Chapter 20 Colton #2
I send one last longing glance towards the food stalls and let her drag me onto the Ponte Aragonese.
Quinn’s fingers slot through mine, and my heart skips a beat.
It feels so right, our hands wrapped together, a small point of connection even in a sea of other people.
But it only lasts for a few seconds before she realizes what she’s done and yanks hers away like she’s been burned.
“Sorry,” she mutters.
We shouldn’t be this awkward. She’s held my hand walking through crowds dozens of times, and it was never weird. That night was the best of my life, but if this is how it’s going to be between us now, I’d take it all back.
The sun’s setting over the harbor, nearly gone now and casting a pink and orange glow over the calm, lapping water. Slowly, the space around us fills, bodies pushing us more tightly to the edge as everyone tries to work their way to the front.
Quinn sends me a victorious smile. “See! I told you my plan was better.”
My stomach disagrees, but it’s worth it for the way her dark eyes sparkle, like there are stars hidden in their depths only I can see.
The crowd continues to surge forward, shuffling us around until Quinn’s pushed into me, her back to my front.
All I can think about is how easy it would be to slip my arms around her waist and inch her back farther, to drop my lips to the curve of her neck, the spot that’s tempted me from the first time I saw her.
I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood, desperate to distract myself.
She turns to face me, every curve of her body dragging across mine. I don’t know if this is heaven or hell.
She tilts her head back to look at me. “I’m sorry. It’s packed. I swear, a few boats and we’ll get out of this crowd.”
Someone pushes me forward. My hands come down on the top of the stone wall behind her, trapping her body between my arms. She fists the material of my shirt as she steadies herself, and I barely keep our lower halves from touching. Thank god, because one brush would make my issue obvious.
I’m not sure if it’s a conscious decision or not, but Quinn’s fingers flex in my shirt, tugging my face closer.
Her other hand settles on my stomach, trailing down to the top of my jeans, and I close my eyes to hide the way they roll back in my head.
When I open them, our gazes clash, her brown eyes going even darker.
Her hypnotic lips part on a gasp. It’d be so easy.
Two, maybe three, inches, and my mouth would be on hers again.
Someone shifts behind us again, breaking our staring contest and bringing me back to myself. I clear my throat. “I think I’m going to grab food now. You enjoy the parade and I’ll meet you in the square.”
She chews on her bottom lip. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay.” She forces a smile and turns back toward the water. I watch her for a minute, unable to move. It’s subtle, but her hand comes up to touch the corner of her eye in a quick movement that has my heart clenching.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.
All I know is I can’t turn it off after waking up next to her, wrapped up in her scent, her touch, her voice when she said my name.
A persistent part of my brain argues she wants me, but one word muttered in her sleep doesn’t overrule the dozens of words she’s said consciously.
I grab pizza from one of the local shops, then find a rickety table, unhappily munching down while keeping an eye on her from a distance.
My phone vibrates on the table, and my heart stutters at the 304 area code. West Virginia. Unknown numbers never call me from West Virginia, and my mind fills in all the possibilities. My mom’s sick. There’s been an accident or a fire or a burglary.
Breaking out of the trance, my hand shoots forward, answering on what’s likely the last ring. “This is Colton Miller.”
“Hey, man,” says a voice I don’t recognize. “How you been? It’s Bobby.”
I wrack my brain for a Bobby and come up empty.
When the silence stretches uncomfortably, he elaborates. “Bobby Campell. From high school? We sat next to each other in American history.”
A blurry image takes shape, a short, skinny white guy who would pop into the seat next to me every third class and promptly fall asleep. I wonder how he got my number, then remember it’s Grand Creek. Everybody’s in everybody’s business.
“Hey, Bobby,” I say absently, eyes pinned back on Quinn. “What can I do for you?”
“I sent over a contract for the new countertops for your mom’s house. Not to rush you, but I need that deposit before I can order anything.”
He rattles off a number that has me choking on my own spit.
“That’s not what my mother and I agreed to,” I say when I recover.
“She decided to upgrade from the laminate to the marble.”
“I didn’t approve that,” I shout.
I’m lightheaded and my leg starts bouncing, the movement rattling the iron table. We talked about a budget. We got it all in place. I can cover it—just about—but not if she starts adding more things without talking to me.
There’s a long, awkward pause on the other end of the line. “Okay, well, you two need to talk this out. If this job isn’t going to happen, I need to take on another one.”
I dig the heel of my palm into my eye. “I’m sorry, man. I’ll sort it out.”
Within seconds of hanging up with Bobby, I call my mom.
She answers on the first ring. “Didn’t expect to hear from you while on your big trip.”
“Momma, did you change things for the kitchen renovation?”
She huffs. “What a way to greet your mother.”
“I’m serious. I got a call from your contractor about a new contract?”
“It’s just a small change,” she says.
“Thousands of dollars is a ‘small change’?”
I can hear papers shuffling around in the background. “The marble is so much nicer. Let me take a picture of these pages and I’ll send them to you so you can see.”
“We set a budget for a reason.”
“Oh, come on! You’re off on a fancy island in Italy, but some marble countertops for your mother are too much?”
She laughs, but there’s a bit of hurt underneath. When she looks at me now, she sees this hotshot professor, one who’s flying all around the world. There’s no doubt in her mind that I can handle these changes to the budget.
And the hard part is, if I had stayed on my original career path, figured out a way to do better in my business classes and got a job in investment banking or private equity, it really wouldn’t be a big deal to cover the few thousand dollars to give her the kitchen of her dreams. But I made the selfish choice, and now we’re here.
“This is our home, Colton. If this isn’t worth investing in, what is?”
That’s all she’s ever wanted, a home that she can make her own.
One that doesn’t have the threat of increased rent hanging over her head.
I think about the string of apartments we bounced through my entire childhood, the ones with things constantly breaking and landlords who refused to help.
Or even worse, the dingy one-bedroom apartment she moved us into before my senior year to save enough money to visit colleges, the two of us trading off between the bedroom and the blow-up mattress in the living room because she said that big brain of mine needed good rest at least a few days a week.
Momma gave up the little comfort she’d carved out in this world to give me what I needed.
I sigh, already knowing I’m going to capitulate. It won’t be too hard to move things around. I may need to look at moving to a cheaper part of the city after my lease is up, but extra time on the T is worth her feeling happy in her home.
“Fine, but no more changes to the budget,” I finally say.
“Who knew I was raising such a cheapskate?” she jokes.
“I’m serious, Momma. No more. Please.”
She agrees, but I can tell from her teasing tone that she doesn’t get it, that she’ll keep making assumptions about what I can handle and keep pushing until I break. We hang up as Quinn squeezes her way through the crowd to where I sit.
“Who was that?” she asks.
“My mom.”
She stands up straighter. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know.” At her concerned expression, I quickly add, “She’s fine. Just… money stuff.”
She sinks into the chair next to me, taking my hand between hers and massaging the muscles in my palm. “Want to talk about it?”
I run my free hand over my brow. “I… I want to support her after everything. But I don’t know how to tell her she’s asking for too much, that I don’t have enough to support her.”
My voice breaks on the words as guilt floods me.
“I obviously can’t talk about healthy family relationships,” Quinn says, keeping her eyes on my hand, her fingers still moving like having a job makes this conversation easier.
“But I can speak to love, and you and your mom have that. And can’t anything be worked out if you’re starting from a place of love? ”
“Yeah,” I whisper, and when she looks up and smiles, her dark eyes crinkling into crescents, my pulse races.
I squeeze her hands before extracting mine and using it to nudge the pizza box and the glass of Nocillo toward her. Her smile grows even wider, and I want to throw myself at her feet.
“You got me food?”
I shrug. “I figured I was standing in line, anyway.”
We sit in companionable silence while she eats.
The crowd in the square’s getting rowdier, the Nocillo doing its job and loosening everyone up.
I watch her watch the festival, so beautiful and carefree in a way she hasn’t been all summer.
Bright and addictive, just like she was when we came here at twenty-one.