Chapter 11
Ren
I try not to laugh—but I feel it, sneaking up the back of my throat, lifted and buoyed by all those champagne bubbles. It comes out as a snort, and I clap my hand over my mouth and nose.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say through another half laugh.
It’s funnier than it should be, me dropping my purse, spilling everything everywhere like the mess I’m supposed to be, and this professional athlete I just met picking up all these pieces of me scattered across my front porch.
All the champagne dulled the sharp edges of my brain, carved over years, that tell me all the things I do are wrong or embarrassing, that I’m silly, childish, and too much.
Miller glances up at me from his crouch, sleeves of his tux buckling as he gathers everything I spilled when I dropped my purse. I think the alcohol might have dulled my motor skills, too.
A wave of his hair curls over his forehead, almost lazy, like it had too much champagne, too. “All good. It was an accident.”
“I meant the snort.” I tap my nose.
“Why are you sorry for that?” He’s got his eyes back on the porch, picking up my wallet, keys, lip gloss and a plastic raptor claw Imani gave me as a joke in case I needed it for self-defence on the subway.
I frown, squashing my nose underneath my fingertip. “Because it’s annoying.”
“No, it’s not.” He huffs a laugh, dropping the claw back into my purse and pushing to stand. His fingers whisper over mine when he passes it to me. “It’s cute.”
“Oh.” I breathe through a wobbling smile when I take my bag back.
He lifts a brow with a slow, unimpressed shake of his head. “I’d ask who told you that, but I don’t think I need to.”
“He thought it was stupid. That it sounded . . . ugly, I guess.” I shrug, shame curving my shoulders inward while I fiddle with the keypad on my front door.
Miller’s gaze sharpens, and the Atlantic blue of his eyes get swallowed by his pupils when he drags them down my body. “There’s nothing stupid or ugly about you.”
My heart hasn’t tripped over a boy or a man in a very long time. But it does when he looks at me like that.
It tries to beat, and it falters, catching itself on my ribs and entirely unsure what to do with such a foreign feeling of something good.
I don’t know what to do with it either, so I hold up my purse. “Messy, though.”
“Not really,” he says, voice low.
Glancing over my shoulder when I push the door open, I try to smile. “You didn’t have to walk me home.”
“Yeah, I did.” He reaches out to hold the door, and when I take a stumbling step into the house, his other hand finds the small of my back. “Careful.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, squinting down at my feet that seem like they might be shifting underneath me. The floor swirls suspiciously, too.
“Stop apologizing.” He taps a thumb against the silk of my dress, and even though everything feels like it’s twisting and turning, I feel it burn across the skin of my back.
“I usually have a lot of things to be sorry for.” I shrug, dropping my purse to the ground.
“Like what? Your laugh?” He glances at me, and I think the lines of his face seem sad. “That on your list, too?”
“Yeah.” I snort, waving a hand. “It’s on Ren’s List of Reasons Not to Be Ren.”
“I thought you said it was called Ren’s Remains.” His hand drops from my back, and he lets me walk on my own, stumbling into my house, but he follows close behind when I wander into the kitchen for a glass of water.
“I don’t know.” My fingers slip over the tap, but I squint in concentration, and I hold up the full water glass like I’ve won something with a smile. Miller’s cheek twitches. “It’s really just a list of things Scott didn’t like about me that eventually . . . I started hating too.”
The amused twitch turns to the tick of a muscle, and whatever he was about to say dies on those full lips when I try to walk forward on my heels, but my ankle buckles.
His hands are on me, one wrapped around my wrist, and the other pressing against the bare skin between my shoulder blades. “Come on, I’ll help you. Where’s your room?”
I give a half-hearted point beyond the kitchen, to another narrow hallway leading to the back of my house.
I don’t stumble again with him guiding me—a light pressure from his skin against mine. Not really steering me, just . . . helping.
He says nothing but uses his elbow to turn on the light in my room.
I wait for the admonishment. Or maybe even the bark of laughter and words that are supposed to be congenial, kind and funny, when he admits, “Maybe you are messy,” as he takes in the haphazardly made bed, the white duvet carelessly pulled up to the pillows, the precarious stack of books on my nightstand, the glass of water left over from last night, the half-open drawers still draped with clothes, or the plant that’s seen better days on my windowsill.
But he stays silent, helping until I drop to the edge of my bed, reaching out for my heels but I give up with a quiet groan. “This is so embarrassing.”
“No, it’s not,” he says for the second time tonight, crouching down again and shifting my dress, words firm like his thumbs working on the straps of my heels.
I blink, watching the breadth of his shoulders as those good hands make quick work of my heels.
I think his thumb might skate over the arch of my left foot when he takes the second shoe off.
I think he might even take a shuddering breath when it does.
But Miller pushes to stand, his shoulders rolling back when he tips his chin towards the bow tied around my neck. “You need help with that?”
“I think so,” I admit, using my palms on the mattress for leverage to stand back up, but it’s easier without my heels. Turning so he can get to work on the bow, I glance back over my shoulder and whisper, “Don’t look, please.”
“I won’t,” he breathes against the back of my neck. I don’t glance back, but I know his eyes are closed.
His fingers brush across the silk, and I feel the gentle tug on the bow, the way the dress whispers over my skin when it turns into an untied sheath, falling down my body and pooling around my feet, leaving me in my bra and underwear.
I don’t bother to grab my pajamas, and I don’t bother to double-check that he’s not looking when I crawl into bed.
“You can open them now,” I say when I have the covers tugged up to my neck.
He blinks his eyes open, one hand flexing at his side before he shoves them both into his pants pockets. “Get some sleep, Ren.”
He’s halfway out the door when I call his name. “Miller?”
“Yeah?” He catches himself on the door, tattooed hand tightening against the frame.
Tucking my chin against my covers, I chew on the inside of my cheek before offering, “If you ever want to turn your list of things you don’t do into things you try again, I’ll help.”
“Yeah?” he repeats, the light in the hall casting a shadow on his face so I can’t really tell, but I think the sharp planes soften with a smile. “You’d play catch with me?”
“Sure.” I nod. “Can’t promise that I’m very good, though.”
His smile turns lopsided, and he taps a thumb against the wood. “That’s alright. I’m a decent teacher.”
He lifts his hand off the frame in a final good night, and when I drop back against the bed, blinking up at the ceiling, I think everything starts to spin.
I can’t tell if it’s the champagne or if it’s this new sort of inertia from the asteroid that killed me, hurtling backwards in time like it never made contact at all, and all the pieces of me start to fly back into place.
Everything spins when I wake up, too.
But this time, I’m confident it’s from the champagne.
Or maybe it’s from the onslaught of memories from last night pelting me with every step I take towards the kitchen to get a glass of water.
All the debris of embarrassment floating around like the asteroid destroying things and causing extinction events is actually me.
I press my palm to my forehead, cringing, when I wait for the water to turn cold.
Scott treating me like a wayward child.
Him, assessing and cataloguing and categorizing. Always disappointed in his findings.
Me, drinking way too much champagne at an important work event anyway.
Miller—Miller.
Miller, sitting there while I droned on and on about mass extinction.
Miller listening when I told him some sob story about how I let a man tear me apart for the better part of a decade all in the name of love that wasn’t even real.
Miller picking up after me because I couldn’t even keep my purse on my arm.
Miller taking off my shoes and my dress for me.
“Oh my god. I’m going to be sick.” I slap a palm over my mouth, trying to suppress a gag, right when the doorbell rings.
I start, eyes wide and swinging around my townhouse like the walls have suddenly turned invisible and I’ll be able to see who’s standing there so I can respond accordingly.
It’s probably fucking Scott. Ready and waiting on the porch with a ginger ale he’ll only give me in some sort of display of toxic masculinity that proves I really do need him after all.
Like I’m not capable of walking down the street to the convenience store and getting my own.
He wouldn’t even bring Canada Dry. He’d bring Schweppes.
I might not be capable of making it down the street—he’d be onto something. But I am capable of going back to my room, putting on a sweater and sweatpants so I can tell him to, kindly, get the fuck off my porch.
“Scott, I’m not interested in your—” My bravado dies when I pull the door open.
It usually does, about halfway into my first attempt at standing up to him in any given conversation.
But he’s not the one standing on my porch.
“Oh,” I breathe.