Chapter 7 #2
“Okay, okay.” He lifts a big hand in surrender. “Given the way I blurted it out, the whole thing sounds ridiculous.”
“I don’t think it would matter how you delivered that bomb. It would still blow up in our faces.”
“Ha.” He turns off the expressway, heading toward Santa Monica Boulevard. An expansive sigh escapes him. “I don’t know how to begin.”
The confession comes out so hopeless that I soften.
“Try the beginning.”
I get a sidelong glare.
Then his shoulders sag. “Let’s start at the fucking infamous chicken dance.”
“That was . . . interesting.”
“Wasn’t it just,” he mutters darkly. “Never living that one down.”
“I admit, I was a little shocked. Drunken dancing on tables doesn’t seem like you.”
“It isn’t.” August rubs the back of his neck with his free hand before putting it back on the steering wheel.
His fingers drum an impatient rhythm. “I’ll be honest, Penelope.
I don’t know what the hell got into me. It was like I was outside of myself, looking down in horror, begging myself to just stop. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Sometimes anxiety can lead to acting out of character. It isn’t always about hiding in your room.”
“Are you saying it can also be acting like a complete goober asshole?”
“Maybe. You have a lot on your plate.”
“I should be used to it by now.” The frown is back and darker. “Regardless. I did the deed—deeds. And now I look like an unhinged, undedicated player.”
“Okay.” I’m starting to get the picture, but I can’t quite believe it. I must be wrong. I have to be.
“We had a meeting. My agent, manager, PR, team staff, all that fun stuff.” August swallows audibly. “The consensus was that I need to clean up my newly tarnished image.”
“By getting married?” It comes out in an undignified sort of squeal.
“Well . . .”
“They can’t make you do that!”
“No. It’s more a matter of optics. I buckle down, don’t party, get a nice fiancée so that it appears I’m focused on work and family. That sort of thing.”
“But to get married.”
He holds up a finger. “Engaged. We don’t actually have to marry.”
“Well, at least there’s that.” I spread my hands wide and roll my eyes. When he simply gives me a deadpan look, I forge on. “Why on earth would you ask me of all people?”
His brow quirks. “Why not? What’s wrong with you?”
The man can’t be this obtuse. Honestly, I know he’s smart. Damn it. “Aside from the fact that no one would believe it?”
“You’re kidding, right?” He says this with a hint of laughter in his voice.
“No, that would be you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Must not tackle the quarterback.
“Don’t make me spell it out for you, August.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to because I’m not getting it.”
With a sigh, I close my eyes. “I’m not a model, or an actress. Nor, do I look like one.”
“Penelope.” His voice comes out of the darkness, soft and easy. “I’ve said it before. You’re beautiful.”
One eye opens despite my best effort to remain aloof. “I don’t believe you said ‘beautiful.’”
As though he knows it will be too much for me if he makes any sort of eye contact, his focus remains firmly on the road before us. “So I’ll say it now. You’re beautiful. Besides, I need someone real. Or, should I say, someone who doesn’t have her own public drama.”
“I’ll give you that bit.” I’m allergic to drama. If there’s a hint of it, I run for the hills.
“And I need someone who . . . ah . . . at the risk of sounding vain—”
“Which means you’re going to sound incredibly vain.”
“Cute. But that risk aside, I need someone who won’t fall in love with me or expect forever.”
Silence ticks out.
“Hence, me.”
His big shoulder lifts in a half shrug. “We both know you have never liked me that way. Hell, March and I are similar in looks and you had a huge crush on him but regarded me as . . . a worm.”
“I never—”
“Oh, come on.” At this, he glances my way. “You never liked me.”
I sigh dramatically, if only to distract from any chance that I might be blushing. “I said I like you fine.”
“Yeah, that faint praise is burned on my brain.”
“If you’re fishing for compliments, I suggest you go to the Pier.”
“I really had no idea you were so saucy.” He doesn’t appear to find this a fault.
“Neither did I. Maybe this is a nightmare, and I’ll wake up, plain old quiet Pen.”
“I can pinch you, if you’d like.” He waggles his fingers.
“Not if you want to live.”
“Just a suggestion . . . Where were we?”
“You were complaining about how I liked March better.”
“Right. That. Which means you’re perfect for this. You won’t fall for me. Plus, and this is huge, I trust you. We’ve known each other forever. I know you won’t tell. Or sell your story later down the road.”
“Thank you for that.”
August nods as if I’m not being sarcastic, and then we fall quiet, the sound of the road humming along.
He hasn’t put on the radio. I don’t know if it’s because he wanted to talk or if he’s one of those rare birds who doesn’t like listening to music while driving.
Because I love listening to music while driving.
And because it’s now way too quiet, I break it. “I have a question.”
“Just one?” Amusement crinkles his eyes.
“Okay, this is the first in a line of many.”
“Ask away.”
“What if you fall in love with me?”
Silence slams down upon the car. Rolling to a stop sign, August stares at me, before a soft huff of laughter escapes him and the corner of his lip quirks.
“What?” I ask. “Is it so comical, then?”
I know it is. Honestly, I do. I also have a perverse, inexplicable and highly ill-advised need to mess with him. But, still, he doesn’t need to laugh so quickly.
August is smart enough to understand the minefield he’s been thrust onto. He shifts in his seat like he’s dying to escape. I picture him flinging open the door and sprinting down the street, leaving behind nothing more than an August-shaped dust cloud.
I’m about to tell him not to bother with an answer, that it was a joke. But then he looks my way with a wry expression.
“I won’t lie,” he says. “This blunt and sassy version of you surprises the hell out of me. But you don’t have to worry about me suddenly falling in love with you.”
I reach for nonchalance. “No?”
The muscle in his jaw bunches.
“I can’t,” he says, almost apologetically. “I found my true love years ago.”
Oh.
Something hard and dull thuds in my chest. I didn’t expect that. Not at all.
“Then why don’t you ask her to do this—”
“It’s football I love,” he cuts in with an awkward laugh. “God. That was cheesy.”
That hard, dull something inside me softens and flips. “No. It’s . . . I don’t know—”
“Cheesy.”
“Lovely,” I insist. “Truly. To know what you want to do and love it so much.”
Absently, he nods, as he drives on. “Yeah. But I’m not just trying to wax poetic here. Football is my wife, my child, my boss, it’s everything. I have to give it my all, you know?”
I don’t truly know because I don’t love something that much. But I can understand a little. And it feels kind of lonely.
His voice is soft but tinged with something bittersweet. “How fair would it be for anyone to have to compete with that? I don’t know much about love, but I know that a relationship needs the players to be fully present.”
I think of my dad. Was he ever fully there? Or did he always mentally have one foot out the door?
“I agree.” I give August what I hope is a reassuring look. “It’s good you know that already. A lot of people never really do.”
“My parents were good role models there.”
“They certainly were.”
A frown wrinkles between his brows, and I know he’s remembering my not-so-great role models. “Oh, hey. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, August.” I move to touch his arm but fall short, feeling shy. “Really. Your parents are my role models for relationships too. I love watching the way they are together.”
“Let’s not go too far now. I could do without catching them making out when I walk into rooms unannounced.” His mouth flattens with distaste. “Too many images are burned into my brain.”
Laughter bubbles out of me. “It’s cute!”
“I’ll be sure to tell my eventual therapist just that.”
My laughter increases, and he sends me a reproachful glare. But his lips are twitching. He turns at a cross street and then pulls up to a driveway. Until then, all my attention had been on August. Only this street is too familiar to ignore. I sit up straight.
“This is Pops and Pegs’s house.”
It’s not the actual house, but the gates of it.
Yes, my grandparents’ house sits behind gates.
In Brentwood. Which might as well be the moon to a college girl living on a severely limited budget.
Given that it’s an enormously expensive enclave of Los Angeles, I had figured we were headed toward wherever it is August lives.
But, no, the sneaky rat took me here. He might as well have cut me open and poured salt in my wound.
I turn toward him and let the hurt show. August frowns.
“You’re not living here?” The surprise in his voice is real.
Slowly, I shake my head; it feels like a lump of lead. “No. I’m in an apartment with a roommate who barely tolerates me. I could have moved in but . . . I don’t know. I didn’t want to get even more attached, you know?”
“I get it.”
“I come here from time to time. Clean and make sure the grounds aren’t falling into disrepair. But there’s only so much I can do on my budget.”
“Can we go in?” he asks gently. “I’d like to see it, if that’s okay.”
“Sure.”
The big gate is made of weathered reclaimed barn doors, hung on thick cut stone pillars with antiqued bronze lanterns on the tops. Flanked by lacy olive trees and thickets of twenty-foot-high evergreen trees, it completely hides away the house inside.
“What’s the code?” August drives up to the gate and makes as if to leave the car.
“I have a remote opener on my phone,” I tell him, inexplicably shaky. I love this house. Every last inch of it. The estate is my heritage, the place I visited time and again for comfort, for sanctuary. But, in this moment, I feel like an intruder, as though I’ll never fully belong here again.
The big wood gates slide back, and we enter another world, far removed from the sun and heat and noise of LA. Here is grace and beauty, an age long gone by.
An allée of jacaranda trees in full bloom line the crushed limestone drive, creating a tunnel of purple. Sunlight spills through the fluttering blooms and dapples the windshield in violet light.
The end of the drive opens to a wide circular limestone paved car park and the house itself.
The one-story ranch would be right at home in Provence with its dusky stone and stucco siding, weathered wooden shutters, and climbing vines.
The roof extends out on one side to create an open porch that follows the length of the house.
And all I can think is I’m home. But home isn’t supposed to hurt like this, is it?