Chapter 18
Eighteen
M ia spent the day after Daniela’s wedding feeling frozen in place. She’d never been so aware that she was standing on a precipice. One wrong move and she was going to send pebbles tumbling over the edge right before she fell on the jagged rocks below. With a groan at her own melodrama, Mia stepped into the shower.
Since waking up with a killer hangover, Mia had thought of nothing but Tori. She couldn’t eat. Couldn’t hold down water. Couldn’t shake the overwhelming sense that she had a choice to make. That she was tiptoeing on a razor’s edge and she was going to have to step off. Leap.
Working shampoo onto her scalp, Mia tried to make sense of the present. To find clarity in all the chaos in her head. She’d only been in Miami a couple of weeks, and it had been a breathless whirlwind since she landed.
She closed her eyes while she rinsed her hair and acknowledged that the only time the tornado stopped twisting was when she was with Tori. It had always been like that. For as long as she could remember, being with Tori had always brought an incredible sense of peace. A calm she couldn’t replicate with anything else.
Was that it? Mia laid her heart out for examination, forcing herself to study every imperfect chamber and damaged valve. Objectively, her life was a mess. Divorcing and grief-stricken and lost in so many ways. Tori, though—she was bright and polished and vibrant. Was Mia clinging to her like a drowning victim, too desperate to realize she was pulling her rescuer under the surface too?
Mia’s sore stomach heaved. It didn’t feel like that’s what she was doing, but could she be sure? Could she trust she wasn’t running to Tori because she made her feel good and whole and herself? That she wanted to spend every waking moment with her because it was the only time her mind was still and her heart close to healed?
With brutal honesty, Mia acknowledged she loved the way being with Tori made her feel. No one ever looked at her like she was the only person in the room the way Tori did. But it was so much more than that.
Mia lived for making Tori laugh. For being the reason her well-guarded dimples cut into her gorgeous face. Mia’s pride burned hot enough to melt sinew and bone when Tori remembered her power and went for what she wanted. The fierce need to protect her, to shelter her from pain, lived in Mia’s marrow.
A new piece in her distressingly incomplete puzzle came into focus. Tori was always holding herself back. Afraid to push. Scared to be wrong.
Mia’s mind went back to her conversation with Rita. To the little slip she’d been trying to downplay for days. To the crush.
She reached for the shaving cream and slathered her leg before propping her foot on the edge of the tub. Things would be so much easier if she could just tell Tori what Rita had said without causing conflict between them. Easier, too, if she could pull everything out of Tori at once and lay it all out for inspection. But Tori was exasperatingly secretive.
Mia smiled to herself and reached for the razor. Bouncing to their last phone conversation, she thought of Tori living a secret double life. If there was anyone who could work for some shadowy, clandestine organization and never give away a single clue, it was Tori.
Her smile evaporated when she leaned forward, her whole brain throbbing. The hangover reminded her of the night before. Of being paralyzed by indecision. She’d wanted to tell Tori what was building inside her—something fragile and real. But she’d been too afraid. Afraid that naming it would mean losing Tori again.
Mia stopped and examined another truth. She’d wanted to kiss Tori at the door, while dancing, while curled up together at the beach. It was insane and dangerous and true. Would she still want that if she didn’t know Tori was gay? If Daniela hadn’t told her that all their friends thought they’d been secretly dating?
The memory hit like a wave, carrying Mia back to when Tori was in her bed. She still felt the electric thrill of Tori’s skin. Felt her own chest ignite as Tori's breathing slowed under her fingertips while they swept along her spine.
Desire Mia hadn’t felt in years roared to unexpected life. She’d had other good friends then and never once had they ever touched like that. Never had she craved another friend’s time and attention and affection the way she did Tori’s. She hadn’t even been as jealous with Eric as she’d been with Tori—as she still was.
What the hell does that mean?
Since separating from Eric, Mia had had plenty of romantic offers. Attractive ones. The hospital was a small place where gossip was concerned, and as soon as word spread that she and Eric were over, all kinds of people asked her out. Not one of them had made her want to puke in the same exquisite way she wanted to hurl just then.
Mia chuckled to herself. She was losing it. What a compliment she was going to give Tori: Hey, you make me feel like I have food poisoning, but like, in a good way. Wanna go out with me?
Pressing her forehead to the warm tile, she let the water wash away half her shaving cream. If only she could ask for Tori’s advice. If she could know—before setting fire to a relationship she so desperately wanted back—whether Tori still had any feelings left for her. If she’d even be willing to figure out what this connection was between them.
The irony was an unmissable firework display going off in Mia’s face and making her eyes ache. All she could think about was Tori struggling with her feelings all alone. Had she confided in anyone at the time? Maybe freaking Ashley Mora.
Gritting her teeth, Mia finished shaving her legs and got out of the shower. She couldn’t stop wondering what would have happened if Tori had come out to her all those years ago. Mia hadn’t thought about going further than drunk kissing other girls in college, but she also had never thought about her own sexual identity. She’d just moved through the world as expected and never questioned it.
If Tori had led her to consider that there were options, what would she have done? Mia pulled on a pair of leggings and a soft gray T-shirt. She grabbed Tori’s varsity jacket from the closet and buried her face in the collar.
The jacket didn’t smell like Tori anymore, but she remembered when it did. Remembered how much she loved to wear it. How Tori would periodically spray her perfume on it for her. A new thing she’d forgotten slammed into her mind. On nights when they couldn’t sleep together, Tori used to spray Mia’s pillow with her perfume.
Eyes snapping open, Mia’s embattled stomach dropped. Was that gay as hell? She was jealous, obsessed with Tori’s touch, her voice, her smile, her smell, the way her nose wrinkled when she didn’t like something, the veins in her hands, the way her hair fell across her pillow.
Fuck me. No wonder Daniela thought we were boning.
Sick of thinking in circles, Mia accepted an unfortunate and terrifying thought. She wasn’t going to be able to figure this out on her own. There was only one way forward and that was a two-way conversation.
Hands suddenly trembling, Mia reached for the phone on her bedside table. Before she second-guessed herself, she opened her texts. She could, in one fell swoop, destroy any hope of their friendship. But secrets had torn them apart before. She couldn’t let it happen again.
Thumbs hovering over the screen, Mia didn’t know how to put anything into words. Instinct sent her outside where she found the old ladder in the shed. In a daze and Tori’s jacket, Mia climbed onto the pool house roof without breaking her neck.
In a rush of nerves and dehydration, she took a photo of the sky and sent it. A second later, she sent the best text she could manage: Come over? Please?
The response came sooner than Mia anticipated.