6. 2
He glanced up from shaking parmesan onto his next slice. “Why’s that?”
“Probably something to do with being raised by a single mom. Being told practically since I was born to guard my heart.” I’d never told any guy I’d dated about Michael. I never expected them to side with me on how things ended, as if some bro bond would make them see me as less. The way Michael did.
But I didn’t get that sense from Jason, and he wasn’t interested in dating me. “Also…it didn’t help that the first guy I ever dated seriously, straight out of high school, was so mean to me. He was my first time, my first a lot of things. I thought I was in love with him, even though I never felt close to him. And even though he was amazing at—” I cut off as the waitress mercifully brought refills of our drinks, because I was about to overshare re: my breasts. She walked off, and I soldiered on. “Honestly, sex with him wasn’t…satisfying. He was more experienced, but he still didn’t know what he was doing. He never let me in emotionally, never would commit to being my boyfriend, not even over the two years we dated.”
“That sucks.” And he looked into my eyes as he said it, as if he’d really been listening and really meant it.
“Well, it gets worse. I broke up with him because he hit on Lily.”
He stopped with a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. “What the fuck. Are you serious?”
I brought my shoulders up in a tiny little shrug. “Yeah.”
His slice of pizza held off to the side, forgotten, outrage coating his features. “What’s the matter with him?”
“I mean, I get that Lily’s prettier, and smarter, and more charming than me. Everybody likes her better. I’m used to that. But an intimate relationship? That’s kind of the one type of relationship that was supposed to put me at the top, above everyone else. You know?”
Jason had watched me silently, concern and outrage all over his face as I talked. Now his pizza was back on his plate and his hands were in fists, like he wanted to deck Michael. I wanted to deck him too.
“What a piece of shit. First off…what a piece of shit. If I ever meet this guy, and I’m not a violent man, I might punch him in the face.”
“You could totally take him.”
“Second, that’s not the first time I’ve heard you say that about your sister, but you’re selling yourself short. Yeah, Lily’s okay, but you’re objectively the more beautiful sister. Alex and I both think so.”
I looked down at my pizza, wholly embarrassed. “You don’t have to build me up, Jason, that’s not why I told you this.”
“I’m not building you up. I’m being factual.”
“You and your brother were not comparing Guidry sisters. Don’t give me that shit.”
“He had too much to drink at the shower, and he ranked the bridesmaids by hotness. You came out on top.” He put a hand to his chest. “I was, of course, too gentlemanly to participate, but I’m entitled to my opinions.”
“I do like being on top.” I snorted. “Alex is a little shit. Where would you place me?” I dared to ask. “Or are you also too much of a gentleman to tell me?”
He smiled and rested his cheek on his fist—ugh, death by dimples. “Exactly where you like to be.” He raised his eyebrows once.
I looked away first and laughed. My face flooded with heat, and my panties just plain flooded. Was Deck Daddy…flirting with me?
No, that was ridiculous.
“Yeah. Sure.” I rolled my eyes.
“Seriously, though. Are you doing okay?” he asked. “With the break-up?”
I took a deep breath and let it out, avoiding his big, earnest eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. Like I said, we weren’t close. We weren’t even friends. It was kind of…a soulless relationship. I’m more upset with myself for getting involved with him in the first place.”
He smiled sadly and briefly rested his hand on mine, squeezing and releasing. The short contact zipped electricity up my arm. “You deserve so much better.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
After we finished eating, I stacked our plates and wiped all the drink condensation and parmesan off to the side. Conversation changing time. “I have something to show you, and I don’t want you to make fun of me because I was just having fun when I couldn’t sleep last night and I truly don’t think it’s useful but if it is in any way, yay.”
I dug in my purse and half-unfolded two of the community room printouts that I stole from his stack in the middle of the night. “I went in to do laundry, but your discard stack was calling me, and I wanted to look at something other than fabric for a minute.” I stopped one unfold away from the reveal.
“And I know I have some nerve showing this to someone so talented, especially when I don’t know shit about construction or if anything I sketched is possible. But maybe it’ll give you an idea, at least.”
He finished wiping pizza grease off his hands and set the napkin on the plates. “Well don’t hold back, let me see it. I need all the help I can get.”
I took a breath and laid it out on the table then sat up on my knees to show him the sketch that sparked my idea. “I liked your rejects like this one, where you flipped the rectangle sideways to make the house wider than deeper. But it didn’t make sense to me to have all the bedrooms on one side when you’d have all this awkward space here.” I pointed to a den he’d sketched out with a balcony ringing it.
“That’s exactly when I tossed this one.”
“Yeah, it would be a nice room, but you’ll be entertaining in the church, not the community center, right? This part of the house is meant to be more private for you and your family, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted.”
I took that paper away and revealed my piss poor sketch underneath that one. He regarded it very seriously with knitted brows.
“So I kept most of the high ceiling and opened it up to this breakfast area, closer to the kitchen. So now your main stairs are here by this back door, with a mudroom, but I moved the back stairs over here…” I dragged my finger to the back of the structure. “And now you kind of have this gallery area over the middle area to connect your master bedroom to your other bedrooms, to give you some privacy.” I couldn’t bring myself to say to give you and your wife some privacy. “And it allows for the library and the media room you wanted to be separated, separated. And then you get this fun upstairs bonus area, and this fun downstairs bonus area, i.e. spaces I didn’t know what to do with.”
He met my eyes. When did I get so close to his face?
“Rose?” He grabbed my face and warmly kissed my forehead. “I love your brain.”
He released me and picked up the drawing, sitting back in his seat to study it while my third eye’s orgasm radiated to every part of my body.
“I never once thought of putting a gallery here, but it’s brilliant. And I can fill these bonus spaces because I’d planned on arranging the bedrooms a little differently—plus adding more bathrooms. I love the idea of the master being separated but on the same floor as the other bedrooms.”
He stared at me, and I tried to pretend my heart wasn’t going a mile a minute by gorging myself on the last piece of cheese bread. “Girl. You just broke my designer’s block. Damnit, I wish I hadn’t left the blank ones at home, because now I have all these ideas.”
Sipping from my drink, I reached into my bag, where I’d stashed a handful of blank copies. I handed them and one of his drafting pencils to him with a smile.
The dimples came out to play. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re the freaking best?”
I laughed and scooted out of my seat. “Have fun—I’m gonna hit the potty. I’m good with staying as long as you want to work.”
About an hour and a half later, we finally made it into Alabama. Jason put on “Sweet Home Alabama” because he said it was mandatory listening whenever you crossed into the state, but traffic was still thick, and we had a long way to go.
He was singing along and in the driving zone, having captured all his new ideas at the restaurant before we left. But I was all revved up with extra sexual energy after watching him professionally sketch a house layout with those hands in such a small amount of time. And after that forehead kiss? Good lord.
Lenny Kravitz’s “Always on the Run” rang out—Mom texting that she and Lily were safely in Texas with her best friend from college. I texted her back, updating her on my situation, and pulled out my iPad to work on sketches for her wedding dress. She knew she wanted something simple and elegant, but also, in her words, “more princessy than a woman my age is supposed to dress for her second wedding.” I’d started on some options for her, but I hadn’t had time to work on it for the past week.
Before long, the car faded away from my notice, taking with it all residual, icky thoughts of Michael, the stress of moving and evacuating, and the increasing sexual tension between me and the cunnilingus lover over there. Fuck me, now I was imagining his face between my legs. Great. Now I was aroused and agitated again. Steely Dan was officially on the menu tonight.
We slowed down into a snarl of traffic, and I barely noticed Jason grab his phone. Taylor Swift’s “Gorgeous” played from my phone, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
His shoulders shook with quiet laughter as adrenaline kicked through my system. I fumbled to turn off the ringer, but it was Too. Late. Just like in the song, I could barely look at his smile.
“That’s an improvement over ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ Do you have songs for everybody in your contact list?”
“Fuck you,” I muttered, smiling despite my burning cheeks.
He laughed harder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you stop drawing. I love watching artists draw.”
My face was about to catch fire. “Thank you.”
“Are you planning a general design, or is that for someone?”
“Um…it’s…” I guess I hadn’t told him. “It’s for my mom.” I turned on the layer with the little Mom character I drew.
“Ah, your mom’s getting married.”
“I probably didn’t mention it,” I said softly, trying to remove emotion from my voice.
“Do you not like Steve? Or is it about your dad?” He asked gently, checking his mirrors as he changed lanes.
“No, nothing like that. Steve’s great, my dad’s somewhere in the wind. Who cares? I just wasn’t expecting it. From her.”
He nodded, jutting his chin out, eyes darting around like he was going to ask a follow-up question.
“I like to draw the person I’m making dresses for,” I blurted before he could say anything else. “Then draw revisions of dresses in layers so they can virtually try them on before I sew anything.”
“That’s cool. You did that for Becca, too?”
“Yeah! I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Show me later. I can’t really look while I’m driving.”
A few moments of silence later, he spoke again. “Would it throw you off to play a driving game with me? Keep me alert?”
“Mmmmaybe not. What kind of driving game?”
His face lit up with mischief as he changed lanes again. “Maybe…truth or dare?”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?” If he was trying to get me to admit that I wanted to know what his cock tasted like, he’d be disappointed. Because that was a truth I’d never reveal.
“Yeah, why not?”
“How do you play it?” I asked, with a long-suffering intonation.
“You’ve never played truth or dare?”
“Not really.”
“Alright—you can pick it up as we go. You first. Pick one: truth, or dare?”
“I have to come up with a dare?”
“No, you’re picking if you’re gonna tell a truth or do a dare. And then…” He tossed me a smile. “I’ll either ask you an intrusive question or dare you to do something ridiculous.”
No way was I picking truth. “Okay, dare.”
“Ha-haa!” he crowed. “Okay let me think of a good one.” He looked all around the car, at the summer afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees. “I’ve never played it in a car before. Ooh! I know. Moon the cars in the other lane.”
“No way!” I squealed. “I’m not mooning anybody. Believe me, those days are long over.”
He did a double take. “What days? You had mooning days?”
I laughed. “No, I used to be…” How could I say this? “A lot more open to public nudity.”
He blinked and shook his head like he was dizzy. “Wow, okay. So since you didn’t want to do the dare, you have to tell a truth, or you lose the game.”
“Did you give me a dare you knew I wouldn’t do, on purpose, to get me to tell you a truth?”
“While strategy is an important part of any game, it’s even more important after your public nudity statement.”
His dimples should be outlawed. I sighed loudly so he knew how I felt about it. “Okay, but don’t forget you’re next. What do you want to know?”
“Um, about the public nudity, obviously.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “In college, I made extra money…posing as a nude model for art classes.”
He looked at me one too many times. In my brain, I reclined naked on a chaise, and his brown eyes traced the peaks of my breasts, licking his lips as he imagined how it would feel to trace them with his tongue.
I bit my lip and resisted squirming in my seat because he kept looking at me. “Eyes on the road, Deck Daddy.”
“So wait. That shy teenager I took to prom, just a few years later, was dropping robe to pose naked in front of a bunch of strangers?” His voice was all honest curiosity, gentle surprise. No judgment.
“Maybe…yeah. It started as foreplay with my boyfriend at the time, who was in the class. And then, after we broke up—well it was decent money for sitting there doing nothing.” I put my face in my hands. “You cannot tell a soul. I’ve never even told Lily.”
“I’m speechless.”
Because he was imagining me naked, or because he couldn’t imagine me naked? My face heated. “It’s not much different from what you do.”
“I think you’ll find my shorts are always on, but yeah. You have a point.”
“Okay, smart ass, it’s my turn. Truth or dare?”
“Dare!” he said immediately.
“Well shit. I don’t have a dare picked out.” Not that I had a truth, either. The only thing I wanted to know was if he was experiencing the overwhelming sexual attraction to me that I had for him, but I couldn’t very well ask my landlord that.
I wracked my brain, looking around the car. “Damnit, I can’t think of anything you can do safely while driving that isn’t lame. It’s so not fair. We’ll have to play another round when we get there. Um…I dare you to…oh, I know! Compose a haiku for me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Compose a haiku? Like right now?”
“Yeah. Compose a haiku about me.”
He laughed. “ About you. Okay. That’s clever, I’ll give you that. Give me a minute to think.”
He sat in silence for a while, tapping out syllables on the steering wheel. I went back to my drawing, trying to ignore his cute little giggles as he worked. “This is hard,” he said.
“I believe in you.”
He picked up his drink from lunch and slurped the last of it through the straw. He cleared his throat. “Okay, here you go. It’s not my finest work, but it’ll do. A haiku about Rose: Beautiful and sweet …”
I exaggerated an awwww .
“ Likes to pose naked for art …”
I guffawed. “Hey! That’s not nice.”
He laughed through the last verse. “ Can’t beat me at Nerf. ”
We laughed together for a minute, and I sighed at the end. “I have regrets.”
“Clever, but weak sauce, Guidry. Weak. Sauce. You’re gonna have to up your game if you want to get a truth out of me. My turn. Truth or dare?”
“I’m picking truth because you’re just gonna give me some ridiculous dare you know I won’t do.”
He grinned. “You’re probably right. So you’re going with Truth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“On your bucket list. Am I J.S.?” He glanced at me, his grin too adorable to be allowed.
Heat flooded my face. “I knew that was gonna come back to haunt me.” He could already see my whole hand of cards and now he wanted his own personal time machine visit into my middle school brain? I carefully put my iPad away to buy time. The way out of this was labyrinthine, and my mind wasn’t up to the task.
He probably only thought of me as Lily’s little sister and his one-time classmate, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to admit the truth. But I didn’t want him to think I was coming on to him, especially this soon after breaking up with Isaac—not that that had even registered on a heartbreak scale. Sure, we were both single, but he wasn’t looking for anything physical. And that’s all I had to offer.
I guess honesty was perennially the best policy.
“Fine. Yes. I had a big crush on you in middle school. Are you happy now?”
“Yeah, I’m actually very happy right now.” He smiled, checking his mirrors as he took the right fork in the interstate. “Like the whole time? Or what?”
Dimples. Outlawed. I stuck my tongue out at him. “From the first day of sixth grade, asshole. Your turn. Truth or dare?”
“I’ll take one for the team and go straight for the truth.”
“Okay. Did you have a crush on me in middle school?”
He winced. “Don’t be mad, but I didn’t.”
I turned one of the vents to blow directly on my hot face, shrugging like I wasn’t disappointed. “I can’t help it if you have shitty taste in women.”
“Or maybe next time ask me about after middle school.”
Oh God, he was flirting with me. I smiled and looked away. “If you weren’t driving, I’d throw something at you. In fact, from here till the condo, all I’ll do is brainstorm items to throw at you later.”
His dimples dug in deeper. “Truth or dare?”
“I guess truth again. Why the fuck not?”
“No, I’ll throw you a softball. Take the dare.”
“Okay, dare.”
“Grab me a Coke from the cooler right behind my seat and pour it into my cup.”
I snorted, but I reached for the drink and popped the top. “That’s even lamer than my dare.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No, no! Not complaining. Here.” I did as he asked, handed it to him, and thirstily eyed his Adam’s apple bob as he drank it. I pulled my goddess cards out again, both to act disinterested and to have something to do with my hands.
“Truth or dare?” I asked him.
“Truth.”
“Did you have a crush on me after middle school?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I did.”
“Really? When?” Because if it was now, I might be in trouble.
“Sorry, Guidry. One question per round.”
“That’s not fair! You asked me two questions.” Maybe it was after prom?
He shrugged. “You didn’t call me on it. Truth or Dare?”
I sighed heavily through my nose, but only to be dramatic. “Fine. Truth.”
He licked his lips. “Was I your first kiss?”
I threw my head back laughing. “I wondered when that would come up!”
“So you do remember.”
I nodded. “How would I not remember my first kiss? Your end of year party. In your pool house.”
“So I really was?”
“Yeahp.” I tapped my lips with my fingers. “My first kiss.”
“Mine, too.”
His quiet admission cast the whole memory in a different light. My heart had practically stopped when he spun the bottle and it pointed at me. Our friends and classmates had whooped at the idea of him having to kiss weird, awkward Rose. Everybody knew he had a crush on Julia Roy, even Julia Roy, who had a crush on Caleb D.
“You know,” he said softly, “I’ll never forget what you said to me when we met in the middle of the circle. Do you remember?”
“No, but I’m sure it was something unforgivably awkward.”
“You said, ‘I bet you regret inviting me, now.’ And I couldn’t get that out of my head, the whole summer. I couldn’t get you or our kiss out of my head all summer.”
A heavy dullness sat in my chest. I had been stuck in his head? I never really believed it was possible for people to think about me when I wasn’t right in front of them. It surprised me, every time, that I wasn’t entirely forgettable.
The silence between us lengthened, only permeated by the hum of the tires on the road and the Beatles’s “She Loves You” on the radio. I flipped through my cards, studying the lines of Hera, Kuan Yin, Lakshmi.
I’d spun fantasies about him for almost a year after that kiss. Him calling my house. Him showing up on my doorstep on his bike. For him to have actually thought about me was incomprehensible.
But it was also really, really cool.
“Is that why you agreed to take me to my prom?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t agree to a truth.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve mentally thrown a throw pillow, a roll of toilet paper, and a sofa cushion at your head already. Wait till we get there.”
“So violent!” He checked his mirrors, laughing, and passed the McDonald’s 18-wheeler we’d been following for too long.
“Fine then. Tell me, kind sir, would you prefer Truth, or Dare?”
“Hmmm. You seem to want me to say Truth, I guess, so I’ll say…Dare.”
I pursed my lips. “I dare you to tell me why you took me to my prom.”
If the sudden scrunching of his nose was any indication, I wasn’t going to like the answer. “Well, you know I had a girlfriend at the time.”
“That was the word on the street.”
He blew out a breath. “Becca was moving out, and Alex and I were fighting over who got to move out of our room and into her big bedroom with the balcony. Mom and Dad told Becca she could decide.”
“Jason Soniat. You took me to prom to get a better room?”
“Kinda? I mean I had a girlfriend! But it wasn’t like it was much of a sacrifice. I got a bigger room, and I got to go to a beautiful girl’s prom.”
“ Stooooooooooop . My big night was a bargaining chip in balcony room negotiations? And don’t act like you enjoyed yourself. You were miserable the whole time.”
Brown eyes under furrowed brows flitted to me. “I wasn’t miserable. When you did talk, I liked hearing what you had to say. Not only that, but Jesus, you were so hot in that silky black dress, I felt like such a stud. You know what would’ve made it more fun? If you would’ve danced with me more than once.”
“I danced with you.”
“Yeah, but then that old song came on you liked—by The Bee Gees? And I asked you if you wanted to dance, and you turned me down.”
“God, how do you even remember that? I wanted to dance with you, but I did you a favor by turning you down. You only asked to be nice.” I bit my lip. More hurt was creeping into my voice than I’d intended. I stared out at the green hills of Alabama passing outside the window. Maybe I should suggest we play I Spy or Would You Rather instead. Because this didn’t make sense. All this time, I’d used my prom as another prime example of me being defective. Unworthy of a man’s interest. I couldn’t find my own date, and I bored to tears the poor guy who’d gotten guilted into going with me.
“Maybe I wanted to dance with you,” he said softly.
He was only trying to make me feel better. That’s what all his flirting was. He thought I was still stinging from breaking up with Isaac, and he was pitying me. It was the only thing that made sense. The hills passed by, the sun was going down. The silence was unbearable.
“Truth or dare?” he asked quietly.
I wasn’t in the mood for either, but he was renting me a fantastic apartment for cheap, helping me build my brand, and evacuating me so I didn’t die in a hurricane. “Truth.”
“So, all the wedding dresses. It’s your life’s work. But why aren’t you married?”
I’d been asked that question hundreds of times, but his stress on the word you somehow transformed the question into something new. Regardless, I trotted out my old standby. “I’m just waiting for the right guy to come along.”
His chin jutted out, and his brows lowered. “I don’t buy that.”
“What do you mean?” Why couldn’t he be one of the dozens of people who were satisfied with that answer, the ones who gratefully accepted it as part and parcel of the illusion of the wedding dress designer waiting for her true love? Nobody looked below this satin-and-lace surface.
“I’m not buying it because you didn’t sell it hard enough. It’s a pat answer, like when someone says, ‘Hey, how are you?’ and you say, ‘Fine,’ but you just got fired and your dog just died.”
I stared out my side window. I’d hidden my jaded views from too many people for too long to even be able to articulate why I wasn’t married. I squirmed in my seat, exposed as a fraud and a liar. What could I even say? Because marriages don’t last? Because I watched divorce tear my mother apart? Because the idea of anyone falling in love with me and staying was absurd?
He glanced at me again. “That silence means I’m right.”
“You’re digging awfully deep, emotionally, for a shirtless woodworker. Why are you poking this bear?”
His expression turned contrite. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me why.”
I let the silence lengthen. I couldn’t even throw the same question back at him now that I knew the story of his ex. Besides, he wouldn’t understand. His parents were still together. He didn’t grow up watching his mother cry all the time , struggling to make ends meet with two young children, all on her own. I’ll always be grateful that she got help and climbed her way out of her despair, found friends and neighbors to help with us while she went back to school and found her joy in her life again.
But now she was going right back into the lion’s den, and it made zero sense to me. Why would she willingly put herself at such a risk? I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep as the shadows along the roadside deepened.