Gravity, p.4
Gravity, page 4
I only wish I felt so fresh.
The entire weekend was consumed with Dex. I couldn’t stop myself. Every single thing reminded me of him.
On Sunday I went to Winthrop Harbor to see my parents. My mother opened the door with the widest smile I’ve ever seen stretched across her face, her gray eyes sparkling.
“I’ve been waiting for the call!” she cried, gathering me into her arms. “Where is he?”
She looked behind me, then back at my face.
My heart sank right into my toes.
Let the fallout begin.
“Bee?” she said, the smile fading from her face. “Where’s Tom?”
“He’s not here, Mom.” My voice was choked with my own guilt. I’d let Tom down hard, taking a page right out of Dex's playbook.
She ushered me inside, closing the door behind us tightly, as if to shut out the rest of the world.
“What happened, Abby?” Her mouth was set in a thin line, her expression somewhere between disappointment and suspicion.
“Mom. What did Tom tell you, exactly? I’m assuming he called you.”
Just then my dad made his entrance, coming in from the kitchen with a folded newspaper still in his hand. He looked from me to Mom, then back again, before he spoke. “He did more than that, Abby. He drove here last weekend to ask for my blessing.”
“What?” The words coming out of my dad’s mouth were incomprehensible.
He’s not the kind of guy who talks about blessings. His own mother is an on-again, off-again Christian Scientist who only attends services when she feels guilty about something that could easily be smoothed over with a simple apology. Only she doesn’t do apologies. She does trying to control other people until they finally snap. She’s going to give herself a stroke.
Anyway, my mother could generously be called a lapsed Catholic, so there’s not a lot of precedent for blessings.
Where the hell did Tom get off asking my parents for their blessing, anyway? I’m twenty-six years old. If I want to get engaged, I’ll get engaged, permission notwithstanding.
I ran a hand through my hair, trying to choose some halfway appropriate words to use instead of the ones I wanted to say. “He didn’t tell me he was coming to talk to you. Frankly I find it a little creepy that he came to ask your permission to marry me.”
“We thought it was nice, Abby. You don’t bring him around very often. He was clearly trying to make a connection with the family.” My mom looked a little hurt that I would turn on Tom like that. Bizarre, considering they’d never seemed to like him very much until…right at that moment.
“I don’t think it’s nice.” I lifted my chin. It was so not the conversation I’d anticipated having when I got in my car to drive over from the condo, which was still a disaster zone.
What the hell. “You should know that Tom and I broke up on Friday.”
Given how my parents were acting, I was surprised Tom hadn’t called them himself.
“Oh, Bee,” said my mom, stepping forward to wrap me in a hug. “What happened? He seemed so sincere last weekend. I can’t believe he changed his mind so quickly.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“It wasn’t him, Mom,” I said into her shoulder, then pulled back, freeing myself from her arms. “He proposed on Friday. I turned him down. We’re over.”
My dad shook his head, clearly disappointed that I’d thrown away such a golden opportunity. “Why, Abby? I thought you two had a good thing going.”
“Something wasn’t right, Dad. Something was missing. It’s done. We’re over.”
Dex.
Dex was the missing thing. But I couldn’t tell my parents that. They watched me mope around the entire summer before college. I threw myself into my job at the local coffee shop and pulled constant double shifts. I blew off plans with friends. When I wasn’t working, I slept.
It was all because of Dex.
When they finally questioned me about it, I told them the bare bones of the story.
Back then they’d dismissed it as puppy love gone out of control. After that I didn’t tell them much of anything. But any time I went through a breakup in college they wanted to know if it was “another Dex situation.”
Sunday wasn’t the time to mention that I’d run into him in Beechford and hadn’t stopped thinking about him since.
After I admitted to the breakup, the visit was strained. When my parents started putting together a shopping list I took it as the perfect opportunity to leave.
As soon as I was in my car, the muscles in my back started to relax. I hadn’t known they were tense.
Striding toward the building with my keys in hand, I take a deep breath of the cool morning air, fragrant with the scent of the flowers in the city’s carefully maintained planters. Enough dwelling on the weekend.
Enough dwelling on Dex.
It was just a chance meeting.
There are no more chances.
The keys have somehow fallen down to the very bottom of my purse—I hate this thing—so I’m digging through it when the door to the coffee shop opens.
I’ll be damned.
There he is.
Again.
His hand is wrapped around a cardboard cup with the shop’s logo on it, and he’s wearing what seems to be his classic outfit, judging by our last encounter—and all of high school—jeans and a t-shirt that can’t help but display his perfectly defined arms.
It kills me to admit it, but he is exactly my type. Six feet tall. Muscular but not bodybuilder built. Piercing eyes. Full lips. I want to tug his bottom lip into my mouth and bite it, like I used to in the back of my car.
He raises his eyes from the sidewalk and sees me, and his body reacts before he can do anything about it. His feet jerk to the side, like he’s going to go back into the coffee shop.
Dex Stevens is trying to avoid me.
He’s doing a shitty job.
“Abby,” he says softly, and part of me melts at the sound of his voice.
“Dex,” I say, facing him head on.
I spent the entire weekend replaying our meeting in my mind and imagining the ways it could have gone differently. Once I’d shut the condo door behind me, my knees had gone weak. I slid to the floor against my doorway, my head in my hands.
I hated Dex.
I loved Dex.
And I wanted answers.
Why had he walked away from me?
Why had he never come back?
Did he feel the same way?
They were all questions I should have asked when I saw him the last time. But I didn’t. By Sunday night I sorely regretted the way I’d acted. I knew I wouldn’t get another opportunity.
But now…
Standing on the sidewalk in front of me is the mother of all second chances, in all its sexy glory.
What can I say?
I open my mouth to speak, and all of a sudden it hits me that he looks rough. On Friday, he hadn’t exactly been squeaky clean, grease on his hands, grease on his jeans. But now his face looks haggard, like he’s been up all weekend.
For all I know, he has.
I don’t know his life.
I don’t know what other obligations he might have.
I can’t help it. I can’t let the silence go on any longer.
“Do you come to this shop often?” I say, the words too bright, too false. Too weird.
Dex has the grace to look sheepish, giving me the same half-smile that used to get me every time back in high school. “I should have told you the other day,” he answers. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I actually live above this building.” He gestures to my office, to the coffee shop. “I work in Gannett at an auto body shop. The clothes are a dead giveaway. But I live here.”
He lives here. Sleeps here. Showers here…
Oh. My. God.
My cheeks go bright red entirely against my will.
For eight years, I have wished every day that Dex had just come with me after high school. I’ve wondered about him every day. Missed him. Dreamed about him. Compared every other guy to him.
And I promised myself that I was done wasting that kind of time on a man who didn’t want to be with me then and hasn’t done anything to prove otherwise in eight years. Eight years.
So what the hell am I supposed to do now, when he’s literally living on top of me?
“What about you?” he says. “Are you visiting? Here for an interview or something?”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding.
“I work here, Dex. My boss—he’s opening a new branch of his marketing firm, and I’m running it. I just got into town last Friday.”
Dex presses his lips together like he’s trying not to scream out loud.
I know exactly how he feels.
“That’s close,” he says, meeting my eyes. “That’s pretty close. I hope it’s not a problem for you.”
Is it?
The air between us charged, magnetic. It’s a struggle to hold myself away from him.
For an instant I consider turning around, getting back into my car, and driving back to my old job. Escaping Dex’s gravity. Leonard would understand…
No. He wouldn’t understand, and why the hell would I give this up just because the man I’ve been in love with since we were twelve years old lives ten feet from where I’m going to be spending the majority of my time for the foreseeable future?
It’s time to be a goddamn adult about this.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Dex.” The words, built up over the years of not speaking, tumble out of me, one after another. “I’m still pretty pissed at you for what you did. But maybe we should…sit down and talk somewhere.”
The invitation hangs in the air for a long moment. His eyes are locked on mine, sending head thrumming down my spine.
Then he swallows.
“Yeah,” he says, finally, like we’re eighteen again and I just asked him if he wanted to see a movie on the weekend. He always wanted to see a movie. His friends were daredevils and spent most of their free time doing stupid, reckless shit. Dex did plenty of that, too, but he always made time for me.
Except when he didn’t.
Except when he left me.
Stop, I tell myself. This is different.
“Yeah, of course.” His voice is steady, confident, and he doesn’t take his eyes off me. “When’s a good time for you?” He glances up at the sign above my head, then his eyes go to the keys in my hand.
“Tonight.” I don’t think I can wait any longer than that. “Is there someplace you like to go around here? Maybe not the coffee shop?”
He gives me that same crooked smile, and I feel my heart crack open just a little more.
“Meet me out here when you’re done with work. I know a place.”
CHAPTER NINE
Dex
My shift at the shop isn’t a disaster, but it comes close.
I’m usually so fucking meticulous about everything I do at work, but today my mind is on fire with Bee.
I have no idea how I managed to play it so cool when she asked me to talk later.
The only thing I’m sure about is where I’m going to take her.
Jennison’s is a bar in Gannett, not far from the shop. This is a little town just outside Beechford. Nobody ever goes to that bar—not anyone I know, anyway—so it’ll be the perfect place to have this discussion.
I’d rather have it in my bed.
But I can’t do that, because now there’s other shit going on. When I saw Bee I forgot all about the situation with Nikki.
It feels slimy, calling it a situation when someday it could be a little human, but when I try to think of it like that my mind revolts. My body recoils from the idea of having a child with a woman who means nothing to me.
How did it even happen? Nikki swore up and down that she was on birth control, and I always, always, used a condom.
That’s what I’m thinking about when I take the wrong panel off a vintage Mustang and screw up some of the paint before Mike stops me to ask what the hell I’m doing to the car.
“Where’s your mind today, buddy?” he says, giving me a hard pat on the back. The guy doesn’t know his own strength. “Fix this shit up, or you’re going to have to stay late to do it.”
There is no possible way I’m going to be late meeting Bee. This whole situation is so tenuous, so unlikely, that one misstep on my part could sink the entire thing. Whatever this thing is.
I laugh to myself. The misstep is already in progress.
It’s definitely going to go down in flames once I tell her about Nikki. For the entire morning I’ve thought of them as separate problems—Nikki and the baby, and Bee.
But they’re not. They’re on a crash course with each other, and the only outcome is that I’m going to lose Bee again.
The best I can hope for is that Bee at least lets me apologize. If she can find it in her heart to forgive me—and I wouldn’t, if I were her—then I can go on knowing we’re okay.
Gritting my teeth, I hustle to undo the work I’ve done on the car.
She’s been on my mind every day. At the very least I have to get her to understand how much she’s consumed my thoughts since I left her standing by her car on the Overlook, her heart fucking shattered. I saw her face in the rearview mirror. I know how bad it was.
In Chicago I lived in a ten-by-twelve apartment with a psychopath for an entire year. All we had was a cheap futon that she’d stolen from her ex-boyfriend’s house on the way out of town, a card table, and a couple of folding chairs. I took night jobs so I wouldn’t have to sleep next to her on the futon, but during the day I could hardly sleep anyway.
The entire thing was torture.
And the worst part? I’d brought it on myself.
The biggest mistake had been leaving Bee, but my trail of stupidity began long before that.
But those things…I couldn’t think about what had happened. I’d have to think about it soon. I’d have to tell her everything. Just not yet.
Even when things were at their worst, Bee was like—and this sounds so goddamn stupid—a guardian angel. Not that I think angels exist.
No, that’s not the right way to describe it. The memory of her was like a lighthouse. I spent almost all of my time in the dark that year, and thinking of her was the only thing that kept me from going to a bar with my night-job paycheck and drinking myself to death.
My chest tightens with frustration. How the hell have I literally screwed myself over?
Things were supposed to get better after Chicago. Chicago was supposed to be my escape from Winthrop Harbor and everything that happened there, and it was a disaster.
So what’s the common thread?
Me.
But I just can’t bring myself to crush my own wild hope.
Despite everything, Bee might still be the girl I knew. The sexy, sweet, funny as hell girl that thought I was the best thing to ever have walked the earth, even after we fought over stupid shit. And it was all so stupid. I should have asked her to be my girlfriend the moment she was allowed to start dating, and I never should have let her go.
I have to be realistic.
She’s probably not that girl anymore. I’m certainly not the teenage bad boy with a heart of gold. I’m just some asshole who works in an auto body shop and goes to college at night to try to pull myself out of a sinkhole of my own making.
I was getting there, too. Things haven’t been amazing, but they’ve been all right. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Now I’m headed back in.
Me, Nikki, and a baby I never wanted.
I’m no good for Bee.
I’m the worst thing for Bee.
But I can’t stay away.
All I can do is tell her the truth about what happened. Maybe not all at once, but she lives in Beechford now, so that should buy me a little time, right?
I know there’s not going to be some happily-ever-after situation for me when it comes to Bee, but at least we can both get straight with each other before we go about the rest of our lives.
I pour everything I have into the rest of my work at the shop and just manage to finish it all with enough time to shower before I have to meet her. It’s ten minutes back to Beechford and I can shower in three if I have to. By then, she should be just about ready to leave her fancy new job.
A part of me wants to scoff at the office gig, at the business professional outfit she was wearing this morning, at the way she’s left me so far behind. But I’m mostly impressed. And proud.
She didn’t let me drag her down.
In the shower I soap myself up and grab a scrub brush from the soap dish. There’s always grease around my fingernails, but I scrub furiously at it, trying my best to get it off. I want Bee to see the best possible version of me.
Even if it’s not worth much.
At five minutes to five, I’m standing outside her office in a clean shirt and the nicest pair of jeans I own—only one hole behind the knee. If I’d known I was going to run into her I’d have bought a new pair. Until Friday there wasn’t anyone in town to impress. Well, other than Mike, and he doesn’t care what I wear under the coveralls.
“That’s your business, buddy,” he would say, if I ever asked him for fashion advice. Then he’d probably hand me a beer and tell me to fuck off. In a nice way.
At 5:00 exactly, Bee appears at the door of her office. My cock is instantly hard at the sight of her in her little pencil skirt. It hugs the curve of her ass so perfectly. I want my hands all over it, but I have to take a deep breath and calm the hell down.
She’s not wearing the jacket she had on this morning, when it was cooler. It’s folded over her arm alongside her purse, giving me a full view of the white sleeveless top she wears tucked in to the pencil skirt. A necklace with green beads hangs right in front of her perky breasts.
Those haven’t changed.
The outfit is simple, but a narrow belt at her waist matches the shade of her low heels.
Bee looks incredible.
Office door locked, she drops the keys in her purse and turns to see me loitering on the sidewalk, leaning against one of the street’s vintage lampposts. Her face starts to light up, but she locks it down a little bit like she doesn’t want me to know she’s been waiting all day for this.
