19. Emmy
Iwake from an extremely hot dream—Liam fixing things in the grocery store, demanding I remove a piece of clothing for each—to discover I’m lying on Liam’s couch, and he’s in the chair across from me with his legs spread wide, his head tilted backward, sound asleep.
I’m still turned on from the dream and even the way he sleeps is straight out of the alpha male handbook. I can think of a few interesting ways to wake him up, but I already asked if he was trying to get in my pants—his opening to ask ‘is getting in your pants an option?’ or to sexily remind me I wasn’t wearing pants—and instead he got mad. His failure to take advantage of the situation was deeply frustrating.
So I guess I’ll wake him the normal way—by being a bitch about it.
“Liam,” I bark. His eyes flutter open and he raises his head. He looks so adorably confused that I don’t have the heart to continue yelling. “I need to get home. If my mom dies, it’ll be on my head.”
He gives me a sleepy smile. “Most people would have just said they don’t want their mother to die.”
“I was attempting to make it sound believable.”
He laughs as he glances out the window.
“The truck’s in my driveway. Get your stuff out of the dryer and we’ll go.”
I go back to the bathroom and change clothes. Now that I finally get to leave, I’m struck hard by a sudden desire to remain. I move slowly, looking at every object in the guest room.
There’s a photo on the dresser that I didn’t notice earlier: Liam in a high school football uniform, with his arm around a little girl. That version of him, younger and bright-eyed, reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s whatever bullshit he did when I was in high school, that thing I can’t remember, but I guess it no longer matters. Even if he was a jerk in high school, it’s pretty clear he has a good side too, and that his good side now far outshines my own.
He’s waiting by the front door when I emerge. He looks good, standing there. He’s comfortable in his body. The arm that’s raised while he holds up his phone to read something is perfectly defined and not because he’s flexing like Donovan always does.
It makes it that much more annoying that he isn’t trying to sleep with me. And why isn’t he? He was flirty by text when I was still in New York—did he expect me to look better? Has my personality ruined things? Or was it just what I initially suspected—that he flirts with every female he works with in order to ease his way, and he’s eased his way with me enough?
“You should tell Julie she left her lipstick here,” I say, and though I regret how jealous it sounds almost immediately, I already know I’m likely to make it worse.
He frowns as he looks up from his phone. “Julie?”
“My former designer.” Ick. There it is again, that note of bitterness the words shouldn’t hold. “The one you seduced into changing the tile.”
His eyes narrow. “I’ve never even met Julie. Is that what you thought? That the tile thing was some kind of trick on my part?”
His voice is more than a little astonished, with a hint of outrage. For the first time, I wonder if I’ve made some wild leaps in coming to that conclusion. Maybe I was simply hurt that the guy who’d flirted with me so relentlessly had turned out to be someone who didn’t even appear to like me much. Believing he was an opportunist meant I didn’t have to examine my own flaws.
“It occurred to me,” I say quietly.
“Is that why you fired her?” he asks.
“No. She still made a huge, expensive mistake. Several mistakes.” Though it’s possible my decision was influenced by it a little.
He fishes his keys out of his pocket and opens the door. “I’m not sure what you heard about me, but…I didn’t sleep with Julie. And I wouldn’t have, even if I’d met her. That’s not who I am anymore.”
He nods toward the truck, and even as I run for it through the pouring rain, I’m wondering what he meant by that’s not who I am anymore. Does it mean he used to be some kind of lothario and no longer is? Did he find God and decide he was going to save his special gift for marriage?
I sort of doubt it—he’s too feral, too relentlessly physical. But if it’s true, then I’m deeply envious of the future recipient of all that pent-up sexual energy once he finally lets it out.
Which begs the question: when is he going to let it out? And with whom?
“What did you mean when you said that’s not who you are anymore?” I demand as he climbs in.
He frowns as he looks over his shoulder to reverse. “I meant that I used to make the most of being a young, single guy,” he says, “and I enjoyed it for a long time, but it got old. I want more now. I don’t do one-night stands or short-term.”
“You want a wife,” I say flatly.
“I fell through a roof over the holidays last winter and broke sixteen bones.” He swallows. “It took three days for anyone to realize I was missing because my friends all have their own lives now and no one was surprised when I failed to show up for shit. I don’t want work to be the only part of my life in which I’m consistent and reliable. I want to be able to count on someone, and I want someone to count on me.”
I wince at the idea of him there, alone.
And there’s a small wound, right at the place where my heart would be if I had one. Some pathetic part of me still wants the things he does—to count on someone, to be able to lean every once in a while—no matter how hard I try to shut the urge down.
Also a bummer? That there’s apparently no chance of turning my final weeks in Elliott Springs into banging the hot contractor weeks.
“You’d better clear out all the Dior lipstick and expensive conditioner from your home before you find her then,” I say quietly.
“It’s my niece’s.”
I roll my eyes. “This is as bad as your endlessly dying grandmas. Is your niece the little kid who owns those shorts you gave me or an adult wearing a twenty-five-dollar lipstick, because I doubt she’s both?”
He gives me a half smile. “Both. I helped take care of her a lot when she was little because my sister was single. And then she basically moved in here for the last few years of high school because she hates my sister’s husband.”
The evidence of Liam’s good side is growing disproportionately. It would have been enough that he scolded my mom for talking about my weight. It would have been enough that he was kind to Snowflake and is willing to restore Lucas Hall at cost. But he also doesn’t sleep around, didn’t fuck Julie into agreeing to crappy tiles, woke before dawn to save stores from flooding, kept me from getting washed off the road, and helped raise his niece.
There’s an uncomfortable twinge in my chest. It’s possible that the only villain in this car is me.
“You know the problem with your Lucas Hall plan?” I ask.
“That my competitor has billions of dollars and can offer to build the mayor a park while I cannot?”
I’m not sure how he knows about the park—I’d have thought the mayor would keep that quiet. “Well, none of that works in your favor,” I reply, “but the real issue is that you’re not giving people what they want. Lucas Hall just sitting there doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t raise property values; it doesn’t bring in tourists. It maintains the status quo and humans are wired to hate the status quo. We’d never evolve if we didn’t.”
“I know,” he replies, crossing over the bridge, where water is rushing freely. Thank God he stopped me from driving home. “I had a different plan but it didn’t work out.”
I cock my head. “What was your plan? No, wait—let me guess. Lucas Hall as some lame museum about the town?”
He narrows his eyes at me. “It wasn’t going to entirely be a museum.”
I laugh, delighted with myself. “I knew it.”
“I was going to make it a hotel,” he says. “A hotel that featured some of the history of the town in the lobby and hallways. We’d keep the ballroom and offer it freely for all the traditional events the town holds.”
My laughter fades. It’s a really good idea. It would have brought in money without ruining the town’s character. “Why didn’t you do it?”
“I couldn’t secure the kind of loan I needed. I thought I had it, but when I fell last winter, my investors backed out and the bank said I was no longer a good risk.”
I’m trying to convince myself he’d have failed before he’s finished the sentence. “A plan like that takes a long time to pull together—”
“I started working on it two years ago,” he says quietly, cutting me off. “I thought I’d have longer.”
Two years. He put two years into this, and that little phone call I placed to the Santa Clara Office of Building Inspection last winter ruined it all.
Yes, I’m definitely the villain of his story, and he, as of yet, has no clue. I’d at least offer him a “sorry I ruined all your hopes and dreams” blow job, but he’s apparently not interested in receiving one from me.
He pulls into my mother’s driveway and I hesitate before I reach for the door.
“You asked once what I do for fun,” I say quietly. “I guess this was pretty fun.”
He holds my gaze for a half second and then he smiles. “You’re saying it was the best morning of your life, then, and the best meal you’ve ever had?”
I climb out of his truck. “Slow down, yard boy. It was stir-fry.”
His stir-fry wasn’t great.
But yeah, it was a pretty good morning. Maybe even one of the best.
* * *
My mother ison the phone talking about Harold when I walk in, clearly irritated by the noise as I start on dinner and talk to Snowflake.
She eats in front of the TV and I eat at the counter before retreating to my room and falling into an exhausted sleep.
All my dreams are about home. About Elliott Springs, when it was still a good place, and Elliott Springs, when it became hell on earth.
I dream about helping my father carry sandbags, about being tripped as I walked onstage.
I dream about Halloween and being back in my little ten-year-old body, which had begun growing squishier and fuller the spring before, when my dad left.
“I’m doing you a favor, fatty,” Landon Briggs says as he steals my candy. “Maybe if you lose some weight, your dad will come home.”
Landon runs, but in the same moment, across the street, an older boy takes off like a shot, chasing him down. He tackles Landon and marches him back to me.
“Give her the candy,” the boy says, glancing from Landon to me. I wonder if he’s now thinking what my mother said aloud as I left—that candy is the last thing I need. “Give her your candy too, asshole,” he adds.
He wasn’t thinking it, then. And I don’t want Landon’s candy, but I wish I lived in a world where more boys like this one existed, a world where someone was willing to take my side.
I sit up in bed.
Liam. Liam was the kid who defended me.
And he was never the villain—not even at the start.