Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Allie walked quickly into the kitchen, Ryan at her heels.
“Look, Allie, are you mad? I didn’t tell you about the tape because I didn’t want you to think that I was some creepy stalker. I really never thought I would see you again after the band stopped playing and then you just walked into the studio with that coffee and I swear I didn’t mean for anything weird to happen and I should have told you and—”
Ryan’s babbling speech abruptly halted as Allie gripped and twisted his shirtfront, pulling him toward her. Their lips met and he abandoned his protests. Allie’s thoughts were reeling.
He liked me all along.
She wrapped both arms around him, pulling his body into hers. He’d liked her when she was a twenty-year-old punk singer who was always sweaty from sleeping in a van. He’d liked her when she was an ex-musician who delivered coffee. And he still liked her now, when she was—What was she exactly? She felt close to figuring it out. For now, she was someone who was very happily making out with the man of her choice in the kitchen of her workplace.
Panting, Ryan broke the kiss for a moment. “Allie, I really am sorry. About all of it.”
“Shhhhhhh.” She kept her forehead against his, her hand now cupping the back of his neck. “You are forgiven. Please stop apologizing for liking me for over a decade.”
Ryan laughed. “It’s more than that, Allie.” She could see tears starting in his eyes and blinked her own rapidly, trying to avoid the weeping that was coming far too easily to her lately.
“Allie, I love you. I used to just imagine how cool you were after I saw you onstage, but now that I actually know you, you’re even better than anything I came up with in my head. You’re creative, and stubborn, and every time I see you, I can’t wait to find out what’s going to happen next. You’re the person I want to sit beside on my couch at all hours of the day and the only person I would drive to a stinky punk club in New Jersey in the interest of solving a mystery.”
Allie laughed, sniffling slightly but maintaining her composure by sheer force of will. Her voice shook when she spoke.
“I love you, too. I actually need to talk to you every day or I just don’t feel right. When I thought you were through with me, I could hardly handle it. You’ve turned my life into a chaotic mess. A really nice, chaotic mess.”
He kissed her again. Gently this time. “Look, as much as it pains me—like, physically —to say this, we need to go back out there. You have some special guests, and our friends are all probably wondering if we’re pulling a Ren-and-Anisha in here, which I’d rather them not be picturing.”
Allie snorted with laughter and grabbed him in a fierce hug. “Do you want to come upstairs later?” she whispered in his ear, her heart pounding.
“Yes indeed,” he whispered back. “Except, as you’ve pointed out, I’m too large for your apartment.”
She released him from the embrace and slid her hand into his. “You won’t be standing up. It will be fine.”
Ryan emitted a strangled moan and adjusted his pants with his free hand. “Ma’am, there are children present. Get a hold of yourself.”
She grinned at him. “You ready to go back out there?”
He beamed back. “Ready when you are.”
—
Jessi and her family stayed at the café almost until closing. Ren made grilled cheese for the kids, and the adults ate soup and fresh bread and desserts and drank too much tea and coffee.
“I’m going to be up all night.” Jessi set her empty cup on the table.
“Well, they won’t be.” Jasmine nodded toward the kids’ table, where all three of them were watching a video on Jessi’s phone with heavy-lidded eyes. “That group will be fast asleep as soon as we cross the state line.”
“If we can carry them in from the car without waking them, we’ll have time to watch grown-up television before we fall asleep,” Jessi explained to Allie. She was leaning in, her arm across the back of Allie’s chair, as though they were conspiring. It was a familiar feeling that Allie couldn’t get enough of.
People say all the time that things feel like a dream, but this actually does .
It was like a weird melding of her past and her present, and she couldn’t get enough of the trippy, dreamy feeling.
At 9 p.m., Ren locked the café doors and asked the kids whether they wanted to see the big ovens in the kitchen. Jasmine went with them, and Ryan and Anisha were having some kind of murmured conversation at the end of the table, looking at each other in an almost exact copy of the way Allie and Jessi were staring at each other.
“Damn, I missed you.” Jessi pulled Allie into a half hug, half headlock and kissed the top of her head. It was something she used to do if Allie was nervous before they went onstage.
“I missed you, too. I’m so sorry about everything. About setting us up to waste all these years not talking to each other.”
Jessi made a fft sound and waved her hand dismissively. “We were young. I know we felt like grizzled old broads, but we were actually tiny babies.”
Allie laughed. “True. But I didn’t have to be such a dick about everything.”
“Hey, I was also a dick. I was in love with Jasmine, and I just wanted to stop touring and be with her. But I didn’t really try to explain to you what would make me happy. I just wanted to be cool, like you. To be dedicated to the band and be on the road. I was so jealous of that. But I just acted like a stuck-up bitch and let the band implode and then fucked right off to the suburbs and started having babies.”
“Jessi, your babies are amazing. And you and Jasmine are amazing, and the fact that you live in your amazing grandma’s amazing house is amazing.”
Jessi laughed. “Well, thank you. This place is also amazing.” She leaned in closer and spoke into Allie’s ear. “Ryan seems kind of amazing, as well.”
Allie could feel herself blushing. “Yeah, I mean, he is. He’s turned my life into a total shitshow, to be honest, but this shitshow is so much better than the non-shitshow it was before.”
“And he fucking made the Allie Crush tape. What a trip!”
Allie glanced over at Ryan. He looked up and winked at her.
“He made the Allie Crush tape,” Allie repeated, nodding slowly. Her heart felt as if it were going to explode.
Jasmine approached their table and started putting on her coat. “We gotta get going or the kids are going to turn into pumpkins. And by pumpkins , I mean assholes.”
Jessi stood up and kissed her wife’s cheek. “Okay, babe. Let’s get going. But, Allie, you have to come visit us soon. Bring Ryan. Hell, bring Ren and Anisha, too.”
“Careful,” Allie said. “They’ll all totally want to come.”
“Everyone is welcome.” Jasmine helped Jessi on with her coat. “Kids! We’re heading out!”
A collective disappointed “Aww” went up from the children, but they collected their coats and filed out with their moms.
“Keep the tapes!” Jessi called as the door closed behind them. Allie stood by the window and waved until she saw their car drive away into the darkness.
Allie turned around and looked at Ryan. She felt a jolt of electricity zinging between them across the almost empty café. Ren and Anisha saw what was happening.
“Well, honey? Nothing else to do here? Are you ready to go?” Anisha asked, her voice a note higher than usual.
“What? Oh yeah. Right. Nothing else to do. I’ll just”—they grabbed their coat from a hook by the door—“put this on and, uh…” They looked around the café. “Yep, ready to go.”
The two of them left without saying goodbye, their giggles silenced by the closing door.
Ryan looked at Allie across the empty café as she locked the door behind the rapidly retreating figures of their friends. She turned the café lights off and grinned at him. The weak glow of the kitchen light was illuminating his face. He looked over at the staircase that led to her apartment and then turned back to her.
“Race you.”
They both broke into a run, laughing.
“Don’t hit your head!” Allie shouted as her feet pounded up the stairs. Ryan was close behind her. So close that, as she paused to unlock her door, he pressed his body to hers from behind. She shivered in anticipation and pushed the door open, tumbling in. “I win!”
They each paused to kick off their shoes. “It wasn’t really a competition, Jetski.” Ryan smiled as he approached her, ducking slightly to protect his head. “We both win.”
She grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward her. His lips were warm against hers, their bodies as close as they could get them. She didn’t want to let him go. But she did want him to take off all his clothes.
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt as they kissed, his hands moving down the sides of her body to cup her ass. He found the hem of her dress and pulled it up over her head in one motion, leaving her standing in decidedly unsexy wool tights and a plain black bra. It was hardly seductive lingerie. But then, when she’d dressed that morning, she and Ryan hadn’t even been speaking to one another. She took one moment away from thoughts of removing Ryan’s clothes to ponder how much of a left turn her day had taken. How much better the night was than the morning.
Ryan leaned over her crate of cassettes and selected one. Cyndi Lauper. She admired his dedication to setting the mood. She was still impatiently wanting to jump him.
As the opening strains of the first song flowed quietly from the speakers of her boombox, she wiggled out of her tights, her body now warm enough without them. Ryan looked up from the cassettes and barely suppressed a moan when he looked at her.
“Dang, you look good.”
She considered saying something sarcastic, to deflect the compliment, but decided she liked how he saw her. “Thank you.” She smirked. “Your turn.”
Ryan did not need telling twice. He shed his now-unbuttoned shirt, and his jeans and socks, and faced her in his T-shirt and boxers.
“Dang.” She laughed. “You also look good.”
He blushed and took one long step toward her, pulling her into an embrace and leaning down to kiss her neck. “I believe you promised that I would be lying down?” he murmured, his voice muffled by her hair as his fingers worked on her bra’s clasp behind her back. Allie felt it release and pulled it free from her body, dropping it at their feet. She grasped the hem of Ryan’s T-shirt and pushed it upward. He ducked his head and pulled it off, adding it to the pile of clothes on the floor. His hands went quickly to her breasts. Allie groaned.
“Oh yes. Let’s lie down,” she said breathlessly. “Let’s lie down right now.”
For once, she was relieved that her apartment was so small, her bed was almost unavoidable. Ryan lay down first, and she lay beside him, her hand going immediately for his hardness.
“Why are we even wearing any clothes?” Ryan asked, as he urgently pulled off his own underwear and then hers. He lay down on his side, one arm above his head and the other pulling Allie close to him. His nakedness pressed against hers made Allie’s whole body buzz with excitement. He slid his fingers down and moved them inside her.
“Oh…Ryan.” She moaned, arching her back and letting her eyes flutter closed.
“You feel good,” he whispered into her ear. She stretched her arms above her head and tangled her fingers with his. He held her hands there, firmly, as his other hand continued to touch her. It wasn’t long before she felt her orgasm building. She cried out, saying his name and some other jumble of words she was barely aware of, her body twisting in pleasure.
As she came down from the high of climax, she was aware of Ryan holding her, stroking her skin sweetly. She opened her eyes and turned to him.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” He smiled at her, his eyes full of tenderness.
She rolled to her right and pulled open the drawer of her nightstand, relieved to find a few condoms in there. They’d been tossed at her when she and Ren had gone to the Pride parade in June, and she’d stowed them in her bedside drawer thinking she was being remarkably optimistic.
Sending a quick thank-you to Allie from the Past, she opened the package and helped Ryan roll it on, slowly. He exhaled deeply, looking into her eyes with an affection that made her insides melt.
She climbed on top of him, and he grabbed her hips.
“I meant it, Allie,” he gasped between moans, his eyes closing. “I love you. I love everything about you.”
His hands were so strong and warm on her body, holding her hips, rubbing up and down her thighs. She sighed and adjusted her body so he was deeper inside her.
“I love you, too.” She moved herself faster up and down on top of him, her hands finding his hands and gripping them, fingers laced between his. “So fucking much.” She tipped her head back and closed her eyes, drunk with the feeling of his skin against hers.
It wasn’t long before he was bucking his hips and shouting her name into the darkness of her room. As he finished, she collapsed on top of him, their sweaty, warm bodies tangled and panting.
As their breathing slowed and their bodies stilled, Allie became aware of the song playing quietly on her boombox by the door.
“True Colors.”
Fucking perfect.
The song lit up her heart with more intensity than it ever had before. She lay beside Ryan’s warm body, her head on his forearm. She did not remember ever feeling this safe.
As the final notes of the song faded in the darkness, Ryan rose and moved sluggishly around the chilly, dark room, disposing of the condom, pulling his underwear and T-shirt back on. When he slid back in beside her, she pulled the covers up over them both, lying close to him again, her arm thrown across his belly.
“Dammit, Allie.” His voice was raspy, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. “I’m so happy right now. This might be the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Allie moved even closer to him, heart full, eyelids heavy.
“Me too.”
Allie held on to him tightly. She never wanted to let him go again. The music finished, and she heard the soft cachunk of the cassette stopping.
Within minutes, they were both asleep.