It was movie night again, Caroline’s decree. They’d had another family dinner, and it had gone well enough, but she’d decided that they weren’t quite ready for a full-on game night. Which is how the group found itself holed up in the TV room again, this time watching The Shining.

Celia, who was not good at scary movies—seriously, she just didn’t have the genes for it or something—had lobbied for anything else. She’d lost. She’d also been the last person to the TV room again, this time on purpose, and had wound up in the same spot as last time, between Jean Luc and the arm of the couch.

Only, this time, seeing as how they were watching the scariest movie of all time, she opted for a blanket.

“I thought you were supposed to be a badass,” Jean Luc whispered to her as she shrank back into the couch cushions, already nervous during the opening credits.

She turned to him and realized that he was kind of crowding her, his humongous arm thrown over the back of the couch behind her and his face leaning down to whisper to her.

“Whatever gave you that impression?”

“Uh,” he looked at her like the answer was obvious. “How about the fact that you got the middle of your nose pierced? That has to require at least a certain amount of badassery.”

“Touché. But at no point did I think I might get murdered during that experience. This one?” She nodded her head toward the TV screen. “Not so much.”

He blinked at her. “It’s a movie. You’re not getting murdered from watching a movie.”

“Excuse me,” she hissed. “Have you ever seen The Ring? You just, literally, described the plot.”

He laughed, shaking his head back and forth and dragging his eyes back to the screen. “I can promise you that you will not get murdered in the next hour and a half. Or, statistically, probably for the rest of your life.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lot of consolation that is. When Jack Nicholson is coming for me with an ax, I’ll remind him about statistics.”

She felt Jean Luc’s deep laugh rumble through the couch cushions and press up against her, as if he’d touched her. He hadn’t, for the record, touched her yet.

He shifted his ass against his blue jeans and the couch creaked. What he wouldn’t have given for a minute, just like this, alone with Celia. He wanted five less people in the room immediately. He was confused about what was happening with her, it was disorienting to have this pumping excitement in his chest after so many years of grief and loneliness. He was not, however, confused anymore about how hot she was. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it at first. But she was cute as hell. It was kind of like he couldn’t un-see the bikini. Even now, in her leggings and oversized flannel button up, he could still see all the things that that bikini had barely covered. Now that he knew what was under her clothes, it was kind of like the clothes were rendered useless.

He shifted again. If they were alone, maybe he’d scoot a little closer. See if that thin line of electric tension that he was almost positive was brewing between them was gonna spool up any tighter.

But they weren’t alone. They were never alone. They were constantly in a group of their friends. And besides, Jean Luc was barely alone in his own mind these days. Jack and Tre could probably read the lusty tension emanating off of him as clear as a bell. That thought had him leaning back just a touch.

The music crescendoed and Celia ‘eeped!’ and buried her eyes in her hands. All he could see of her was that shock of silver hair. He really, really wanted to touch her hair. It looked impossibly soft and really interesting. He liked that she’d dyed it such an unusual color. It looked trendy and cool with her dark roots and it was just really… different from all the girls who used to come onto him when he was still playing. There had been plenty of pretties, no doubt. But they’d all been ultra-feminine and practically perfect. Perfect makeup and perfect style. He’d always felt, somewhere in the back of his mind, as if they’d been auditioning for a role he hadn’t known was up for auction.

Celia and her silver hair didn’t look like that at all. And it made him curious. And, if he was being honest, a little itchy. In a good way. She was so little he was sure that one good, real hug from him would swallow her right up. He knew he could lift her with absolutely zero effort. He wondered what it would be like to move her in other ways. To roll her over. Put her hands around his back. To nudge one of those knees out of the way… Yikes!

He shifted again and let out a long, quiet breath. He needed to chill the hell out. He did not need to be popping wood in the middle of this movie night surrounded by a bunch of friends. Maybe he should take a blanket and go stretch out on the floor. That way he wouldn’t be tempted by Celia and he—

“Ohmygod.” This time, she went entirely under the blanket, completely submerged just like she’d been in the pool. Even under the blanket, Jean Luc blinked and got an eyeful of that bikini. He had a feeling now that he might, one day, be escorted to his maker by that bikini.

“You alright?” Jean Luc whispered, lightly elbowing the shapeless lump of blanket that was Celia.

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m just gonna go ahead and live under here for the rest of my life,” she whispered back.

He chuckled. “You don’t have to watch the movie, you know. You’re pretty much torturing yourself right now.”

She peeked one dark, furious eye out from under the blanket. Jean Luc blinked at her. With the hair and the piercing she always looked more fierce than pretty, but right now, just looking down at that gorgeous, humongous eye, he realized how pretty she actually was. He gulped. Actually gulped.

“Are you nuts?” she whispered forcefully. “You want me to go be by myself in the house somewhere? Now I know you’re trying to make sure I’m the first one murdered.”

He laughed, but it got stuck a little in his throat. Was this where he was supposed to offer to go with her? Find someplace where they could be alone? Was she asking him to take her away from this movie and find someplace to lay her down and kiss the daylights out of her? No. No. She most likely was not asking him that. And he could only imagine what everyone else in the room would think if they left the room together. No. Not a good plan.

He could just sit here like a dope and not do or say anything. And maybe if he did that for long enough, whatever this thread of tension between them was, it would just break. It was trying to reel them into one another, he was sure. But if it broke then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore, he’d go back to the way things had been for him. Simple. Sad. Lonely.

He didn’t want to do that. What he wanted was more Celia smiles. And more Celia laughs and more Celia blushes. He looked down at the top of her silver head and realized just how badly he wanted to press his cheek there. Yeah. He didn’t care if he was making a fool of himself in front of his friends. He wasn’t gonna pull away from this. He was going to lean into it.

The music crescendoed, Jack Nicholson tweaked, and this time the whole room jumped. Celia was back under the blanket.

He took a deep breath and slid his hand a little further on the back of the couch. He estimated where her shoulder was and pressed his palm there. She tensed for a second, under the weight of his arm, and then completely relaxed. The blanket shifted and fell away from her face, and she looked up at him.

“If it’s any consolation,” Jean Luc said, “you could definitely outrun Jack Nicholson. Dude’s like eighty.”

Celia laughed and turned back to the movie, but when she did, she shifted over a few inches, so that Jean Luc’s humongous arm was all the way around her and she was tucked into his side. He wondered if she could feel the bang of his heart where her shoulder pressed his ribs. He fought the urge to shift his butt against the couch again. He figured even the smallest adjustment was liable to send her skittering away. No. He was not going to break this spell no matter what.

She was stiff, but he couldn’t tell if that was because of him or because of the movie. She jumped again and this time she grabbed at that hand he had over her shoulder. With both hands, she gripped his palm, tugging his arm over her so that he almost had her in a headlock. Like she was using his forearm as a seatbelt. He could feel the soft crush of her against his skin, his muscle, and his arm flexed.

Celia praised whatever fucked up, twisted soul had decided to make this into a movie. She was certain of two things. She was never going to stop being freaked out about the little kid ghosts and she was never going to forget about the heavy weight of Jean Luc’s arm over top of her. Seriously, his arm was roughly the size of her leg. She clutched his one, gigantic hand in both of her hands and hoped she wasn’t breathing on him too much. Because her breath was not playing it cool. She could always blame it on the movie, she supposed. But she knew that she was breathing like she was hiking up a mountain because she was basically getting snuggled by someone she’d had a crush on since she was thirteen years old. And he was huge and warm and smelled so freaking good she was forcing herself to look at the movie instead of burying her face in his armpit.

Play it cool! she commanded herself. Her eyes dropped to his gigantic hand clutched in both of hers. She was holding onto him like a lifeline. She shifted her hands and held his hand palm up, like she was trying to catch the light. He instantly opened his fingers, held his hand completely still for her. She felt just a kiss of his breath on her temple.

So, she knew she was about to cross a line here. Up until now, pretty much everything she had done could be explained away as casual flirtation. This? What she was about to do? Felt different. She, snuggled up in the dark with him, was about to explore a part of his body. If that didn’t say come here, big boy, she didn’t know what did. And that’s how she knew she shouldn’t do it. Because she wasn’t asking Jean Luc to fuck her. She already knew that she wouldn’t, under any circumstances, be subjecting him to the miserable, disappointing experience of sleeping with someone sexually deficient, like herself. She was just flirting with him. That was all.

That was why she shouldn’t, under any circumstances, trace the lines in the palm of his—damn it! Her fingertips, apparently having a mind of their own, were already skating over that long, somehow handsome, line that swept across the middle of his palm. She leap-frogged from callus to callus and then flipped his hand over to inspect his nails.

What the hell was she doing? This was a suicide mission! Because, Jesus, even his nails were handsome. Square and clean with that perfect half moon of white at each cuticle. His arm flexed around her, just for a second, and Celia melted back just a little bit further into him. Her knees, drawn up to her chest, threatened to topple over to the side, press into the side of his leg. But she didn’t. She flipped his hand over again and just kept tracing the lines of his hand.

He held perfectly still and let her do whatever she was going to do.

Jean Luc was strung like a bow, vibrating with electricity as those small, gentle touches of hers just lit him right up. He swore his arm was numb from the elbow down. He didn’t think he’d ever in his life been touched like this. Affectionately, sweetly. It was sexual, of course, because she was this perfect little sexy warm gorgeousness pressed up against him. But her touch wasn’t aggressive or overt. Not like so many of the women he’d had experiences with, who seemed to really like grabbing the bull by the horns. So to speak. There was something so forward and so shy at the same time about this touch. And that, he was beginning to understand, was the perfect way to describe Celia. Forward and shy. Confident and self-conscious. She was like a pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. He wondered what would happen to a man if he could catch that pendulum perfectly in the middle, stop it still like a gong. Would he see the real her?

The thought was still clanging around in his mind when the credits rolled on the movie and their friends started shifting.

“Now that’s a movie,” Jack said, standing up and stretching. It was still dark, so he couldn’t quite see what the hell was happening over on the couch, but he knew for a fact that something had had Jean Luc’s juices going for the better part of that motion picture experience. And he didn’t think it was Jack Nicholson.

But Jack didn’t get a chance to see because the dark shapes on the couch separated and Celia was quickly folding a blanket and stretching. “Good night, everyone!” she called, a little too brightly, and ducked out of the room just like that.

Jean Luc felt like she’d just ripped Velcro off of his bare skin. She’d been all pliant and warm and touchy and then the movie was over and bam! She was off like a shot, practically running back to her room.

He rose up himself, said some goodnights and went to his own room. He closed the door and leaned back against it. Then and only then did he let out the whooshing breath that had been gathering in his chest for the last hour and a half.

 

***

 

Celia crept into the kitchen at dawn the next morning. She needed coffee and she needed it yesterday. That had been one of the worst night’s sleep of her entire life. The combination of the scary movie and the unresolved sexual tension had her tossing and turning for the better part of the night. She cursed herself for getting herself into this situation. And she cursed Jack, too. For suggesting it in the first place.

She pulled a mug down from the cabinet and looked out the kitchen window at the pool, still as ice in the early morning light. She indulged herself in a brief fantasy where she was actually amazing at sex and knew, without a doubt, that she could blow Jean Luc’s mind. Yeah. If that had been the case, last night would have ended up very differently. She’d have followed him back to his room, and stayed up all night for a very different reason.

She shook her head at herself. There was no point indulging that fantasy seeing as how that was pretty much her mind writing a check that her body couldn’t cash. It was only disappointment down that road. She sighed and stepped over to the coffee maker. She blinked at it. There was already coffee made. Huh. Someone must have set the timer.

“Why do you wear those?”

Celia ‘eeped’ and jumped a full foot in the air as she spun around to face Jean Luc, who’d apparently been sitting at the kitchen counter this entire time. She hadn’t seen him.

“Sorry,” he winced, and then his eyes widened. “Wow. Remind me never to sneak up on you again.”

Celia blinked down at the bread knife that had somehow found its way to her hand in the midst of her panic. “Wow,” she muttered. “I guess you can take the girl out of Brooklyn…” She carefully slid the bread knife back into its slot in the knife holder and poured herself a cup of coffee.     “Guess I’m strung a little tight from the movie.”

He grunted and took a sip from his cup of coffee. He was strung tight too, but for a very different reason. “You gonna sit down?”

“Right.”

Celia hadn’t anticipated seeing anyone else this early, and though she was wildly grateful that she’d brushed her teeth, she cursed herself for not putting her contacts in. She pulled off her thick glasses and folded them up. Her glasses in one hand and her coffee cup in the other, she squinted her eyes and carefully stepped toward the barstools where Jean Luc was sitting.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, surprise and laughter in his voice.

She was too busy trying to pick her way across the fuzzy landscape of the kitchen while not falling on her ass or spilling her coffee to answer.

She jumped a little when she felt Jean Luc’s hand at her elbow, guiding her toward the counter.

“I don’t like people seeing me in my glasses,” she told him, straightening herself on the stool with as much dignity as she could muster.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You think your sexy librarian frames are less attractive than that squinched-up raisin face you have to make without them?”             

Her mouth dropped open, but she had to admit, he had a point. She was really squinting just to see him two feet in front of her across the counter. She sighed and put her glasses back on, staunchly ignoring the fact that he’d called them sexy librarian frames. If she thought about that, she was going to fall off her barstool. She put it in her back pocket to mull over later.

She needed something else to talk about. She cast around, trying to ignore the way he looked so freaking hot in a gray undershirt and his short hair pressed down at one side where he’d been sleeping on it. “What was it you asked me when you attempted to give me a heart attack and I attempted to stab your face off?”

He chuckled. He was hoping she’d missed that because he’d impulsively asked and immediately regretted it. “I was asking about the boxers that you’re wearing. Why you wear them instead of PJs.”

“Oh.” She looked down at the worn, blue and gray boxers. She also looked down and realized that her black camisole was leaving very little to the imagination right then. At least she hadn’t worn the white one that totally showed her nips. “I don’t like pajama pants because I get all bunched up and tangled in them.”

“So, you just go to the men’s section and buy yourself some boxers?”

“No,” she shook her head and took a sip of coffee. “These are my ex-boyfriend’s.”

Why oh why had she just admitted that? Now it sounded like she was some sort of creepy, desperate woman who was so lonely she’d stolen underwear from a man who’d dumped her just so she could sleep in them. Oh God. Now she was either going to have to explain further—humiliating—or just let him think whatever he was going to think—also humiliating.

But Jean Luc just raised one eyebrow. “Your ex-boyfriend must have been tiny as hell.” He leaned to one side, peering at her boxers over the counter.

“He wasn’t tiny!” Celia insisted. Though she wasn’t sure why. Max had definitely not been what one would call large. Or athletic. She waved a hand in the air. “I mean, compared to you, everyone is tiny.”

He straightened up a little in his chair and she could see him attempting to suppress a smile. “Recent break-up?” he asked, and she could have sworn the tips of his ears went red.

“No,” she shook her head immediately. “Maybe three or four years ago.”

“And you’re still wearing this man’s underwear because…” He was looking at her like she was crazy, or like he was trying hard not to ask the question he really wanted to be asking.

She shrugged. “Because they’re comfortable and he was a nice guy, so there’s no bad memories associated. And because I hate spending money. So why would I go buy new boxers when I have a few perfectly good pairs anyways?”

He nodded his head from one side to the other. “I can relate to that. I hate spending money. It’s like nails on a chalkboard for me.”

She turned the handle of her coffee cup one way and then the other. “Yet you insist on paying for the hotels and all the groceries and the gas and the car rental and—”

“Correction,” he told her. “I hate spending money on myself. I like spending money on,” he swallowed, “on people I care about.” He cleared his throat. “I bought Hugo a house and didn’t think twice. He was so pissed at me for doing it without asking.”

She gathered her courage. “Is it weird to be here without him?”

Jean Luc looked down immediately and Celia could have kicked herself when it was like a light had been extinguished within him. “Yeah. But everything is weird without him. Even years later, it’s still so weird and awful that I can’t call him up or text him. That I’m just never gonna see him again. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.”

Celia slipped off the barstool before she could get a chance to psych herself out. She popped around the counter and pushed between Jean Luc’s legs. Up onto her tiptoes, she clamped her arms around his neck, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. He was frozen for a second before those big arms of his came around her back.

He was right. He swallowed her right up. He was tempted to plant his hands flat on her back, really feel her. But instead, he banded his forearms around her and squeezed her tight. She melted into him, all soft and tiny. His body was firing and his heart was banging around, but this hug was more about comfort than it was about sex. In a strange way, he almost felt rewarded for having talked about Hugo. It was like he’d taken a teaspoon of the crushing weight of grief that he felt, and he’d handed it to Celia. And now he was just a little bit lighter than he’d been before.

Celia gave him one more squeeze and stepped away. She wasn’t pressed against him anymore, but she was still between his knees as she reached across the counter for her coffee and stayed just exactly where she was. He cleared his throat.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly.

“For the hug?”

“For all of it,” he answered honestly. Every little thing she did was lifting him up. And it felt good. For the first time in a long time, he felt good.