“Should someone go check on her?” I ask, eyeing the long hallway that Lia just disappeared down.
Alex looks up from her engagement ring and tilts her head as though she’s not even sure what I’m referring to. “Oh, she’s just being dramatic. Don’t worry.”
But I am worried. Before she bolted from the dining room, she looked awful. Her skin had turned pale white and she sat so still in her seat, I was afraid she might have choked on her food and stopped breathing. Then she burst out of her chair and ran like something horrible was chasing her.
Alex must notice me gazing down the hallway because she sighs and says, “If you’re so worried, you go. She likes you.”
My head jerks back toward her. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, she practically thinks of you as a brother already.”
A brother. Of course.
That’s how she should think of me.
I crumple my napkin and toss it on my plate. “Right. I’ll just go make sure she’s okay.”
What I really want to add is, “Because it’s not like I’m actually needed here.” But I restrain myself. Alex is doing an excellent job at making this entire thing about her, even though the engagement is supposed to be between the two of us. But I suppose that’s pretty common among brides.
Alex barely gives me a second glance as I get up and follow in Lia’s footsteps down the hallway.
I approach the ladies’ room door and the sound of low, strangled sobs lurches me to a halt. I rap lightly and the noise on the other side instantly stops, like someone has pushed the pause button in the middle of an emotionally dramatic scene.
I hear sniffling and then, “Someone’s in here.”
“It’s Grayson. Are you all right?”
There’s a long silence. Too long. And then, “I’m fine.”
But it’s almost a joke because her voice is so strangled and shattered. She clearly isn’t fine. “Are you sure?”
Another long pause. “Yes.” And just when I think she’s going to leave it at that, she adds, “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Do you need anything? Water? More wine? A tranquilizer dart?”
I hear a small, muffled laugh that quickly turns into a sob. “A tranquilizer would be lovely, thanks.”
I crack a smile. Leave it up to Lia to lob my joke right back at me. Even when she’s clearly upset. I lean toward the door. “I’ll get right on that.”
“If you could locate something strong—like for an elephant or a wholly mammoth—that would be great.”
I chuckle. “One wholly mammoth tranq dart coming right up.”
Despite our friendly banter, Lia doesn’t emerge from the bathroom until after the check has been paid and we’re preparing to leave. Her eyes are red and puffy and she won’t look at me.
I want to reach out to her. Ask her again what’s wrong and keep asking until she agrees to tell me. I feel this strange urgency to understand her. To comfort her.
“I have to close down the restaurant,” she tells us as we head to the parking lot. I’m about to offer to help, feeling a sudden exhilaration at the thought of being alone with her, but she snatches the keys out of Alex’s hand and says, “You guys go back to the house with Dad, okay?”
Later that night, as Alex showers, I lie in her childhood bedroom, thinking about how strange it is to be back in this house. It’s familiar and yet so foreign at the same time. I haven’t been back here in over four years, and walking the hallway toward Alex and Lia’s bedrooms is like stepping back in time, rewinding the last four years of my life, becoming twenty-two again.
God, I was a mess back then.
I was so fucking clueless. So torn between my passionate, deep-rooted feelings for Alex and my yearning to be independent. To experience the world without her. That’s inevitably why I didn’t follow her to New York, even though I had plenty of job offers in the city. And she knew that.
That knowledge was our ultimate undoing.
As soon as I told her I wanted to take the job in D.C., she knew what my choice meant. It meant I wasn’t choosing her.
And least not then.
And least not yet.
As it turned out, the single life really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, I had my flings. My share of one-night stands. I kissed other lips. Touched other breasts. Experienced what it felt like to be inside someone other than Alex.
But something was always missing.
There was always this emptiness inside of me that those girls couldn’t fill.
And when I bumped into Alex three months ago after getting transferred to New York, I suddenly knew what was missing.
It was her.
The rest was a whirlwind. Weeks of nothing but wild sex and talking and eating and more sex. It was as though we needed to make up for those four lost years. And once we did, I wasted no time buying the ring. I didn’t want to risk losing her again.
But now that I’m back in this house, everything that went on inside these walls comes flooding back. The whispered fights. Alex throwing punches and threatening to leave and me pinning her arms down, kissing her face, begging her to stay until we were both breathless and falling onto the bed, devouring and ravaging each other as though it was our last day on earth.
The memories hit me like a brick thrown in the face. And suddenly all that pain and panic that it’s going to end any second come rushing back to me, saturating me with a cold, deep-set ache.
Things are different now, I tell myself. We’re older. Wiser. We’ve lived apart.
I hear footsteps in the hallway outside and the quiet opening and closing of the door to the next room.
Lia is home.
And suddenly my mind becomes inundated with thoughts of her on the other side of the wall. Only one room away. This awareness never used to be bother me before but for some reason now it seems to be all my brain can fixate on.
What is she doing? What is she thinking? Is she feeling better?
The toilet flushes in the bathroom that sits between Alex’s and Lia’s bedrooms, and a few seconds later the door opens. Alex stands there looking unbelievable in some barely-there black leather teddy that is cut so low, the fabric just manages to cover the nipples of her perfect C-cup breasts.
She pauses, one hand propped against the door frame, the other hand seductively working its way down the length of her body, stopping only long enough for her fingertip to draw slow circles around strategically covered areas. She cocks her head to the side and flashes me her “I want to ravish you” look. Surprisingly the look hasn’t changed much in four years.
My entire body tenses as she closes the bathroom door and struts toward the bed, kneeling down on the edge and then crawling the rest of the way to me. Her hips swing seductively from side to side like a cat looking for attention.
She stops in front of me for a moment, and then her lips descend toward my stomach. Her hand pushes up my undershirt as her tongue flicks against the waistband of my boxer briefs.
Under any circumstances, yes, I’d be as hard as a rock right now, letting her take me into her mouth, my breath becoming shallow and ragged—a guaranteed side effect of Alex’s skillful tongue.
But all I can think about is that wall behind my head.
That flimsy piece of plaster dividing this room from Lia’s.
And it’s enough to make me wriggle out from under Alex’s lips and sit up. “Baby,” I say as gently as I can, knowing this will only lead to a fight. “Not tonight.”
Alex looks like I just admitted to murdering her grandmother. “What?”
I glance around helplessly. “We’re in your father’s house and—”
She traces a polished fingernail across my hip bones, and my body automatically shivers. “That never stopped us before.”
I reach down and clasp her hand in mine, bringing it to my lips and kissing it tenderly. “Yeah, but that was different. We were careless teenagers. Now we’re—”
“Engaged,” she spits back. The fury has already settled into her features. “Engaged, Grayson,” she repeats. “I think that entitles us to do whatever we want in here.”
“I know,” I admit, “I just...don’t feel comfortable.”
“You don’t feel comfortable?!” she echoes, her voice rising.
I cringe, knowing it’s no use to try to quiet her now. She’s already over the edge. Anything I say will only make it worse.
“Or you don’t want to fuck me?”
I shake my head. “That’s not it. You know that.”
“Because I saw how hard you got in the car. So don’t try to tell me that you’re not feeling it.”
Suddenly the memory of Lia’s pink bra peeking out under her tank top rips into my train of thought, and I can feel my erection returning. I quickly will it away and attempt to cup Alex’s face in my hands but she violently pushes me away.
“Baby,” I try, “of course I’m feeling it. I’m always feeling it. I just...” I flounder, wondering if I should just have sex with her to stop this argument from escalating out of control. I could always cover her mouth with mine to keep her from making too much noise and pass it off as passion. But knowing Alex that’ll never fly. She’ll want to do it backward and forward and all over this room. Somewhere along the way she got it into her head that good sex has to look like a porno flick.
“You just what?” she demands.
“I just...” Without warning, Lia’s face flashes in and out of my mind and somehow, in that moment, I know I’m making the right decision. “...not tonight.”