherry on a really shit-filled day.
I hung up and sat there, listening to my breathing. She’d already done this. Last night, when we had our fun little meeting of the minds—they’d already bought the condoms. Had they already done the deed? We’re just talking and stuff.
I wanted to throw up. I also wanted to nail Aaron’s dick to a tree. And pull Angel’s hair out one hair at a time.
And more than anything, I wanted to talk to her dad.
That thought kicked me in the gut more than anything in a very long time, and knocked the wind right out of me. I sucked in a breath and clamped a hand over my mouth. Because it wasn’t her actual dad I wanted to talk to, but the pretend one I used to wish for. The perfect one that would hold me right now and say all the right things and help me figure out the way to deal with our kid. And then head off to break the boy’s fingers.
In other words, Bash. I wanted to talk to Bash. But I couldn’t do that, because we were weird right now, and because he really would go break fingers. It pissed me off through and through. I missed my friend. I needed him.
I needed him for her, for the crap with the diner, for what was about to be crap with my dad. For this freaky-ass thing going on with a guy lately that I couldn’t tell him about, even as a joke, because he was the freaky-ass.
I put the phone away. It was Sunday. Angel would theoretically be home when I got there, getting ready to go drive with Bash unless she was off doing homework again—and fuck-a-duck.
If homework was a cute little code word for sex, I was going to mess up that girl’s world.
I swiped under my eyes and pushed open the door, pulling my hair down from the messy bun and fluffing it out. I felt so hot, it almost made me more nauseous, but Dad tended to place me better like that, so...
“Okay,” I whispered, breathing slowly and shaking out my hands. Time to shelve the diner and the Angel issues for the moment and go face this one.
He opened the door before I even knocked, which told me he’d been watching out the window, and the set of his mouth told me I was eleven minutes late getting there.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, hugging his neck.
He smelled of Ivory soap and cigarettes, the latter I’m sure he thought he was hiding successfully from me and from his home health nurse. He tended to forget we had noses. He hugged me back, so at least he didn’t forget I was me. Not today.
“What were you doing out there?” he said, his tone irritable as he paced in front of the door.
“I was on the phone,” I said.
He turned and fixed a look on me. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass,” he said. “Since when are there phones in cars?”
Ah. That’s where we were.
“So what are you eating tonight?” I asked. “Has Bev been here yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “She’s supposed to bring me extra puddings tonight.
“Awesome,” I said.
“You were late,” he said.
“I know, Dad, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll do better next time.
He grunted and walked back to his recliner, next to which was a rickety old metal TV tray with a lidded cup, the remote, and a book. Add some Cheetos to that mix, I thought, and he’d never have to leave his chair.
The room was bright, every light on. He liked it that way, claimed it helped keep him from nodding off. Sleep wasn’t usually his friend. The dreams he’d always been plagued with made slumber a miserable place for my dad. He could take medicine to knock him into the next planet, past dream level, but he hated how that made him feel. So the lights stayed on, the television stayed on, the AC stayed on—basically if it kept him cold and kept his eyes open, it was on.
A war movie was playing on the TV, which usually spurred him into a bad mood and quick tempers, but today I didn’t care. I was kind of in a mood, myself.
I settled on the couch and pulled a worn throw pillow into my lap. “Whatcha watching?”
“Does it matter?” he asked. “War is life. It all has the same message. Get your shit together.”
“Okay,” I said softly. “Words to live by.” I ran my fingers along a stray thread on the pillow. “Dad, do you remember how you and Mom named the diner?”
“Of course,” he said. “And so do you. I’ve told you a million times.”
“So go for a million and one,” I said. I needed the nostalgia. I needed him to hear it, too.
There was a long pause.
“When I asked your mother to marry me,” he said. “We weren’t even dating. I just knew. She didn’t, but I did. She laughed and said Sure thing, Greene. When bananas turn blue.”
His face softened with introspection. “So, I bought a banana, painted it blue and brought it to her.” A smile pulled at his lips. “She said, ‘Well, a deal’s a deal. But how about a date first?’” Dad stopped and rubbed at his jaw. “We were never apart again. We’d joke that that blue banana was our good-luck charm. So when we bought the building for the diner, she painted one and put it in the window. I couldn’t imagine a better name after that.”
My eyes burned with tears. Not just at the story—he was right, I’d heard it a million times in my lifetime—but it was the longest dialogue he’d had in almost a year. There for about thirty seconds, it was like having my dad back, talking to me. Really talking to me, not just grunting at me in short little fragments.
“I can’t imagine a better one, either,” I said, shutting my eyes. I would rather run through town naked and on fire than have this conversation. “I’m fighting to keep it, but I don’t know if I can.”
He frowned at the TV, and I knew he’d gotten lost again.
“So, Dad, do you remember a guy named Landon Lange? Tall. Useless look about him.”
“Carries a purse like a woman,” he added.
I laughed. “Yes!”
He shifted in his chair and reached for his cup, and I took it that the subject was finished. Except that it couldn’t be. Why the hell couldn’t it be? I gritted my teeth together and willed my brain to let it go. I’d already determined that it would only rile him up, or he wouldn’t remember it at all, that it served no purpose.
But there was an angry seven-year-old girl inside me, losing her purple-flowered room all over again and wanting retribution.
And the Blue Banana Grille was about to become The Honey Pot.
“He came to see me the other day,” I said.
Dad grunted.
“Seems that you and he had a—transaction last year,” I said, forcing the word over my tongue. “Do you remember that?”
Another grunt. “Bottom drawer.” He twisted in his chair to look behind him.
“What do you need, Dad?” I asked, pushing back at the impatience shoving its way up my throat. “Bottom drawer of what?”
“I want some peanut butter crackers,” he said.
“Bev’ll be bringing supper soon,” I said. “You don’t want to spoil your appetite.”
“I’m a grown-ass man,” he said, twisting back to growl at me. “I can have crackers before dinner if I want to.”
I held up my hands. Every day was different, and so were the boundaries. I knew that from before I hired Bev to bring him his meals and make sure he took his meds correctly. Soon, I’d have to concede to full time care or move him, and that was a battle I wasn’t looking forward to.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get you the crackers.”
I got up and went to what was always the snack cabinet below the counter, but it was empty. Bev must have moved some things around for easier access. I opened the pantry cabinet, which was at eye level, and there were what looked like fifty boxes of whole grain peanut butter crackers. I pulled a package out and brought it to him.
He took it and tore it open, giving me a double take as if questioning why I still stood there.
“Bottom drawer,” he said again around a mouthful of peanut butter.
“What bottom drawer,” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My bedroom.”
I shook my head and grabbed a nearby blanket to throw over his legs, and then wandered into his bedroom.
“What, is there food in here, too?” I said, cringing as I entered. The bed was unmade and the sheets looked like they hadn’t been washed since I washed them. Two months ago. Two unfinished glasses of something kind of brownish sat on his nightstand with cracker wrappers scattered around them. Dirty clothes were wadded up in a pile on the floor, and there was a definite stench going on.
“Has Bev been cleaning in here?” I called out, wrinkling my nose.
“No,” he replied.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “She’s paid to handle light cleaning and laundry and it stinks in here.”
“I don’t let her in there,” he said.
“What?” I said with a sigh as I opened his top drawer. “Dad, you have to let her do her thing.” Top drawer was a mash-up of everything from questionable socks to fingernail clippers. I closed it. “Or hey, maybe wash a load of clothes,” I said under my breath.
Next two drawers were T-shirts and shorts and jeans. Bottom drawer was—
“Holy fuck.”
“Watch your language,” he said casually from the other room.
I backed up to the bed and sank onto it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whispered.
All I could do was breathe. And stare. And listen to my heart shoving blood through my head at warp speed. A million questions asked and answered themselves in my head as I sat there in shock. I got back up and walked slowly into the living room, stopping to stand between him and the TV.
“Can you move?” he said, not looking up.
“Can you tell me why there’s—” I took a slow breath and let it out. “Dad, how much money is in that drawer?”
He looked up like I’d asked him about the weather.
“A hundred thousand dollars.”
* * *
I had to walk away. Well, as far as the kitchen, anyway. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stood in there eating it at the counter in shock.
What did he do? Why did he have that kind of money, did he win it? Would he even remember the answer to that? And why was it in a grocery bag in a dresser drawer in his bedroom instead of at a bank?
Why didn’t he just pay Lange before the Blue Banana entered the equation?
He was asleep when I finally pulled myself together enough to go back, so I sat down and flipped through channels unseeing.
“Your granddaughter bought condoms with her boyfriend yesterday,” I said softly. He snored louder. “Yeah. My thoughts exactly.”
A few minutes later, he woke with a start, gripping the arms of the chair like he was on a carnival ride.
“Dad?”
He jerked to the right, staring at me with wild eyes. “When did you get here?”
“I’ve been here for a little bit,” I said. “You fell asleep, so I thought I’d watch some—”
“Did you take the money?” he asked.
My mouth was still open, but words failed me. I couldn’t tell if he was angry, paranoid, still in a dream state, or honestly asking me a question. It crossed my mind that he might not remember telling me, and I could pretend not to know, but that hurt my brain just to conjure that up. I was juggling too much already.
“No,” I said. “It’s still there.”
“Well it’s yours,” he said. “You need to take it. I don’t want it here.”
I blinked. “Mi—Mine? What are you—”
The knock on the door made me jump. “Good God.”
“That’s Bev,” he said.
“I know,” I said, both palms against my temples. I felt like if I let go, everything might fall out. But he was halfway lucid, and I had to grab the moment. “Dad, where did that money come from?”
“From the trees,” he said.
Well, so much for lucid. I sighed.
“Trees.”
“Bailey’s trees,” he said irritably, like when I was little and bothering him.
“Bailey,” I said, shaking my head as I walked toward the door. Mr. Bailey was an eccentric older man that basically owned most of Charmed and lived like a recluse in a house tucked away in the woods across the pond. My dad and Lanie’s aunt had grown up with him or something, and they’d kept some semblance of a friendship as adults. I think. My dad only still spoke of him in dreams. “Of course. Big house Bailey?”
“Don’t let her in yet!” he hissed, and I stopped cold. “Get some plastic grocery bags to double it up—triple it up—so it doesn’t show. I’ll stall her.”
I gaped at him. “Dad—”
“Do it!” he demanded. “Put it in your car.”
“My—” I had to laugh. This was insane, like we were pulling off some kind of heist. Except that the money was mine and it came from trees and landed in his dresser drawer. “I’m not putting it in my car.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Allie,” he said. “Get it out of here, away from me. Now.”
In that one split second of looking up into his eyes, my dad was in there. Goose bumps covered my body.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Another knock at the door made us both jump, and I sucked in a breath as I went to the kitchen and pulled four plastic grocery bags from the drawer I knew he stockpiled them. On a whim, I tore a large black garbage bag off the roll under the sink.
“Mr. Greene?” Bev’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Are you okay? It’s Bev, can I come in?”
“Just a second,” he called back, shooing me into the bedroom and shutting the door behind me.
“Jesus,” I muttered, the insanity of the situation mixed with the rank odor of dirty clothes and sweat and funk overwhelming my senses.
I dropped to my knees and opened the drawer again, half expecting it to be gone like something I made up in my head. Nope. Still there. I reached out and picked up a bundle of hundreds wrapped in rubber bands. Some were like that. Some were twenties tied together with twine. Whatever the version, it was more cash than I’d ever seen in my lifetime and was likely to see again.
Take it away from me. Now.
My eyes filled with tears. Something buried deep under the dementia, something him, was still in there. And just tried to do the right thing. I think.
“What the hell am I doing?” I said under my breath as I heard Bev talking in the next room. I stuffed the tattered plastic bag into another, and then that into another, tying it all off at the top and setting it on the bed.
“Does it look like a bag of money?” I muttered.
Glancing around, I grabbed the garbage bag and fluffed it open, threw all his dirty clothes in it, and topped it with the bag of money. Tied that off. That worked. I opened the door and smiled at Bev as my dad turned around in surprise.
“What were you doing in there?” he asked.
I sighed.
“Cleaning up your mess,” I said. I held up the bag. “I’m bringing his clothes home to wash. It’s disgusting in there.”
“I’d be happy to wash them,” Bev said, reaching for the bag and retracting her hand when I yanked the bag behind me. “He—didn’t want me to go in there.”
“I know, he told me,” I said, trying harder not to look like I was committing a crime. “But I’m overruling him.” I chuckled. “I’m going to put this in my Jeep, and then I’ll come strip the bed. If you’ll take care of that from there, I call it good.”
“Will do.”
Fifteen minutes and half a melt-down later, the bag sitting like a slumped passenger on my right, I pulled into my driveway. Next to Bash’s truck.
“Fuck,” I sniffed. He was early, and sitting in the porch swing by the front door. Clearly the day wasn’t done with me yet. “Shit, damn, hell, and every other word.” I swiped under my eyes and took a deep breath. It was getting dusky dark. He wouldn’t notice.
I grabbed my loot. God help me. And then—God help me.
Damn if he didn’t look sexy sitting on that swing, one leg cocked lazily over the other at the ankles and his left arm riding over the top of the swing. Like he was waiting for me and had all the time in the world. Except that he wasn’t waiting for me. He was there for Angel.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“How long have you been here?”
He stood up slowly and I quietly mourned the loss of that visual.
“Not long,” he said. “Maybe fifteen.”
“Sorry, I got held up at my dad’s,” I said. I could feel the money like heat burning up through the top of the bags. I had to find a place for it. Where did one hide a hundred grand?
Bash gestured toward the bag. “Looks like you have his body in there.”
“Almost,” I joked, feeling the sweat break out along my spine. “All his dirty clothes he’s been hoarding.”
I wasn’t good at this. I never had to be. Anything juicy going on in my life, I told Bash. Not telling him was like going against nature, but telling him about this money meant telling him about Lange. And Lange was now his partner of a sort. A partner he needed.
“Need help?” Bash asked.
“Nah, I got it,” I said, walking past him to unlock my door.
Was it my imagination that I could feel him behind me?
“Angel didn’t say anything about being late,” I said, that subject now joining the party in my head and making my blood go a little warmer. If she was with that boy… I clenched my teeth together. “Did she text you?”
“No,” Bash said, following me in. “Maybe she’s at a friend’s house or something.”
“Or something,” I said under my breath. “Let me go put this in the laundry room, I’ll be right back.”
I was shaking by the time I got the bag open. I didn’t know from what. Anger, anxiety, nervousness over Bash—all of the above. My life felt like a giant melting pot of really pissed-off worms, all going in different directions. I pulled out the grocery bag of money and stood there holding it.
Take it away from me.
Okay. Done. Now what the fuck was I supposed to do with it? I yanked my phone from my pocket and typed out a text to Angel.
Bash is here. Why aren’t you? Get home.
“Hey Allie?”
Bash’s voice was coming down the hall, and the panic hit me like a freight train.
“Shit,” I muttered, hitting send. Probably the same kind of panic criminals felt when they robbed banks or held up stagecoaches or broke into jewelry stores and museums. Because yeah—I was on that same level, holding a grocery bag of rubber-banded cash that my father may or may not have stolen.
Nevertheless, I did what any like-minded criminal’s helper would do. I tossed the bag in the dryer with the towels I’d already fluffed twice and shut the dryer door.
“Yes?” I said, bursting through the door and nearly slamming into him. Finding my face just under his. “Sorry,” I breathed, backing up.
His step forward seemed unintentional, like his body just reacting to mine. In a dimly lit hallway with nothing behind me but wall. His expression mirrored that, like he was fighting himself.
“I—was going to ask you if you wanted to just start working on the essay,” Bash said. Too close. His gaze falling to my mouth.
All the magnets in the universe traveled through space in that four-second span, to land in the inches between us and pull me toward him.
“Um—essay,” I managed. I could feel the warmth from his body radiating off him, and everything in me itched to feel more. To slide my hands under his shirt and feel just how hot his skin really was.
“Want to?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
I wasn’t talking about any essay anymore, and I didn’t know if he was, but the moment I caved to the pull he backed off, leaving a cold vacuum where his body had been.
My head spun like I had a hangover, and as I watched him stroll back up the hallway with both hands raking his hair back, I suspected he’d gotten just as drunk.
Shit.
Weren’t we a pair.
I, at least, had nightly dreams churning me up as an excuse. What was his?
“Okay,” I said, grabbing a spiral notebook from the kitchen counter and fanning myself with it before turning my grocery list over to a new page. I glanced at him for a reaction check, and he was studying that spiral as if it was the most fascinating thing ever. “So. What are we doing?” His eyes flew up to mine. “The essay,” I clarified super quickly. “What are we supposed to write about?”
He pulled out a chair at my table for me and I sat down while he went around to the opposite side. Good plan. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and then sat down with trouble in his eyes.
“I think we’re supposed to talk about what we’d do for Charmed,” he said. “How we’d join together to do great things.”
My mouth went dry at the thought of joining together to do great things. They would indeed be great things, if my dreams were any indication, but we couldn’t write about that. We couldn’t even look at each other about that. The memory of his eyes going so dark as he looked at me in that dress shot my heart rate sky-high.
Essay.
“Hang on,” I said, my voice going gravelly. I cleared my throat as I pushed my chair back. “I need to text Carmen. Want some water or something?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Look, if you’re too busy to do this, I don’t need to just sit here.”
He got up, and I turned to fix him with a look.
“What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” he said, pulling his keys from his pocket. “Tell Angel we can do this another night, when she can see fit to be here and not waste my time.”
“Hey!”
“What?”
His jaw muscles were working furiously, and it was clear he wanted to be anywhere but there. What happened to the previous ten seconds?
“Why are you being a dick?” I asked.
He laughed. It was an angry laugh, but at least his eyes lit up a little. I missed that spunky side.
“I’m being a dick?” he asked. “What about you?”
“Me?”
He held his arms out and tossed his keys on the table as if to say finally!
“Yes, you,” he said. “Where the hell are you?”
“Where—what?” I asked shaking my head in confusion. “I’m right here.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Where’s my best friend? Where’s the woman I can talk to about anything? That I never have to be someone else around or watch what I say? What the hell is going on lately?”
My eyes went hot with embarrassed tears. Was I wrong? Had I misinterpreted that he’d been fighting the same attraction? I held up my chin in defiance, unwilling to be weepy.
“You know what? I could ask you the same questions,” I said. “You’ve been like Jekyll and Hyde, hot and cold, laughing with me and then the silent treatment.” I took a breath and gripped the back of the chair in front of me for grounding. “I have so much shit going on right now, and I can’t talk to you—”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because it’s different now,” I blurted.
His eyes narrowed. “What’s different now?”
“Everything, apparently,” I said, flailing my hands. Don’t lose your shit. Keep this on the rails. “Ever since—that.”
“Since what?” he asked, but the look that passed over his face told me he knew exactly what “that” was.
I shook my head. “Don’t be a girl. You know damn good and well what I’m talking about.”
He put a don’t be ridiculous expression on. “Because you kissed me? Come on. That was nothing.”
I blinked through the smile I felt was tacked on. Nothing. Nice. Okay. I turned and walked to the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a glass, needing something to do.
“Well that nothing has made you weird,” I said. “And probably made me weird, too, in response. Because we kissed each other, and maybe both of us know that’s—not—what we do.”
That made sense, right?
Turning around and finding him a foot from me made sense too, as my heart tried to slam its way out of my chest.
“You kissed me,” he said.
I tilted my head. “Yes,” I conceded. “But I wasn’t there by myself, mugging with a dishtowel. You kissed me back.”
Amusement danced with something else in his eyes. Something resistant. Something all too familiar lately that made his jaw twitch.
“If I kissed you, you’d know it.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered with an eye roll. “Save the macho for someone else.”
He blew out a breath in frustration as he turned to walk away and then just made a circle back to me. “I’m not being macho,” he said. “I haven’t kissed you. Not like—”
“Whatever,” I said, shaking my head and really just wanting him to leave. I didn’t want to hear any more about how it was all me. “You know what? Never mind. I should have never brought it up. This is why everything is so different now. If you can’t even own up to it—”
“Shut up.”
“What—”
Hands held my head, hips pinned me against the sink, and his mouth landed on mine.