First-Time Caller

Chapter 17

I take her to a tiny bar right next to the docks with a crooked front stoop and a jukebox in the back corner that plays only one song. The bar is full, but there’s a table in the back corner wedged right up against a foggy glass window and the beleaguered jukebox. Lucie studies the musical selections while I grab us two beers and a basket of French fries, her face cast in blues and pinks from the neon lights above the bar.

“It’s an interesting choice,” she says as I hand her a beer. “To only feature ‘Thong Song.’”

She takes a long sip from her glass and sighs happily. A bit of foam clings to her bottom lip. I drop myself down at the table before I can do something stupid like wipe it away.

“Well, it is a classic,” I tell the table.

“That’s true.”

“It used to play Hairspray too. But I think someone slammed their glass into it after one too many rounds of ‘Good Morning, Baltimore.’ It’s been playing Sisqó ever since.”

She hums in mock sympathy. “A grim fate.”

“I don’t know. He has been called the Tchaikovsky of our time.”

She tips her head back and laughs. It sounds different outside the radio booth. Less contained. Rougher at the edges but better because of it. She settles in her seat and the length of her thigh presses against mine. We don’t have the excuse of the close quarters of the booth tonight, and I wonder if she did it on purpose. I don’t move away.

“Thank you for this,” she says, pushing her bangs out of her face and shifting in her chair. She’s wearing more makeup than usual tonight. Her eyes look like they’re glowing. “Were you in the area?”

I’m too busy watching her slip out of her coat to answer her question, a soft-looking emerald green dress beneath that’s draped over her shoulders. I can see freckles I’ve never seen before. Right below her collarbone and in the hollow of her throat. I take another long pull from my beer.

“What?” I ask in a rasp as I pull the bottle away from my mouth.

“You must have been close by when I texted,” she says.

“Oh, no. I mean, yeah. I live over here. Up on Fleet.” And I hurled my body into the shower as soon as she texted that she was waiting at the restaurant, not bothering to look at the T-shirt I pulled out of the dresser before tugging it over my head.

“It’s not a far walk,” I add, feeling a rush of embarrassment for the way I rushed over. Lucie is a grown woman and she can handle herself. But all I could think about was the hopeful tremble in her voice when she asked me if she thought she’d find someone, the two of us sitting alone at that picnic table. I clear my throat. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

She keeps staring at me, her beer lifted halfway to her mouth.

“What’s your deal?” she asks suddenly, after the silence stretches so thick it feels like I’m going to choke on it.

I blink at her. “My deal?”

“Yeah.” She takes a heavy gulp from her beer. This time she wipes the foam away with her thumb. “What’s up with you?”

“Why does it sound like you’re asking what’s wrong with me?”

“You’re a radio host,” she says, ignoring me, holding up a single finger in explanation. “Of a late-night romance hotline.” She holds up another finger. “You told me you don’t believe in love, yet here you are. Helping me find my match. What gives?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m helping you find your match. I just bought you a beer.” I nudge the basket of French fries closer. “And fries. Did you eat dinner?”

She grabs one of the fries and tosses it in her mouth. She groans when she gets a taste and then immediately grabs two more. “Well?” she asks, reaching for the ketchup from the table behind us.

I grab a fry too. “Well, what?”

“You’re a man of contradictions, Aiden Valen.”

I shrug. “I like having a paying job.”

She rolls her eyes. I laugh.

“What? It’s true. I took a job in radio because I needed quick cash in college. I was a dumb kid and thought it would be better than working at the campus cafeteria. My friend needed coverage for a shift and said she’d pay me double if I did it for her.”

“And you fell in love? That first shift?”

“I hate to squash the optimist in you, but no. I liked the quick money and I liked that I got a bunch of girls’ numbers.” I shovel another fry in my mouth and wiggle my eyebrows. “Apparently I have a nice voice.”

Lucie gives me a sour look.

“Don’t look at me like that. I was in college.”

“That’s not an excuse for being a trollop.”

Another laugh barks out of me. Two of the men at the bar turn to glance at me over their shoulders. I smother my smile into something manageable. “I also liked . . . being someone else. I liked putting my problems away and existing as a new person.”

“Aiden Valentine,” Lucie says. “Instead of Aiden Valen.”

“Exactly. The biggest problem Aiden Valentine had was what song to play next. It was easy for him to be happy. Easy for him to make conversation. Easy to be charming.” He didn’t have a sick mom or a slowly deteriorating GPA or trouble with people. “I liked talking to people. It was purely coincidental I ended up on a show about romance. I liked talking about love until I . . . didn’t, I guess.”

“Why?”

Maybe it’s the low light or maybe it’s the burn of alcohol in my belly or maybe it’s Lucie, but the truth tumbles out of me. “I started to see this common thread with callers. How love could make them miserable. How it could tear them to absolute pieces. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I think I started waiting for it. Bracing myself for it. It felt easier that way.”

“Why?” Lucie asks again, her body curving closer into mine.

“Because I saw it with my life too. With my . . . with my dad. My mom got sick,” I rasp, my palms pressing against my cold glass. “She kept getting sick and it tore my dad to absolute pieces every time. And I think that’s when I stopped believing in good things.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and leans closer. “Is she—”

“She’s okay now, but it was—” I drag my thumb up and down the condensation, focusing on it. Trying to hold myself here and not in a memory. “I was a kid the first time she was diagnosed. Three days before my eighth birthday.” I remember there were balloons on the kitchen table when my parents sat me down. A cake that sat in the fridge and was never eaten. “And it was—we all had a hard time with it—but my dad—” My voice cracks at the edges and I swallow around it. “It devastated my dad. My room was right next to their bathroom, and some nights, after my mom fell asleep, I’d hear him through the wall. He’d run a shower to cover the noise, but I could—I could hear him crying.” I could tell in the morning, with his red-rimmed eyes and his drawn face. The way he’d look at my mom when he thought no one was looking at him. Like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. Like he wouldn’t survive it if she didn’t.

I keep talking, determined to move the conversation forward. I’m sprinting across a field of conversational land mines, tossing out the most devastating milestones of my life like they’re party favors. “He loved her so much, and it was killing him the same way the cancer was killing her. After that I thought it would be easier if I just never—if I didn’t let myself feel that.”

Lucie makes a soft sound. Her fingers brush over my arm. “Aiden.”

I shake my head. “Nah, don’t do that. I’m not the one you should feel sorry for.” I take another pull from my bottle and force some levity into my voice. “Anyway, I worked in radio for a long time and it was good. And then it wasn’t.” I attempt to lighten the mood. “I think I heard one too many complaints about mediocre anniversary gifts. It took the shine off romance for me.”

Lucie watches me carefully, her chin in her hand. I wait for her to ask more questions about my parents, but she must read the apprehension on my face. I don’t talk about them. Not ever. It’s how I hold myself together. It’s how I keep going.

Her eyes soften.

“You’re helping me,” she points out. “I have to think you believe in romance a little bit if you’re willing to help me.”

“Maggie threatened me with bodily harm.”

“Is that why you’re here tonight? Because Maggie threatened you?”

“No. No, this is my own misplaced sense of chivalry.” I force a cough into my fist. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

“Liar.” Lucie points a slim, accusatory finger at my nose. I grab it and then lower our hands to the table. I am irrationally pleased when she doesn’t pull her hand away. “I think you’re a closet romantic,” she tells me.

“Decent human being,” I correct.

“Secret swoony boy,” Lucie parrots back.

I snort. She twists her hand under mine and our palms brush together. I trace my thumb over the grease stain on the bridge of her knuckles. “I think if anyone could convince me to believe in it, Lucie, it would be you.”

She grins into the top of her IPA, cheeks pink. “By sheer force of will.”

I squeeze her hand. “Something like that.”

Two beers later and Lucie picks up a laminated menu with a stain that could be ketchup or could be the leftovers of a bar fight. She took her hand back about an hour ago, before the aforementioned beers, and I’ve been silently scheming on the other end of the table for ways to get it back.

It’s an impulse I don’t particularly want to investigate.

Lucie studies the menu with the focus of a NASA physicist. “You know what I need?”

I take a long pull of my beer and wonder if she’d notice if I propped my arm along the back of her chair. What she’d do if I tangled my fingers in her hair. I’m pleasantly buzzed on beer and proximity, the smell of her shampoo and that fucking green dress. “A gin and tonic and two more plates of French fries?”

“Yes,” she breathes, drawing out the word until it’s six syllables long. She’s been eyeballing the drinks at the table next to us with an expression I can only categorize as longing lust. Her eyes narrow. “But also no.”

“No?”

“I need to have fun, Aiden. I never have any fun. I am always the least fun person in the room.”

“That’s not true,” I tell her. “We’re in the same room three nights a week and I can guarantee I’m less fun than you.”

She has the decency not to argue with me. “What do people even do for fun?”

“I’ve heard rumors of a thing called television.”

She frowns at me. “Aiden. I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

She shifts in her seat, her knees bumping mine beneath the table, her face open and eager. “Do you remember the first time we talked? When I told you I don’t want to try?”

I nod. Sometimes I think I hear her voice twisting through my dreams. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I feel like she should be in the space next to me, her laugh ringing in my ears. “I do.”

“Well, tonight I don’t want to try. I don’t want to think about failed dates or the radio show or the . . . or the dillweed who stood me up tonight.”

I mouth the word dillweed with a smile.

“I want to put money in that jukebox and hear ‘Thong Song.’ I want French fries and another beer and maybe even a shot. A shot, Aiden! I don’t think I’ve ever done a shot before.”

She’s picking up steam, her eyes growing wilder with every word. Concern starts to war with my amusement. She’s riding a hysterical edge that sounds like she’s about to cry.

“Lucie, are you—”

“I’m fine,” she says. She takes another noisy sip of her beer. “I just—while everyone else was having fun, I was mixing formula bottles and falling asleep reading about the very hungry caterpillar. I missed the part of life where you can be an idiot without consequence. I’m—I’m being nostalgic, I think. Or romanticizing. I’m very good at romanticizing.” She presses two fingers between her eyebrows and rubs, then averts her gaze to a TV above the bar that’s airing an old Orioles game from the early nineties. Cal Ripken walks out from the dugout with his hat raised, and the crowd goes wild.

Lucie sighs. “You can ignore me.”

“It’s impossible to ignore you,” I murmur.

“What was that?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.” Her lips are still tilted down at the edges, her shoulders curved in. “You know, if you’re looking for fun”—I give in and stretch my arm out across the back of her chair, my fingertips glancing along her bare shoulder—”they have a Skee-Ball machine in the back.”

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Are you messing with me?”

I shake my head slowly.

A grin splits her face and it’s like I’ve been plugged into the wall. Like the sun’s been tilted in my direction.

“Where?” she asks, already leaning halfway out of her seat to look.

“Food first.” I press her back with two fingers against her shoulder until she’s upright in her seat. “Then Skee-Ball.”

“Aiden?”

“What?” I grunt.

“Have you always been this bad at Skee-Ball?”

“No.” I glare at the giant flashing zero at the top of the machine. The last ball I tossed went in a completely different lane. The one before that left a dent in the scoreboard that’s currently mocking me. “This is a recent development.”

It’s actually a combination of the alcohol and her feet kicked up on the side of the machine, her long legs a smooth line all the way to the hem of her dress. I don’t think I’ve gotten a single ball past the metal gate.

“You’re not very good,” she says, her lips around a straw.

She crosses and recrosses her legs, and a ball bounces from the ramp to the floor. She slips from her perch at the side of the machine to retrieve it and I stare too long at the way the material of her dress stretches across her thighs when she bends to scoop it from the floor.

I swallow hard and finish my drink in two heavy swallows, averting my eyes to the top of the Skee-Ball machine and the clown face painted there. It’s judging me silently with its unblinking eyes.

I’m the clown. Lucie is as off-limits as it gets. She’s looking for romance. Happily ever after.

Not a beleaguered radio show host with an attitude problem.

“Here,” she says, coming to my side and handing me another ball. She sets her empty drink next to mine and shifts until she’s behind me. She wraps one arm around my middle and laces our fingers together.

My stomach drops to the floor.

“Um,” I say, confused and too aware of her body pressed against my back. “What’s happening right now?”

She huffs and tries to guide my stiff arm in a different position from behind me. “I’m trying to correct your form.”

“My form?”

“Yes,” she says, sounding frustrated. I can’t tell because she’s behind me, trying to arrange my body like I’m a puppet on a string. “Your form is bad.”

“What do you know about Skee-Ball form?”

She peers around my shoulder. In her heels, her temple is almost pressed to mine. If I leaned forward, I could brush my lips over the bridge of her nose.

The tight grip I usually keep on myself is too loose tonight, undone by half a dozen drinks and Lucie . I’m staring too long. Thinking about too many things. Coming up with too many excuses.

“I know a lot about Skee-Ball form, thank you very much.” Her palm pats at my side and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my groan in check. “It’s all in the hips.”

Christ. “Is it?”

“Yep.” She drags her palms down my sides to my waist. They’re warm through the thin material of my T-shirt. She urges me forward, her chest pressed to my back, then wraps her arm back around my torso. I can smell her shampoo. The sharp bite of metal that always seems to cling to her. I suck in a sharp breath.

Her face appears over my shoulder again. “Did I pinch you?”

“No.” I can feel the press of her between my shoulder blades. At the small of my back. I want to slip my hand behind me and tug her more firmly to me. I want to drag my fingertips up the back of her bare thigh. I shift my feet and her hand clenches in a fist against the front of my shirt. I close my eyes tight. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine,” I say again. “You were saying? About the hips?”

“Oh.” Her hand presses flat against my abdomen and her nails trace a meandering, distracting path, like she’s trying to map all the dips and contours of my body through touch alone. Heat licks everywhere her palm touches. I grab her hand when her pinky touches the button of my jeans.

“Lucie.”

“Hmm?”

“What are you doing?”

“Oh,” she says again, her forehead dropping to my shoulder. A sigh shudders out of her. “I forgot what I was saying.”

Some of her words slur at the edges and I glance at our abandoned table. Two empty baskets of French fries and a collection of glasses. An empty plate that used to have a burger that she absolutely devoured. A buzzy, far-off part of my brain suggests we’ve had too much to drink, but I can’t make my body move away from hers.

“I think you were trying to show me proper form for Skee-Ball throwing,” I say slowly.

“That’s right.” She hums. She nuzzles into the space between my shoulder blades and makes a happy sound. “You smell good.”

“Thank you.” I squeeze her hand. “You smell good too.”

Two green eyes appear over my shoulder. “I said that out loud?”

“You did.”

“Great.” She sighs. Her palm pats at my stomach. “Okay. Let’s toss some balls.”

I snort. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

“Be mature, please. This is very serious.”

“Of course.”

She places one of the balls carefully in my hand and wraps my fingers around it, fussing with my thumb and where it’s placed. I try to pin hers with mine in a juvenile attempt at a thumb war, but she evades my clumsy maneuvers, clicking her tongue in disapproval.

“Focus,” she says, and I swear I would if I could. As it is, I can only focus on the places she’s touching me, one of her heeled feet between mine. My imagination is having a field day.

“Okay, so, when you throw the ball, you’re not extending your swing.” She tugs my arm back, then pushes it forward in a wide arc. When we move forward, her body slides against my back. Goose bumps erupt on my forearms. “Like that. See?”

I move our arms together again. “Like this?”

She nods and her hair brushes against my biceps. “Just like that,” she whispers in my ear. “Give it a try.”

She steps away. I throw the ball. It hits the metal grate again and bounces off the ramp, rolling under one of the booths by the window.

“I think I’m just bad at Skee-Ball,” I murmur.

“Yeah, you’re pretty terrible at it,” she agrees. I turn halfway with an arched eyebrow and she’s grinning at me, smiling so wide her eyes are a fraction of their usual size. A laugh slips out of her the longer I try to look stern, and something inside me cracks open.

“Oh!” she says, her face twisting in eager anticipation. I like this version of Lucie. She’s unburdened by the weight she seems so intent on carrying around. Soft at the edges. Playful. “You know what we should do now?”

“Have some water and get you another burger?”

“I want to dance!” she declares, ignoring me completely. She turns and clicks her way over to the jukebox. She makes a show of studying the selections even though there’s only one song, then holds her hand out to me, palm up.

I slap it with mine, then hold on.

She glares at me.

“What?” I ask, leaning heavily against the machine at her side. I feel like I’m underwater. Everything is dense and slow-moving. Like I’m stuck in a syrupy haze, or maybe just caught in Lucie’s orbit. The orange light from the jukebox makes her look like she’s glowing.

“I need change,” she says.

“I know. That’s why you’re doing the show.”

“No.” She sighs. “Like coins. For the machine. To play music.”

“Oh.” I dig into my pocket and hand her two quarters.

“Thank you,” she says primly.

She drops them into the tiny slot and presses the appropriate buttons, her tongue caught between her teeth. The violin intro starts and a cheer goes up around the bar. She holds out her hand to me again.

“I gave you all my quarters,” I tell her.

“I’m not asking for quarters.”

I slap our hands together again.

“Stop giving me high fives.”

“Can’t help it,” I mumble. She wiggles her fingers and I blink at her. “What? What are you asking for?”

“I can’t dance to ‘Thong Song’ by myself, Aiden.”

“I bet you can.”

She stomps her foot and I laugh. Next to us, Sisqó is singing about “dumps like a truck, truck, truck.” I feel like maybe I’ve fallen through the floor and entered an alternate universe. I’ve either had too much or not enough to drink for this.

“Aiden,” she says again, slipping closer. “Dance with me. Please.”

“Lucie,” I whisper back. “Don’t make me publicly dance to ‘Thong Song.’”

She twists her hips back and forth to the beat, her bottom lip jutting out. I should not find that as sexy as I do.

“Fine,” I groan, trying not to smile when she gives a happy little cheer, feet marching in place and her arms raised above her head. The hem of her skirt rises two inches. I tug it back down, then clasp my hands behind my back. “I’m just going to sway,” I warn her.

“Swaying is fine,” she agrees quickly. She fists the front of my shirt and drags me into the middle of a two-by-two section of sticky hardwood. The two bearded men who were sitting at the bar earlier are at a high-top table now and they’re no less confused by our antics.

Lucie loops her arms around my neck and smooshes her cheek against my shoulder. After three hazy seconds of consideration, I cup the back of her head and dig my fingers into her hair. We slowly drift back and forth, not at all following the beat of the song. On the other end of our makeshift dance floor, two frat boys in matching candy-colored polos do a drunken line dance.

“You know, for being stood up, tonight actually turned out okay.” Lucie tips her face toward mine and all I see is green, green, green. Hedera canariensis , I think blearily, but prettier . The prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“I think that’s your third gin and tonic talking.”

She huffs. “Is it impossible to think I’d have a good time with you?”

“Very few people would refer to me as a good time .”

“I find that hard to believe.” Her gaze drifts lazily across my face.

I can feel my heartbeat in the palms of my hands, the backs of my knees, the hollow of my throat. The place on my neck where Lucie’s fingertips are tracing featherlight patterns. I try to figure out what she’s writing there, then decide I don’t care. As long as she keeps doing it.

I smooth my palm down her spine and tuck her closer. I’m letting myself glide down the slippery slope of affection, content to gather these moments and hold them close for tomorrow, when we haven’t consumed an entire bar and I need to pretend my eyes don’t catch on Lucie every time she enters a room.

I think I have a crush, and that’s the last thing I fucking need.

“You’re a good dancer,” I murmur against her temple.

“This isn’t dancing,” she replies sleepily.

“Swaying, then. You’re a good swayer.” She hums back something noncommittal and my hands tighten on her. “I should get you home.” I sigh.

“What?” She leans back in the circle of my arms, pouting. I grin at the look on her face. She’s so fucking cute.

“No,” she whines.

I push her hair back over her shoulder. “Yes. Sadly, ‘Thong Song’ has come to an end.”

It ended about a minute ago, but Lucie didn’t notice and I didn’t want to point it out.

“Do you have any more quarters?” she asks. I shake my head and her shoulders slump in defeat. “Damn.”

“Next time,” I tell her, guiding her to the table, making sure to keep my hand on the small of her back. Neither of us is particularly steady, but she has the added complication of death-trap shoes. She wobbles as she collects her things, managing to get only one arm in her coat. She lets the rest of it drape over her shoulder as a yawn twists her mouth. Her fist digs into the curve of her cheek.

She looks adorable. Deliciously disheveled. I stand there in the middle of the bar and stare at her. Coincidentally, I realize I’m fucked. Because it would be one thing if I only enjoyed spending time with Lucie because of how her legs stretch for miles beneath the flimsy material of her skirt, or how her nose scrunches when she laughs, or how she looks at anything and everything with unflagging optimism. But it’s all of those things and a bunch of other stuff too. How smart she is. How sharp. How generous and open and lovely and kind. I like all of those things and no single part rises above or sinks below the rest.

I help her slip into her jacket and I pinch the top two buttons closed, fumbling with the too-small closures. My knuckles brush against the curve of her breast and she inhales sharply.

“I’m going to walk you home now,” I tell her, my hand slowly moving down the rest of her buttons. I hope that by the time I reach the bottom of these tiny, ineffectual bits of plastic, I’ll have cobbled together some common sense.

“Okay,” Lucie says, not moving an inch. She angles her face up and her nose nudges mine.

I release all that common sense like a balloon, watching it float happily away.

“Lucie,” I breathe, scrambling for restraint if common sense can’t be bothered. She’s been drinking. So have I. I can’t kiss her, even if the devil on my shoulder is bellowing obscenities, daring me to drop my mouth to hers and see if she tastes as sweet as she sounds. My fingers twitch and I let go of her coat. Unfortunately for me, she stays plastered against my front.

“I’m going to walk you home,” I repeat, hoping I might be able to convince one of us.

Her eyes close, lashes spread in a fan across the tops of her cheeks. Her nose brushes against mine again and a shudder works its way over my shoulders, my body trembling. I can smell the gin she’s been drinking. The faint trace of whatever perfume she wears.

“Lucie,” I whisper. I think I’m begging, but I have no idea what for. To let me go. To drag me closer. I don’t know.

Someone bumps into her from behind and she sways on her feet, her hands clenching in the front of my T-shirt. I steady her with my hand on the small of her back, my thumb edging over the curve of her ass.

“Watch it,” I snap at the dumbass behind her. Lucie drops her forehead against my chest and slumps against me. I sigh and grab my coat, tossing it over my arm as I gently guide her forward. She wobbles as we weave through the crowd, and as soon as we’re on the marble front steps of the bar, I tug her to a stop. She looks at me with heavy, sleepy eyes, a question in the tilt of her head.

I drop to the step in front of her and look at her over my shoulder. “Hop up.”

She stares at me. “What?”

“You can’t walk on cobblestone in those shoes.” I hunch over a little bit more. “Hop up.”

“On your back?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll fall.”

“I won’t.”

She bites her lip and I have to swallow against the groan that rumbles up inside of me. “Lucie. I’m not going to drop you,” I promise. “Let’s get you home.”

“I could walk barefoot,” she suggests.

“Yes. Please walk barefoot down the streets of Baltimore in March.” I jerk my head forward. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

“You’re bossy.”

“I certainly can be,” I tell her.

She blinks at me, color rising in her cheeks. I don’t miss the way she shifts on her feet.

“All right,” she finally says. She steps forward and slips her hands over my shoulders. Her belly presses against the middle of my back and her knee hitches at my hip. It’s either the best or the worst idea I’ve ever had. Because I have to grip the smooth skin of her strong thighs when I stand and every step forward has her shifting against me.

She rests her chin on top of my shoulder with a happy sigh as I start down the moonlit street, her arms crossed over my chest. I have the insane urge to guide her hand down the front of my T-shirt. Warm her skin with mine.

“This is nice,” she says.

Is it possible to die from the feel of a woman’s thighs? Maybe. It certainly feels like a possibility right now.

“Yeah,” I agree. “It is.”

COMMENT FROM BALTIMORON78:

Petition for Heartstrings to air on Saturdays. I need to know what’s going on.