6. Maren #2
He was out of the water now, dry-ish, in a T-shirt that was doing its job almost aggressively well.
I knew from treating him what was under that shirt anyway, and I was keeping that knowledge in its professionally appropriate box, but the box had developed some structural issues over the past few weeks, culminating in what he looked like just a half hour ago.
I knew the exact topography of that left shoulder.
I knew how he breathed when I hit the right spot.
I knew the stillness that settled over him when he was trying not to react to something, and I had absolutely no business knowing any of it as well as I did.
He had the scar through his left eyebrow and the soft curl his hair got when he didn’t bother with it, pushed back from his forehead, and he was laughing at something one of the guys had said, and it landed on me the same way it had at the family skate in August. He was distracting.
By the time the sun was down and the string lights had taken over and the DJ had shifted to something slower, I’d had plenty and needed some hydration.
I went inside.
The kitchen was cool and blessedly empty, the party reduced to a muffled thrum through the glass doors.
I found a glass, filled it at the sink, drank the whole thing, filled it again.
Then I leaned against the counter and let the cool air do its work and stared at the ceiling before closing my eyes and thought about nothing for a moment, which felt extraordinary.
I startled. The door opened behind me. I turned.
Ryan stopped when he saw me. Then he crossed to the sink, filled a glass of water, and leaned against the counter across from me like he’d planned to be there all along.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He looked me over for a moment and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was enjoying the view. I was in a swimsuit cover-up with damp hair and sun still on my skin and no sunglasses to hide behind, and he was looking at me like he had nowhere else to be.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“I’m great,” I said, which was true. “I’m also maybe slightly—” I held my thumb and forefinger a small distance apart “—this much not completely sober.”
“How much is that?”
I tilted my head side to side. “Enough to come inside for water. Not enough to be a problem.” I refilled my glass.
“It’s a great party.” I came to sit on the barstool next to him, because my legs were tired from the pool and the chair was right there. “Cole really came through.”
“He did.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been very professional about you.” I knew I had a self-satisfied grin on my face because I was in fact, very satisfied with how professional I had been. None of this needed to be announced, certainly not to him. To his fucking face. What is wrong with me?
He went still. Not uncomfortable. Just completely focused, as if everything else in the room had stopped existing.
“What do you mean, Maren?” he almost whispered, turning his body to face mine as a slow grin appeared.
“I want it noted,” I continued with some dramatic flair, “that I have been extremely, aggressively professional, given that you are—” I gestured at him, a loose motion that covered the general area of him “—you know. All of that.”
“All of what,” he said, very carefully, the corners of his mouth turning up even more.
“Ryan.” I held his gaze. “Don’t make me say it.”
He didn’t look away. He was watching my mouth and then my eyes and I wasn’t imagining it—I knew I wasn’t imagining it—and neither of us moved. We were so close. Again. How did this keep happening? Did he feel it too?
“You should probably drink your water,” he said quietly.
“I am drinking my water.” I picked up the glass and drank some. “See? Responsible.”
“Very responsible.”
“I’m an extremely responsible person.” I set the glass down and he was still watching me, close enough I could see the exact color of his eyes in the kitchen light, blue-gray that changed depending on the room, the light, or maybe what he was wearing?
I’d been so careful for weeks, and being this close to him in Cole Westbrook’s kitchen at eleven o’clock at night had used up the last of it.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked me, playing my game right back.
“Of course.” We were whispering now and had to lean in a bit to hear each other. It was probably my imagination, but it seemed like heat was radiating off him, or maybe that was just me blushing.
“I’ve been very professional too.” I’m sorry, what?
I scrunched my eyebrows at him. “About what?”
My heart raced. The game we were playing was getting dangerous, and I sobered up immediately.
He gestured at me, less dramatically, but certainly at all of me. “At all of this.”
“Me?” I asked. I pushed, because, fuck it, why not? We were in this now. “How so?”
He took in a long inhale. “Maren.”
“Yes, Ryan?” I replied sweetly as if it were a question.
“It’s so much worse than it was in college,” he admitted.
So he did think about it. Fuck yeah. I mean, oh nooo.
“College?” I played dumb. I didn’t know what to say and I wanted to see how this played out.
“Don’t do that.”
Before I could say “do what” he continued.
“You know what you do to me, Maren. What you’ve always done to me. From the day we met. And it’s getting harder to remember what the right thing to do is here. Especially now.”
He was right, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted more. “Why now?”
“Because you’re the most beautiful woman in every room. I can’t keep my eyes off you. I’m clocking you all the time, making sure I get even just a glimpse of you. The things you do to me… Do I need to go on?”
I was practically breathless and if it were any other time, and any other person, I’d have jumped in his lap and stuck my tongue down his throat. My mouth did fall open and I licked my lower lip, biting it after and I’d forgotten entirely how to speak.
I didn’t stick my tongue down his throat, unfortunately. I’d sobered just enough to remember why. My brother. Fuck him.
“Griffin would lose his mind,” I said. God I was the buzzkill. And again, fuck Griffin. Ugh.
“Yes, he would,” he said with no change to his expression.
“And we work together.”
“We do,” he replied, unmoving.
“And it would be complicated.”
“Very.”
I nodded and he did as well, neither of us taking our eyes off each other’s.
So reasonable. Me and Ryan Lindqvist having such a reasonable conversation like two adults.
I leaned forward, just slightly, without a plan, more with an intention my sensible brain hadn’t caught up to yet.
God I wanted him to kiss me. Just once. I bet he’s an amazing kisser.
His hand came up and he tucked my hair back behind my ear, just that, just his fingers brushing my cheek as he did it, and I forgot entirely what I’d been about to say. It wasn’t important. The buzz from his touch was electric.
He left his hand there. Not moving, just present and warm against my jaw, his thumb barely touching my cheek, making its way toward my lips.
Despite the counter arguments for the words unspoken, the moment held.
Then from the hallway, loud and immediate, came the sound of Cole’s voice. “Babe, the taco truck guy said he’s free in March—” Then Cole himself, crashing through the kitchen door with two drinks, a woman, and Griffin behind him, and the moment shattered into completely normal pieces.
Ryan’s hand dropped. I straightened on my barstool and picked up my water glass and drank from it with the focused intention of someone deep in the important business of hydration.
“There you both are,” Griffin said, opening the fridge. “Cole’s trying to hire the taco truck for his birthday.”
“It’s not until March,” Cole said, not bothered by any of this. “Planning ahead. Lindqvist, what do you think, the backyard or should I look at a venue?”
“Backyard,” Ryan said. His voice was exactly as it always was. Unaffected.
I studied my water glass. My cheek was still warm where his fingers had been.
“Backyard,” I agreed, nodding vehemently.
Cole launched into taco truck logistics. Griffin argued about March weather in Phoenix. The kitchen filled with noise and I sat on my barstool and was completely, totally, professionally fine.
We weren’t alone again the rest of the evening, and I called a rideshare to go home forty minutes later after stealing more glances and watching him do the same.
Lying in bed with the ceiling fan turning slow circles in the dark, I thought about his hand in my hair and the way he’d looked at me and the word very when I’d said complicated.
Not yes. Not I know.
Very. Like he didn’t give a shit.
I pressed my face into the pillow. The reigniting of this crush was overwhelming.
On top of that, I was embarrassed. I was also, underneath the embarrassment, lit up like the string lights on Cole’s patio, and I didn’t know what to do with either of those things so I did what was…responsible.
I went to sleep.
I dreamed about blue-gray eyes and a warm hand and another moment that didn’t finish and woke at five in the morning thinking about it some more.