Chapter 7 #2
Corn on the cob, macaroni and cheese, ribs, dinner rolls, coleslaw and a key lime pie as well as a coconut cream pie. This was home. This was family.
So why do you think you don’t know what family is?
Maybe his attitude was a poor tribute to this family that had given him so much. Maybe.
But there was a division between him and them. And he honestly didn’t know if a few years of being part of this clan could erase the heritage of his actual blood.
If he could bring himself to care even a little bit more about his dad, then he might feel sorry that the old man had gone to the grave without ever knowing the joy of real family. Without ever understanding it. Remy might feel slightly outside the circle, but at least he knew it was real.
At least he knew it could be.
Lydia picked up her rib and began to nibble at it delicately. Then she put one finger in her mouth and licked barbecue sauce away, then her thumb.
She was a virgin.
That knowledge echoed inside him as he watched the way her tongue moved over her own skin.
What the hell was wrong with him?
She shouldn’t have told him she was a virgin. That was the bottom line.
He looked down, forcing himself to focus on his food.
There was conversation going on around him, but it was difficult for him to track. He looked down at Hank, who was staring at him balefully. And he gave the dog some meat off his rib.
“No feeding dogs at the table,” said Nancy, as if he was fourteen years old, but part of him appreciated the rule.
“Poor Hank has been through a lot,” said Lydia.
And again, he sort of felt that they could be talking about him.
“It’s true,” Remy said. “He has. I’m trying to make up for it.”
When it was time to serve pie, Lydia got up to make coffee, and he couldn’t help but take notice of her long legs, showcased to perfection by the short white dress.
She really should wear dresses more often.
“Success,” Matthew said. “You’re barbecue sauce free, Lydia.”
She gave her brother a thumbs-up, and treated him to an irritated facial expression, but then brought the pot of coffee, along with mugs, back to the table.
Remy decided to assist with serving pie, and then after he had laid out plates for everybody, took one piece of each for himself.
Lydia did the same and started sipping her coffee.
He had just about shoveled the last bite of pie into his mouth when Lydia made an outraged noise. “Oh, of course,” she said. “I spilled coffee on this like I have a hole in my lip.”
“We’ll just clean it right away,” her mom said.
“Okay.”
“I am cleaning out the upstairs,” Nancy said, turning her attention to him. “So you should run up and check out the boxes in your old room.”
“I already came by and did mine,” Matthew said. “Not that any of you care. Maybe Mom just threw all my things away.”
“Sure, golden boy,” he said. “That’s likely.”
Lydia got up from her chair and went over to the sink, getting a washcloth wet, and dabbing at the front of her dress. He decided to take that as his cue to go upstairs.
“I’ll just go check it out.”
He hadn’t been upstairs in the house in some time. Maybe not since he’d moved out. There just wasn’t really a reason to. There was a guest bathroom downstairs, and sometimes he felt reluctant to take a walk down memory lane. Yes, he had childhood memories here, but . . . it was all complicated.
This had been the best time of his life in many ways. But being here also made him ache. He pushed open the door that led to his teenage bedroom. He had had his own bedroom here. It still blew his mind. That they had been so generous to him.
The space looked different now. No posters on the wall.
And a few boxes in the center of the room. He opened one up and looked inside.
His yearbook.
Yes. It was past time he took the stuff with him.
It really said a lot that he was going through things at this house at the same time as Matthew and Lydia.
That maybe, just maybe, this was his family. And he did belong.
Yeah, because family would be checking out Lydia’s legs.
There was an outdated PlayStation, but he was actually feeling nostalgic, so he figured he would keep it. And there was a birthday card in the box with puppies on the front. He frowned. But he opened it up and saw that it was from Lydia. For his seventeenth birthday.
Of course she had given him a card with puppies. Even if it wasn’t his thing, it was very much hers. And she wouldn’t be able to imagine anything more charming. He chuckled.
It was just so . . . her.
Sweet. And a little bit lost in her own world. But he liked that about her. He always had.
The door creaked, and he looked up. And there she was, standing there in that white dress, looking at him.
“Yes?”
“I just . . . I was curious what was . . .”
“A birthday card from you.”
She slipped inside. “Really?”
“Yes. You hoped that my birthday was paws-itively wonderful.” He handed her the card as she crouched down by the box, moving to her knees. She looked at the card and laughed. “What was I thinking?”
“The same thing you were thinking when you brought me a damned dog. You can’t imagine anybody not finding this as charming as you do.”
“Well, that makes me sound selfish.”
“You’re not selfish.”
He looked at her profile, at the way her blond hair fell into her face.
She was sweet in ways that no one else he knew was.
She was the last person on earth who could ever be considered selfish.
She just cared so much about the things she cared about, she couldn’t understand that other people might not.
He knew that intuitively. Understood it.
“What else is in the box? Or is it personal?”
He didn’t know what possessed him then. “Industrial-sized bottle of lube and a giant box of condoms.”
She looked up at him, the card open in her hands, her eyes round.
“I’m kidding,” he said.
“Well. Well . . . I mean, I am quite certain that . . . in high school . . .”
“I wasn’t getting up to anything in high school. Not here. Can you imagine? Me being my father’s son, I would’ve been chased out of girls’ bedrooms with a shotgun.”
“Oh. Well. I mean, I assumed that . . .”
“Did you make assumptions about me?”
He was inching way too close to the thing that had been haunting him these last several days.
“I wondered. Of course I did. I am the lame younger sister. Of course I always wondered what you and Matthew were doing. You were so much cooler than me.”
“Well, for obvious reasons, neither Matthew nor I really came online until we left here. But we were very cool in college.” He and Matthew had actually been roommates at the University of Oregon, which they’d decided to attend together.
“I guess so. And as the younger sister, I guess I never thought the logistics through. I just thought you were both cool.”
He chuckled. “Well, I was from the wrong side of the tracks, and Matthew . . . you know. Once we got to college we cut loose. It wasn’t so easy in a town full of people who all thought they knew us.”
“Right.”
“Is that your problem?”
Don’t ask about that, you idiot.
She blinked. “My problem?”
“Yeah. You said that you . . .”
“Oh, I remember what I said. Thank you. But no. I’m not gay, and I’m not from the wrong side of the tracks, as I think you know.”
“That isn’t what I meant. What I meant is when you live somewhere all your life, people have an expectation about who you are. Which is really what I was up against too. Folks think they know you. And because of that, they think they know what you want, or at least what you ought to want.”
“Oh. Well. I’ve always been weird. I’ve always been the girl with cages of animals in her room, the one you could bring a sick bird to. But yeah, guys are reluctant to date that girl.”
“Not now, though.”
“It would take a very particular kind of man to sign on for all this.”
It was true in some ways, but in others, her comment irked him. The idea that somehow men wouldn’t see she was a great girl. Sweet and caring.
“Then what is it?”
“Well. I’m twenty-seven. After a certain point, it gets weird.
In college I felt like an outsider. When I came home, I hadn’t met anyone yet.
Then I just still didn’t. You are right about the hometown thing being weird in some respects.
You can’t really casually hook up with somebody unless .
. . I don’t know. Unless you really think about it.
Unless you know what you’re doing. I didn’t know what I was doing. Or even what I wanted.”
“So at this point, some of the problem is the barrier of having never done it.”
She snorted. “Done it. This does remind me of high school.” She looked up at him, and suddenly her blue eyes were grave. “Remy . . . if you . . . I . . .”
She didn’t ask. She didn’t verbalize what he thought she might.
But his heart stopped all the same, his stomach went tight.
Here they were, sitting on the bedroom floor that he’d once called his own.
He had lived here, and so had she. Her parents had been very trusting to allow that.
To let him live in the same house as their teenage daughter.
God knew he would never, ever have done anything untoward then.
He was thinking about it now. But then, she was twenty-seven.
As she had just reminded him.
“Lydia . . .”
“If you don’t . . .” She looked so wounded, she couldn’t even finish the sentence. And that did it.
Because suddenly the words that had been echoing inside his head roared through him like a freight train, and he realized he did want to do something about them.
He couldn’t leave her looking like that. He reached out and cupped her face, holding her steady as he leaned in and kissed her.
She drew in a breath as soon as their mouths touched, and the sweet sigh nearly undid him.
Remington Lane had kissed any number of women, but none of them had ever been like this.
There wasn’t any knowing involved before. And he knew Lydia Clay.