Chapter 9
Cassie
I can’t believe Luke Curtis is in my car. He’s in. My. Car. After the year I spent getting over him, I never thought I’d be stupid enough to get this close to him again, even though our closeness is just a platonic business thing. That’s all it is. From my side, anyway.
When we turn onto Rutledge, the air currents in the cabin shift and I catch a whiff of something foul. It’s coming from Luke. I don’t feel the need to break this to him lightly.
“You stink.”
Luke looks at me, surprised. “I do?”
“You reek of B.O.”
“I thought my Old Spice was still holding up.”
“It’s not. Don’t get your stink on my upholstery.”
“Hold on. I got this.” Luke starts rummaging in his backpack. He pulls out a white T-shirt and an aerosol can of deodorant. Before I can object, he strips off his shirt.
My heart hops to my throat. Even smelly, he’s a sight to behold with well-defined pecs, a light peppering of chest hair, a full pack of abs with defined obliques. I’m overtaken by a wave of unexpected longing.
Gross, Cassie. He’s filthy!
“What are you doing?” I double my grip on the steering wheel.
“Changing my shirt.”
“In my car?!”
“I don’t want to get my stink on your upholstery.” He raises an arm and sprays a cloud of deodorant.
The smell pinches the back of my throat. “Okay,” I say between hacks. “I think you got it.”
He lifts his finger, tosses the can to his other hand, depresses the nozzle, filling the cabin with another cloud of musky aerosol.
“That’s enough,” I say. “My windows are going to fog up.”
“But at least I won’t smell.”
I catch another glimpse of Luke’s pecs as they dance up and down with each arm movement. The wave of desire returns like a reflex left over from our past moments of intimacy.
“Forget it. Just. Clothe. Your. Self.” I punctuate each word with a backhanded slap against his bubbly bicep.
“Fine. Geesh. You don’t have to hit.” He pulls the shirt over his head and tugs it to his waist. “You could have closed your eyes.”
“I’m driving,” I say through clenched teeth.
“And I’m preening.”
“Do you even know what that means?”
“It means I’m making myself more attractive.”
“It means you’re cleaning your feathers with your beak.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I know so.”
“I can look it up.”
“Don’t bother. Just—” The smell of Luke’s deodorant hangs heavily in the air, burning my eyes and my nose. I press the buttons to lower all four windows. “It’s a good thing Sarah isn’t here,” I holler over the wind and road noise. “She hates musky cologne.”
“Who’s Sarah?” Luke hollers back.
“My personal assistant.” The rushing air massages my face and blows my hair away from my cheeks.
“I thought all women liked musk-scented cologne.”
“Not all of us. Those that do prefer it in reasonable quantities.” I inhale a deep breath of air and then close the windows. The pressure in the cabin leans on my eardrums. I release it with a crackling sound.
“Better?” Luke says into the silence.
“Where am I going?”
“Is the smell better?”
“Marginally. Where do you live?”
I sink into my seat and set my jaw. Luke sighs next to me. We pass a church on the left with an impressive steeple. Afterward, historic homes line the street, buffered from view by palm trees and oak trees that have been trimmed to wind around the low-lying power lines.
This is the part where we don’t talk, where I drive him home, kick him out, and then think of a way to get out of that second date.
Luke clears his throat. “How’s Granny?”
Huh uh. Heck no. Idle conversation isn’t happening. “She’s fine.”
I feel Luke’s eyes on me. He’s waiting for details. I clamp my lips shut.
“How are her knees?”
“They’re fine.”
“I thought they were arthritic.”
“Arthritic knees can be fine.”
We roll by an old, red-bricked corner store that’s advertising cigarettes and cold beer. It looks out of place among the well-kept homes.
“How’s Nana?” Luke tries.
“She’s fine.” I tap my finger on the steering wheel.
“Mouthy as usual?”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” Luke asks.
“Talk.” My eyes are on the road, but I watch Luke slouch into his seat in my peripheral vision.
Maybe I’m being too mean. Maybe he doesn’t deserve this. My mind wanders back to that night. The text. His two-timing revelation. Fast forward to him inserting himself into my launch, my company.
The silent treatment is probably the least he deserves.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I could tell him actions speak louder than words, but I don’t want to encourage him.
He tells me where to turn left, and then right. We creep along Benton Street which is heavily screened with trees. Immaculate multi-storied homes with generous first, second, and third floor porches characterize the neighborhood. Wood siding is the dominant exterior treatment, with a few brick homes bucking the trend.
“Historic homes don’t scream bachelor pad to me,” I answer.
“I’m not a bachelor.”
I give Luke my best yeah-right face and then refocus on the road.
“Mine’s the next one,” Luke says.
“This one?” It’s the only house on the street with a front yard and a driveway.
“Yep.”
I turn in.
Six windows balance the second floor. The first floor has two windows on either side of ornate wood and wrought iron double doors. A porch spans the length of the house, and a decorative peak with a half round window divides the roofline.
I do some math in my head. A historic home, on a significant piece of land, with enough bedrooms for a family of ten. He paid millions for this place.
“Do you have servants?” I ask.
“No. Not yet. I may hire a part-time housekeeper.”
I throw the SUV into park in anticipation of Luke’s exit, but he turns to me instead.
“What I meant was, I am a bachelor. But not like I was. Not like you’re thinking. I haven’t had a girlfriend in over a year.”
I flash him my yeah-right face again. “I thought you required females to stroke your ego.”
“I don’t require females for anything.”
“Anything?” Skepticism laces my voice.
“Uh. No. I haven’t done that in over a year.”
“Done what?”
“That.”
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“It,” he says like I haven’t figured it out.
I back up so far that my hair smashes against the driver’s side window. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“You went there?”
“You went there.” He alternates his arms in front of me, palms up, like two pistons. “I thought we were going there.”
“No.” I feel anxiety rising in my gut. “We weren’t.” I tug the handle, kick open the door, and hop out. “Wait,” I say after doing a little circle. “What am I doing? I’m staying. You’re leaving. No, you’re leaving and I’m staying. No.”
He’s right. I went there. And I shouldn’t have.
Luke jumps out of the car and sprints over to me.
“Hey.” He reaches out but doesn’t touch me. “I thought we were acting like old times. Sorry.”
“This is not like old times in any way, shape, or form.”
“I know. But we had a comfort level. I guess I still feel it, so I got too...graphic.” His arm is still outstretched.
I throw up my hands. “I’m leaving now.”
“Wait. Let me show you my house. It’s historic. You like history.”
“Some other day.” Meaning, never. I step into my car.
“I have ghosts.”
I pause and peek at him over my shoulder. Olde Towne Ghost Tours is still my main source of income. Charleston ghosts are my bread and butter. “You mentioned that before. What kind of ghosts?”
“Moany Maroney and an ectoplasmic cat.”
I set my foot back on the driveway and slowly turn. “Moany Maroney?”
“That’s what I named him. Or her. Just now actually. All I know is I hear moaning. Only at night. And there’s an invisible feral cat that meows like it’s about to tangle with a demon.”
“How old is your house?”
“It was built in 1810. I can show you around.”
Luke’s managed to pique my interest but setting foot anywhere near his bedroom seems like a bad idea.
“I better not,” I say. “We need to keep our relationship professional.” Despite my unprofessional comments just moments ago.
Luke crosses his arms and leans on my car. He mulls over my last statement and then says, “Professionally speaking, we need to plan our next date. The internet audience is waiting.”
My insides cringe. I manage to maintain a blank expression. He has a point. Unfortunately. Luke and I are trending on Instagram and it’s driving subscriptions. How...complicated. Single, independent me knows I should run away screaming, but the businesswoman in me can’t resist an opportunity to grow my subscriber base. I also can’t resist my sudden idea to get date number two over with as soon as possible.
I dig through my purse to find my phone. After climbing out of the car, I pull up Instagram and start a Live.
“Hey, fam. Cassie here. I’m just going to dive into this livestream. I don’t know if you caught my interview on I107, but if you didn’t, you can stream it on their website. Anyway, guess who’s with me?” I adjust the camera, so Luke is visible over my shoulder. His surprised expression quickly drops when he realizes he’s live.
“Hey, family,” he says slowly.
“Yeah. Like we said in our interview with Chris Sands, we decided to go on a second date. We know you guys are here for it, and so are we. This is officially date numero two.” I hold up two fingers. “Luke’s gonna show me around his house. You guys, he lives in a historic mansion. I’m not going to say where because I know you guys would stalk him.”
“Good idea,” Luke says. “Not the stalking part. That’s bad. Bad idea. But the whole not letting people know where I live. That’s good.” He dips his head next to mine, so close our cheeks almost touch. He still smells bad—an unhappy pairing of sweat and manufactured fragrance—but I feel a zing of electricity in my arm where his bumps into mine.
“Not that I don’t trust you.” Luke squints at my phone. “All fifteen of you. I totally don’t think you would stalk me because stalking is illegal. Also, you have no idea how bad I smell.”
“He’s telling the truth,” I say.
“If you don’t mind...” Luke angles my front-facing camera toward the ground. “I don’t want them to see my house.”
“Oh. Sure.”
I record our feet as we walk up the driveway and around to the back door. We enter through a mudroom that’s occupied by a very large dog.
“This is Korg,” Luke says as the dog eagerly paws my jeans. I crouch and give the audience a good look at Korg’s smoky gray coat and floppy ears. He licks me on the cheek in greeting.
“No, Korg. Bad boy.” Luke grabs the dog’s collar as I stand. He leans into view. “Cassie doesn’t like dogs.”
“I don’t dislike dogs. I just don’t like slobber.” I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand.
“Korg is a slobberer, and he doesn’t care who knows it.”
“Great,” I say and then flash the audience a stiff smile. “Oh. Hi JuJu5. It’s great to see you too. You subscribed?” I raise my free hand to my head. “That’s awesome. Come back and tell me how your first date goes.”
Korg runs into the kitchen, and Luke follows him.
“I’m going to flip the camera around, okay?”
I start recording from my back-facing camera as I enter the kitchen. It doesn’t live up to the house’s promise of grandeur. The cabinets look like they were born in 1980, and the counters are dull with stains here and there. A large island takes up most of the room, a big slab of gray composite that Luke hasn’t bothered to decorate.
“One of your cabinets is open,” I say, but Luke is already on it. He walks over, inspects the hinges. Opens and closes the door. Tries to jiggle it, but it’s firmly attached. “I forgot to tell you about my third ghost that haunts the kitchen. Well, it may only haunt this particular cabinet. I won’t know until I take a sledgehammer to it on demo day.”
As an owner of a ghost tours company, I believe in ghosts. Obviously. However, I don’t believe every story I hear. I require proof. An open cabinet door is not proof.
“I don’t think cabinets can be haunted,” I say.
“This one is. It opens by itself. By itself,” he repeats to our live audience, leaning forward for emphasis.
“The hinge must be loose.”
“The hinge isn’t loose. C’mere. Feel it.”
I walk over, swing the door a few times, shrug. “Maybe it’s warped.”
Luke hogs the camera. “It’s haunted,” he says definitively.
I laugh and take a step back. “You’ll have to get an exorcist in here to give you an opinion.”
“Do they give estimates? Because I may have a dead Civil War soldier and an angry ghost cat in need of rehoming too.”
“You’ll have to ask them,” I say.
Luke gestures to his cabinets like Vana White. “Clearly, the kitchen needs a little work to keep up with the Joneses. I’m thinking white shaker cabinets, quartz countertops, glass tile backsplash. That’s what my interior designer suggested, anyway. Let’s move on to the family room.”
Korg circles my legs as I head to the double-wide doorway leading to the next room. I record everything, including the apparition on the couch that almost makes me toss my phone into the air.
“Mom!” Luke hollers. “Stop doing that. You don’t even have the TV on. What are you doing here?”
“I’m having a vodka tonic. Or two. Or three. Your father called.”
Luke leaps over to me and swipes the phone out of my hand, clicks it off, and then tosses it onto the leather sofa.
“Luke!” I say a little too loudly. My adrenaline is still spiked from the surprise encounter with the ghost of Luke’s mom. “We were doing a Live!”
“Not anymore.” Luke stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“You have to stop cutting them off like that.”
“No one wants to see this,” Luke says. “Trust me.”
“See what?” Cecilia Curtis says as she walks over to us, vodka tonic in hand, white flowing skirt trailing behind her. Korg sniffs the hem of her dress.
“No one wants to watch my drunk mother skulk around my house like a ghost,” Luke says. “It’s dark in here. You could have turned on the lights.” He walks over to the doorway and flips on the recessed lights.
“Why would anyone see me?” Cecilia says.
“We were doing an Instagram Live,” Luke answers.
“That’s what all the commotion was about?”
“Why are you drinking, Mom?”
“Your father called.”
“I get that, but why did a conversation with Dad drive you to drink? Wait.” Luke rests his hand on my forearm. “I’m not sure you should hear this.”
I definitely shouldn’t hear this, but Luke’s mom is between me and my phone. Maybe I should just leave it on the couch and make a run for it. I can always buy a new phone.
“That’s what you do when you’re sulking about Cassie,” Cecilia says, her voice wobbly. “You get drunk and spill your guts.”
I feel my eyes go wide. Warning bells go off in my head, and I’m pretty sure an “Abort” sign flashes on my forehead in bright red capital letters.
“Mother,” Luke growls. He narrows his eyes at his mother and tips his head toward me.
Cecilia and I lock eyes and recognition lights her face. “Cassie! He won you back! I’m so happy. Come in for a hug.”
My body feels like it’s slowly oozing to the floor. If I don’t get out of this house now, I’m going to sink into a pile of mortification.
Cecelia approaches enthusiastically and I have no choice but to catch her. Her bony arms wrap around me like we’re long-lost besties, which we most definitely aren’t. When Luke and I were dating, we went to Chicago a couple of times a year, once for an overnight weekend. I’ve seen her, like, seven times max?
She lets go of me and veers toward Luke, arms outstretched and ice tinkling in her glass. “I told you she’d take you back. How could she not? Just look at that face.” Cecelia squeezes Luke’s cheeks between her thumb and forefinger and then she encircles him with her arms, first looking up at him and then resting her temple on his chest. A moment later, her nose crinkles and she takes an abrupt step back. Vodka splashes out of her glass and onto the floor.
“You need a shower, son. Right now. Go upstairs.”
“No, Mom. I’m not—”
“Go. You’re stinking up the place. Cassie’s not going to snuggle with you when you’re smelling like that.”
My cheeks flare with heat.
Luke glances at me nervously and then refocuses on his mother. He rests his hands on her shoulders. “You’re drunk, Mother.”
“This house has eight bathrooms. Pick one.” She escapes his grip and shoos him away. “Go on. It’ll only take five minutes. Clean yourself up. Cassie and I can talk about old times.”
“I am not—” Luke shakes his head and wags his finger between me and his mother. “Nope.”
“Fine. You never listen to your mother.” Cecelia hobbles into the kitchen with us in tow. She starts opening cabinets, rummaging through Luke’s food.
“What are you doing?” Luke asks.
“I need more booze.”
“No,” Luke says emphatically. “You don’t.”
“If I’m going to have sex with your dad, trust me, I need more booze.” She continues rummaging.
Luke looks at me. “She’s not normally like this.”
He hurries over to his mom, turns her away from the cabinets, and takes her glass. After pouring her drink into the sink, he refills the glass with water. “Here,” he says handing it to her. She chugs it, oblivious to the water spilling onto her cheeks and down her dress.
“Um... I’m going to go?” I point to the back door.
“No. Stay,” Cecelia pleads. “I need girl talk. Luke won’t understand.”
“I understand you are not sleeping with Dad, under any circumstances,” Luke says sternly. “That’s not happening.”
“You don’t get to decide,” Cecelia says.
“Yes, I do. You can’t stand Dad.”
“I can’t, but he offered to give me the beach house in Cancun if I meet him down there next week.”
“You said you don’t have a price.”
“Everyone has a price.”
“Have you heard of a booty call?” Luke asks.
“I think I should leave,” I say, this time a little louder.
Cecelia looks at me beneath hooded lids. “I need your advice, Cassie. You and I are kindred spirits.”
“We are?” I inch toward the back door.
“We’ve both loved men who cheated on us.”
“Mother, stop. You’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m tipsy. And I know what a booty call is.”
“If you go to Cancun, that’s a booty call. You’re seriously considering having a booty call. With Dad.”
“First of all, you have no room to talk. Secondly, a house on the ocean, Luke. We could go whenever we wanted. Even the seafood smells better in the tropics.”
“I can buy you an ocean house,” Luke says.
“What would you do, Cassie? Would you answer Luke’s booty call if he offered you a house in Cancun?”
I shake my head.
Cecelia tucks her chin and peers at me. “One night of sex for a house on a beach?”
“No. I don’t think I would.”
“I would never ask her to,” Luke says.
Cecelia throws up her hands. “You two are no help.” She slumps onto the island. Luke grabs her before she slides to the floor.
“You need to lay down,” he says.
“Will you read me a bedtime story?” Cecelia slurs.
I cover a grin with my hand. Luke catches me. “This isn’t funny.”
He’s right. This isn’t funny. I’m learning too much about Cecelia’s sex life and Luke’s feelings for me. So why am I still smiling?
“Green eggs and spam with a can of yams. Ya-mmmmm. My lips are vibrating!”
Cecelia throws an arm around Luke’s neck and leans into his chest. A second later, she pushes off and waves her hand in front of her nose. “Where did you get that cologne? Dollar Tree?”
“It’s not cologne. It’s deodorant.”
“It’s not working.”
I can’t stand back and watch Luke struggle with Cecelia’s weight any longer. I join him on the other side of the island.
“Thank God, Cassie.” Cecelia throws both arms around my neck. “You smell like lavender.” She buries her nose into my hair, and I lose balance and fall backward.
Luke dives behind me and props me up. Somehow, we divide his mom between us and shuffle her back into the family room. We carefully lay her down on the leather sofa and Luke covers her in a knitted blanket. Before he can stand, she grabs his shirt and pulls him closer. “If I want a house by the ocean, I’ll have a house by the ocean. You can’t stop me.”
“Sure, Mom.”
I grab a throw pillow and tuck it under Cecelia’s head. “You’re such a sweetheart, Cassie. I always knew you were the one. I’m glad Luke finally realized it.”
Ice flashes through my veins. I stand stiffly, steal a glance at Luke, but he’s looking away, his lips in a firm line like he felt the same surge of panic.
“Okay. I’m headed out,” I say hurriedly. “Take some Tylenol in the morning, Cecelia. You’ll feel better soon.”
She pulls the blanket up to her chin and snuggles into the pillow. “I feel amazing. Ya-mmmmm. It tickles.” She giggles, snorts, and then laughs.
“Great. Um.” I feel like I’m forgetting something. My phone. Luke moved it to the end table before we tucked Cecelia in. I take a deep breath, straighten my shirt, and walk over to my phone, and consequently, Luke. As I feared, he touches my elbow.
“Can we talk? On the front porch?”
I grab my phone and shove it into my back pocket. “This has been...enlightening? But I really need to go.”
“I really need to talk.”
“Didn’t your mom already say everything?”
“Exactly. Thanks, Mom.”
We both glance at her still form. She’s already asleep.
Luke looks desperate. What can he say to me that I don’t already know? He’s been sulking about me to the point of inebriation and then drunk dialing his mom, telling her his secrets, making her think I’m the one. I feel like I’ve descended into an alternate universe. I’m embarrassed, alarmed, mortified. But also...humored. My ex who cheated on me has been pining for me for who knows how long, and his drunk mother ratted him out. This day could be a sitcom episode.
I look at Luke, contemplate his worried expression and defeated stance, and can’t help but smile. Life with Luke always was full of laughter and surprises.
“Fine,” I say. “Walk me out?”