Twenty-One #2
But I just couldn’t back down or give in or let it go.
It was juvenile and stupid, but I played the cat-and-mouse game with him, with no end in sight.
I took the silliness to a new low by rearranging my schedule.
I knew he had to get up early to go to work, so I stayed at the office past the time I knew he could stay awake and still be expected to function the following day.
I came home when I knew he would be gone, returning to sleep, then get up late and shower.
I worked for myself, so my time was flexible; I just moved everything around to accommodate the freeze-out of my lover.
This went on for three days, into the following week.
He was working late, and I was not returning his latest phone call when my friend Aiden called me.
He needed to bring a buddy to his self-esteem workshop because they were having group that evening, and people were supposed to share with someone in the room who knew them.
The idea was that a person from your life, a friend, could call bullshit on something you said.
Only a friend could really say if you were telling the truth or not.
I tried so hard to weasel my way out of going to group once I knew what I was getting into, but by then it was much too late. I was good and stuck at the YMCA with him.
Group is exactly what it sounds like. You sit around in a circle and talk about what’s going on in your life.
In Aiden’s case, he had to say what he’d done the week before that had made him feel empowered.
He seemed nervous, the way he was shifting around in his chair, doing that thing where he chewed on the inside of his cheek and squinted his left eye.
I was staring at him, and he interrupted his monologue about how he had not gone home with the first guy who asked him at the club on Saturday night.
“Shouldn’t even be at a bar,” I muttered.
“What?” he said, turning to me.
I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“You know,” I said pointedly, scowling at him. “What do I always tell you?”
He groaned, and the woman leading the group, Dr. Riehl, met his gaze. “What does Jory always tell you, Aiden?”
He rolled his eyes. “That I don’t know my own worth, and that I shouldn’t go home with just anybody—I’m special, they should be special.”
“That’s marvelous,” she said to me.
I nodded. “He shouldn’t be at a bar.”
“Agreed,” she told me.
“Then where am I supposed to meet people?”
“Coffee shop,” someone suggested.
“Bookstore,” another person said.
“Jogging club, hiking club, bike club,” a girl who looked like a cherub chimed in.
“Walking club,” I said. “There are art walks, events where lots of people make dinner together and then eat.”
“Ohmygod, that sounds amazing,” a guy told me.
“Right?” I said, looking at all of them. “You go as a group, so no pressure, and everyone participates, and then you sit after, eat, drink a little, and chat.”
“What is the name of that?” a beautiful woman asked.
“Perhaps Jory will tell us all after class,” Dr. Riehl suggested.
“I’ll do that,” I assured all of them. “But really, anything but a bar to meet people for Aiden, am I right?”
Everyone agreed.
After the session, I gave everyone the information for Dinner Date, a company that hosted events for couples that I knew about because my business, Harvest Design, had done some work for them.
Dr. Riehl, a very kind-looking woman with white hair and an easy smile, thanked me for participating and for caring enough about Aiden to show up.
On our way out, Aiden smiled and put an arm around my neck, pulling me in close. “Thanks for coming, J. I really appreciate it.”
I knew he did, and before I left, I told him that I would invite him for dinner soon.
On the street moments later, headed to get on the L so I could go home, I heard my name called.
When I looked around, I saw Aaron Sutter standing beside his car in the rain under an umbrella.
I jogged over to him, and when I was close enough, he reached for the lapel of my peacoat and yanked me forward.
“Hi.” I smiled at him, running my hands through my wet hair. “What are you doing here?”
He just stared at me, at my face, absorbing me with his eyes.
“Aaron?”
He dropped the umbrella, put his hands on my face, and kissed me.
It was so spontaneous, like he never was, that it caught me off guard.
He usually asked if something was okay or not, announced all his intentions, and received permission or not.
That he was just suddenly kissing me, on the street, out of the blue, his tongue sliding over my lips, seeking entrance… it was a shock.
“Aaron.” I choked out his name as I took hold of his wrists and pulled his hands off me. I took a step back before he could recover. “What’s going on?”
“Jory,” he sighed, his eyes soft. “I’m sorry for everything.
I’m sorry all the way back to the first time I took you to bed and was careful instead of how I really wanted to be.
I’m sorry for not telling you everything I was ever thinking, and I’m sorry for ever making you feel like you were less than perfect just the way you are.
” He smiled quickly, then bit his lip before raking his hair back from his face.
“See, I want you back, and I’ll do whatever you want to make that happen. ”
All I could do was stare at him.
“I should have told you that all I did when I was away was think about you. I mean, I missed talking to you and laughing with you and arguing with you and being in bed with you and just all of it. You make my life fun, you make me laugh at myself, and you infuse my house with this warmth that’s just gone now. ”
I had no idea what to say.
He reached out and captured my face in his hands again. “Jory, I don’t give a shit about anything else. I don’t care if you fall down drunk every night we go out, as long as I get to take you home with me.”
I took another step back from him. “What are you doing here?”
He looked at me oddly. “I just unburdened my soul to you and you want to know what I’m doing here?”
“Yeah.”
His voice had a thread of chill to it. “I called Dylan, and she said you were here giving your buddy Aiden support.”
I nodded.
“Could you please respond to what I just said to you?”
I took another step away from him. “I appreciate what you said, and I’m flattered, but you and I are over as anything else but friends.”
“Jory.”
“C’mon, Aaron.” I squinted at him. “You know that.”
“Jory—”
“If you really look at us…you know I’m not the one for you.”
His eyes were scared. “Come home and talk to me.”
One more step back and I was successfully out of arm’s reach. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t. There’s no way.”
His entire expression hardened. “Why? Because of that detective? How does he rate a second chance but I don’t? I didn’t leave you for years and then just show up one day out of the blue. I never had you take a bullet for me! I never hurt you the way he did!”
I took a breath. “Because you can’t,” I said, because it was better that he knew so he could be done with me.
“What?”
“You could never hurt me the same way he could.”
We were both silent, letting my words seep in, and he suddenly saw the size of the chasm between us. I had to make him see it so he understood that there was no way to get back across.
He took a breath through his nose, stood rod-straight, and looked at me with flat eyes. “I could never hurt you like that because you never loved me enough to let me.”
I nodded slowly.
“God, Jory, you really love him.”
“He’s the only man I’ve ever loved,” I said, and he could hear the honesty.
And with that, he left.
He didn’t offer me a ride, which was a relief, and he didn’t look at me again. He just got back into his car and left me alone, standing on the sidewalk in the rain. There was no other way for it to have ended.
I remembered halfway home that I still had my cashmere trench coat at Dane’s office.
I was way too cold, soaked through every layer I had on, to catch the L and not end up getting hypothermia.
So I took the detour downtown to Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan.
I still had my key card for the after-hours elevator and another for the front door.
When I got off on the sixtieth floor, I went immediately to the glass door and knelt to unlock the bottom, surprised when it swung forward.
Someone was dead. Dane would murder whoever had forgotten to lock the door.
I was betting on his latest secretary, Kristin.
She had seemed perky when I talked to her on the phone, and Dane had called her energetic.
It wasn’t one of his better compliments.
I noticed as soon as I stepped inside that the alarm light was green, which meant it had been disarmed. Clearly someone was there.
Walking by the front desk where Piper usually sat, I saw a light on toward the end of the hall.
It wasn’t in Dane’s office, so I realized someone was burning the midnight oil.
Maybe it was Miles Brown. I slowly took off my lace-ups, not wanting to track water across the marble floors, and also, I could be silent that way.
I could slip up behind Miles and scare the crap out of him.
He had a high-pitched shriek when he was startled, and I knew this from the many other times I had taken years off his life by jumping out at him.
It was a lot of fun. But when I started down the hall, I realized Sherman Cogan was in his office instead.
When I poked my head in, he turned from where he stood beside the wall and looked at me. His smile was instant.
“Hello there, stranger,” he said warmly. “Come for your old job back?”
“No.” I shook my head, slipping into his office. “Just came for my coat.”
“I see. Looks like you could use one. What did you do, stand outside for an hour?”
“Only a half hour,” I teased, walking over beside him to look at the blueprints on his wall. “It’s pouring out there.”