Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ROB
She’s so beautiful, with her eyelashes flat against her cheek, her legs tucked up, her arm slung across her chest.
Fuck, am I the kind of creep who watches women while they sleep? I guess I am now. I don’t think I mind too much either.
Last night changed me. Just like the night I met Travis all those years ago. It was at an open mic night, and I was falling-down drunk. I played one of the songs I cowrote with David, and Travis told me I’d covered it better than Bad Magic played it. I told him my whole sad story, something I remembered none of the next morning, and he told me we were going to make something great together. Better than my old band. I told him all I could make right then was a garbage fire.
Game. Set. Match.
I want to build something great with Sophie too. I’m not sure how yet, but I figure most great things aren’t built in one night. We’re off to a good start, though. We’ve given this thing between us a foundation of truth, and if you ask me, that’s the strongest foundation possible.
I decide to make pancakes, then realize I only have flour and eggs, so I settle for eggs and toast. And coffee, obviously.
I’m in the middle of making breakfast when I get Travis’s text.
We’re all set for your birthday. Did you go see about a girl last night?
I did. Thanks, man.
Sophie comes up behind me while I’m still at the stove. I turn toward her, and she wraps her arms around my neck. I think to myself, I could get used to this.
Then I notice she’s wearing one of my band T-shirts, and I like it. My God, how I like it. My T-shirt. My woman. Mine .
“I stayed over,” she says into my ear, her breath soft on my neck.
“You did.” I set the spatula down. “Could you please leave now, before it gets awkward?”
Her hair is mussed, and the lines from my pillow are pressed into her face. It’s as if my bed has decided she’s ours too. I pull her closer and kiss her neck, her cheek. I try to kiss her lips, but she pulls back, smiling. “I have morning breath. You really will want me to leave if you kiss me.”
“I won’t, but there’s an extra toothbrush under the sink, if you’d like to use it.”
She glances down at the shirt, then folds her arms over her chest.
“Uh-oh,” I say. “You’re about to insist that you really need to leave. Your arms tell the whole story.” I shrug, soaking in those pillow lines and the sight of her in my band’s T-shirt. That does things to me.
“No,” she says, dropping them abruptly. Then she laughs. “Okay, maybe. I just…I have a shift later, and I haven’t had a chance to shower. I feel grubby.”
“You look absolutely delicious in my T-shirt. It’s giving me all kinds of ideas.”
“Really?” she says, sounding pleased and plenty surprised, which she really shouldn’t be. I figured it was common knowledge that if you want to drive a guy crazy, you wear his band’s shirt.
“ Really. ”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Did this just become my shirt?”
“Sure. You can have my whole wardrobe.”
She smiles. “That’s unnecessary. But I’d be happy to eat some burned eggs.”
“How dare you. These eggs are undercooked.”
“Were undercooked.” Her smile turns wicked. “You’ve been distracted.”
Of course, that’s when the charred scent reaches my nose. “Burned eggs coming right up.”
Laughing, she leans in and kisses my cheek.
I take the eggs off the burner, inspect them, and throw them in the trash. “I have cereal or cold toast.”
“I’ll have coffee,” she says.
I watch as she pours it, looking at home in my kitchen, very much like she belongs there.
“I have to go meet Emil at the park, but why don’t we stop at Dottie’s place for breakfast?” I say, speaking like a man who wasn’t there yesterday morning. I don’t want Sophie to leave me yet. I’m not ready to release the spell that was cast last night.
She looks at me with an amused twinkle in her eyes. “First the crystal in your bedsheets, and now you want to go to Dottie’s place for breakfast?”
“I know,” I say, shaking my head theatrically. “It’s like I’ve been drinking Pollyanna juice, or eating Pollyanna p?—”
Laughing, she presses her hand to my mouth. “Don’t you dare.”
I kiss her palm. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She laughs harder, pulling her hand back. “Yes, you would.”
“You know me well.”
She glances thoughtfully into her coffee cup, as if it’s full of tea leaves that might spell out the future for her. “I’m still worried about standing between you and your family. I don’t want you to regret?—”
I brush my thumb over her cheek. “What I’d regret is if I didn’t give this a real shot because of them. If I let them stand in the way of something that could be really great. Besides, you’re the person who’s going to help me form a new family.” Her eyes widen, and I realize how that sounded. “Don’t worry, Soph. I was talking about Emil. But if you’re really desperate for me to knock you up, I’ll give it a try.”
She laughs, but I still see the worry in her. I feel it.
“Listen, I’m better off without them. Every time I’m around my dad or Jonah, I get dragged down. Depressed. Isn’t that a good reason to stay away?”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “But it shouldn’t be final. It should be…don’t you want to leave the door cracked open?”
I give her a sad smile, because I’m feeling her losses, which she spelled out for me last night. The parents who pawned her off on a reform school. The grandparents who never said their last goodbye. “That’s the way the monsters creep in, or slip in an RSVP card with fish circled.”
She smiles back, her expression just as rueful. “I guess I’m projecting. You’re right. My parents are never going to change, so I need to stop wanting it. I’ve got Aunt Penny, and Otis is…we’ve become really close now that I’m no longer trying to steer him away from making my mistakes.”
I rub my thumb over her cheek again, then lower my head to kiss her. “Don’t you dare forget Mrs. Ginnis.”
She pulls back to meet my gaze. “That wedding really made an impression on you.”
“Damn straight. And it changed you too. You made a promise to be good to yourself, and you have been. You’ve started accepting yourself, and it’s been beautiful to watch.”
“Rob…I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t even know who I am anymore.” There’s a warning in her tone. Maybe I’m a fool for ignoring it, but I’d be no less of a fool if I let her push me away because she’s worried I’ll leave her.
“It’s all jumbled together,” she continues, swallowing hard. “I almost had a panic attack last night, after we TPed Jonah’s house. I felt like I was that girl again, the one who’d done something stupid and caused so much trouble. It’s like I’m struggling with who I was back then, who I’ve tried to be, and who I am beneath it.”
“I like all of them.”
“You didn’t,” she says, her voice serious. “What if?—”
“I like all of them. I’m fucking floored that you’re still able to see the positive side of things after what happened to you. That’s magic. Even if being optimistic is something you’ve done consciously.”
“You mean after what I did. It didn’t happen to me, Rob. I did it.”
“I’ve made hundreds of mistakes and nearly ruined my own life dozens of times. I’m not going to judge you for that. You took responsibility for what you did, and you grew from it.”
Her eyes well up with tears. “Fuck me,” I say. “I didn’t mean to make you cry again.”
“They’re good tears,” she says, smiling. “Like rain on a sunny day.”
“Who the hell wants it to rain on a sunny day?”
She leans in to kiss my cheek. “Me, I guess. There’s something beautiful about the mixture of happy and sad. I… I still wish the fire hadn’t happened. I’ll always wish that. It caused so much harm, even though no one was seriously hurt. But I wouldn’t willingly say goodbye to the life I have now. To the friendship I have with Hannah and Briar. And Otis. And…I wouldn’t have you.” She looks into my eyes, and I can see different versions of the future in them, each of them with us front and center.
“Damn, Sophie. It’s like you’re begging me to write a song right now.”
“Maybe I am,” she says softly, smiling even as tears course down her cheeks. “Maybe we’re writing one together. It’s a song I’d like to listen to.”
“Me too. I guess we should get on that.” I trace the tracks of her tears, then kiss them softly, my hand burrowing into her hair. Then I kiss her lips, wet from her tears. “I’m falling in love with you, Sophie. I didn’t expect it, but that’s the truth. I think it started the first time I saw that video of you throwing the ring in Jonah’s face. I’ve watched it a thousand times.”
Her eyes widen, and I wonder if I’ve pushed her too far. “If that’s saying too much, you can blame my council of elders,” I say, hoping to recapture some levity. “The Wise Women Group were very insistent that I should tell you how I feel.”
“They were right,” she says, getting onto her tiptoes to press a soft kiss to my face. “But will you give me a little time to figure all of this out?”
“All the time you need.”
I kiss her neck, her cheek, her lips.
She makes a soft sound. “I should really take a shower.”
“Me too,” I say. “Want to be water-efficient?”
“ Yes .”
I lift her up, and she wraps her legs around my waist—completely bare aside from that T-shirt.
I push open the bathroom door with my back, my mouth on hers. If she had any real worry about morning breath, it’s evaporated, thank God, because she’s kissing me back just as feverishly. I set her down on the bathroom counter so I can pull my clothes off, and she watches me, her gaze hot, her legs splayed open. I step into them, accepting the silent invitation.
“It would be a pity to take that T-shirt off.” I slide my hand under it, caressing. Squeezing. Appreciating.
Her head tips back, giving me access to her neck, and I press a kiss to it, gratified to see the mark I left there who knows when.
“It would be more of a pity to leave it on,” she says huskily, and when she’s right, she’s right.
I step away to turn on the shower, and remember we still need the next condom from the strip in the bedroom. When I turn toward the door, she thrusts out her leg to bar my path. “You’re not allowed to leave me in here.”
“You can’t shower alone?” I tease.
“Not anymore. There’s a spot on my back that’s very hard to reach.”
“I’ll be happy to assist you. But I need to grab the neon green condom.”
She keeps her leg in my path, firmly pressed against me, “I’m on birth control. And I’ve gotten tested, you know, since…
I feel like a firebomb just exploded inside of me. That asshole. That fucking piece of shit. Imagine having Sophie and deciding she wasn’t enough…
I grit my teeth and force myself to concentrate on what she’s telling me. Because, oh, fuck…
“I’ve always used condoms,” I say.
“I want you inside of me now. Without anything between us.” She lowers that sexy leg. “If that’s okay. I mean, if you really want to make it through the rainbow, we can. I don’t want to destroy our goal by?—”
I lean in and kiss her hard. She opens her legs wider for me, and is it strictly necessary for us to make it into the shower? Because I want her here, in my shirt. I press closer to her, and she makes a sound deep in her throat, angling her head back far enough that it touches the mirror, her long hair a tumble down her back. Her legs cinch around me, pulling me in close.
I reach down to touch her, finding her ready for me, so damn ready, and the strangled sound that releases from her lips into mine tells me it’s time. So I line myself up and push in—slowly at first, enjoying the difference in sensation, the fierce pleasure of being inside her like this, skin to skin, raw. And then I can’t take it anymore, so I drive in deep. Sophie rocks forward, taking me deeper, her heels urgent against the small of my back.
“Oh my,” she whispers.
Oh my indeed. I pull out and thrust in again, grabbing hold of her hair. Needing the feeling of her to engulf me and change me even more than it already has.
“You feel like a revelation,” I pant into her ear. Then I tug at the hem of the shirt, because she’s right—as good as it is on, it’ll be better off. She helps me tug it off over her head, and then I carry her—still buried inside her—into the shower stall, where the warm water rains down on us.
Like rain on a sunny day.
The words sing inside of me, another addition to the record of us, as I press her back into the wall. My mouth and my hands and my dick are all desperate for her. She’s soaked with water, soft and wet and so beautiful it hurts.
So beautiful it hurts.
That’s part of our song too, part of us, and I drive into her again, and again, feeling her clenching around me, falling apart. The sight of her like this—lips parted, eyes closed, neck taut and hair a wet tumble—shoves me over the edge into a kind of abyss. Pleasure spirals and curls around us as I clutch her to me. I don’t want to let her go, but everything in life has an ending. It’s what makes this time we spend alive so special. So painful.
I gently set her down on her feet, my arms still around her, and hold her as the water cascades over us, until we’ve recovered enough to actually use the shower for its intended purpose. And then I clean that spot between her shoulder blades, determined to treat her every bit as well as she deserves.
“Wow,” she says, pressing her face into my chest beneath the constant stream of water.
“Wow,” I repeat. “I may be unqualified to offer a scientific opinion, but I’d say this scientific experiment has had pretty definitive results.”
“It’s my unscientific opinion that you’re right. I’ve been feeling pretty lucky lately. Do you think it’s because of your lucky guitar pick?”
“Or maybe your unlucky penny. Maybe we should keep carrying them around just to be sure.”
Laughing, she slicks my hair back from my face. “I’ll make a Pollyanna of you yet.”
Maybe she already has, because it feels like we’re floating along on a cloud with no care for the miles of open air just beneath us.
Before we leave, I slip away for five minutes, saying I have to discuss the band’s rehearsal schedule with Travis, which is enough time for me to call Dottie and make some arrangements.
When we get to Tea of Fortune, Dottie is waiting for us. So is the rest of the Wise Women Group.
“Didn’t we do this yesterday?” I ask.
“None of us have lost our sense of time yet, young buck,” Constance says. “But we weren’t going to miss out on the fun.”
Sophie looks confused, but before she can start asking questions, I hurry to introduce her to all of the women, giving Ann credit for her excellent taste in scratch-off tickets.
Dottie leads us to the booth directly next to their table, then hurries back moments later with two partially full cups of milky tea. “Now, drink those down, my dears, and I’ll read your fortunes.”
She stays glued to her spot, and it’s obvious she has no intention of walking away to give us a private moment. Fair enough. I glance across the table at Sophie, who looks confused but a little excited. Like she knows something’s up but sees the glass as half full.
Sophie finishes her tea first and then gasps as she sees what’s written at the bottom of her cup. She turns to me. “Rob?”
Like clockwork, Ann brings over a bouquet of flowers, and Constance turns on ABBA’s “I Have a Dream” on her phone, most likely suppressing an eyeroll.
I offer the flowers to Sophie with a flourish. “Will you go to the prom with me, Sophie Ginnis?”
That’s what’s written in the bottom of her teacup, more or less, space permitting.
Sophie laughs. “Are you asking me to crash the high school prom with you next spring?”
“We could try, if you insist. But that’s not what this is about. I’m playing at the Orange Peel a week from Thursday. It’s an eighties’ cover party, and our set is short. I figured maybe we could treat it like the prom. Give you the experience you never had. We can rent a limo, bring your friends. We’ll dance, Sophie.”
She’s gaping at me, looking mostly pleased, thank God, and then she says, “But that’s your birthday.”
“Did Jonah tell you?” I ask, shocked by the thought. It definitely doesn’t seem like something he’d say or even remember.
“ I did,” Dottie says, still beside our table, overseeing the promposal like she’s our conductor. “I’ve always made a point of knowing when you young people have your special days.”
I smile at her. “Thanks, Dottie. I think I’ve got this from here.”
I half expect her to sit down next to me, but she joins her friends while I turn to face Sophie. “Yeah, it’s my birthday, and this is the way I want to spend it.”
She beams at me, then leans across the table to kiss me. Which causes the older women next to us to cheer, although I hear Ann shouting, “Did she say yes?”
The three of them invite us to eat with them. They pull up an extra chair, and we have breakfast at their table, while everyone but Constance fusses over us. When it’s time to go, Dottie gives us a to-go container stuffed with treats for Emil. Despite never having met him, she’s adamant that “great things” are in store for him. I can’t say I don’t like hearing it.
Then Sophie and I meet Emil at the park. He’s feeling confident about our chances that I’ll be approved to foster, and so am I. Right now it doesn’t feel like anything could pull me down from this cloud.
Emil and I serenade Sophie. I’ve come to appreciate the wholesome kind of fun she likes to engage in almost as much as her dirty side. So when she suggests that the three of us put on the temporary tattoos I’ve had in my glove box for the last couple of days, I don’t say no. I just ask who has a bottle of water so we can apply them.
Before Emil leaves with the dog, he asks me if we can have a talk, man to man. So I walk a ways away with him while Sophie sits under the tree with a paperback she had in her purse.
“It’s not fake anymore, is it?” he asks when we’re far enough that she probably can’t hear.
“No,” I admit. “Doesn’t feel fake at all.”
“You should do something nice for her,” he says, drumming a fist over his heart.
“You’re right about that.” I glance back at the tree, at Sophie with the breeze ruffling her hair. I turn back and we continue walking. “I gave her a promposal.”
He laughs. “Aren’t you kind of old for that?”
“Absolutely. But if I can’t handle making a fool of myself for her, then I don’t deserve her.”
I explain what I did while he regards me with serious eyes. Then he nods. “All right. I’ll remember that. You’ve got some moves, man.”
A little later, I drop Sophie off at her car. I spend a couple of hours working on my new songs in the park, and then I meet Travis and Bix at the Beat to practice. They share a few knowing headshakes over the tonal change in the new songs, but they like them.
I sense something’s still off with Travis, though. He has that hollow-eyed look he gets when he hasn’t been sleeping right. I ask him about it when Bixby is in the bathroom, but he just shakes his head.
“It’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing.”
He shrugs, glancing out the window at the parking lot beneath us like he’s thinking of pulling a runner. Then he looks back at me with worried eyes. “I’m going to sound like one of the old geezers in a prison movie, but I think a storm’s coming.”
“Because of that call from Lilah?”
He shrugs, his expression helpless. “I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling, but I’m having a hard time shaking it.”
Storm’s coming.
For the rest of the day, that phrase keeps repeating in my head, and it stays with me as I go to bed. If I were a more superstitious man, I’d say it’s downright ominous.