Chapter 12
“Are you two fucking?” Kim asked the second the elevator doors shut.
Jo whirled around, the blunt question distracting her from her quickly spiraling thoughts.
Max peeked up from the game on his phone and shook his faded teal hair out of his eyes. “Who’s fucking?”
“Jo and that guy,” Kim said, smacking him on the arm. “Did you see the way they looked at each other?”
“Um, no?”
“We’re not—!” Jo cried, then remembered she was in public. She lowered her voice. “We’re not fucking.”
“But you want to be, right?” Kim said, looping her arm through Jo’s and pulling her toward the front doors.
“I… maybe?” she admitted.
Max trailed behind them, staring at his game.
“Oooooo, you’re blushing,” Kim said. “Come on, I need to see everyone’s faces when they find out.”
“No, please don’t!” Jo cried. “Felix and I are friends. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable around everyone.”
Oh God, was that why he bailed on dinner? Here she was thinking that Indi-Con had already freaked him out. That he would hole up in the hotel room all weekend and say “fuck it” to the con, to MnM, to everything. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe he took one look at Kim’s face and realized he couldn’t handle all of Jo’s friends jumping to the same conclusion she had. Just because he’d been a little flirty today didn’t mean he wanted, or deserved, to be paraded around for their inspection.
Jo glanced back toward the elevator, wondering if she should follow him and make sure things weren’t going to be weird now. Or would that make it worse, to admit to what Kim saw between them? Probably best to give him his space. She could play along with his story that he was tired. She was used to making excuses for the man in her life.
But first, she had to deal with the person currently dragging her across the lobby. Jo planted her feet and forced them to a stop. “Kim, listen. There’s a reason I told the group I was bringing a friend that I’m volunteering with. I’m not ready for everyone to know. Hell, I’m not even sure I know what just happened between us. Please, for now, keep this to yourself.”
“What’s going on?” Max asked as he caught up with them.
“Nothing,” Kim said quickly, and Jo mouthed “thank you” to her. “Nothing’s going on.”
Kim, Max, and Jo were the last of their friends to arrive at Dilley’s Bar Grill for dinner. The circle of Heather, David, Young, Aida, and Trey expanded to include them. They practically fell over each other trying to be the first to hug Jo. When Aida finally made it to her, Jo grabbed onto her tightly.
“God, I missed you,” Jo said, blinking back tears. Her arms fully encircled Aida’s long and lean form, made even taller by the heels she wore. The woman seriously dressed like she was on the way to a board meeting every day of the week: pantsuit, silk blouse, heels, full makeup and hair, the whole nine.
“I missed you too, babe,” Aida said. “How was the drive?”
Jo knew what she was really asking. “Oh my God, I don’t even know,” she whispered. “I have so much to tell you.”
“Bathroom later.”
They broke apart, and Aida’s fiancé, a handsome, pudgy Black man named Trey Wilson, swept Jo into his arms.
“Mojo!” he cried as he lifted her off her feet and spun her around, his long black locs fanning out behind him.
“Hey, beefcake,” she said. “What’s shakin’?”
“Where’s your friend?” he asked as he set her down. “I’m excited to meet him.”
Jo shrugged and gave a casual, practiced smile. “He was tired from the drive, but he’ll be around all weekend. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”
“Good,” Trey said. He slung his arm over Jo’s shoulder as the hostess walked the group to their table. “I need someone to wander the exhibit hall with me and tell me it’s reasonable to spend five hundred bucks on a replica of Sting.”
“The sword or the singer?”
Trey’s full-bellied guffaw carried over the noise of the dinner crowd. “Honestly, I’d take either one.”
“You’re not buying a sword this weekend,” Aida called back to him. “We only packed carry-ons.”
“Damn.”
Jo found a seat at the table between Aida and their Korean friend Young Kwon. Young had gotten a new haircut since Jo had last seen them—short at the back and long on top, styled in a perfect pompadour and bleached platinum white. Their square glasses had tiny flowers on the frames.
Daisies.
Suddenly, all she could think about was Felix and his bees-and-daisies coffee tumbler. She looked around the table at her friends, ordering drinks and swapping MnM stories they’d told a hundred times. There was an empty seat at one end of the table. Jo held in a sigh as she stared at it.
Young nudged her. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “I just wish my friend had been up to joining us.”
“Yeah, bummer,” they said. “But so cool that you’re getting an MnM scene going in Kansas. How’s it been getting settled?”
Jo answered the question by talking about work, rather than MnM. Across the table, Heather Abrams, a bubbly, strawberry blonde, white woman, tuned in to their conversation and jumped in right away with questions. Heather was a nurse, too, in pediatrics, and she and Jo had bonded years ago over horror stories from college and floor training.
“Hey, Mojo,” said Trey brightly, commanding the attention of the entire table. “Does everyone know about the tornado?”
Multiple pairs of eyes homed in on Jo. She had told only Aida about the tornado, everything that had happened that night, and all the things she’d felt the next morning. Yup—safe to assume that Trey knew everything about Felix that Aida did.
“The, um… the what now?” said David Espinoza with a slight Salvadoran accent. The most soft-spoken of their group, he peered at Jo from down the table through a curtain of long black hair.
“Spill!” shouted Heather, tossing her curls.
Jo couldn’t help but glance over at the empty chair again. She wished Felix were here to tell the story with her. She was curious to hear his perspective of that night, especially of how they’d ended up in each other’s arms. Would he gloss over that fact or make light of it? Would he play up how scared they were or shrug it off like it was no big deal?
Everyone was watching her. And Felix wasn’t here. Fine. She’d tell the story on her own.
“So in Kansas?” she started, putting a wide grin on her face and leaning into her storyteller’s voice. “They have these things called tornadoes.”
Her friends were enraptured as she told the story, making it as dramatic as possible. Then she insisted someone else talk because she had barely touched her enormous Cobb salad and was starving. The conversation broke up into multiple small ones, and Jo listened to Heather and Young go back and forth about the best desserts from around the world. It was an ongoing debate between the two of them, and tonight it was tiramisu versus hamantaschen.
As people were ordering dessert (Young got the tiramisu; Heather went with crème br?lée), Aida bumped Jo’s knee and stood up. Jo followed her. They ducked into a single-stall restroom.
The door was barely closed and locked when Aida said, “Talk.”
Jo talked. She told Aida about everything: the café con leche and Felix’s music, their laughter-filled conversations in the car, the fact that they were sharing a room, the heart-pounding moment between them when she gave him her key, and finally, why she suspected he hadn’t come to dinner.
Aida steepled her fingers under her chin and paced the tiny bathroom, deep in thought. “What if—now hear me out,” she finally said. “You two fuck this weekend?”
“Aida!” Jo cried. “What happened to making good choices?”
“This is a good choice,” she replied. “You two clearly have the hots for each other. You need to bang it out. You either get it out of your systems and move on, or it’s magic and sparks and earth-shaking orgasms, and then you can be together. Either way, it’s a win-win, right?”
“Or…” Jo countered. “It becomes really awkward between us for the rest of the weekend and the nine-hour car ride home, and then we still have to work together to plan MnM for the library.”
Aida regarded her. “I’d say you could always quit volunteering, but something tells me you don’t want to do that.”
Jo let out a weary sigh. “No, I can’t quit. I promised to help him for six weeks. His job might be on the line, and I can’t—”
“I’m not talking about ‘can’t,’ babe. I’m talking about what you want.”
“I want—” Tears suddenly gathered in Jo’s eyes. “Him. I don’t want to bang it out. I want him. So much it aches sometimes. Felix is… Aida, he’s wonderful.”
Aida pulled her into a hug. Jo fell against her and lost it. Fuck texting and fuck video calls. Jo had needed her best friend these last few weeks, and now that she had her, everything came pouring out at once.
“No one has been wonderful to me like this in years, Aida. Why did I stay with Jeremy for so fucking long? Why did I beg him not to leave when he dumped me? I don’t even have Felix yet, and he’s so much better to me than that asshole ever was! Motherfucker stole my cat!” She wept and wept while Aida rubbed her back and made gentle, soothing sounds.
“I’m so scared I’m going to fuck it up,” Jo whispered.
“Babe, how would you fuck it up?”
Jo shook her head against Aida’s shoulder. She didn’t know. She couldn’t put the feeling into words. But it was always lingering in the back of her mind, in the pit of her stomach, in the core of her heart. Whenever Felix was too good to her. Whenever he saw her for all that she was and didn’t turn away from her. A monstrous voice inside Jo insisted she was only one false move away from everything crashing down around her ears. If it wasn’t inviting him to Indi-Con that did it, it would be something else.
If Jo could explain that, if she somehow found the right words, Aida would tell her she was wrong. Aida would call her “babe” and reassure her that she wasn’t going to fuck it up. And Jo would believe it. She would believe it long enough to make it through dessert with their friends. Maybe even long enough to get back to the hotel and say good night to Felix. But the feeling, the voice, would come back. It always did.
Aida didn’t press her for a response. She simply held her until her sobs subsided and then wet a paper towel with cool water and dabbed the red splotches from her cheeks. “I’m so sorry you’ve been feeling like this, Jo,” she said with eyes full of sympathy. “I know I’m usually the problem-solver, but I don’t really know what to tell you.”
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Aida gave her a soft smile. “You know how much I love you, right?”
“Yeah, I know. I love you too.”
“And I trust you,” she continued. “You’re smart, and you’re braver than you give yourself credit for. You drove halfway across the country to figure out what you wanted the rest of your life to look like. Do you know what kind of balls it takes to do that?”
Jo chuckled. A snot bubble came out of her nose.
“For the record,” Aida said as she wiped Jo’s nose, “I’m still on Team You-Two-Should-Fuck. Which probably means you start by telling him how you feel. But whatever choice you make, I promise I trust you to make the right one.” She held up her pinky. “For you.”
Jo hooked her pinky around Aida’s. For me.
“Thank you.”
Aida pulled her in for another hug and kissed Jo’s hair. “Do you want a minute alone, or do you want me to stay?”
“I need a minute,” Jo told her. Aida squeezed her once more before she left. Jo splashed some water on her face, peed, and took several deep breaths in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and red, but she didn’t really mind if her friends saw. Knowing Aida, she had already told them to play it cool.
Jo stayed quiet through dessert and focused on her exceptional chocolate lava cake. Trey and Aida picked up the bill, because of course they did. They both made good money and were generous to a fault with it. As they all returned to the hotel together, Heather walking slightly crooked from her three whiskey sours, Jo texted Felix that she was on the way. They squeezed into one elevator, stopping for hugs and “see you tomorrows” at each of their floors, until finally Jo rode up to the eighth floor alone. She followed the corridor to room eight-thirteen and knocked before opening the door.
A light was on. From the entryway she could see the ends of two queen beds, one of which was occupied. She shut the door quietly. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” Felix replied over the whisper of rustling sheets. As she stepped fully into the room, he sat up and gave her a soft, sleepy smile.
Oh.
Jo had had no idea, not a goddamn clue, how it would feel to see Felix in bed. He wore a loose, pale gray T-shirt with one sleeve riding up to expose his biceps and deltoid. His hair was mussed from the pillow. The white duvet pooled in his lap as he leaned against the headboard. And that smile he was giving her—Jesus. Even if he’d been standing there fully naked it wouldn’t have been this intimate.
Perhaps it was that intimacy that made her feel brave.
Felix absently scratched an itch on his chest. “Did you have a nice time?”
“Why didn’t you come tonight?”
His mouth fell open, and a tiny, wordless sound came out.
“I wanted you there, Felix.” She kept her voice low but steady, refusing to acknowledge the part of her that was begging her to shut up, to laugh it off. “I wanted you to meet my friends.”
“Jo, I’m sorry,” he said. He got out of bed and approached her. His hand drifted forward, but he didn’t touch her. Thank God. If he did, she would lose the last shred of her composure.
“Why didn’t you come?”
“I—” Felix cut himself off with a strangled sound. He raked both hands roughly through his hair and held his head. His eyes darted back and forth between hers. Then he flung his arms wide and let them fall to his sides. Jo could practically hear him thinking, fuck it. “Because I was afraid of what would’ve happened if we’d walked into this room together.”
She shifted her weight back. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. He couldn’t possibly mean… “Wh-what would have happened?”
Felix took a step, forcing her to crane her neck. His breathing had gone fast and shallow. “If I’d been alone with you after you trusted me with your room key, I would have confessed everything. Everything I feel for you, Jo. Everything I want to have with you. One way or the other, I would have ruined your night. Either by stealing your friends’ thunder with the truth of how much I care about you, or… or by not being able to keep my hands off you.”
Okay. So that was what he meant. Holy shit.
There were other words in there too. Confessions that her heart drank up like a thirsty sponge, but that her mind didn’t know how to handle right now. It was easier to focus on the sexy part of what he said. The part that lit up her every nerve, sharpening her senses and kindling heat low in her belly. She tightened her grip on the strap of her purse, which she apparently hadn’t taken off her shoulder yet. For a moment, it was a lifeline, something tangible to cling to while the world tilted sideways and -settled someplace new.
Then Felix moved even closer, towering over her, and the ground became unsteady once more. He must have showered to wash off the grime of the road, because Jo was struck by the scent of cloves and sweet vanilla. She inhaled sharply, involuntarily. Her lips parted as she let out the breath, and Felix’s eyes trailed lazily down to her mouth.
“I would have brought you into this room, Jo, and done anything you asked me to,” he said, his voice deep and oh so gentle. “I would have laid you down and touched you however you wanted, for however long you wanted. I don’t think I’m wrong that you want that as much as I do. Am I?”
His gaze darted back to her eyes. The intensity of the desire in those dark brown pools made her sob—a sound wrenched from deep within, where she was burning from the inside out. Felix’s arm lurched forward, but he stopped himself. His hand curled into a fist. Every muscle in his arm bulged from the effort of not touching her.
“Am I wrong, Jo?” he repeated.
“No,” she whispered. “No, you’re not wrong.”
Felix exhaled slowly. The corners of his lips lifted in a satisfied grin. Not smug. Just pleased. Happy. She’d made him happy.
“I was afraid that if I didn’t put some distance between us in that moment when I wanted you so badly, I’d ruin everything about tonight—maybe this entire weekend—that you were looking forward to,” he said, his smile fading. “It appears I ruined your night anyway, and I’m so sorry, Jo. I’m sorry I didn’t come with you, but even more so, I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Jo fought past the need that blazed through her body. This conversation was important. Before anything else tonight might bring, they needed to finish it. “I was hurt, Felix. And confused,” she said. “But I understand now why you needed some space and why you couldn’t really explain. I forgive you.”
Felix released a shaky breath, relief smoothing the lines on his face.
“You didn’t ruin my night. I had a good time with my friends. And…” She wrung her purse strap. Could he see how her hands shook? Could he see how he made her tremble? “The night isn’t over. If we don’t want it to be.”
“Jo…”
“Kiss me, Felix.”