After the Kiss (26 page)

Julie remembered how good he’d looked at that wedding, his broad shoulders filling out a well-cut suit, and all that warm heat intensified and began to course through her body. Cole was
so
not the fun she needed right now. “Look,” she said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “I just had to do an emergency procedure on a little boy who was hurt on this thing today.” She gestured toward the play structure.

Cole immediately snapped into sheriff mode. “I see. I’ll send Luke Bedwin over in the morning. He’s got some tools that he can use to square off and solder this piece of metal. At least that way no other kids will get hurt until the Parks Department can take care of it.”

Exactly what
she
was going to suggest. Great way to end the conversation. “Good. Then my work here is done.” Julie turned to walk away.

Cole reached out casually to touch her upper arm, stopping her in her tracks. “Wait a sec. I’ll walk you home.”

“Excuse me,” she said stiffly, trying to ignore the jolt of energy lancing through her. And then, to her chagrin, she shivered visibly.

“Hey, you’re cold,” he said gently. “Here.” He pulled off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders before she could protest. Julie was enveloped in the warm smells of leather and musk. She realized that she was smelling
him
.

Underneath the jacket he wore a snug, white long-sleeved T-shirt. Julie tried not to stare at his muscular chest, which looked even larger now that it was uncovered. “Th-thank you,” she managed to stammer. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so off-kilter, a weird combination of desire and resistance she couldn’t quite get a handle on.

“It’s getting dark. Who knows who could be out here? Like I said, I’ll walk you home,” Cole stated firmly. He was still acting like a lawman, and his tone suggested that he was used to being followed without question.

Oh, no, no, no
. Cole walking her home was
not
a good idea. She was a busy woman. Too busy to mess around with a guy like Cole Grayson, with his sexy-as-sin smile. “No, thanks. I’ll get your jacket back to you tomorrow.” The sooner she got away from him, the better. Julie turned away and started walking through the park.

“Mmmm … no,” Cole said as he fell into step beside her. “You’re just going to have to get used to me.”

Not likely
. He was gorgeous.
Too
gorgeous. And boy, did he know it!

Julie stole a sideways glance at him, then slid her eyes quickly back. Her heart was
beating too rapidly in her chest. She was breathless, dizzy—like seasickness, but without the sick. Whatever it was, it was bad news.

Who was she kidding?
This
was why she’d done her best to ignore him ever since he’d moved back to Star Harbor. Because her body betrayed her whenever he was around, just like it had so long ago when he’d stolen that kiss. At least then, she’d been able to keep her reaction in check. If you called slapping his face “in check.” Now, they were both adults, and of course the stakes were higher. She had a job to do, and she had zero time to worry about getting involved with anyone, let alone a notorious womanizer.

“Actually,” he said, his deep voice sounding slightly hollow in the thick of the woods, “I’m glad I ran into you. I need to ask you for a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” she responded warily.

“I’m planning a safety demonstration at the Spring Fair. I was hoping that you’d join us, as Star Harbor’s doctor-in-residence, to give a run-down on some basic medical care. I’ve got the Kingsport EMTs already lined up as your demonstration team. It would mean a lot if you’d agree to participate.”

The man seemed serious. “When is it?”

“The third weekend in April, same as always.”

“Okay. I’ll do it. For Star Harbor.”

“For me,” Cole underscored, softly.

“I’m happy to help out with your project,” Julie informed him. “In fact, I think it’s a great idea. But let me be clear: I am
not
doing this for you.” They had reached the front steps of her house. Julie gracefully vaulted up them and removed his jacket. “Here.” She turned around on the stoop, jacket in hand, with Cole right behind her, one step down. Even down five inches, he was still slightly taller, and she was staring right into his piercing eyes.

She was about to tell him to get lost, but he curled one hand around her upper arm as his other hand covered her hand holding the jacket. His hands were hot where they touched her skin.

“Why don’t you want to do this just for me?” She caught a whiff of his scent—all male
and amazingly good. Like sea and spice and musk. Her pulse rate skyrocketed.

“You know why,” she managed to get out.

“Yeah.” His voice was husky. “Yeah, I know.” He slid his hand up her arm to her face and stroked her temple, pushing back a stray strand of hair, his eyes locked on hers. A low, dark shiver started in the base of her spine and jolted upward. “You’re not going to slap me again, are you?”

He remembers
. “I’m thinking about it,” she murmured, unable to tear her gaze away.

Cole didn’t smile. “Then you’d better go inside before I give you a real reason to.”

It took her only a fraction of a second to realize what he meant and when she got his drift, she swallowed. Hard.

Cole stared at her for just a moment more. Then, smoothly, he released her, grabbed his jacket, and walked down the steps. There, he waited patiently while she reached into the tiny pocket of her leggings and took out her house key. It was only when she’d let herself into the welcome comfort of her childhood home and flicked on the hall light that he gave her a nod before turning and disappearing into the darkness.

I scroll back down through the photos and description again, looking for a reason to avoid contacting the seller, but there isn’t one. Blond, beautifully made, and I can tell, even though the pictures were taken under bad lighting with a shaky hand. I nearly convince myself that this mid-century dresser is exactly what I want, but I don’t click the link to the seller’s email. It’s true that in the very worst case, I drive somewhere unfamiliar and stand awkwardly in someone’s entryway or garage or shed while I struggle to find a polite way to refuse. It’s imagining that potential moment, thick with polite embarrassment, that prompts me to close the listing. The solemn main menu of the MetroLink homepage blinks back.

My cell phone lights up the corner of my bed where it’s slipped under the sheets. There’s only one person who would call me at this hour.

“I think you keep me as a friend so you have someone to talk to when you’re with the goats.”

Shelley laughs. “You’re not wrong. The ladies rarely have much to say, and Will won’t talk to me until he’s had more coffee.”

I stretch out on the bed and watch a moth settle itself into the shadows gathered on the ceiling. I can hear the muffled and mysterious noises of Shelley’s task, a bleat from one of her little milking goats. “I might have been asleep this time, you know.”

“Carrie.” Shelley laughs, sounding a little far away since I’m probably on speaker. “I know you.”

“You do.” She does.

“Yesterday was hard,” she says, her voice gentle. It
was
hard. I am sleepless at an unreasonable hour fit only for happy women and happy men tending their spoiled goats.

“I’m not sure what was so hard about it, exactly.”

“Did you call your parents?” she asks.

“I did.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much. They were disappointed, naturally, but understand. As always. In half a minute they started re-planning the trip as a second honeymoon for themselves.”

“Haven’t they already had, like, four second honeymoons?”

“Six, actually.”

Shelley laughs. “I love that. Your parents are like the patron saints of happy
marriages.”

“You’re not doing so bad yourself.”

“Hey Will, didja hear that? We’re happy!” Shelley laughs again, and I hear Will grunt, but then there is also a suspicious little bit of breathy quiet coming over the line.

“Guys! That better be the goats kissing. Jesus.”

“Sorry. Hey, Carrie?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Of course. People have breakdowns at work over nothing all the time.”

“Stop that. It’s not nothing.”

“Then what is it?”

Shelley is my colleague at the Metropolitan Library, where I’m happy, where I love the kingdom of teen collections over which I reign, except today, when in the middle of everything, I wasn’t. Shelley was reconciling my circulation report. Like always. Like every Tuesday. We were talking about me taking vacation time.

“I mean, sure. That sounds nice.” Shelley enlarged my circulation report and corrected a cell in the spreadsheet with an efficiency that reminded me of wren tucking grass into a nest.

“Nice?”
My thumb painfully picked up a sliver of wood from the teen collections desk, where I was gripping the edge too hard. That must be why my voice had been so hard.

“Yeah, nice. I’ve never vacationed with my parents, but you like yours, right?”

I do like them, actually, but something felt a little numb around the edges of my thoughts. Why? “Yes.”

“Awesome. Block out the days. Go, cruise, take pictures of Alaskan icebergs—”

“Glaciers. Not icebergs. Glaciers.” The sliver was deep and drove deeper as I tried to work it free. I’m certain that’s why there were tears in my eyes. I felt Shelley push in close to me, saw her dark fall of hair in my periphery. But I continued to work the sliver, because I knew if I looked at her, I’d break apart, right there in teen collections, for no good reason I could understand.

“Hey,” she whispered.

I shook my head. Pushed the sliver in farther.

“Carrie. Look at me. Come on.”

“Can’t.”

She laughed, just a little. Because Shelley is happy. Because what else is there to do when you recognize the signs of an inexplicable breakdown? “Carrie. Seriously. Also,
there isn’t anyone here right now. It’s okay.”

When I met the obvious sympathy in her gaze, it’s how
familiar
she looked that unfastened the sob from my throat. Or at least that’s what I told myself, swiping the tears away. “Fuck.”

“Oh, Carrie.” She gently lifted my glasses away, making it worse. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Is something going on with your parents?”

“No. I just talked to them. They’re great, as usual. Looking forward to the trip.”

“Here? Is it something here at the library—work stuff?”

“No. It’s awesome here.” I stuttered over another sob. “I love it here.”

“It’s my fuckup with the glaciers, right? What’s the difference, anyway? Are icebergs little glaciers, like baby glaciers that will be big glaciers someday but have to heave up on a continent or something?”

My confusion momentarily eased up my breathing. “What?”

She passed me a tissue. “You don’t want to cruise with your parents, do you?”

I looked at my sliver, but couldn’t see it because my thumb was now so mangled and sore. The numb-around-the-edges feeling had spread out over everything. “No,” I whispered. “I don’t think I do.” I looked back at Shelley, who was leaning against the counter, head in hand.

“Finally.”

I sat down on a stool, suddenly exhausted. “What do you mean?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

And I’m still not entirely certain what she meant, except that I couldn’t go with my parents on a cruise to Alaska. Now, I listen to the little sounds raining through the line from Will and Shelley’s tiny milking barn.

“Carrie?”

“I’ll be okay, Shelley. It’s a funk, that’s all. Lady of a Certain Age funk.”

“Hmm. There are certain … cures for such a thing, you know.”

“Oh, I know
you
know, Shelley,” I say, hearing Will laugh in the background, “but I think we’ll save that talk for another time.”

“Try to sleep, Carrie. Really, even just a little before work.”

“See you in a few hours.”

I slide the phone away and try to focus on finding the moth, but it’s hidden itself too well.

All I can hear through my open windows is the hum from the streetlights. The bar anchoring the apartments next door had last call more than an hour ago. It won’t be long
before my next-door neighbor, a third-shift nurse, stumbles into her apartment and cranks on her shower, the hot water banging its way up from the basement.

The computer on which I was browsing for furniture I have no room or use for has made my lap hot and my eyes tired, but I just drape my body into a new position over the duvet and adjust my glasses. The breeze is just cool enough to feel good combing through my short curls, luffing the T-shirt I’ve worn to bed.

I hover my arrow over another menu item on MetroLink. Other than “Furniture for Sale,” it’s the only option contrast-shaded purple, proving I’ve visited it before. “Men Seeking Women.”

I love MetroLink personals, but not the way my friends do, as a source of entertainment at the expense of the lovelorn who can’t afford or won’t subscribe to a “real” online dating site. I read only the men’s personals, and I read them the way I might ritually eat a favorite candy bar. I start with the Casual Encounters section and all of the horny out-of-town businessmen and drunk college boys posting dick pictures and rough invitations.

Then, I read the dozens seeking a “BBW,” who are sometimes so achingly poetic in their desire to take tender care of some mythical and kind full-figured woman. I can’t help but think they must be the ancestors of the prehistoric men who carved those pendulous, round-bellied goddesses from cave stones.

I usually skip those of the seniors, who seem to mainly post long and unparagraphed essays filled with ellipses and metaphors about spoiling a mistreated and much younger woman. Even worse are the painfully short single-sentence pleas that manage to cut open the loneliness of widowerhood or divorce after a long life with one woman.