CHAPTER ELEVEN
James’ house is a modern take on a traditional Texas farmhouse: a mix of dark woods, copper, glass, and cut limestone. Ahead of the entry gallery, a tall light shaft illuminates the space from above and gives it a museum aesthetic. Stone walls contrast with bright burnished plaster and concrete floors. I wouldn’t be surprised to find it’s been featured in Architectural Digest, or at least on a couple fancy home blogs.
“It must have taken you forever to build this,” I say as he leads me past the foyer and into the streamlined kitchen.
He glances back at me with a smooth smile. “I can’t take the credit. The previous owner was an architect.”
“Well they had great taste.”
He nods and tells me to make myself comfortable while he goes to change out of his golf clothes.
I take a seat on one of his kitchen barstools just long enough to hear him close a door somewhere in another part of the house. Then I hop up and snoop around as much as I can. I’m not stupid enough to wander far; the place is a maze and I didn’t bring any breadcrumbs to lead me back to the kitchen. I play it safe by peeking my head into nearby rooms. There’s a formal dining room, office, some sort of sitting area, and an expansive living room—at least, I think that’s what it is. It’s hard to tell any of the rooms apart because most of them are empty.
At first, I think it’s a fluke, or even some kind of minimalist design strategy I’m too uncultured to appreciate, but the more rooms I see, the more I realize that isn’t the case. One or two bare rooms can be written off, but they’re all bare. In one room, I stumble on a few pieces of mismatched furniture, but they aren’t arranged in any sort of thoughtful way. In fact, it looks like James just moved in and only brought a few items with him from his old place. Framed photos and paintings sit against the wall of a sitting room, waiting to be hung. A mismatched chair and end table sit in one corner underneath a floor lamp. An open paperback rests on the table, flipped on its face.
The vignette is so depressing that I turn on my heel and book it back to the kitchen before I see anything worse, like a room full of discarded frozen dinners for one. Unfortunately, James is back before I am, pouring a finger’s worth of amber-colored liquor into a glass tumbler.
I blush at having been caught nosing around his house and grapple for the first excuse that comes to mind. “Just looking for a bathroom.”
His brow arches, but he doesn’t look up. “Find one?”
“Mhmm.”
“Good,” he says, pushing the tumbler across the gleaming white kitchen island then pouring one for himself. “I hope you like Maker’s Mark. It’s all I have.”
I hate it, in fact, but I’m not going to admit that. I reach for the drink and down a long swallow, hissing as it burns my throat.
He laughs. “Yeah, sorry. It was a gift, and I don’t have anything better—I don’t really drink unless I’m at the club or a social event.”
“Or after a near-death experience,” I choke out, trying not to wheeze at the aftertaste.
I’m sure people who enjoy drinking alcohol straight are very cool and badass, but I like my alcohol diluted and masked to oblivion. In fact, just give me the soda.
“You okay? Do you want something else?”
“It’s fine. I just usually mix it with something,” I admit sheepishly.
He turns to his industrial refrigerator and pulls open the door to check inside. I, of course, pop up on my toes to peer over his shoulder. There are a few takeout cartons, a half-full bottle of white wine, and the requisite condiments like ketchup and mustard. The fare is as depressing as the art sitting on the floor in his sitting room, but at least there’s a glimmer of hope.
“I’ll take that wine,” I say, hopeful that I won’t have to finish my drink.
He chuckles. “Yeah, I wouldn’t drink that if I were you. I don’t even remember opening it. Looks like you’re stuck with the bourbon.”
Why hath God forsaken me?
He pulls the bottle out of the refrigerator and pours the contents down the sink—as sacrilegious a behavior as I’ve ever seen.
“Did you just move in?” I ask, returning my attention back to the liquor I plan on nursing.
“Maybe a year ago.”
“What?!”
My shock is out there, spilling across his kitchen along with the sip of bourbon I spit out. I wipe it away with the sleeve of my shirt before he turns back to me.
“I guess it’s been a year and a few months, actually.”
No. That doesn’t make sense.
I turn back to the empty rooms behind me. “But what about your stuff?”
“The furniture? Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get around to that.”
“And the artwork…”
“I haven’t decided where I should hang it.”
He says it like it all makes sense, and maybe it does. Maybe I’m the weird one.
I turn back to his kitchen and see the pieces of his life I missed before. On top of a thick slab of Carrera marble there are paper plates and solo cups. The glasses and china you might expect to find in a house like this are in the custom cabinets, but they’re still bubble wrapped.
“Honestly, it doesn’t even look like you live here.”
“I don’t really.” I turn in time to see him shrug. “I hardly spend any time here. I work long days, and when I’m not at the office, I’m at the club.”
I frown. “That’s so…”
“Depressing?” he fills in for me before he downs the rest of his drink and sets the tumbler down in the sink. “Yeah, well, I don’t bring many people here for a reason.”
He’s being defensive, and I don’t blame him. I feel bad for poking at his life. I could have easily gone home after the wreck—we were only a few minutes away from the co-op—but instead he brought me here. I don’t want him to regret that decision.
“Well, if it matters, I’d rather live in your empty house than my ridiculous co-op.”
He turns back and smiles. “I think you have more furniture crammed in that tiny room than I have in this whole house.”
That thought makes me laugh. “And most of it I found on the side of the street.”
That surprises him. “Really? That bookshelf?”
I beam. “Yup. I sanded it down and repainted it.”
He nods, impressed. “Maybe I’ll commission you to furnish this place.”
I snort. “Yeah right. This is the sort of house you fill with Eames armchairs and Rothko originals.”
“I’m more of a paint-by-numbers kind of guy.”
I laugh at the absurdity of that statement. “Yeah, right. I’ll make sure to bring you one the next time I see you.”
He smiles and crosses his arms, leaning back against the counter on the other side of the island. I take in the black lounge pants and Caltech t-shirt he changed into. The dark gray material looks like it’s been washed a million times, soft and worn. His feet are bare, which is adorable in its own right.
Then it hits me, like a stiff punch to the gut—I AM IN JAMES ASHWOOD’S HOUSE. I’m in his kitchen, hanging out, and he feels so comfortable he’s not even wearing socks!
Maybe he’s noticed that I’ve gone silent, but he doesn’t try to coax me out of it. It’s infuriating, how comfortable he is in his own skin. I’m squirming on his barstool with a bourbon-soaked sleeve, sifting through lame topics of conversation until I land on one that is probably inappropriate, but interesting nonetheless.
I decide to lead into it slowly, so I don’t spook him and his bare feet—and no, I don’t have a weird foot fetish. Except, maybe I do…he does have nice feet…
“What’s on your mind?” he asks.
Your stupid feet.
“Oh, um, I was actually wondering about your last girlfriend? Someone told me she had a drug problem or something?”
Well, so much for leading into it slowly.
He sighs, like the subject still weighs heavily on him. “I’m guessing you mean Rebecca?”
Shouldn’t he know who his last girlfriend was?
“Um, I guess so? Pretty blonde?”
“Yeah, that’s Rebecca. We weren’t anything serious.”
Silence follows, which means if I want answers, I’m going to have to ask the questions outright.
“And she was into drugs?”
He clears his throat and stalls, clearly irritated by the topic. “Among other things.” He’s focused on a point just over my shoulder, and maybe I should take his closed-off demeanor as a sign to change the subject, but I’m interested. I want to know if he’s truly single or if he has a druggie ex-girlfriend who keeps him up at night. “It was a hard time. Rebecca and I weren’t together long, but those few weeks happened to coincide with her downward spiral. When we first started dating, I didn’t even realize she was using.”
“Wow.”
“She’s doing well now. Last I heard, she was in California at a rehab facility.” He frowns and drags his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m coming off callous about the whole thing, but I hardly knew her. She was my date for a few public functions. I never even brought her here.”
My heart is a drum during a Dave Grohl solo—THUMP KICK POUND THUMP KICK POUND.
“So you only bring certain women here?” I ask, probing just a liiiiittttle further.
His eyes meet mine, and I’m surprised to find a hint of amusement there. “As you can see, it’s not some big prize. In fact, I think you might be the only woman I’ve ever brought here.”
SWOON.
“Because you’re embarrassed by your red plastic cups?” I quip, because I’m incapable of enduring an intimate moment without making a joke.
His focus shifts to his stack of disposable cups and then back to me. “Well, most of the time they invite me back to their place.”
REVERSE SWOON. Of course. I hadn’t even considered that.
“Oh. So none of the women you’ve been involved with have asked to come here?”
“In my line of work, you get pretty good at saying no. I’m not into the idea of someone moving in and spending a bunch of money decorating a place I hardly spend time in.”
I grin. “So you just leave it empty. You’re either a much simpler creature than I thought you were, or you’re deeply troubled.”
“Probably a little of both. What about you?”
I lean back on the barstool, as if I’m trying to put distance between myself and whatever question he’s about to ask.
“What about me?”
“You mentioned a boyfriend a few weeks ago. Are you still seeing him?”
“Seeing him? Yes. He lives at the co-op with me. Dating him? No.”
My focus is pinned on the countertop, so I can’t tell if he smiles when he says, “Thanks for the clarification.”
Then I remember something that will amuse him even more.
“You know, he was actually at the window the night you picked me up for that party.”
His brows rise in surprise. “So he saw you in that dress?”
My cheeks flush. “No. I had the coat on, remember?”
He nods, and I swear I see him replaying that night in his head. I wonder if he remembers the dress like I do. The feel of it against my skin is hard to forget, even when I want nothing more than to put that entire night behind me.
I shift on my barstool and wince when my tank top brushes across the seatbelt burn on my chest.
“Oh shit,” he says, pushing off the counter. “I can’t believe I just remembered. Do you want something for the pain?”
I glance down at my chest and am surprised at how angry and raw the scratches look around my tank top. Under my gaze, the skin seems to throb even more. “Yeah, I guess so. It wasn’t hurting too much until I looked down at it.”
He tells me to stay put, and I do. I learned my lesson last time, and I don’t think he’d buy it if I said I was searching for a bathroom a second time. He comes back quickly with a small, rattling bottle of Tylenol. I expect him to hand it over, but instead, he fills a small glass of water and doles out two pills into the palm of my hand. His hand grips mine to keep it steady so the pills don’t fall onto the ground. It’s something you’d do for a child, but I don’t mind him touching me, and I don’t mind how close he is now compared to earlier. He was standing half a kitchen away from me, but now we’d be toe to toe if I weren’t sitting on the stool.
When I’m finished taking the medicine, he takes the glass and sets it on the countertop. Even though he’s done playing nurse, he doesn’t move away. His attention is on my chest, and I will my breathing to slow down when he reaches out gently, brushing his fingertip across my skin, just barely touching the edge of the wound.
“How badly does it hurt?” he asks. “One to ten.”
My breath catches in my throat when his fingertips brush across my collarbone.
Does what hurt? Him touching me?
It burns.
I shake my head, aware that it doesn’t really answer his question, but it’s the best I can do right now. I don’t trust my voice with words.
His fingers brush higher, up near my shoulder, and they light a fire beneath them. My stomach squeezes tight, and my chest is rising and falling so fast it feels like I’m spiraling through the car accident all over again.
It would be different if his touch was hard and deep, but this thing he’s doing feels more like torture. The light drag of fingertips across my skin means I can’t control the goose bumps or the shiver that rolls down my spine.
Every nerve ending in my body is focused on his movements, on where they might go.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “It’ll leave a bruise, I’m sure.”
He seems pissed by the notion and drops his hand, turning away to drop my glass in the sink. In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere in his kitchen has shifted. There’s enough pressure brewing in the space to kick-start a hurricane. I can’t stand the awkwardness, and I consider trying to bring the conversation back to the pleasant topics from earlier, but it seems futile. Besides, who am I kidding? I am currently equal parts hot and bothered, all because James platonically stroked my clavicle. It’s embarrassing, and my opaque cloud of emotions suddenly crystallizes into an intense urge to flee. I’m afraid to find out just how much sway James has over my libido.
Best to not overstay my welcome, I think in a desperate attempt to rationalize my feelings. We all have that one friend who’s the last to leave the party, ignoring the fact that you’re cleaning up in your pajamas. It’s not like James invited me back to his place at the end of a sexy date. He is definitely not trying to seduce me. He probably just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to drop dead of a brain hemorrhage.
I slide off the stool and clear my throat, lest any residual hormones try to make me sound like a lust-filled schoolgirl.
“I should probably get going.”
He glances back at me, his eyes matching the stormy atmosphere. “What?”
“I don’t want to keep you.”
“Keep me?”
I nod. “Yeah, you know…” I glance around. “Like you said, if I stay too long, I might start decorating!”
That makes him smile again, and his smile is worse than the storm clouds.
“Let me take you home at least,” he says, moving around the island, presumably to get his shoes.
“It’s okay, I can just ride my—”
Shit.
I completely forgot about my bike. I didn’t remember to grab it from James’ car before the tow truck driver drove off, but it’s just as well. Last I saw, it looked like it’d been folded into an origami swan. The repair job would likely cost more than a new bike.
He frowns, presumably thinking the same thing I am.
“Did that bike have any sentimental value?”
Sentimental value? Well no, other than being my only means of transportation.
“No.” I shrug, trying to play it off. “Like most of the inanimate objects in my life, it was a fixer-upper I found on Craigslist. It probably would have crapped out in the next few months anyway.”
His handsome face is a mask of disapproval.
“Good thing there’s Uber, right?” I add with a weak smile.
He nods and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “That’s probably for the best.”
I want to know what he means, and usually I would bite my tongue, but he’s requested an Uber for me and I’m about to leave. No doubt another few weeks will go by before I get to see him again, so I bite the bullet.
“Why is it for the best?”
He looks up at me from beneath his brows. “You know why.”
His response is an arrow to my heart.
“I don’t, actually.”
“We’re fooling ourselves here, Brooke.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
He leans forward and props his hands on the counter. His head falls and his gaze is focused down at his bare feet. It takes him a second to collect his thoughts, but when he does, he glances back up and asks me with a stiff tone, “What do you want out of the next five or ten years?”
Easy. “I want to find another job teaching French or Spanish. I want to travel and see as much of the world as I can. I lived in Europe after college for a few years, and I might want to try that again.”
I think my answer will make him happy, but his smile, half twisted in sadness, proves me wrong.
“That’s great. I want those things for you too, but I want to be honest about what I want. I’m sick of serial dating, sick of living out of an empty house I don’t want to come home to at the end of the day.”
“Okay, and what does this have to do with—”
“I want a wife and a family, and I want it soon.”
His words coil around my neck like a noose.
“A wife?” I clarify with a squeaky lilt to my tone.
“And kids.”
“Doesn’t that sound a little too, I dunno—forward?”
He laughs and pushes off the counter. “I’m not proposing marriage, but I’ve gotten to where I am today by looking into the future. In five years, you want to be traveling the world. I want to be married and settled down.”
My voice is barely a whisper when I reply, “So what are you asking?”
“It’s obvious that we’re attracted to one another, but we have to be realistic, don’t you agree? The math just doesn’t work.”
He looks down at his phone, and I can tell from his furrowed brow that my Uber must have arrived.
Oookay, it’s time to go. I gather my purse from the counter and laugh, realizing something.
“You know, you played this all wrong,” I quip.
He looks back up, curious about the shift in my tone.
“You’re right, there is an attraction. We were supposed to fool around for a few months, ignore reality for as long as possible, and then have this discussion after a nasty blowout. Things should have gotten messy and complicated.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “I don’t want to rob you of your 20s.”
“Well this way you’re robbing me of a few months of what would undoubtedly be really good sex.”
“Is that right?” His scorching gaze nearly makes me regret my joke. “Is it too late to choose door number three?”
My mouth goes dry and before I can embarrass myself any further, I turn toward the front door. We walk alongside one another like two well-adjusted adults who don’t tumble into bed just because it would feel really good. We look toward the future and plan our lives accordingly. I’ve never regretted acting responsibly so much in my life.
“You know you have it easy, really,” I say, peering up at him as we walk. “There must be thousands of women in Austin ready to ovulate at the mention of a five-year family plan.”
He arches his brow. “Do you know of any?”
My stomach drops. We’re joking around, but still, the thought of setting him up with someone else isn’t funny yet. I refuse to drop the cool-girl act though, so I force a laugh.
“Maybe you should just post a job opening through your business—or better yet, make a Tinder account. Slap on a photo with you wearing a suit, maybe link to this address, and make sure to mention that annoying little dimple that appears when you really think something is funny.”
His gaze is hot on the side of my face when he replies. “Thanks for the advice.”
A car honks out front.
It’s time to leave.
“Thanks for the ride. Sorry about your car.”
He smiles. “Thanks for the talk. Sorry about your bike.”
“Is that what it was? A talk? It felt more like a therapy session.”
“If that’s how you feel, you should come back for another appointment, lie down on my couch…”
I roll my eyes.
“I’ll see you at the club,” I counter, taking one last look at him as he holds the front door open for me.
Though, for sanity’s sake, I hope I don’t.