27. Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
“ W hat do you want to do for your birthday?” I ask Cade days later, as we lounge around the apartment. Rory has been holed up in EJ’s room since she got home—stress smoking, she says, because working for my mother is hell on earth.
His eyes flick to me. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on.” I walk into the living room, settling into the couch next to him. “It’s your birthday. ”
“Exactly why,” he says, “I don’t want to do anything.”
“Don’t tell me even your mother listened to that crap,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “Or Eddy? I’ll ask EJ, and I know he’ll tell me the truth.”
“My mom didn’t listen to my demands,” he admits. “But you should.”
“Since when have I ever, Cade?”
He considers this. “This time you should.”
My lip juts into a pout. Cade groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Gigi. I’m serious.”
“Sure.” I nod. “No birthday.” Cade’s eyes drag over my face. “I promise,” I lie.
“If you do something, I’m going to be pissed.” His jaw flexes.
“Uh huh.”
“Gigi.”
“Cade.”
“Princess. I mean it when I say—”
“When is your birthday again?” I ask, eyes sparkling as my hand travels downward against his zipper. “I’ve already forgotten.”
When I march into Beach Brew the next morning before a shift at the diner, the first thing EJ says to me is, “I was told to warn you not to plan any sort of birthday excursions.”
“Hello to you, too.” I roll my eyes. What an enigma, that Cade. “He’s being ridiculous.”
“Or maybe,” EJ offers, “he’s a man turning twenty-three in a few weeks who isn’t in the mood for a party.”
“That sounds crazy.” I hand over bills for my coffee and EJ shakes his head. I slide them into his tip jar. Ever since Cade and I have been spending time together exclusively-non-exclusive, EJ has been comping my coffee nearly every day.
“The fact that you’re saying that after spending all summer with my brother is crazy.”
I debate this, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “He really doesn’t want anything?”
EJ shakes his head. “His birthday is a weird time for him. He hates being recognized as not a shithole.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Not to someone like Cade, who is convinced he’s a shithole,” EJ says. “Remember your target market.”
“But I don’t think he’s a bad guy.”
“That doesn’t matter,” EJ explains. “Not to Cade.”
I decide at this moment what I’m going to do for Cade’s birthday: convince him he’s the amazing guy I know he is.
“You just got a look on your face.”
I wait at the pickup counter for my coffee, wordless.
“Gigi. If you’re planning something for his birthday behind his back, I’m telling you, it may not go the way you hope it will.”
I roll my eyes. “EJ.”
“Respectfully, Gigi.” He hands me my coffee. “Take my advice.”
“Have you done anything for EJ’s birthday?” I ask Rory later that day, as we clean adjacent tables.
“You mean like this year? Or ever?”
“Ever.”
“I’ve only known him a few years,” she says, “and it’s not like we’re a couple.”
“Inseparable close friends?” I supply.
“Inseparable close friends who screwed each other once and went on about life after as if everything was normal,” she adds. “But inseparable close friends is way easier to say.”
I laugh. “I’m still immensely confused by you two.”
“You and me both,” she says. “But I don’t have the brainpower to figure it all out. I’ve given up. We are what we are, and we don’t know what that is.”
I can’t resist laughing again because, wow, Rory and EJ are just as messy as Cade and me. As I put my dirty rag into a nearby bussing bin, I ask, “What if I do? I’d like to see you happy.”
“Because you’re on top of the world and falling for the one guy who is the epitome of everything you aren’t after, Ms. Lover of Love.”
I offer an eye roll. “I don’t love Cade.”
“Stop lying to me,” Rory says, narrowing her eyes. “And yourself.”
Lunch?
Cade texted.
I know you can’t resist pizza. Or I guess, you can’t resist ice cream. But they’re in the same place, y’know?
Or a hot date with me. You WON’T resist that.
Reading the last text made my heart scorch. I threw my phone to the side and haven’t picked it up yet. It has been two weeks. Two weeks of being together every day. Two weeks of being wrapped up with him in his bed, in his truck. In the bathroom of the diner during a particularly slow closing shift, where Cade would not stop skating his deliciously rough hands over my hips every time he saw me.
I am falling for him. Denying that would be silly, but acting on the feeling is more reckless.
I’m addicted to the parts of Cade Deans I have close to me now : the softness in his eyes when he looks at me and the care he takes when he captures my waist. I’ve caught myself tracing the lines of his tattoos, wracking my brain as to why he’d cover such an immaculate frame with gray and black ink. Loving him, even though he made such an imperfect choice.
I can’t help it.
I’m not willing to sacrifice what I have of him now at the expense of asking for something more.
Not yet.
Gentle fingers outline the tattoo on my collarbone. It’s so small, it could be mistaken for a birthmark. But my tattoo is about much more than what the image is or how much real estate it takes up on my skin. It was about being daring. Telling myself I could do something daring.
And to impress Cade.
I’ve been doing well on my self-imposed Cade break today, taking the afternoon to hole up in my room and simply process—process the idea that I am a summer fling girl now. Summer fling girls don’t spend every second with their fellow fling—that’s relationship behavior. I’m not Cade’s girlfriend, as much as I wish I was. He doesn’t want that.
If he really doesn’t want that, he is showing it in the strangest way I’ve ever seen a man not show interest in somebody.
Realizing my Cade break is for naught, I reach for my phone and video chat Mollie.
“We normally call,” she whines as she picks up. I can’t see her face, only the eggshell-white ceiling of her bedroom. “I just got out of the shower. I can talk to you on the phone just fine after a shower, and that doesn’t involve you seeing me naked.”
“Am I going to see you naked?” I ask her ceiling.
She’s back, holding me up so I can see her face. She’s got a plush pink robe wrapped around her. I raise my eyebrows. “This isn’t yours,” she deadpans. “Mom bought me my own, so I wouldn’t steal yours anymore.”
“Fantastic,” I reply, smiling. “But I’m not demanding to see you so I can verify that you aren’t stealing my clothes.”
Mollie smirks. “Good, because if you do decide to verify, you will be sorely disappointed, dear sister.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding me? Have you raided the whole thing?”
My sister’s lips stretch thin. “Not the entire thing. I haven’t touched your cardigans.”
“As if you’d need a cardigan in mid-July!” I retort. “That’s why you haven’t bothered to steal those, too.”
Mollie shrugs. “You can never be sure.”
“You have plenty of sweaters, should you get chilly.”
She groans. “But yours are better. More comfortable. Worn in like a sweater should be.”
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your breath to make an argument about cardigans that I am certain you won’t need.” I narrow my eyes at my sister. “My cardigans are ‘worn in’ because I’ve got nearly two years on you. That’s two extra years of wear-and-tear, thanks to me.”
Mollie’s eyes flutter, her expression returning to a midpoint once more. “You demanded a FaceTime for a reason, so what is it?”
I move my hair aside, putting the phone close to my clavicles.
“Why are you—wait. What is that?”
I pull the phone away so Mollie and I are face-to-face.
“You got a tattoo,” she hisses. “Last I knew, you hated those.”
“It’s complicated,” I tell her. “I wanted you to see it. I’m proud of it. Sort of.”
She studies my face. “There’s nothing complicated about my sister, who is a creature of safe, safe habit, getting a tattoo? Or what about this non-committal sex you’re having? You don’t do that.”
I’ve told my sister all the dirty details, of course.
I bite my lip. “It’s Cade. I’m with him and I… Everything falls away.”
“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Mollie mocks. “You come back to the real world in less than a month, remember?”
I frown, peering at the calendar on my nightstand. Less than a month makes it sound longer than it is. It’s only three more weeks. “I know.”
I have to choose a path soon: put it all out there for Cade and hope he’s feeling this, too, or let this be a meaningless—that doesn’t seem meaningless—entanglement that I’m certain I’ll be reeling over for months no matter how this ends.
Lovely.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Hold on,” I tell Mollie. “I think one of Belinda’s impulse buys showed up. They may need me to sign or something.”
“Take me,” she demands. “You will not leave me in this room.”
I get myself down the stairs quickly, then set Mollie aside and throw open the door.
“You weren’t answering,” Cade says, holding up a box with two cups perched on it. “So, I brought the Pizza Ice Cream Parlor to you.”
My heart squeezes, warmth rising up to my hairline. I’m so overtaken with joy that I might soar into the sky like a guy on a Red Bull commercial.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say softly. “Sorry. I was… taking a nap.”
I forget that Mollie is still within earshot, since I set my phone on the kitchen counter to answer the door. She laughs, and I scramble to collect my phone from the counter and turn her down before she can do or say anything else.
I slip my phone into my pocket, giving Mollie a view of nothing. She has lost her right to look at the ceiling with that laugh.
“Sorry about that,” I tell Cade. “Belinda.”
Cade’s gaze flicks to his feet, then back up. “Can I come in? Eat some lunch?”
I take a shaky breath in. “Sure,” I say. “But I’m not letting you into my bedroom.” I take my phone out of my pocket, hang up on Mollie as she’s staring at me with her forehead creased in confusion.
“Didn’t plan on seeing it, princess,” Cade says as he walks in.
Cade and I spend the rest of the afternoon together, eating pizza and taking small scoops of ice cream in between. This doesn’t do any good for my heart, because the idea that he is with me and doesn’t want me to take off my clothes is comforting.
What we do is fine enough. But the times he gives me slivers of sweet Cade with a heart—getting me coffee and bringing it to the diner, the Ferris wheel moment that replays like a movie every night before bed, how soft he touches me, like he thinks I’ll snap in two under his hands. He couldn’t possibly not have feelings, right? Guys without feelings don’t act like this. I’ve seen plenty. If Cade Deans is calling himself an emotionless, heartless man, he’s lying.
I show him The Bachelor this afternoon, skimming through the boring parts and having to re-explain the rose ceremony multiple times. He endures it all, so much so that when I look over after our fifth episode, he’s fallen asleep. In caring mode, I stand, pulling the blanket that sits on the back of the couch over Cade’s frame. He shifts, but doesn’t wake.
I leave him to sleep.
I don’t want to wake him by being in the kitchen or living room, so I pad my way up the stairs and to the hole that is my room. I take the opportunity to reconnect with Mollie. I’ll just whisper.
“YOU JUST HUNG UP!” she bellows as the call connects.
I shush her. “He’s asleep downstairs.”
“AS IF HE CAN HEAR ME!” she tries again, her vocal chords straining. “WHY IS THE TATTOOED HUNK ASLEEP IN YOUR HOUSE?”
“It’s not my house.” I shrug. “It’s Belinda’s. And can you stop yelling?”
“Gigi.” Mollie softens. “You know what I mean.”
My eyes roll. “Are you done?”
She actually takes time to think. “I guess. But this arrangement is giving me whiplash.”
“You and me both,” I tell her.
“Obviously,” Mollie chides. “The tattooed hunk is asleep on your couch as we speak.”
“I’m too polite to wake him up and kick him out,” I quip. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“For starters,” my sister sing-songs, “you can admit you like him, and that’s why he’s asleep on your couch.”
“Belinda’s couch,” I warn, grinning against the phone.
“It doesn’t matter to me whose couch it is,” she replies, frank. “It matters that you are the one allowing him to sleep there undisturbed.”
“What does that mean?” I chide.
“It means,” Mollie replies, breezy, “that you like him, Gigi.”
I sigh, my shoulders heavy with the weight of guilt. “Fine,” I mutter sheepishly. “I do. I like him, okay? But—”
My chest goes light with realization, butterflies flapping away in my stomach.
“Ah-ha!” my sister squeals. “And no buts! No ands! And no ifs, I guess! Whatever.”
“Admitting I like Cade changes absolutely nothing,” I say sorrowfully. The thoughts of him looking at me on the Ferris wheel flash in my mind with my words. The smile on his face. The way he kissed me at that exact place, and changed the trajectory of my entire summer. The way it feels to hold his hand in moments when we need each other most, during fears, big and small.
The hand I can’t trust to hold on tight and never let go is the only hand I want to hold.
And that hurts much worse than my tattoo did.
If Cade ever asks the number for the pain he’s causing me, I’ll tell him it’s a solid eight.
And then hope he holds my hand to make it better.