Come to Me Quietly (Closer to You) (7 page)

Get a grip, Jared
.

I gathered myself while I gathered the plates and forks. I walked back out with everything, sat down across from Christopher and Aly, the only true friends I’d ever had, and forced myself to relax.

We all ate together, like we did it all the time – like we’d done so many times before. Our conversation was light, and the food was awesome. We drank a few more beers and played some cards. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so good.

But I did. I felt too damned good.

From across the table, I tried to suppress my amusement. Aly was obviously a lightweight. After three beers, her speech was beginning to hint at a slur. “I need another beer,” she announced, draining the last few drops in her bottle, wobbling a little as she stood. She kind of staggered into the kitchen.

God, she was cute.

“Grab me one, too, would you?” Christopher called.

She emerged with two. “Nah, but Jared can have one.” She winked at me as she slid it across the table to me.

I couldn’t help but smirk.

“Oh, uncool, Aly, uncool,” Christopher mocked, pressing his hand to his chest. “You always liked him better than me, didn’t you, Aly Cat?”

Aly’s mouth puckered in defense. “Oh my God, don’t you dare, Christopher. You two just about gave me a complex when I was little. I can’t tell you how much time I sat in front of the mirror, worrying I looked like some mangy cat. One day Mom found me crying, curled up in a ball in my room. It took her, like, two hours to convince me it was about my name and not what I looked like.”

Aly Cat.
 

A smile pulled at my mouth, at my thoughts, and a wave of nostalgia slammed me, threatening to knock me off my feet. It washed over me with warmth, and things I didn’t want to remember. Fear tightened my throat. I pushed it down. I’d leave soon, before I could fuck it all up and leave them hating me.

I stood and drained my beer. “I’m going to grab a smoke.”

I was hit by a wall of stifling night air when I escaped outside through the sliding glass door. I closed my eyes and sank to the balcony floor, resting my back against the wall. The concrete floor was still hot as I pulled my bare feet up and bent my knees. I dipped my head to the side to light a cigarette. I drew it in, felt it expand in my lungs, welcomed the mild calm it pulsed through my agitated veins. I rushed my free hand through my hair.

Careless.

Coming back here. Staying here. All of it.

Taking another drag, I looked up as the sliding glass door slowly opened. Aly’s silhouette emerged in the darkness, her movements somehow softer than they’d been inside.

Just to the side and across from me, she slid down onto the floor. Slowly her face came into focus. She drew one leg to her chest, exposing the skin on the underside of her thigh. She tilted her head to the side, and the length of her black hair fell down around one shoulder, all soft and innocent and a little bit infuriating. This girl was either the biggest tease I’d ever met or was completely oblivious of how perfect she was.

For a while we said nothing, just listened to the sounds of the night, and allowed a distinct pressure to build up around us. I rested my forearms on my knees and let my hands dangle down between them. I wasn’t looking at her, but I could
feel
her looking at me. With the intensity of it, I thought she might as well go ahead and climb inside my head, because she was definitely getting under my skin.

My nerves flared in a way I didn’t quite understand. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so comfortably uncomfortable, like I wanted to bolt and sink into it all at once. Maybe I was finally slipping over the edge of sanity. God knew I’d been heading there for a long time.

I rocked my head back and lifted my face to the starry night sky as I brought the cigarette to my mouth again. I held it in for a long moment and then slowly blew it into the air. Smoke curled over my head, these wisps of nothingness that I studied as they slowly evaporated.

Finally she spoke. “Are you okay?”

Confusion rumbled through me and I let out a slow sound of exasperation. “I don’t know what I am, Aly. Being here is just… I don’t know… It’s hard.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Studying me, she frowned. “I mean, why did you come back?”

I shrugged as if it made no difference in the world. “I don’t really know.” And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to talk to her about it, even if I did.

Her voice came low, earnest and sincere. “I know you probably think of me as the little girl you used to know, but you can talk to me, Jared.”

My attention dropped to her thigh, rested there for a beat too long. She believed I still thought of her as that little girl, huh? Incredulous laughter slipped out. I took another drag as I shook my head. I chewed at my lip as my eyes found her face. “That’s not how I think of you, Aly.” Not even close.

In the dimness I watched as her green eyes softened, filled with something that appeared too much like affection.

I looked down, away, stubbed out the cigarette.

“You
can
trust me,” she whispered.

I let my eyes fall closed as I loosely wove my fingers together. I said nothing because I was pretty sure I could trust her. It was me who couldn’t be trusted.

We settled back into the silence, and again I took comfort in the distinct discomfort. I thought maybe she took some, too.

There was something about the summer air in Phoenix. Even though it was hot at night, it was almost refreshing. How many times had we been out in it, playing hide-and-seek in the dark? How much had we laughed?

I’d been comfortable then.

In the far distance, at the lowest point on the horizon, a flicker of lightning edged the sky, this faint warning that the monsoon approached. The storms always seemed to loom in the distance before they engulfed the
city, teasing us with the promise of a reprieve. On the few days it did actually rain, it was like a torrent of relief pounding heavily into the ground. The thick scent of rain would rise as it met the dry dirt and hot pavement as the heavens opened up and washed the world anew.

I hadn’t allowed myself to miss many things while I was away, but this… this was one of them.

I had to admit now that I’d missed Christopher, too.

And I’d missed her.

I stood and dusted off my pants, reaching a hand down to her. “Come on, Aly.”

She didn’t hesitate to accept my hand. Her shy smile told me everything. She liked touching me every bit as much as I liked touching her.

Fuck
.

This was so very bad.

My muscles flexed along my arm as I pulled her to standing, and her feet came to hold her weight, although for a few seconds I didn’t let go. Finally I forced a casual smile and dropped her hand. Pretending to be the gentleman my mom had always hoped I would be, I slid the door open for her. “After you, Aly Cat.” Of course, I couldn’t keep out a little tease.

She slugged me on the arm as she passed. “See? You are a jerk.”

The next night I sat on the opposite end of the couch from Aly, who was curled up on her side. Those long legs were bent, her knees tucked up close to her chest with her head propped on a pillow that she’d taken three minutes to situate on the armrest. The lights were off, and the television flickered in front of us.

Aly’d gotten off work about an hour before. She’d walked through the door looking exhausted, which she’d confirmed when she dropped the huge-ass bag she always carried on the floor with an exaggerated sigh and followed it up with “I’m exhausted.”

Apparently I was perceptive.

Probably too perceptive because I couldn’t help watching her now. My side was pressed up against the opposite armrest, as far as it would go, while my eyes were constantly drawn toward her. She was relaxed, and looked engrossed in the TV show, although she was probably close to slipping into sleep. She kept shifting her legs, burrowing deeper into the couch, sinking farther into comfort.

How messed up was it that I really wanted to burrow into her comfort, too?

I shook my head and forced myself to look back at the TV.

About half an hour later, the door opened behind us, and I could hear mumbled voices right outside the door. It was easy to make out Christopher when he whispered, “It’s fine. You can come in.”

Christopher slipped in the door, leading this dark brunette toward the hall by the hand. Her eyes widened as she stole a glance in our direction; then she ducked her head and studied the floor. Christopher didn’t even bother with introductions.

In the last week, the guy’d had more girls in this apartment than I could count, and he kicked them out just as fast as he dragged them in. I mean, I had a pretty bad record, or a pretty good one, depending on how you looked at it. But there was something about this that was different. Something that made me feel sympathy for the girls. For him, it seemed a game, kind of like the poker he’d slung last night. Deceitful.

When Christopher’s door snapped closed, Aly lifted her head to look at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I lifted an eyebrow her direction. “Dude is kind of a slut, isn’t he?”

She quieted a dubious laugh. “Tell me about it. I had no idea I was going to have to deal with this every night when I first moved in here.”

I had the urge to ask her about it, to find out if she was worried and if Christopher was happy or what the fuck his problem was. Instead I kept my mouth shut, figured I was hardly in a position to judge Christopher’s behavior.

The movie played on, but it did nothing to drown out the giggles emanating from Christopher’s room. I turned up the volume, but still they were distinct, probably because as much as we didn’t want to, Aly and I couldn’t stop straining to listen.

Finally Aly blew a frustrated breath toward the ceiling. “Do you want to watch the rest of this in my room? It’s always quieter in there.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Aly clicked off the TV, hugged her pillow against her chest, and headed into her room. She left the door open behind her, a clear invitation.

I stepped inside. As curious as I’d been, I’d never been in here before. It was dark, though moonlight bled in from her opened blinds. A fairly large bed was pushed into the corner of one wall below the window, and directly across the room, a smaller TV sat on top of a horizontal six-drawer dresser. A large mirror and dressing table with a regular kitchen chair were set up to the right of it. Filling the space between her bed and closet was a tall bookcase. Spines and spines of books were lined up. A row of large, unmarked books filled up the bottom shelf, reminding me a lot of the journal I had tucked in my bag back out in the other room.

I resisted a smile. These had to be Aly’s sketch pads.

The bed was framed in mahogany wood, the base and carved headboard one large piece. It was unmade, the maroon comforter bunched and twisted with black sheets. Nothing really seemed to match all that well, but it all flowed, this eclectic feel of peacefulness coming over me the moment my feet sank into the soft cushion of her carpet.

Aly gestured toward her bed. “Feel free.”

I eyed it. I knew a trap when I saw one. Not one Aly had set, but one that my fingers would fall into. Lying next to her would be a very bad idea.

I dropped to the comfort of the carpeted floor. “I’m good on the floor. I need to stretch out a bit.”

“Suit yourself.”

She hopped onto her bed and turned the movie back on, the flick popping back to life in the same place we’d abandoned it. Luckily the shit going down in the next room was completely drowned out, and it was just me and Aly and this dumb comedy that really had nothing to offer other than a distraction from the racing that normally happened in my mind.

That and the annoying chime that kept going off on Aly’s cell phone every ten seconds.

The screen would light up, she’d tap out a message, tuck it back at her side, and then the whole thing would repeat again.

“You know that’s really fucking annoying, right?”

She sat up on her elbow, looking down at me in confusion. “What?”

“You having a conversation with someone when you’re supposed to be watching a movie with me.”

She rolled her eyes. “I am watching a movie with you.” Her phone chimed again. Those green eyes widened, and she laughed.

“And who is so important that you’d rather be talking to them than giving your full attention to me?” I didn’t really understand why I was feeling petulant and moody and a little bit pissed off, but shit… she was the one who’d suggested we watch a movie, saying she just wanted to relax and unwind. She was supposed to be mine for the night.

“Giving you my full attention, huh? I thought we were watching a movie.”

I didn’t miss the fact that she didn’t answer my question. It was a guy. Motherfucker. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling protective or possessive, because I was seeing flashes of both the innocent little girl I’d always taken care of and a gorgeous one lying on her bed. And I had no fucking idea if the one on the bed was innocent or not.

God. I couldn’t even stomach the thought.

But shit, she was twenty years old, and I wasn’t delusional.

It chimed again, and before I realized what I was doing, I flipped over onto my hands and knees. Crawling the few feet across the floor to her bed, I climbed up onto it. I grabbed the stupid white thing she had buried in the covers. The red light flashed its annoyance.

“What the hell are you doing?” She was caught off guard and her voice was shocked and raspy. I’d somehow managed to end up caging her, my legs on both sides of hers, one hand planted on the bed above her shoulder and the other gripping her phone. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes wide with surprise. I was so close to her I could feel her heart pounding, the beat steady and hard. Something inside me screamed to back away because I knew without a doubt I shouldn’t be near her this way, that I shouldn’t allow my blood to burn, race, thrum as I listened to her heart rate escalate. I shouldn’t like her reaction to me.

But I did.

“Who is it?” I demanded.

“It’s just Gabe.”