Color of Sunshine (Colors of Us #1)

Chapter 1

JESSE

In the absence of the busy, low-level chaos that usually fills Alex’s house, the solid clunk of the bottle he sets beside my plate is ominous. An unnecessary reminder of how he has me cornered.

With Alex’s wife Ellie and their three-year-old twins conveniently out visiting Ellie’s sister, the family dinner I’d been expecting has turned into a one-on-one affair; pizza and beers at the kitchen island.

If it weren’t for the fact that I’m not sure I want to know what Alex is planning to spring on me, tonight would be just what I needed.

It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t officially named this evening for what it is. I know my best friend well enough to see it a mile away. This is an intervention.

One I probably desperately need, but that doesn’t change the validity of my trepidation.

Over the course of our ten years of friendship, Alex has staged more than one intervention on my behalf.

“To get you out of your shell, Jess,” he’s always explained with a grin, before launching me into whatever situation his scheme of the day holds in store.

Situations that have resulted in varying outcomes, ranging from landing me that perfect-as-could-be internship under my favorite professor sophomore year, to the two of us getting mugged (and afterward, coming down with spectacularly miserable food poisoning) the infamous time he talked me into a night of club hopping through San Francisco’s Redlight District with some highly questionable acquaintances he’d made while in line for food truck tacos.

Usually, dinner with Alex’s family is my biweekly salvation.

My big enough dose of real life to keep me sane through another fourteen days buried in the Suzzallo Library stacks, combing through texts on medieval witch hunts, trying to find an inspiration to give direction and spark to my so far lackluster, and currently totally stalled, dissertation.

Don’t get me wrong, my research fascinates me. You don’t pigeonhole yourself in an obscure and entirely useless field like mine unless you love it. Still, I’m well aware that, as Alex has been telling me with increasing urgency, I’m careening head over heels toward burnout.

Tonight though, it’s all I can do to choke down my pizza and hope that, under Ellie’s civilizing influence, whatever Alex has in store for me is A, tame enough for my very tame tastes, and B, escapable if not.

We make it through two slices each before he lets the ball drop.

“When was the last time you did something just for fun?” He narrows his eyes at me, pinning me in place with his characteristic Alex stare, like he can see straight through me into the cluttered spaces of my mind. “And don’t try ‘tonight,’ because this doesn’t count.”

I open my mouth, knowing he’ll tell me off for what I’m about to say, but he beats me to it with an exasperatingly smug grin.

“You can’t say every night after you’re done with god knows what you do with your books and your computer all day, when you ‘relax’ with yet another book or a history documentary.”

“Like your idea of a good time isn’t binge watching hundred-year-old Twilight Zone episodes,” I smirk back at him.

“Not the same.” He takes a long pull from his bottle—for effect I’m sure, not to buy himself time to think of what to say.

Alex always knows exactly what to say next.

Sure enough, “For one thing,” he raises a finger, rather menacingly, I can’t help thinking. “Nothing I watch is related in any way to my work. Second—” another finger joins the first.

Dammit. Somehow, I know this is where things are going to take a turn.

“—I have Ellie.”

It takes a concerted effort to ignore the mess of emotional scar tissue that threatens to rip open. Because now I know what he’s getting at, and it doesn’t matter that it’s been over five and a half years since Stephen…

“You want me to find a wife.” I raise my eyebrows at him, keeping my face straight and my voice as dry and unimpressed as possible; quite a challenge considering the sheer ridiculousness of the words and the fact that suddenly this conversation is stirring up that too familiar, longing ache in my chest.

My attempt at humor is pure self-defense of course. Armor against what Alex is about to say next, and even more against the danger of tipping over the edge into thoughts of what might have been if…

Of course Alex doesn’t take the bait and let me derail the conversation.

“Nice try,” he drawls back, as unimpressed as I’d attempted to sound.

Bastard.

“I’m not telling you you need to find some perfect prince charming and settle down with him and a couple of kids in the suburbs—”

That does hit too close to home. Something Alex, the one who saw me through those blurred, broken weeks when just getting myself up and out of bed felt like more than I could face, should realize for Christ’s sake.

Still, much as I love my friend, I’m well aware that tact isn’t his forte.

Ellie either has some thick skin, or he saves up what little he has of it for her.

“It’s not like I’m trying to get you to stop focusing on your research.

And obviously I’d never even think that it would mean forgetting about Stephen or anything like that,” he barrels on, “but Jess,” the joking falls away from his face and he huffs out a sigh.

“I’m worried about you. When’s the last time you went out on a date? ”

The answer takes me a beat too long because, dammit, I’m trying frantically to think backward in my head. It was summer…I think. Last June? No, that wasn’t last year. Maybe early fall the year before?

My shoulders sag in defeat. He has me on this.

And he knows it, because now his grin is back, transformed into full-blown shit eating evilness. “Do you remember Todd from our wedding?”

The suddenness with which my stomach drops to the floor and horrified, claustrophobic panic surges through my blood has to be some sort of record. There isn’t time for me to try to hide the reaction, not that it would do me any good anyway.

No one who’s had to spend more than five minutes with the man could ever forget Todd.

“I thought you might.” Alex leans back in his chair, taking a self-satisfied swig of his beer.

Ellie’s cousin Todd is the only thing there is to possibly dislike about Alex’s wife.

In one brief conversation, Todd managed to air out every bit of family gossip he could remember—or imagine—made it clear that he found the venue and food far too cheap for his refined tastes, implied that Ellie looked fat in her wedding dress, and finished off the whole fiasco by offering me the honor of blowing him in the bathrooms.

Cutting through my thoughts, Alex announces, “What you need is to get back out there—”

Nervous dread seeps over my skin, making me feel suddenly suffocated by the neck of my sweater. I do not like where this is going.

Alex blithely surges on, ignoring my part-baffled, part-panicked expression. “—Meet people. Have a little fun. Go out on a fucking date. Jesus, Jess. It’s been what, six years?”

“Five years and eight months,” I mumble under my breath, automatically reaching down to massage away the sudden, bone-deep ache that shoots through my right thigh.

His shoulders sag slightly, the maniacal glint in his eyes dimming for a moment as his face twists in sympathy and with his own grief.

“I know, Jess. And you know I miss him too, even though I get that it isn’t the same.

But what if it had been him that had been driving that night and you were in the passenger seat?

What would you want for Stephen if it was him sitting here with me instead of you? ”

My next breath is harsh and ragged in my chest, and I have to gulp down a quick mouthful of my beer to try to hold back the choking tightness in my throat as my leg gives another vengeful twinge.

If Stephen had been driving, maybe neither of us—

This, however, is a pointless and infinitely destructive line of thought, as the therapist I saw until last year told me ad nauseum, until I at least agreed to, if not internalized, the message.

And goddammit, Alex is right.

“I’m not saying you need to get over it or some heartless bullshit like that.

I’d never say that, and you know it. It was you,” he points sternly at me over his bottle, “who said, what, two years ago, was it? That you were ready to think about seeing someone? So I’ve been patient.

Watched and waited to see some evidence.

Some action. Well, sorry, Jess. Time’s up. ”

My defensiveness over the way he’s calling me out and my apprehension over what he’s proposing are seriously outweighed though by the fact that my mind is still thoroughly stuck on one part of what he’s said.

“What does,” the name sticks in my throat, coming out high and choking, “Todd have to do with any of this?”

“Glad you asked,” Alex grins at me.

Did I say his earlier grin was shit eating? Apparently, that was only because I hadn’t seen this one yet.

“Todd,” he waggles his eyebrows at me obnoxiously, “is my insurance policy.”

I swear I can literally feel the neck of my sweater trying to strangle me now. I do not like where this is going. At all.

“You have a week to find yourself someone, ask him out on a date, go on said date, and report back to me. Otherwise, I’m calling Todd and setting the two of you up.”

“You wouldn’t.” Because this is low, even for Alex. He knows just as well as I do what an abrasive, insufferable ass Todd is.

“Try me.”

My stomach sinks as I realize his eyes are narrowed into that stubborn glare I’ve seen one too many times to doubt his sincerity.

And then the dreaded words, “I’m doing this for your own good. You’re twenty-nine years old, Jess. You’ve been alone, reliving your heartbreak for almost six years. That’s fucking long enough, and if Todd is the motivation you need…” He trails off with an unsympathetic shrug.

If that look in his eyes hadn’t confirmed how well and truly screwed I am, those words certainly would. Derailing Alex from anything he thinks is for my own good is impossible. An axiom born of prior experience, unfortunately.

Never mind the fact that he’s right. That maybe, after the way I’ve let my life slowly grind to a standstill, I do want something…more.

Nervously, I gulp down a swallow of my beer, futilely hoping it will wash away the fact that my mouth feels like it’s full of sawdust.

“I don't even know who I’d ask.” The words come out on a bit of a breathless gasp, and if it were anyone other than Alex I was talking to, I think I’d be sinking into the floor with embarrassment right about now at how obviously terrified I am.

Because it’s not just that I can’t think of a single man to ask.

The few, and I mean few, times I’ve tried going out on a date since losing Stephen, I’ve never once initiated any of it.

It’s nerve-wracking enough having to make small talk; worrying if I’m being interesting enough, remembering not to talk too much or too little (alright, obviously only one of those is really ever an issue), trying to find that impossible safe space of showing interest by asking enough questions while not coming off as intrusive.

Attempting to pull all that off with someone I’m even remotely attracted to and somehow working up the courage to invite him on a date?

A preemptive urge to break out in a sweat and glaze over into tongue-tied silence is already setting in.

“It’s just a fucking date!” Alex tips back in his chair with a laugh. “Relax, Jess. That’s the whole point of this. Relax, have some fun,” he arches his eyebrows pointedly at me over his bottle. “Go out and get some.”

His grin turns wicked as I choke on the gulp of beer I’d unfortunately just taken.

Slapping me on the back, he laughs again. “Just so I can stop worrying about you?”

“Give me a month.” The words leap out before I can stop them.

Goddammit.

This is why Alex’s schemes are so deadly.

I’m an adult, for Christ’s sake. I could walk away from all of this.

Ignore it completely. Go back to my predictable, (currently) heart-break free life.

Except he knows I won’t. For better or for worse, beneath all the shit he gives me, Alex loves me like the brother neither of us ever had.

And I can’t stand to let him worry about me.

“Two weeks.” He pins me with that narrow-eyed stare again, daring me to argue.

“That’s not enough—”

He shakes his head, grinning because he knows he has me. “You’re more resourceful than you think. You’ll find someone.” He tips his head back, finishing off his bottle. “I have confidence in you.”

“That makes one of us,” I grumble, pushing my chair back from the counter to carry my plate across the kitchen so I can scrape my remaining half slice of pizza into the trash. My appetite vanished somewhere around the first sentence of this conversation.

“Hence the necessity of Todd,” Alex grins at me, taking the now empty plate out of my hands. “A little motivation is all you need.”