10

tabby

 

“You’re seeing Sebastian again after school,” I told Greyson, as I stuffed another sorry-looking peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a paper bag.

“Why?” He dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and poked at the corn muffin I’d given him.

“Why not?” I countered with a dash of impatience.

“You don’t like him,” Greyson snickered, glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s not true.” It was very true.

“Yeah, okay.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice as he turned back to the muffin.

Hurrying to the mirror beside the front door, I swiped on a coat of lipstick and blotted my lips together as I begrudgingly allowed my thoughts to drift to Sebastian.

I wasn’t proud to admit that he had lingered in my mind long after I’d fallen asleep the night before, bringing on dreams I would rather keep to myself. My body reacted to him in ways that I found eerily familiar. While we think we leave the past behind, the past never truly leaves us. Types don’t change as much as we think they do, and Sebastian was my type through and through. He reminded me of my youth, before work and age and tragedy. He reminded me of guys I used to date, while also reminding me of why I no longer allowed myself to fall victim to those lustful feelings.

Men like him are trouble. They don’t want serious. They don’t want forever.

Still, Sebastian had surprised me. For someone with the maturity level of a child, he had handled himself well with Greyson, albeit somewhat abrasively. I’d have to talk to him about his choice of language. Greyson might’ve picked up on some choice words from his mother, who’s idea of discipline was having cake for dessert instead of ice cream, but that didn’t mean it was appropriate for Sebastian to speak so frankly.

Capping my lipstick, I turned back to Greyson as he basically pecked at the muffin. One crumb at a time.

“Hey, come on,” I urged him, hurrying toward my briefcase on the counter. “We need to get going.”

“Fine,” he huffed, cramming half of the muffin into his mouth as he stood up and threw the other half away.

I felt the creases between my brows forming as my lips curved into a frown. He stood there, staring at me. Challenging. Daring me to scold him for wasting food, for acting out. But, I remembered our therapist and what she had said about allowing him to bully me, or to egg me on, and I squared my shoulders and let it run over me.

Pick your battles.

“Let’s go.” I pulled my briefcase from the counter and led the way to the front door.

 

***

 

“Alex, we’re putting the Worthington house online,” I announced, as I walked through the door of the agency.

“Oh, finally,” he groaned, rolling his eyes dramatically. “What’d you have to do to convince her?”

“I lit some candles at Church and promised to never say the Lord’s name in vain again,” I muttered, my words dripping with sarcasm as I hurried into my office.

“You know, I was just thinking to myself about how hilariously unwitty you are,” Alex quipped, his tone dry and flat. “I’m genuinely curious here. That old lady looks at the computer like it’s the damn devil.”

“I know,” I emphasized, dropping into my chair and unclipping my briefcase to pull out my laptop. “But I told her how this area just isn’t pulling the number of potential buyers as we’d hoped for from local paper listings alone.”

“And that did it?” He tipped his chin, eyeing me with doubt.

“Okay, and I promised to run out and grab Sandy a new cage today before stopping by the house,” I relented with a roll of my eyes. Alex cackled. “Hey, it was worth it. We’ll definitely find a buyer now. I do need for you to run the listing on the usual sites, though. Can you manage it?”

“Honey, just give me the pics and info. Anything to help lighten your load. You’re doing enough as it is,” he replied softly.

I smiled gratefully. “Thank you.” Reaching into my briefcase, I pulled out the sheet of paper with the information he’d need. “And I’ll forward the pictures to your email.”

“Perfect. I’ll get those up today.” Alex gave me an affirmative nod, hugging the paper to his chest. “Now, before I run along and do that, why don’t you tell me about your dinner with the baby daddy?”

The mention of the words baby daddy sent Jess running into my office with enough gusto to help her win a marathon.

“Yes, yes, yes! How is Thor?” she asked, her voice thick with enthusiasm and desire.

“Can you stop calling him that?” I grumbled, shaking my head as I powered on the laptop.

“Ooh, she’s already getting defensive. I love it.” Alex exchanged a knowing look with Jess and I resisted the urge to throw my stapler at him.

“Dinner was fine,” I divulged vaguely, looking from Alex to Jess. “You do realize that I am only the middle man here, right? I’m acting as the mediator for him and Greyson, to help them develop a relationship. That’s all.”

Alex tipped his mouth to Jess’s ear. “So she says,” he grumbled in a volume I could hear loud and clear, and Jess giggled airily.

“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that.” I narrowed my glare at them before loosening my brow and picking up my phone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a chinchilla cage in the area.”

 

***

 

Heading out toward my car, I spotted a flash of golden hair from the corner of my eye and turned, assuming immediately that Greyson had skipped school. I wouldn’t put it past him, and as I opened my mouth to begin the lecture of the century, I promptly closed it.

“Well, if it isn’t Tabby Clarke,” Sebastian crooned, holding a to-go cup from the coffee shop in his hand. “Where are you off to in the middle of the workday?”

“Off to see a client,” I replied without any intention to keep the conversation moving as I hurried toward my car.

I was horrified to find Sebastian following me, taking long, easy strides to keep up with my power walk. “The one with the chinchilla?”

Faltering in my steps, I turned to him with an accusatory and suspicious glare. “How did you know she has a chinchilla?”

“You were on the phone last night,” he explained easily with a shrug.

“Oh. Right.” I pulled in a deep breath and continued on my way to the car.

Sebastian kept up.

“So, can I come?”

His questions were forward and disconcerting. He didn’t know me from a hole in the wall and I don’t care how popular he was in the world of music—I didn’t know all that much about him either. It rattled me, that he would rather jump straight into forwardness than work his way up to a place of comfort.

“Um, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I stammered, pulling my keys from a pocket as I approached my car.

“God, you don’t think anything’s appropriate,” he laughed. “But, in this case, you’re probably right. I mean, obviously, you’re working,” he offered with a shake of his head. At himself or at me, I couldn’t be sure. “But … I’ve never pet a chinchilla before and I hear they’re really fucking soft.”

He was unrelenting and infuriating. I turned to insist that he stand down and find something else to keep him occupied until Greyson was out of school, but instead, I made the mistake of taking him in. The breadth of his shoulders, the leather jacket concealing them from my curious gaze. His t-shirt, stretched over the hard-cut muscles of his chest and smoothed over his flat stomach. He had kept his hair down today, instead of that stupid knot, and the gentle late-spring breeze lifted the golden strands from off of his neck. The tattoos imprinted to his skin there winked at me with every gust of wind, and it was a test of my willpower not to launch myself at him.

“The fact that you’ve never pet a chinchilla doesn’t make the situation any more appropriate,” I pressed, standing my ground.

His lips twitched to unveil a playful grin as he said, “You must’ve driven your sister insane.”

“Excuse me?” I spat, crossing my arms, my keys dangling from my fingers. “I thought you didn’t remember my sister,” I accused with a narrowed, stony glare.

“Honestly, no. I don’t. When you’ve slept with as many women as I have, you stop remembering.”

“Oh, well, that’s lovely,” I grumbled under my breath, shaking my head. “What a great influence you are.”

“Never said I was,” he replied pointedly, waggling his brows and smirking smugly. “As I was saying, I don’t need to remember your sister to know what type of girl she was. She was bold enough to approach a bunch of guys in a band and agree to a one-night stand. That takes balls, and the fact that you won’t allow me to accompany you because it’s inappropriate, tells me you have none. So, like I said, you probably drove your sister absolutely insane.”

Scouring rage and disgust engulfed my veins in fire. My cheeks burnt with the evidence of my anger and I clenched my fists against my sides. Taking one step forward, my toes nearly touched his as I tipped my head back to glare confidently into his eyes.

“You know absolutely nothing about me,” I growled, my words pouring like lava from my mouth.

Dipping his head to stab my gaze with his, his features contorted with smug victory. “And yet, I seem to know exactly how to get underneath your skin,” he boasted before standing again to his full height.

Sucking in breaths to calm myself back down to a reasonable temperament, I dropped my eyes to the pavement beneath my feet.

That’s when I noticed our shoes.

It was silly, noticing something as mundane and everyday as shoes, especially ones so common. But, both pairs of identical Converse pointed toward each other—black canvas, scuffed and dirty white capped toes—and it irritated me to think it might mean something. That perhaps it had been fate pushing me to uncharacteristically change my shoes in the middle of the workday and switch from my usual heels to something more preferred.

“If you want my honest opinion—”

“I don’t,” I interjected, still staring at those sneakers.

“Okay. That’s fine. But I’m giving it to you anyway.”

I pulled my eyes from the ground to look up at him, staring expectantly and hoping he’d get it over with fast. I was already late, no thanks to this nonsense.

At the lift of my chin, he smiled, deepening the lines creasing the corners of his eyes and the sides of his mouth. He smiled a lot. It was apparent in how natural he wore the grin. I didn’t know what that was like anymore.

“I think you had to grow up really fast. Probably before you were ready,” he assessed with a critical eye, although the grin never wavered. “I think, at one point, you were maybe a lot more like your sister than you let on.”

The statement, though true, left me jarred and wondering just how wide those holes in my heart really were. How was it so easy for him to peer inside like that and know something I’d tried so hard to leave behind?

“How do you know that?” The question floated along a whisper, unable to raise my voice. I was too startled. Too shaken.

Pulling a hand from his pocket, he didn’t falter in lifting his fingers to tuck some hair behind my ear. His fingertips were rough and callused against my skin, but his touch was expertly gentle, as he slowly traced the curve of that ear. His gaze held mine tightly and my pulse quickened, throbbing at the base of my throat with every beat of my panicked heart. The collection of hoops clicked together with the movement, until he reached my lobe, where he lingered. Gently pinching the skin between his fingers and moving in closely to inspect.

“These are gauged,” he determined with a nod, his smirk unrelenting.

I jerked my head back, pulling away from his touch. Unnerved by my sudden movement, he slipped his hand back into his pocket.

“I think somewhere in there, Tabby, there’s a badass just dying to come out.”

“I’m a badass just the way I am,” I countered with my own smirk, untucking the hair from behind my ear.

“Yeah, I’d agree with that,” he nodded, sincerity in his eyes, “but I don’t think this stuck-up attitude comes as naturally as you’d like to think it does.”

I can’t keep doing this. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and checked the time. I was going to be late to meet with Mrs. Worthington, and realizing I wasn’t going to shake this overanalyzing bastard, I turned to unlock my car and get in.

“Are you coming?” I snapped at him.

With an obnoxious bout of forced enthusiasm, he clapped his hands together, jumping on his toes. “Do you really mean it?” His voice oozed obnoxiously with sarcasm and something almost endearing.

“Oh my God, just get in the car,” I responded with a dramatic roll of my eyes.

Sebastian rounded the car to get into the passenger side, and as soon as he was seated, his knees hit the dashboard. “What the hell kind of car is this?”

“You can move the seat back,” I needlessly instructed.

Reaching to the floor between his legs, he found the lever and pulled, sending the seat back as far as it’d go. And his legs still looked uncomfortably bent.

“Looks bigger on the outside,” he muttered, opening the door. “Yeah, this isn’t gonna work. Come on, Thumbelina.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Thumbelina. You know? Tiny fairy?” He got out of the car.

“Uh, where are you going?” I called after him before he could shut the door behind him.

“We’re taking my car,” he informed me, as he headed in the direction of a silver Range Rover, before repeating, “Come on.”

Something told me I was going to regret this.