Chapter Thirteen #2
“I think you like me more than you did when you agreed to this trip,” I told him.
“I know you better,” he said. “More to like.”
I sat back in my chair, the compliment warming me to my blood. “Oh.”
“Is that surprising?”
“A year ago, no.” I dropped my gaze to the table. “I haven’t felt very likable lately.”
“Really?” He sounded surprised. “You’re so fucking refreshing.
You wear you heart on your sleeve in a way that’s both admirable and terrifying.
” My pounding pulse blurred my vision with each beat.
You’re so fucking refreshing. I’d carry that with me for the rest of my life.
“You yell at strangers in their place of work and try to seduce them into giving you personal intel.”
My laugh transitioned into a groan. “God. I can’t believe I did that. We should never talk about it again, starting now.”
“That dress,” he went on.
I crumpled up a napkin and threw it at him, and he laughed. My blood hit a boiling point. “Desperation makes you do crazy things.”
His smile dimmed a few watts and he reached for his drink. “Oh, I’m aware.”
I winced, thinking of the letter that brought us together in the first place. How devastated he must’ve been when he wrote it. The damage it did to never hear back. The fallout. Everything up to now, right this second.
“What happened?” I asked, the words slipping out unwittingly. “With you and Catalina?”
Dex gulped his drink, wincing. Was I asking too much of him?
Here we were on a trip to return a letter he’d written to her and I hardly knew anything about their relationship aside from what I’d (possibly illegally) read in said letter.
I didn’t necessarily feel entitled to the information, but it did seem odd that Dex remained so protective of it when he was the one insisting it was over.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, wiping his face clear of emotion. I sighed into another sip of my drink, disappointed in myself for even feeling disappointed. “Why do you think Sequest is sketchy?”
I laughed, prompting the line between his brows to deepen. “Because you drive a Mercedes? And you’re paying for this entire trip? ‘Money isn’t an issue’?”
“That would make me sketchy, not Sequest.”
“Well, you work there.”
“Technically, yes.”
“That’s what I mean.” I pointed at him. “Sketchy.”
He hid his smile behind the last sip of his margarita. When he offered to get us more, I agreed without hesitation, checking my phone to see if Phoebe had woken up, demanding to know why I’d gone out with Dex without her.
She hadn’t.
When Dex returned, I steeled myself for the return of the brick wall and said, “Do I get to ask you something now?”
“You found out a lot about me tonight.”
“Nobody cares that you used to live in Chicago,” I said, which wasn’t true, but it made him laugh, so my heart did a little flip. “Did you actually pose for an art class?”
He sank in his seat, hands flat on the table. The corner of his mouth quirked. “Yeah.”
My face broke into a grin. “Oh my god. Why?”
“My brother dared me.”
“You did something because someone dared you to?”
“I did something because my brother dared me to.” He traced the rim of his glass again, his mouth tipping in a smile. “When we were kids, he figured out I’d do pretty much anything to make him laugh and I never knew peace again.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I deadpanned. His smile widened briefly, but then he gulped down some of his drink, a complicated sort of emotion flickering in his eyes. I refused to let him put that wall back up, not tonight. “Did you get any phone numbers? After the class?”
“Seven.”
“Oh, you got me beat! I got five.” I sat back in my chair and shook my head solemnly. “I guess you look better naked than I do.”
He let his elbow rest on the back of his chair, eyes dark under the dim lights. “I can’t imagine that’s true.”
A hundred degrees in a Midwest summer couldn’t compare to this. An inferno spread through my body. I was half tempted to glance down and confirm my body remained intact rather than crumbling to ash around the legs of my chair.
I’d been under the impression we’d spend the rest of the trip aware of the mutual attraction and leave it at that, considering we were on our way to the woman he believed to be the love of his life. But Dex was throwing out the plan in favor of… what, exactly?
Fun?
A warm body until reuniting with the one he really wanted?
Blowing off steam after a shitty day? Week? Year?
Honestly, I should’ve been thrilled at the prospect; hot person, no strings, the best way to ease into the dating endeavor after being stagnant for so long. Dex would be good, too, if those hands were any indication. Low stakes, high reward.
But as Dex’s eyes pinned me across the table, low stakes seemed like the last term I’d use to describe us.
I blinked away, throat bobbing. We were the last ones left in the bar, and I had no idea when that happened.
“It’s late,” I said, pushing out of my chair. “It’s really late. Do hotel bars have last call? Because if so, we’re probably cutting it close.”
I reached for my margarita, dumping the rest down my throat in hopes it might dull the feeling of Dex’s eyes boring into the side of my head.
I couldn’t deny that I wanted him. Was sort of desperate for him, considering the amount of shirtless fantasies I’d indulged in, and all the staring at his hands.
There were no consequences for admiring from a respectful distance.
Making our way to the elevator with a handful of inches between us, I realized maybe the distance itself was a consequence.
A necessary one, but it was so hard to remember why when Dex’s eyes were on me.
Our footsteps echoed up into the ceiling of the empty lobby. We paused at the elevators, Dex hitting the call button.
“When was the last time you did this?” he asked. I must’ve been gaping at him because he felt the need to clarify: “Went out.”
“Went out,” I repeated. “Like, with a person?”
“As opposed to…?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. A while,” I mumbled, reaching up to rub my burning nose. “It’s not something I can do.”
“Because of Phoebe?”
I bit my lip as the doors opened up, shuffling inside, and when they slid shut, the air inside went with them. I leaned against the wall, dizzier than I had any right to be after two margaritas. Dex hit our floor number and leaned against the wall opposite, facing me, waiting for an answer.
“I mean, yeah. But also, I’m not exactly the ideal partner right now,” I said, earning a flat look in return.
“Come on,” he said. “Earlier, I listed a bunch of reasons why you’re awesome.”
I looked at him for a moment, feeling the weight of yet another compliment before tucking it away.
“It’s not an easy pill to swallow,” I explained, my voice softening as the elevator shifted underneath us. “Me having a fourteen-year-old at home.”
“Who cares?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“You expect me to believe that someone is going to look at you,” he said, emphasizing this like it was the be-all and end-all, “and decide the deal-breaker is your sister?”
“Believe it,” I replied. “It happened.”
His expression shifted into the impassive mask I hadn’t seen much of lately. “Tell me,” he said quietly, and that muscle in his jaw ticked.
He’s angry, I thought almost wondrously.
“I was with someone when my dad died. Shawn. We lived together. We weren’t engaged, but we were there. We looked at rings. And then…” I leaned my head back, bonking it against the metal, and shrugged. “He couldn’t handle it.”
“He couldn’t handle it,” Dex repeated, no longer attempting to hide the disgust.
“At first we—Phoebe and me—we couldn’t stomach going back to Dad’s, so she slept on the couch of our apartment,” I said, eyes locked on our distorted reflections in the metal walls.
“He started pushing me to take her back to my dad’s within, like, a day and a half.
And when I did, the calls and texts got fewer and farther between, and then he came from Boston one night to break up with me in person.
Said it was too much, he didn’t sign on for it. ”
“Christ,” Dex muttered. “What a coward.”
I didn’t mention the delayed response I had to the breakup.
How autopilot kept me moving until I was brushing my teeth three months later and the ache hit, a blinding pain, a visceral emptiness, a new sort of grief befriending the loss.
I thought I would marry Shawn and he bailed on our life so easily, as if he had a bag packed the whole time.
It was a lot to handle, Dad dying and my guardianship of Phoebe—a not-insignificant part of me understood why Shawn left.
So many people in my life called him a coward, but sometimes I couldn’t help wondering if I should’ve given him an out.
“Vi.” My head snapped up, meeting Dex’s dark eyes under the fluorescent elevator lights.
Something about him calling me Vi tied up my insides like a balloon animal, all twisted and ready to pop.
“That guy was an asshole. You didn’t deserve that, and neither did Phoebe.
But that’s not how every person will react to your situation. ”
We were closer. When had I left my wall? I’d assumed it was the only thing keeping me upright.
“Maybe,” I said softly “Doesn’t really matter.”
“No?”
I could smell him. The sharp scent of his soap mingling with the sweetness of strawberry and tequila. I wished I could curate a cologne of exactly this, his scent right now.
“Since when do you care about my personal life?” I whispered. I could reach out and touch him, could see the pulse thrumming in his throat.
“I care,” he murmured. His eyes dipped to my mouth and stuck there. “It’s easy to care when it’s you.”