10. Maren #2
Ryan was there, crouched at the bottom shelf, completely absorbed, no idea I was watching.
His thumb moved along the spines slowly, one at a time.
He pulled one out, turned it over, read the back with the same attention he’d given every book I’d handed him—real, unhurried, like nothing else existed.
The late afternoon light came through the high windows and caught his blond hair, and I thought about Thursday night in his truck, the way he’d kissed me like he’d decided and wasn’t in any hurry about it, and the sound I’d made against his mouth that I was still embarrassed about and also couldn’t stop thinking about.
I was absolutely staring.
He raised his head and caught me and I turned so fast I nearly knocked a display off the end cap, grabbed the first spine my hand landed on, and stared at it with great focus.
“Any good?” he asked.
I read the cover. A memoir about competitive bird-watching. “Supposed to be excellent,” I said.
He stood. The aisle was narrow and he didn’t compensate for it, just rose to his full height with the book still in his hand, close enough that I had to tip my chin up to meet his eye.
“Maren.”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“You were absolutely staring.”
“I was assessing the shelving system.” I put the memoir back with great dignity. “They’ve reorganized since last time.”
“They haven’t reorganized anything.” He reached past me, his arm an inch from my shoulder, and drew a book from the shelf without looking, the one I’d been heading for, the one I’d abandoned when I’d turned away to pretend I hadn’t been watching him. He held it out. “You want this one.”
I took it. My face was warm.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He didn’t step back. The space between us was exactly the distance it had been in my driveway Thursday night, and he smelled the same—clean and woodsy, something quiet underneath it—and I was extremely aware of my own heartbeat and the fact that I had told myself, very firmly, that I was not going to let this happen in the middle of a bookstore in Tempe on a Saturday afternoon.
“We should go check out,” I said.
“Probably,” he agreed, and didn’t move for another two seconds that I felt in my back teeth.
Then he stepped back and let me lead the way to the register.
Ruth turned to Ryan over the top of her glasses with the frank appraisal she’d been sharpening for thirty years of watching people walk through her door. Then she turned to me. Then back to Ryan.
“First time in,” she said. Not a question.
“First time,” Ryan confirmed.
“He found the Cal Beckett without help,” I offered.
Ruth nodded slowly, as though this were significant information she was filing away. “Keep him,” she said to me, and began ringing up the books.
Ryan stepped to the register and paid for both of our books—a sizable stack between us—before I had finished digging out my wallet and I stood there with my wallet open and nothing to do with it.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I know,” he replied. With a smile. And that was it. End of discussion.
Outside the afternoon had gone golden, the October light that made Phoenix almost unreasonably beautiful, warm without the summer brutality, the sky a deep clean blue above the street. We walked to his truck with our separate bags and I was reaching for the door handle when he said my name.
“Maren.”
I turned around.
Afraid of what he was going to say, I started rambling. “Thank you for the books. You really didn’t have to—”
“Maren.” He said my name again.
He was standing at the back of the truck, bags set down, wearing an expression I’d learned to recognize. The one from the driveway Thursday night, from the kitchen at Cole’s party, from every moment where he’d decided something and was about to act on it.
“Ryan,” I said. Unsure how to proceed. Something was simmering between us and I was scared of it.
“I’ve been thinking about the other night.” Oh no. Here it comes.
“Okay.” I felt the apprehension in my voice. He was going to say it was a mistake, and he’d be right.
“I want to do it again.” What? He said it simply.
No performance, no lead-up, no glance away first to soften it.
The fact of it laid plainly in front of me and left there.
“Not just in your driveway. Not because it’s late and we’re alone and it happened.
Because I want to. I can’t stop thinking about it and I think you feel it too.
You have to. There’s always been this thing between us.
” He motioned back and forth and stared at me.
My bag was in my hand and the afternoon sun was warm on my shoulders. “That’s a terrible idea,” I said with not much conviction, because I really wanted to kiss him again.
“I know.”
“Griffin—” It was like nine years ago when we almost kissed. Griffin. The reason it was a bad idea then was the same as it was now and of course I brought it up again; I was scared.
“I know.”
“We work together.”
“I know that too.” He held my gaze. “I’m having a hard time caring about any of those things.”
Whoa, what?
I studied him for a long moment. The light was catching his hair, the blond gone almost amber. I thought about the plane, about it’s a date said quiet enough it was only for me, about lying awake in the dark waiting for regret that never came.
I closed the distance between us.
He met me halfway. His hand came up to my jaw the same way it had the first time, warm and sure, and this kiss was nothing like the careful driveway version.
This was both of us knowing exactly what we were doing and doing it anyway, in a parking lot in Tempe on a Saturday afternoon in October, bookstore bags at our feet, the whole ordinary world going on around us and neither of us paying it the slightest attention.
His other hand found my waist and pulled me in and I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him back with everything I’d been holding since the pool party kitchen, since the plane.
Hell, since nine years ago, when all I wanted to do was crawl on his lap and crush my lips to his.
He’d been like this at Jensen’s pond nine years ago too.
Quiet and thorough, registering everything and disclosing nothing.
He’d given me the sweatshirt off his back like it was a logistics problem to solve.
He’d held still on a truck tailgate in the dark with his hand on my knee and his forehead pressed to mine and we’d said Griffin’s name like a decision we had made before either of us said it.
I thought about that moment for far longer than I’d ever admit.
The restraint of it—the effort it took to hold a line when everything in the moment was asking both of us to cross it.
I understood all of that now in a register I hadn’t had at eighteen.
I knew what it had cost him to pull back. I knew what it had cost me.
When we finally pulled apart we were both breathing differently. I was aware of his heartbeat under my fist, fast and real, telling me he wasn’t as steady as he looked.
He rested his forehead against mine. His thumb traced a slow line along my jaw.
I had my fist still wrapped in his shirt and the afternoon was going on around us.
A car passing on the street, someone’s music from an open window above, the whole world completely indifferent to the two of us standing here having just done something we couldn’t take back.
“Well, that was…” I trailed off, unable to qualify what was happening between us or how I felt about it.
“Yeah.” His voice was lower than usual and he pulled me in close and rested his chin on top of my head while we embraced.
I loosened my grip on his shirt and smoothed the fabric. “This could be complicated.”
“I know.”
“We should probably talk about it.” I tipped my head back to look at him. “Not right now though.”
“Not right now,” he agreed.
I stepped back. He let me go, but slowly. His hand trailed from my jaw to my shoulder before dropping. We picked up our bags and got in the truck, and I plugged the address into his navigation app and he pulled out of the lot, and for a few blocks we didn’t say anything.
“Ruth told you to keep me,” Ryan said, breaking the silence.
I turned to the window at the passing street. “Ruth has opinions.”
“She seemed confident.”
“She’s never wrong about books.” He let that sit. “Or people, actually.” I smiled.
I felt him look at me with a grin, brief and warm, and turned back to the window and let myself smile where he couldn’t see it.
Outside, Phoenix passed by in the October afternoon light, golden and easy, the truck quiet around us like I’d have expected when two people had just said something that changed things and were sitting with how large it was.
The truth was that I knew my own patterns.
I’d spent the eight months since my breakup with Josh taking them apart with thoroughness, determined not to repeat them.
The way I moved toward people who needed managing.
The way I made myself smaller to fit what someone else needed.
How I gave and gave until I was running on empty and still calling it love.
I’d promised myself the next time I let someone in, it was going to be different.
I’d choose someone who showed up, who asked questions, who saw me. Josh had never once asked me a question he actually wanted the answer to. Two years, and I could count on one hand the times he’d made me feel like the most important thing in the room.
Ryan Lindqvist had remembered, from a red-eye flight, I’d mentioned a bookstore in passing three weeks earlier. He’d handed me the book I was looking for before I’d found it myself. He’d said I want to like it was simply true and I deserved to hear it plainly.
As complicated as this was, I found I didn’t mind the trouble at all.