“Nothing.”
I snort, can’t help it because I wasn’t born yesterday. “Uh-huh. He’s gonna kick your ass over it? That doesn’t sound like nothing to me.” I challenge her to answer the question and dare her to meet my eyes because I hate the feeling I have deep down that something is off when things between us have just started to feel so damn right on.
When she finally looks at me, I witness her green irises swimming with conflicted emotion and her lips opening and closing without saying a word. I decide to let her have the moment, allow her to keep whatever cards she’s playing close to her vest.
“Don’t ruin this, Tanner. Please don’t ruin this incredible night.” She takes a step toward me and stops. “Today, tonight, has meant more to me than any day in a long time, and I can’t argue with you over this right now. Please trust me when I tell you that things aren’t always what they seem. That conversation, please just forget about it. I’m fine. Nothing is wrong. Just shit at home…” Her voice fades off, and I eye her warily, not believing a word she says. “Please don’t make it something it’s not and tarnish what happened tonight.”
She steps into me as soon as she finishes speaking, both of us proceeding cautiously, as I start to process what she’s said and she waits to see if I’ll accept her request. Her eyes plead with me, reinforcing her words, and as much as I want to shake some answers out of her, I also want to fold her in my arms and erase the look in them.
The fact that I don’t like the words I overheard or the fear I somehow feel emanating off her means I clench my jaw to prevent any questions from tumbling out, keeping them churning just beneath the surface. I don’t deserve to know all of her deep dark secrets yet because we’re still getting to know each other and still I feel the inherent need to protect her from whatever is haunting her eyes.
She must feel my turmoil because she reaches up on her tiptoes to brush her lips to mine in an attempt to ease the sting of the secrets she’s keeping from me. And call me a sucker, but it does help a little bit. Well, until my phone rings – Rafe’s distinct ringtone interrupting us.
Duty calls. Too bad everything within me wants to be focused elsewhere at the moment.
Like on her.
I know I’m dreaming, know this can’t be real, but it feels so good to see Stella and the familiar smile on her face again, that I welcome the memory. I glance over at her and just shake my head. There’s nothing else I can really do because she’s just that damn funny.
“What? It’s true.” She shrugs, blond hair falling over her shoulders and a bottle of beer in her hand.
“It is not!” But I can’t keep from laughing because she knows me too well.
“That’s such crap. I’ve seen you do it. The minute a woman tells you she loves you, you get that knee-jerk reaction and say it right back.”
“I do not.” I feign ignorance when I know she’s one hundred percent spot-on.
“Dude, she’s right,” Pauly interjects with the tip of his bottle before meeting Stella’s hand in a high five. “You get pussywhipped and cave in to saying it back.”
“It just comes out. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just ignore that the chick’s said it and hurt her feelings because I don’t respond?”
“Jesus,” both of them say in unison as Stella slumps back in her seat and slides me a sidelong glance. “It’s gonna hurt her feelings a helluva lot more when you say it and don’t mean it, Romeo.”
I blow out a long breath and swallow the smart-ass comment on my tongue with a sip of beer.
“You guys are too funny,” Pauly says as he rises. “’Nother round?”
We nod and watch him walk off, and now that he’s gone, I look over to Stella who’s eyeing me once again. “What?”
“Nothing.” Silence falls between us for a moment before she continues. “I think it’s cute, you know. Most guys are scared of saying those three words.”
“Well, according to you and Pauly, I say them too much.”
“I’m just giving you shit,” she muses, head on the back of the chair, eyes tilted up to the ceiling. “I like that it’s easy for you.”
“I guess the real question, though, is if I can say it so easily, how will I know when it’s really real?” It’s amazing the things you’ll think to talk about when you’re bored out of your mind.
“You’ll know it’s real when you hesitate.”
I angle my head and meet her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“If the words are so easy for you to say when it’s in reflex, then the first time you ever hesitate, when you don’t say ‘I love you’ back immediately because you’ll be so overwhelmed that she said it to you… well, I guess then you’ll know it’s real.”
I stare at her, not sure if I believe her or not, but since I have nothing else to think about, the notion settles in as I lift the beer to my lips and rest my head on the back of the chair. “Food for thought,” I murmur.
A noise in the hallway pulls me from my dream and the moment I’d completely forgotten. My dreamlike state lasts momentarily, and I hold on to the recollection of Stella since the memories are coming less and less frequently now.
Rolling onto my side to avoid the bright light that floods the room, I’m struck by how perfectly it frames Beaux’s body in a halo as she sleeps. I visually trace the lines of her face and the sheet covering her body and take her all in. She’s so feisty when she’s awake that it’s interesting to have a moment to watch her in sleep. And it’s not like we haven’t woken up beside each other before, but this time just seems so very different.
Good different.
The first time you hesitate…
I push the train of thought aside – how both Stella’s wisdom and now Beaux lying beside me make me hesitate in so many ways – and try to redirect my mind to where I want my thoughts to wander: my family. I wonder how my sister, Rylee, is doing with her new husband and her band of motley boys that she loves more than life. I find myself guessing at how many times my mom has gone to pick up the phone to call me, only to hang it back up because she doesn’t want to annoy me even though I tell her to call anytime and that I’ll answer when I can. And then I get that little pang deep down as I wonder if my dad has found a new buddy to join him in sitting on the rocks of the jetty to fish since he’d gotten a little too used to my being home over the four months. We both found it therapeutic sitting there with fishing poles in our hands, him in having his only son home again for the longest bout in a decade and me in having his company. With my father, I didn’t have to say a word, and yet he knew exactly what to do to help me deal with Stella’s death.