Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
“How does one find the pastel-colored underbelly of Fontain and start playing mahjong while eating barbecue?”
Gavin chuckles as we step onto Mom’s porch and into the glow of the lone light above the front door.
He leans against the railing then loosens the knot of his tie.
That doesn’t make me imagine anything dirty at all.
“Accident,” he says. “Right after Greg and Amanda died, I ended up there on a Thursday night to grab dinner and there they were. Jan knew my mom, and we started talking. Guess she could see I wasn’t in the best place and invited me to join.
” He shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he squints at the dark.
“We used to meet every week, but schedules were too hectic so now it’s once a month.
Still a good time. A break from reality, you know? ”
I nod even though I don’t. Not until tonight, at least.
My nonanswer hangs, clunky. He’s looking at me with his new devastating face and I don’t know what to say or what comes next.
The cool breeze and bright stars feel romantic, as does the fact I spent an hour on his lap with his voice making love to my eardrum, but now here we are, on my mother’s porch, and I’m torn between asking him to kiss me while I dry hump him in that suit or telling him good night.
“You wanna dance with me?” he asks.
I laugh.“As much as you know I love dancing—” I look around the porch. “You hear music I don’t?”
He slides his phone out of his pocket and taps around the screen until music plays. The Temptations sing the first lyrics of “My Girl” and he sets the phone on the railing.
“I do now,” he says with a half smile. At my hesitation: “I saw your moves with Addie.” My cheeks heat as he reaches a hand to me. “Don’t get shy on me now, Miss Reese.”
Dancing with Addie in the living room is different—playful—and this will be anything but. The epitome of why I hate dancing—the closeness. The way he’ll touch my body and the feelings it will dredge up that I’ve been fighting like hell to keep undredged.
He gestures with his hand. “No fighting, remember?”
I hesitate then put my hand in his and his half smile turns whole.
He wraps one arm around my back, I drape one arm over his shoulder, and he tucks our joined hands between us.
My cheek finds the place where his neck curves into shoulder, the slope of my nose fitting perfectly against him.
His smooth new jaw rests on my forehead and my eyes flutter closed. I imagine his doing the same.
The three-minute stretch of his heartbeats, his hums to the low music, and the shuffle of our feet on the boards of the old porch become my new favorite sounds.
The song changes to Frank Sinatra’s voice singing “You Make Me Feel So Young,” and a laugh bursts out of me. I pull back enough to look up at Gavin, and there’s a shit-eating grin on his face.
“You planned this?”
He guides me through a slow spin.
“Me?” He pulls me to him. “Plan dancing with Reese Conway after a date of her sitting on my lap, which I also may have coordinated?”
I snort; we’re back together. “Ass.”
It’s his turn to laugh and now we’re closer. “You know why dogs don’t dance?”
We angle our heads to look at each other. “Why?”
“Two left feet.”
I fight a smile. “Bad.”
My cheek rests against him as the next song plays: “Blue Moon” by Billie Holiday. I have to give it to Gavin, if he’s trying to win me over with romance, he is. I want my whole life to be right here, right now.
“Tell me about your life in Chicago,” he says. “The way Addie describes it, it sounds like Disney World.”
I’ve never once lied to her about the details of my life, but she does respond to every story I tell her like it’s magic—like I am.
I keep my cheek against him. “She’s telling you all my secrets.”
“Hm.” His hips guide mine. “She already loves you.”
At this, I laugh. “She can’t love me, she hasn’t even learned her lines. I haven’t done anything.”
“Sure you have.”
We’ve played, we’ve laughed, but she would be doing that no matter who she was with.
I was supposed to help her learn the lines to land a lead part and instead she’s barking.
Other than family who must be endured no matter what, that’s not how it works with strangers.
If love really came that easy, it wouldn’t be so hard for me to find.
“To answer your question,” I say. “I live in a great building. Right in the middle of the city.”
“You like your neighbors?” he asks. “I’ve always wondered what that would be like.”
That simple nothing question amplifies everything I don’t have. Everything I’ve bypassed with my hours spent climbing to the top.
“We’re all friends.” I’ve only met one. “Since I have the rooftop”—Gavin spins me again and I dodge his gaze—“it’s where we usually end up. They have kids that play hide-and-seek up there. We drink wine. A small town of our own in the chaos of the city.”
We’re back together. “Sounds nice.”
“It is.” At least the way I once imagined it would be. I settle back into him. “There’s this place we go called Big Mini Putt Club—it’s a bar and grill with miniature golf in it. They make the best margarita in Chicago.”
I’ve never been a liar—I’m straightforward and direct in a way that most people consider cold—but the need I have in this moment to make Gavin think I’m beloved is fierce. I don’t want him to know how alone I am.
The song switches to one I don’t recognize, more upbeat and about life being a dream.
Gavin’s jaw scrapes my forehead as he talks. “You play mini golf in those ridiculous shoes?”
I let out an amused breath. “I’m offended you’d even ask.”
He laughs at my lie then twirls me again. This time when he pulls me back to him, we’re face to face, his breath rubbing against mine. “Sounds like a helluva life you have up there.”
I swallow. “It does.”
We’re not dancing anymore, just standing close. Looking at each other and breathing between notes of old music.
He says, “A hard thing for a thirty-year-old who cuts grass in Fontain to compete with.”
On paper, he can’t—he accepts mediocrity, and I will always choose excellence—but right here, right now, there’s not a skyscraper in that city I’d rather be in nor a single person I’d rather be with.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, coy. “Half the men in Chicago probably don’t even know how to start a mower.”
He smiles and I fight the urge to touch it. Only then I remember I’m not supposed to be fighting anything and let my hand go. My index finger traces his lips then his jaw then down his neck until I take hold of his tie with both hands.
He wets his lips, and I watch. I bite my lip, and he watches that.
“Is this the part where you kiss me, Davy Crockett?”
He inches closer, fighting a smile. “Say please.”
I give his tie one hard yank, and there his mouth is, colliding with mine.
His hands move from my hips to my hair to my back, roaming every curve.
I nip at his lip; he does the same.
We kiss and we kiss and we kiss until my back hits my mother’s house and Gavin’s hard body is pressing against me.
I want him everywhere with nothing between us. I want skin on skin and sweat on sweat. I want long looks and a longer night. I want, I want, I want.
Until he murmurs, “God, you’re incredible, Reese,” and it sucks the air out of the night sky and turns me to stone.
Because even though that may be true, I’ve lied to him.
He has no clue that I was sent away from work as a course correction for working too much or that I just lied to him about having a condo of friends and playing miniature golf. Nor does he know that I’m trying to get pregnant by a stranger because there’s nobody in my real life to get me pregnant.
Nobody to the point that him hugging me in a closet was the most intimacy I’ve felt in years, and I’ve spent half the hours of the last days wondering what it would be like to feel like that—with him—forever.
Him calling me incredible is like me saying a business is viable because they have a lot of followers on social media or a good logo. He has no idea what he’d find with a deep-dive evaluation, and I don’t know how to tell him.
Gavin pulls his mouth from mine. “What’s wrong?”
“I have to go.” A burn ignites in the back of my nose, and I slip out of his arms. “Mom needs medicine. I just remembered.”
He looks at the front door like he’s expecting to see my mother standing there. “Oh.” He clears his throat. “Can I—”
“Thank you for this.” With his hair slightly disheveled and his loose tie around his neck, he’s perfectly imperfect in a way I never knew to expect. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I eye his suit as I open the door. “Maybe next time go with a tux.”
This, at least, makes him smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Behind the closed door, my thoughts are dragged into a game of tug-of-war. I am a logical woman who is illogically attracted to this man.
I don’t understand his life choices, but I want to be with him.
I want a baby, but I want to be with him.
He thinks I’m incredible, but I feel anything but.
And Chicago . . . once upon a time I wanted to come back here—it’s in black and white on lined paper—yet now here I am, and I don’t know how to let what I have—bleak as it now seems—go.
My career. The winning and the grind. As a kid, I imagined it would be easy, but now it’s filled with so many unknowns that I’m utterly terrified.
Mom appears with a stupid look on her face. “Well?” She wipes her hands on her apron. “How was it?”
“Shut up.”
After hours of Joshua Jackson judging me from the ceiling, I get out of bed and research another donor. At the first photo of Chad Blackstone with his six cats, I slam the computer shut.