Chapter Three #3
“Yes,” I lied. I hadn’t forgotten that. In the past, I’d come up with out-of-pocket questions or facts when we were at a social event and had to endure small talk.
I would blurt them out with a straight face and Turner would entertain them while we got blinked at.
It was like an inside joke. But I wasn’t feeling very humorous after he’d called me special with his whole chest. “My bad. I’d totally forgotten that. ”
Turner huffed out a laugh. “This is the second time I’m calling bullshit on you, but I will if I have to.”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“You know me plenty, Frankie.”
I finally glanced back at him. “People change.”
“Perhaps they do, yeah. Outwardly. But not us.” He patted his chest. “Not here.”
“That …” I trailed off. That felt like a low blow, honestly. “That’s not true.”
“You order fancy drinks and wear your hair a lot shorter,” Turner threw back.
“You have bangs now, and have done something to the makeup around your eyes that I don’t know the name for, but it makes it impossible to look away from them.
But you’re also hurting, and you still won’t tell me why.
You still rather protect me from the truth than allow me to carry some of the weight for you. ”
I gaped at him, pulse racing all over my body.
Two brand new glasses were set before us. Neither of us turned to acknowledge them.
He stepped even closer. Carefully, as if he was testing something.
I could smell him now, really smell him, not just a faint hint of his cologne, but his scent.
His legs pressed against my knees gently, and I parted them to accommodate him.
Closeness was something I’d experienced with Turner in the past, but not like this.
There was intimacy in the way he leaned forward.
It was mixed with carefulness, gentle prudence. I felt breathless.
“I haven’t changed deep down either, Frankie,” he told me, and this time his words fell on my skin. “I’m still the same, only this time I’m trying to fix my mistakes.”
“How?” I whispered.
The back of his fingers grazed the exposed section of my shoulder. A wave of shivers spread down my body from that spot. I hitched a breath. “The how’s not important. What matters is the why.”
“Why, then? Why are you trying to fix anything?”
His tongue peeked out, wetting his bottom lip.
I wondered if he’d taste the negroni in it.
The bitterness from the Campari. I wondered if I would smell it in his breath if I leaned a little forward.
“One day I found myself at my barber, sitting on a chair and looking at a brand-new reflection. I don’t remember asking for a mullet, or Johnny cutting it.
Just that it was done and I was somehow stuck with it.
It was the first thoughtless thing I’d done in a long time.
The first I’d done for myself, too. It felt freeing. ”
“Post break-up hair,” I pointed out softly. “You look good with it.”
A little hum left him. His next words tickled my lips. “You really think so?”
It was a heady sensation to have something I’d wanted for such a long time within reach.
It made me feel like I could finally take it.
Perhaps that’s what had me reaching for his hair with my fingers.
Perhaps this new kind of closeness had emboldened me.
In the past I would have never touched Turner’s hair without an excuse.
I had none now, besides wanting to feel it between my fingers.
His hair was impossibly soft. And this felt innocent in the same way a first kiss would.
Like an exploration. A theory being tested.
I let my hand fall to the side of his head, then slid my fingers into the longer locks at the back.
I could feel the warmth of his skin, like a furnace.
Turner let out a sigh, his eyelids fluttering half closed.
“It feels as nice as I thought it would,” I heard myself say.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t recall what we were talking about. All I could think of was how I was feeling—heart racing all over the place, euphoric. And how Turner looked at me—eyes bouncing up and down my face, lips parted with fascination.
“Frankie,” he said, as softly and close as he’d ever talked to me. He swallowed again, gaze finally settling on mine. “Why didn’t you open the door that day? Why didn’t you want to see me?”
The question felt like a bucket of ice to the face.
My hand dropped to the barely-there space between us. My whole body was flushing. “I don’t want to talk about that day.”
Turner’s cheeks were also burning, but not with shock or chagrin like mine. “Then tell me how to fix it. Because there used to be a time when you would always open the door if it was me knocking, and I don’t know how to get us back to that.”
I sat back on the stool, trying to regain the air that wasn’t making it to my lungs.
“You don’t need to fix anything. There’s nothing to fix.
That day I felt lonely and sad, and Ric shouldn’t have sent you to check on me.
It was embarrassing to realize he had, that’s why I didn’t open the door.
But I should have. It was rude, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. ”
Turner chewed on my words silently. Intently. Like there was a key hidden somewhere. “I don’t know if you’re saying that to make me feel better, or to make yourself feel better.” He shook his head. “I used to be great at knowing the difference. The best, even.”
“You need to stop saying those kinds of things.”
“Why?”
My eyelids fluttered closed. “Because they make me regret leaving Portland.”
“I hated that you did,” he said, voice hardening. “I hated having to watch you pack your life and leave. I hated that I didn’t do anything to stop you.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you need to hear it. And because I want to. You need to know how much I’ve fucking missed you since, and how selfish I am for saying it only now.”
A breath hissed out of me, leaving my mouth agape.
I tried my goddamn best to pull something—anything—out of me, but my teeth started clattering, making it impossible for me to speak or move beyond trying to contain the clatter.
This was a quirk of mine, see?
This is what happened when I felt on the verge of something big. My whole body started shaking, and it always, always started at my teeth, then expanded down my chest, before taking up all my ribcage. I called it The Goddamn Shakes.
My body had done this when I typed the words The End on the first manuscript I ever finished and when I was offered my first book deal. It had also happened that one night ages ago, when Turner kissed my forehead while I pretended to be asleep.
We had been left behind by my brothers, and we were sitting on his couch, so close together our hips pressed.
Turner had turned a horror movie on and while we’d been joking about how bad the CGI was, his arm had gone over my shoulders and he’d tucked me close.
Really close. So close that I’d felt his ribcage against the length of my arm.
So close, that the top of my head could nestle perfectly against the curve of his arm.
So freaking close, that when we fell quiet, I’d seen him waging a war, gaze flicking from the tv to my profile and back to the screen again.
He did that for so long that he noticed me noticing.
He did that for so long that he flushed, and I flushed, and then he smiled, and I smiled back.
I’d been so sure Turner wanted to kiss me that I’d almost combusted waiting.
For one hundred and eighty minutes, I’d stood on that cliff, The Goddamn Shakes getting worse and worse, to the point that Turner threw a blanket over me.
When I realized the credits were about to roll on that screen and Turner wasn’t going to kiss me, I shoved the whirlwind of disappointment and embarrassment as deep down as it’d go and shut my eyes.
Turner’s lips brushed over my forehead then, and I knew that I should have kissed him myself.
I should have never pretended I fell asleep to spare us the awkwardness.
I’d let the moment slip away, and all I had left was a bunch of “what ifs.” What if he’d kissed me?
What if that’d been the start of something?
What if he’d been eighteen and horny and I happened to be there?
What if I’d kissed him first and gotten rejected right then and there? What if I’d imagined the whole thing?
I hadn’t had the balls to find out. To make a move. Or ask.
Just like I didn’t now.
This moment right here felt big. Huge. Life-altering, much like that one. But unlike that younger version of myself, who was just a teen with a crush, rejection felt like a fatal wound now.
Turner Reece was telling me that he’d missed me, that he hated that I left, that I wasn’t in his life, and that had more than one interpretation as much as he wasn’t engaged to Mia.
What if I hoped for the one thing I always longed for and got it wrong?
What if he just meant he’d missed Frankie Rossi, his friend.
I wouldn’t be able to take it. Not now. Not this weekend that was already making me feel so fragile.
I—
I jumped off the stool. Briskly enough that Turner moved away to give me space. “This wasn’t a good idea,” I said.
Turner’s nod was slow and stiff, as if the simple gesture cost him an excruciating amount of effort.
“I … I’m sorry, Turner. I’ll see you around tomorrow. I—Thank you for the chocolates. And the note, but I can’t do this. Not this weekend.”
Turner frowned. “What chocolates? What …” He released a frustrated breath. “What note, Frankie?”
“The ones you sent to my room.”
“They aren’t mine.”
“But—”
“I’d love to take credit for them, believe me. But they aren’t from me. Why did you think they were?”
“The note said To all the time we lost,” I explained. “And it wasn’t signed. I—It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Because you wanted that note to come from me.”
I flushed, head to toes.
Turner continued, undeterred. There was something bothering him. “Could they have come from an ex? A friend? Anyone you might know who’s attending the convention?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Could they be from a fan, Frankie? Did you eat any of the chocolates? Be honest with me, it’s alright if you did, but I need to know.”
“No,” I huffed out. “And why do you look like you’re ready to perform surgery on me if I had?”
“Because I’m considering it.”
“Turner,” I snorted. “Stop worrying. It’s not like there’s someone plotting to …”
My voice trailed off, coming to a soft, gradual halt.
Shit. Fuck.
“Frankie?” Turner called, and it was as if he had grown taller by a foot based on how alarmed he looked. “Words. Now.”
I considered lying, but I knew him. He wouldn’t let it go now. “Remember when I asked if Ric had sent you here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I had just told him about the possibility of me, ah, maybe, probably, having a reader with slight stalking tendencies. That’s why—”
“Frankie?” That muscle on his jaw had stopped, and he turned white as a ghost. “Take me to your room.”