Back to You (27 page)

“How did you know about that place?” he finally asked.

“Mr. Brennan was talking about stress reducers in psych class a couple of weeks ago. He said there were places like that. I just looked it up.”

Del nodded as he looked down at the bottle in his hand, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “Well, thanks. I think,” he added with a tiny laugh.

Lauren shifted on the grass, crossing her legs in front of her. “Do you want to talk about Aaron?”

His smile fell. “No.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her look down. A beat of silence passed before she asked, “Will you anyway?”

He turned toward her, irritated. “What, is this part of your psych class too? I’m not an experiment, you know.”

She lifted her eyes then, looking at him.

And even in the dim light, he could see the hurt there, and he had to look away.

“I just…I know he was important to you,” she said, turning away from him and picking at the hem of her jeans. “I just wanted to know about him.”

Something pricked in Del’s chest at her tone of voice.

At the words she had spoken.

He hadn’t talked about Aaron in so long. And he realized then that one of the main reasons for that was because no one ever asked him to.

He inhaled slowly. “Aaron was my brother, my mother, my father, and my best friend. He took care of me. Maybe more than he should have. I wish I hadn’t needed him so much. And I miss him every day.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. Maybe it was because he’d already dulled his raw emotions, but that hadn’t hurt as much as he’d expected it to.

“I bet he needed you too,” she whispered. “Probably more than you realized.” Lauren reached over, taking the bottle out of his hand.

Del thought she was cutting him off and he was about to protest, but then she surprised him by bringing the bottle to her lips.

She grimaced as the liquor hit her tongue, and Del watched in shock as she took two long pulls from the bottle. She was about to take a third when he reached over and yanked it away from her.

It splashed down her chin, and she brought the back of her hand to her mouth as she whipped toward him. “Hey!”

He looked at her wide-eyed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What, you’re the only one who’s allowed to take the edge off?” she asked, her voice thick with the burn of the alcohol.

“Just let that settle for a minute. Jesus.”

She swallowed and coughed, turning away from him, and Del could only imagine how much her throat must be burning.

A few minutes passed before she spoke again. “Thank you. For telling me all that,” she finally said.

He nudged her with his shoulder, and she turned back toward him. “Thank you for asking.”

She smiled softly. In the dim glow of the motion light, he could see that her eyes were glazed.

It already hit her. Of course it would have.

She looked down at the bottle and then back up at him, quirking her brow.

He had no idea what this was about, but who was he to deny her?

“Slow,” he said, handing her the bottle, and she nodded, bringing it to her mouth and taking a much smaller sip. She flinched again, shaking her head slightly as it went down.

“You know,” she said, her voice somewhat husky before she cleared her throat. “I was kind of jealous of you in there tonight.”

He smirked, looking over at her as she handed him back the bottle.

“You got a lot of built-up aggression, Red?”

She smiled, looking down as she shook her head. “No, not aggression. Frustration, maybe.”

He glanced at her. She was studying her thumbnail, and there was something about her expression that didn’t sit right with him.

“Come on,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Like you could have done any real damage anyway.”

She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”

“I mean seriously, look at these things,” he said, reaching over to grab her bicep. He jiggled her arm, and it flapped lifelessly under his hold. “What were you gonna do?”

She whirled suddenly, attempting to grab his arm, and he pulled it out of her reach with a laugh, jumping back slightly.

She immediately followed him, lunging forward and gripping his wrist, trying to twist his arm behind his back. He laughed at her determination, but her attempt was pathetic. He let her maneuver his body for a minute, giving her the false impression of success, and then he shifted his weight, circling his wrist quickly so that he was the one gripping her arm.

Del brought his body forward suddenly, bringing her arm behind her back, and the shock combined with her fuzzy reflexes forced her backward onto the grass.

He landed on top of her, one of his hands trapped between her body and the ground and the other on the grass beside her, holding up some of his weight.

For a second, they both froze.

And then Lauren shifted her leg slightly, urging his body into the cradle of her thighs.

Instantly he pushed off of her, wrenching his hand out from underneath her as he sat up. Del looked down, brushing the grass from his pants before he reached for the bottle that was now lying in the grass between them.

As he righted the bottle, he could see her sit up slowly. Her eyes were forward, but there was a firm set to her jaw.

She said nothing.

Del focused his attention on wiping off the mouth of the bottle with his shirt, and then he looked straight ahead, taking another shot.

“You pick girls for sex.”

He closed his eyes, resting his elbows back on his knees as he swirled the bottle.

“You pick girls for sex, but they’re not good for you. They’re not nice girls.”

“Thanks for the news flash. I had been so confused as to what keeps going wrong.”

“I have a point, you know,” she said, matching his tone.

“Well then why don’t you stop stating the obvious and get to it?”

He heard her take a small breath, and when she spoke, her voice had softened significantly. “Did you ever think about a friends with benefits situation?”

Del froze with the bottle at his lips. He sat that way for a second before he resumed his movements, taking a long, slow sip.

Had he ever thought about it?

Jesus. Ever since they’d kissed a few months ago, all he’d been doing was fantasizing about her.

Sure, he’d fantasized about her before that a few times; after all, he was a guy, and she was a beautiful girl, and he was only human. But he never had any intentions of acting on it.

Then they’d made out on his bedroom floor.

And once he’d kissed her,
really
kissed her, felt the weight of her body moving against him, it was all he could do not to push her into the janitor’s closet every time he passed her in the halls.

And nights like this, nights they spent alone together, were always the hardest.

But he knew better than to sully her. So he continued to throw his efforts into other girls. Meaningless girls. Girls that were all wrong, of course, like she had said.

On the surface, their friendship had gone back to normal after his little slip-up. But underneath it all, he knew he wanted her. He had crossed a line, and now the craving he had for her was a living thing, gnawing at him all the time.

But the absolute worst part was that he knew it was more than just a physical desire. He didn’t just want her body. But he had been burying his emotions for most of his life, and emotional feelings were so much easier for him to ignore than physical ones.

That night in his room, he could see in her eyes that she wanted him too. And now the alcohol was making her brave enough to ask for it.

Del was aware that she was looking at him, that she was waiting for an answer, so he did the only thing he could think of to do.

He laughed it off.

“Enough of the sauce, Red.”

“I’m not drunk,” she snapped.

“Well, you’re not sober.”

She looked at him for a second before she rolled her eyes. “I was just asking, Michael,” she said, taking the bottle from his hands and turning forward again.

She took another slow sip, and for a second, Del thought she was going to drop it, but then she turned back toward him.

“You said it gets messy, but why does it have to?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“If you’re friends with someone,” she continued, “if you care about them and trust them, it shouldn’t get messy.”

“If you’re friends with someone, that’s
the reason
it gets messy,” he said tiredly, passing a hand over his eyes.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “You don’t think it would be so much more enjoyable if you cared about the person? Trusted the person?”

She turned further toward him, hopping up on her knees, growing more earnest as she argued her point. “Look, you told me once that I should use better judgment when it comes to guys, right? And
clearly
you need help in that area. We both care about each other, so why can’t we just be something a little more to each other instead of going to the wrong people for that kind of thing?”

She was making sense. Perfect sense. But his mind was already made up.

“
Relationships
get messy,” she continued. “But this?” she said, gesturing between them. “This could be great.”

She was quiet then, and Del knew he needed to respond. He was racking his brain, trying to think of a valid argument, but he couldn’t come up with anything. And not just because she had presented such a strong argument, but because deep down, he wanted exactly what she did.

He ran his hand down his face and made a desperate attempt at a defense. “You’re a virgin.”

“
So
?” she nearly yelled, her voice indignant as she whipped her head toward him. “What the
hell
does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m not making fun of you,” he said quickly, trying to mollify her. “I think it’s great that you are.”

Her shoulders softened slightly, but her expression was still defensive.

“But…I’m not taking your virginity. That should be something special.”

“What’s more special than my best fr—”

“It’s out of the question, Lauren,” he said firmly, cutting her off.

Del saw her shoulders drop as she turned forward, the set returning to her jaw.

He’d used her real name, and she knew that meant he was serious.

Lauren closed her eyes, and he turned away from her, looking down at the grass as he picked at it with his fingers. There was a reason he went for the girls he did: because the good girls were too good for him.

And she was the best of them all.

He had to remember that he had a knack for ruining people’s lives. She’d regret him being the one, he reminded himself. It should be another guy.

Although the thought of another guy getting to touch her that way, getting to be that for her, was enough to make him want to put his fist through a wall.

“You know,” she said softly, pulling his attention back to the present, “for someone who’s supposed to be a tough guy, you’re a real chicken shit.”

He whipped his head toward her, his eyes wide with surprise before he laughed.

“We’ll talk about this when you’re sober,” he said through a smile, shaking his head as he reached over to take the bottle from her.

And even though Lauren never brought it up again, he thought about it all the time.

I
t felt oddly comfortable to be back on the mats again.

Lauren looked around the gymnasium as she sat on the floor, stretching her legs. She hadn’t been inside a gymnastics studio in years, and yet she felt immediately at home. The smell of the mats, the sound of the vault springs clanging roughly, the repetitive patter and thuds of hands and feet hitting the mats as someone made a run.

She couldn’t believe she’d lived here all this time and didn’t know about this place. Then again, she’d never looked for one. When she’d first moved to Bellefonte and started teaching, there was hardly free time for anything, much less an old hobby.

Lauren stood and began stretching her quads, glancing at the door before she looked to the clock on the far wall. Five minutes to six. They should be here any minute now.

She smiled, realizing then just how excited she was about the evening.

Michael had called her earlier in the week, starting the conversation with, “I have a favor to ask you,” and immediately following it up with, “You can totally say no.”

He explained to her that Erin’s birthday was that weekend, and when he’d asked her what she wanted to do, she’d said, “I want Miss Lauren to teach me flips.” Lauren had told the class a few stories from her time as a gymnast, and apparently Erin was enthralled.

Michael assured Lauren that he’d made Erin no promises, so if she said no, it would be no big deal—she wouldn’t be letting anyone down. He would just find something else for them to do, and she’d be okay with it.

And in the middle of his rant, pardoning her for something she hadn’t yet declined, she laughed.

“Of course I will, Michael,” she’d interrupted, putting him out of his misery. “I’d love to, actually.”

And she meant it. She had grown so fond of Erin over the past few months; plus, teaching her gymnastics would be combining two of Lauren’s favorite things.

Apparently, in the hopes of her saying yes, Michael had already done his homework. As soon as she agreed, he told her about this place, a mere fifteen minutes from where Lauren lived, and said they held “open gym” on Sunday nights from six to eight: for a small fee, gymnasts could come and use the facility to practice routines or fine-tune their skills.

So they’d agreed to meet at six, and when Michael cupped the phone and told Erin that Miss Lauren was going to teach her, she could hear the enthusiastic squeal through Michael’s hand.

A few minutes later, as Lauren was using the wall to get a good stretch on her ankles, she heard the door open, and that same excited peal echoed through the gym.

“Is she here yet, Daddy?”

“I’m not sure. Let me just talk to this man for a minute and then we’ll go look for her, okay?”