‘Hi, Nick,’ I say, arriving downstairs. He beams and hugs me, and as he releases my shoulders, I ask, ‘Have you grown?’

His brows elevate hopefully. ‘I dunno. Have I?’

I laugh. ‘I think you have! Boys gain weight in a whole different way than girls! Seriously unfair.’

He smiles down at me. ‘You do seem shorter.’

‘Shut up.’ I punch him half-heartedly and we turn to go. ‘I’ll be back in a bit, Dad. Don’t get into any trouble while Mom’s at work.’

‘Aw, pumpkin – you’re no fun!’ he says in pretend objection, chuckling and shutting the front door behind us.

We turn to cross the porch and stop on the top step.

Reid is halfway up the walk. When he sees me with Nick, he stops abruptly too. In the span of those two seconds, a smile blooms and dies on my face. Whipping his sunglasses off, Reid glares at Nick and then at me. His jaw locks, fists clenched at his sides, as we all stand immobile and dumbstruck. He’s clearly angry, but so beautiful I can hardly stand to look at him.

‘Dori?’ Nick finally says, breaking the tense silence.

‘Would you mind waiting in the car, Nick?’

He glances towards Reid. ‘Are you sure –’

‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’

Reid’s eyes flick to him as he passes. Nick is taller than average, but shorter and leaner than Reid, whose in-production body looks big and defined in comparison. Nick keeps a wide berth and avoids eye contact as he walks to the sedan he borrowed from his mom for the night. Reid’s spotless Ferrari is parked right behind it.

I start down the steps. ‘Reid. What are you …’ I swallow the uncomfortable lump in my throat and start over. ‘What are you doing here?’

He watches me approach, but makes no move towards me.

‘You stopped talking to me, Dori. I came to find out why.’ He glances over his shoulder at Nick, who waits by the driver’s side door, resting his arms on the roof of the car and watching us. ‘Or should I take this as an answer?’ When he looks back at me, the pain is evident in his eyes.

I shake my head, coming to stand in front of him. ‘No. Nick has nothing to do with … us.’

‘Is there an us, Dori?’ I flinch at the raw torment in his voice, and his hand moves as if to touch me, but he drops it back to his side. ‘I made promises to you, and I intended to keep them. I know I was wrong to hide River from you, and I’m willing to do whatever I need to do to make up for that. But you have to talk to me. If you’re going to end it, you have to tell me why. You can’t just disappear like you did before.’

Mom told me he’d called, though her memory was suspiciously vague as to the content of their conversation. From his perspective, my withdrawal is exactly like last time. But last fall was about submitting to pressure from my parents. This time is all me and my personal demons.

‘This isn’t like last time.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he says softly.

My heart clenches rhythmically instead of beating. ‘We can’t talk about this now –’

‘Because going out with some other guy is more important to you?’

I wince at the indignation in his voice, and the way he pivots from hurt to anger.

‘Nick is leaving town tomorrow. We made plans …’

He stares at me, hard, silent.

Laying my hand on his forearm, I note the immediate tautness of the muscle under my fingers. Like he can steel himself against my touch. Like he wants to.

‘Can we talk tomorrow, Reid? Please?’

The tension melts from his shoulders with a sigh. Carefully – as if he’s afraid to startle me, he lifts his hand to curl one finger under my chin and gazes down into my eyes. ‘Will you talk to me, Dori?’

His thumb grazes over the indentation in my chin as though it’s meant to rest there before it slides up to outline my lower lip. When he leans to kiss me, my body responds without regard to how this connection tears at my heart. My mouth opens to him, yielding against all the rapidly disregarded rationales for why I can’t surrender to what he thinks he wants right now. My hand slides up his arm and under the sleeve of his T-shirt, tightening on his bicep as he slips that arm around my waist and pulls me closer, urgently.

I want this. I need this. And when he kisses me, he knows it.

Stroking my tongue with his, he’s both fiercely possessive and gentle, and I want nothing more than to wrap myself around him and be carried away to a place where I don’t have to think. A place where there’s no guilt or fear, no right or wrong, no divine punishments or senseless accidents or indeterminate states.

When he draws back, his chest rises and falls with mine. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,’ he says, turning to go without looking back, pulling his keys from his pocket. He ignores Nick completely as he gets into his car and drives away.

I walk unsteadily to Nick’s car, belatedly aware that at least three neighbours came outside in the last few minutes to sweep clean sidewalks or check empty mailboxes and watch Reid Alexander kiss me.

REID

As soon as Immaculada leaves the kitchen, Mom walks in with her coffee cup and heads for the impressive-looking coffee maker, which supposedly makes all sorts of coffee drinks. If it’s in operation, though, there’s a good chance it’s just making coffee.

‘Reid?’ She pulls out the adjacent seat and glances back at the digital clock over the stove. ‘Goodness, you’re up early,’ she observes, sitting next to me.

I shrug. ‘I’m still on production schedule, I guess. Just as well – we start up at Universal on Monday.’

‘So soon?’

I arch a brow at her. ‘Time is money, Lucy.’

She laughs at my overdone impersonation of my father … and every producer in Hollywood.

Truth: I couldn’t sleep most of the night, thinking about how Dori responded to that kiss. She wants me still. I don’t care what she says – or refuses to say, since she hasn’t been speaking to me. Come to think of it, her avoidance feels even more suspect, because I’ve seen Dori angry, and nothing about her reactions yesterday denoted anger, even in the face of my obvious jealousy towards her friend.

Dr Shaw will be happy to know I didn’t lay a verbal insult (or a fist) on Nick – the guy I mistook for her boyfriend last summer at Habitat, because he clearly wanted to be her boyfriend. Considering the fact that for about two minutes yesterday afternoon I thought that guy was the reason she wasn’t calling me back – I think I showed extraordinary restraint.

‘River’s room is completely ready,’ Mom says, breaking into my mental recap.

‘Mom, are you sure you’re good with River living here? I know you and Dad thought you were almost rid of me. And it’s not like I can’t afford my own place.’

She smiles and lays her hand on top of mine. ‘Reid – this house is ten thousand square feet, give or take a few closets. We have staff who’ve been with us for years and are utterly trustworthy. It’s private. It’s safe. This is the perfect place for him. And for you, for now. Not forever – for now.’

I nod. I’m still stunned at how my parents have reacted to this.

Mom sips her coffee and I sip mine, both of us lost in our thoughts.

And then: ‘You haven’t said very much about Dori the last few times we’ve spoken,’ she says. ‘How are things with her sister? And her first semester at Berkeley?’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not completely sure on either count.’

‘Hmm.’ Her hmm doesn’t sound surprised.

‘When I met her, I saw her altruistic side and thought do-gooder. I saw the girl with no make-up, wearing the least flattering outfits a girl could wear – especially knowing I was going to be around –’ Mom rolls her eyes and shakes her head – ‘and I expected boring. And she wore these T-shirts every day, supporting all kinds of causes, and I decided she was judgemental and sanctimonious.’

During our very first dinner out, Dori admitted that she was a bit sanctimonious. Her admission was coupled with that mischievous smile of hers that I’d begun making deliberate efforts to trigger. That may have been the moment I fell in love with her.

‘But I was so wrong about her. Even when she questioned her own goodness, she managed to see something good about me. And then her sister had that accident. It destroyed her. It obliterated her faith in everything.’ I bite the inside of my lip. ‘Everything except me. I somehow got her to trust me. And then I lied to her. And I can tell myself it was a lie of omission like that’s something other. Like that’s something lesser. But it was still a lie, and I knew it every goddamned day that I didn’t tell her.’

‘Reid, if she’s lost her faith in God, that isn’t yours to resolve –’

‘Yes, it is. She was trying, Mom – she was trying so hard to rebuild it. And then her dog died, and I didn’t tell her about River. And now I have a son, who I can’t turn my back on –’

‘Of course you can’t. Dori wouldn’t expect that. She wouldn’t want that. I know she wouldn’t.’

‘That’s what’s tearing me apart. I don’t know how to fix this. How do I fix this?’ I stare into her eyes – my eyes, mirrored back at me. ‘I can’t lose her. I love her.’

‘I see that, Reid. But if I’ve learned anything in the past few months – and I think you have, as well – it’s that people must fix themselves. That’s the only way change has any hope of becoming permanent.’ She squeezes my hand.

Winking at me from her ring finger is the huge, flawless, round-cut diamond my father presented on bended knee when they were young.

Not as young as I am.

My dad was twenty-nine or thirty when he proposed to my mother. He was thirty-five when I was born, very legitimately. Thirty-five. Not fifteen, and too much of a dickwad to even consider the fact that a girl he’d had sex with – a girl he’d made love to – could possibly be pregnant with his child, no matter what else he thought she’d done, or with whom.

Mom follows my eyes to her hand and back to my face. She angles her head. ‘Reid?’

‘Mom. I need to ask you something.’

I hear the melodic chirrup of the Cantrells’ doorbell when I press the button, because all the windows and the front door are wide open. It’s a beautiful spring day in LA.

‘I’ve got it!’ Dori calls as she descends the staircase, alerting me that one or both of her parents are home. Just like the first time I ever heard her speak, I’m struck by the musical sound of her voice.

I watch her appear a bit at a time – bare feet on the steps and then her perfect legs in a pair of khaki shorts, followed by one of her more hideous T-shirts – a tie-dye done with too many colours, rendering it a sort of repulsive brown, for the most part. It sports the name of a chorale outreach programme for teens, sponsored by her high-school choir. Finally, her beautiful face dips into view.

*** Copyright: Novel12.Com