Chapter 12 Legally Blonde–ing All the Way to Jail #2
I adjust the strap on the pricey leather crossbody cell phone case I bought in a different retail haze (separate from the light therapy mask and designer tote one) and briefly consider whether I might have a shopping problem. “I need to find food before we do anything.”
He twists his backpack around to his front and pulls out a L?rabar without looking at me.
Which I find thoroughly annoying considering I’m painfully aware of why I’m avoiding his eyeline—the general humiliation, regret, and shame from kissing my best friend when he was trapped in a locked van with me—but I can’t for the life of me understand why he’s avoiding mine .
I rip open the package. “You are an angel sent from heaven.”
“You always were easy to please,” he hums.
The sentence does something to my lungs. “Should we talk about…” He finally looks over at me and it’s too much. His slate-blue eyes bore through mine. I’d forgotten how intense those eyes could be. Like ice picks.
“About what?” he asks me, so infuriatingly nonchalant that he might already be enacting his ghosting protocols on me like he has on every other woman who’s slept in that stupid van. Like he did after my wedding, I think before suppressing the unwelcome comparison.
“About…” He trails off. He’s making me say it. I can’t believe he’s making me say it!
Two can play that game. I say nothing. My eyes stare back, daring him to say it. But he doesn’t flinch as the silence stretches around us like sticky taffy, and I can’t take it. I’m too tired. Too weak.
“We can just pretend it never happened if you’d like,” I offer.
He tilts his forehead up to the sky, an animal lounging in a sunbeam. “That would be impossible.”
I practically catapult off the hood of the van. “Hah! I knew you knew what I was talking about!”
He almost smiles, and I can finally take a breath. “As my legal representative, I was hoping you’d use your words.”
“I said I was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again—”
“To be clear, are we talking about when you lied to a police officer or the time you mauled me in—”
“ Mauled you! That is just…” I can hardly form a proper rebuttal. “That is…false! Just absolutely…You think…?” Pebbles ping against the metal bumper with my pacing. “No. No. You’re not putting this all on me. I heard zero complaints from you when we consensually touched mouths.”
His top lip curls upward in a micromovement of amusement. I force my eye line to a spot on the bridge of his nose.
“Leave it to you to make kissing sound revolting.”
My hands pin against my sides and clench into fists. “You kissed me back.”
“Oh, I one thousand percent kissed you back,” he replies. It stuns me. I didn’t anticipate such an enthusiastic admission of guilt. I’m a deer caught in his headlights. “And when you do it again,” he continues, “I’ll kiss you back that time too.”
How is he this relaxed? How many other women have this relationship with Ethan? Does he have “friends” he makes out with all across the contiguous United States? Dozens of Charleys, when I’ve only ever had one Ethan?
“Why do you keep saying ‘when it happens again’? It won’t happen again,” I promise him.
He confidently hops onto the gravel drive. “It will.”
I turn away and spot a crowd collecting in front of a building with wood slats and a white awning. “Then how about you wait here for that kiss, and I’ll go find coffee.”
“Charley.” He catches me by the shoulders and swivels me back around. “It doesn’t…,” he starts. His face twists every which way. “Everything doesn’t have to mean everything , you know? It can be one thing for one of us…and then something else, and then…who knows? You know?”
This scene is humiliating. The way he starts and stops is like watching a boat parallel park.
Mr. I Don’t Do Relationships is letting me down easy between a mud-caked camper van and a garbage can painted to look like Marvin the Martian.
I thought being left for a rowing machine while holding a plastic phallus was my rock bottom, but I hadn’t known the true depths of my personal indignity.
“Look.” I free myself from his grip. “We’re now friends who’ve…kissed each other. But our friendship means too much to me to let that one minute become some world-ending thing.” I couldn’t handle it being a world-ending thing. Even if I’m one of many, he’s so much more to me than that.
I start down the road, powered by avoidance and a desire for caffeine.
He follows me. “Hey.” He knocks my elbow with his, as though he’s not ready to let go of the time I made out with him in a broken-down van on a marathon route and got woken up by Alf Knudsen and his band of enforcers. “We ‘touched mouths’ for way longer than a minute.”
I grimace. “?‘Touched mouths’? Disgusting.”
“ You said that.” He lengthens his stride to catch up to me. “I was repeating what you said.”
“I can still plead ‘vulnerable divorcée’ for every embarrassing thing I do for the next six months. It’s my rolling affirmative defense.”
He grabs my wrist. “You know I can’t take you seriously when you speak legalese. You’re like three kids in a Chico’s blazer.”
“Chico’s?” I pull my arm back with a gasp. “I’m not your mom . My blazers are Sézane.”
Do I have a spending problem?
I have no choice but to stop when we reach our destination and fall into line at World’s Best Donuts, an old-school donut shop and an essential stop on any trip through Grand Marais per Midwest travel accounts.
“Is that supposed to impress me?” he asks.
“Is your endless supply of ratty band tees supposed to impress me ?” I flick his shoulder, trying to get a rise out of him.
He eyes me up and down in a way we don’t eye each other up and down. At least not when the other’s looking. “But you look so cute in my ratty band tees.”
The compliment immediately disarms me. I’ve always derived a bit too much pleasure from trading barbs with Ethan, but this sweetness? Absolutely lethal.
“Can you even eat here?” I ask, tilting my head at the store behind us. It’s obvious I’m deflecting.
He shakes his head. “Nah. This is just for you.”
Deep-fried dough, a love language.
“I’m getting Lewellen flashbacks of you at the Donut Barn.” The memories flood my body with warmth. I suddenly feel too aware of my hands and take a step back.
Clearing my throat, I remind us both why we’re here in the first place. “We should try Laurel and Petey again, just to make sure they’re not legally bound to each other yet.”
“You’ve texted them both thirty times. They’ve seen your wall of texts and are punishing you accordingly.” He twists me around by my fingers to snatch the phone from my hand, and we collide with a delicious thud. “They’ll wait, Chuck,” he reassures me. “You don’t need to overthink everything.”
One second passes. Then two. We’re nose to nose, chest to chest, fingers entwined around my phone.
The energy between us zings across my front and down my spine.
Last night, I wanted more—part of me still wants more—but this has to be enough.
This is what forever with a guy like Ethan looks like.
Roasting each other in line for donuts. Close but not too close. Never close enough to hurt.
He removes a strand of hair from my mouth, and I should be laughing at this—the way it gently tugs at my lips is like something out of a movie—but the way his eyes are locked on mine is so open and intense. This doesn’t feel like a choreographed move. But maybe that’s the move.
We move as one, stepping back so that I’m up against the barn-wood siding—alone in a crowd of hungry people. What must we look like? Should I care?
“I’ll always be your friend, Beekman. But I’m not going to pretend last night didn’t happen. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want it to happen again.” Something about his words—the way he says my last name, the way his eyes darken and his mouth moves—they make me feel naked.
Maybe we can’t pretend we never crossed that line, but this, this new energy between us, is dangerous. Flammable. Explosive.
If I hadn’t already had my mulligan kiss, I’d take it now. No question.
But he’s not the one playing with fire here.
What happens if we have another meaningless, messy make-out next to this family in matching tie-dye T-shirts waiting for a box of bear claws?
By this time next week, Laurel and Petey will be having a relationship-ending fight over cabinet knobs in an Anthropologie, Ethan will be long gone, and I’ll be alone—in my big empty house—replaying the way my friend’s mouth felt on mine until I die.
He’ll have no problem dropping out of my life for the next adventure, just as he had no problem skipping my wedding.
I’ll be the only one left feeling the loss of him like a missing rib.
So instead of doing the thing my body craves like oxygen, I grab my phone from his hand and shove it between us, a sexual buffer. He instantly backs up.
“Do you think they’ll have…” My mouth further detaches from my brain with each syllable. “A maple log?”
Ethan looks back at me. Like he’s still deciding his next maneuver. Can he hear inside my brain? He seems all too aware of what he’s doing to me, but he’s been hiding so much of himself since the moment he showed up on my driveway. Again, I’m left wondering what he’s about to do next.
Never breaking eye contact, he replies in a low, gravelly voice, “Do you want me to check? On the maple log?” Donuts have never sounded so erotic.
I nod and direct my focus toward connecting to the Wi-Fi of the neighboring bookstore. “That’d be great. I’m gonna try Laurel again.”
Only once he’s out of sight do I realize I’d much rather have a Bavarian cream.