Never Been Kissed (33 page)

“What’s going on with Cora?” Brody expected evasions but Sean just smiled, holding his arms out to the side, like he had nothing to hide.

“What can I say? I’m a really lucky guy.”

“It’s good to see you this happy,” Brody said and he was surprised by the oily residue of jealousy that clung to the words, that coated his stomach. And his brother … his brother knew.

“What about you and Ashley?”

The glowing coal in his chest took a hit. He shook his head.

“Come on, man,” Sean said. “You can’t stand there and say nothing is going on. I caught you guys making out on the roof last night.”

“I’m leaving in two weeks.” Brody tucked the napkin in his pocket and pushed the pen back across the bar. It was good to say that, a reminder. He should say it more often.
I’m leaving in two weeks.

At some point he had to pull the plug on this thing and in two weeks was as good as any.

“What? What about Ashley?”

The anger was a brushfire, sudden and out of control. Sean was just standing in the wrong place at the wrong
time, holding a match. “What about her? She’s Ashley Montgomery. Her brother is probably going to be president someday, her father is the Governor of Georgia. She grows gardens in the desert. Gardens.” His voice cracked and he turned away from his brother. “She has no business hanging around here planning a senior shuttle service and playing house with me.”

His hands were full of humility and anger and this was an unsolvable problem. She was leaving. She should leave. Yes, she said she’d come back, but by then he would be gone. Her life was on a totally different trajectory than his and he had zero illusions about that. There were no fantasies he was spinning in his head—instead, the last few days, the days to come, they were a long slow bleed out.

And it was inevitable.

“What are you going to do?”

After Atlanta, I’ll be right back here. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but I have to say it. I’m coming back for you.

“Go back to my life.” That sounded pathetic.
He
sounded pathetic, and he wasn’t. The absence of Ashley from his life was not going to reduce him, and he needed to remind himself of that. “I’ve been offered partner.”

Partner in a company that protected dirty politicians and child pop stars. A job that he took when the last dream he had was ripped out from under his feet. A dream he didn’t have the courage or the stomach to try to replace.

“Congratulations. That’s great. Isn’t it?”

Brody swallowed his dark, gloomy laughter. “It is. Thank you,” he said.

Sean knocked once on the bar and then turned to walk away but then, last minute, he whirled back around. “This is probably going to make you run right out the door, but fuck it: I don’t know when you got the idea that you don’t deserve her. Or that you’re less than her. It’s
bullshit, Brody. You’re a good man. The best. And she’d be lucky to have you in her life.”

That hero worship in his brother’s eyes—that was the black bag he ran from. The hero worship that he didn’t deserve.

“Do you know why I stay away from here?” he asked.

“No,” Sean whispered.

“So you will keep thinking that.”

So that someone in his life would think the best of him.

“No. You know why you leave?” Sean asked. “Because you start believing it.”

Brody watched from the corner of his eye as Sean poured Ashley a glass of wine and slid it across the bar. He approved of the drink—she looked really stressed-out. Her brother was going to arrive any minute and she seemed torn between being excited and wanting to run away.

He understood the inclination—exactly.

“It’s noon, Sean,” she protested. “On Friday.”

“And you look like if you don’t relax, your head is going to pop off.”

“I’m just … just nervous, I guess,” she said and ran a hand down her yellow cardigan. Now that her bruises were nearly gone and she had more pink in her cheeks, the yellow glowed on her. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I mean, if you don’t count the hospital in Nairobi and the plane back to JFK, I haven’t seen him in over a year.”

“What are you worried about?” Brody asked, propping up the broom and leaning on it.

“He seems sad. And stressed,” she said.

“He’s running for Congress,” Sean said. “Seems stressful.”

“He says he has something he needs to tell me. Something important. And I don’t know, it’s stupid but I just … I just want him to like me. And I want to like him. I want us to be as regular a family as we can be.”

Sean shot a sharp glance toward Brody. “I know the feeling. He’s going to love you, Ashley. You’re totally loveable and if he doesn’t, it’s his problem.”

Brody nodded and after a moment Ashley smiled. She blew out a long breath that lifted her bangs, and took a sip of wine. “Thank you, boys. You do know how to give a girl a pep talk.”

“While you’re waiting, how about you grate some ginger.” Sean pressed a cheese grater and a giant knob of ginger into her hands.

Brody had just finished cleaning up after the plumbing guys; the new metal sink gleamed in the bright sunlight coming in through the window.

They’d all been working hard, Ashley harder than anyone. He’d gone to help her buy the van in Masonville, a very serviceable, very white,
big
van. With room for eight, air-conditioning, and storage in the back for walkers. She had cooed over and stroked that van like it was a new baby.

She’d been answering interview questions at night, talking to Earl Anthes in Public Health during the day about expanding the service to include doctors’ appointments—and now, as she waited for her brother to arrive, she grated ginger for Sean’s …

“What the hell is the ginger for?”

“It’s my secret ingredient.”

Sean sounded so strangely pompous that Ashley lifted her eyebrows at Brody. “Yeah, Brody,” she said before taking a sip of wine, “secret ingredient.”

The front door opened and in through the slice of light walked Harrison Montgomery, looking as if he’d been sprinkled with gold dust. If one could forget that Ashley was a Montgomery, because she carried all her gold dust on the inside, one could never forget what family Harrison was from.

His pedigree and in turn Ashley’s was right there, on his high forehead, his blue eyes and the intelligence and honor that came through them. His patrician nose. The way he held himself. The son of a bitch was regal.

“Harrison!” Ashley cried, setting down the ginger and jumping off her bar stool to go hug him.

“This place is in the middle of nowhere,” Harrison said, hauling his sister into his arms. The two Montgomerys closed their eyes as they hugged and Brody had to look away, only to find himself meeting Sean’s eyes.

They didn’t hug. They made bad jokes. He suddenly felt the lack in his life. How much of it could they change, he wondered. How much of their past could they rewrite?

“Look at you,” Harrison whispered, leaning back to examine his sister’s face. “The bruising is almost all gone.”

“Just the lovely yellow eyeshadow.” She closed her eyes, showing the yellow skin on the lids.

“You’re beautiful,” Harrison said, kissing her forehead. “How are your ribs?”

“They’re fine. Everything is fine.” She gave her brother a squeeze as if to prove it.

“Brody,” Harrison said, his arm still over Ashley’s shoulder. But his other hand was held out toward Brody. “Good to see you again.”

“I thought you were angry I kidnapped her.” Brody shook Harrison’s hand.

“I’m over it,” Harrison said, with a smile that gave every impression that they were friends, but at the same time created a clear distance around the guy. He wore dress pants but his shirtsleeves were rolled up, the same uniform he wore weeks ago when he’d turned Brody’s life upside down.

Brody wasn’t a huge fan of Harrison, but even he had to respect the guy when he was in this form. He had gravitas.

“She’s her own woman,” Harrison said, giving Ashley a jiggle. “She wants to hide out in a bar in a small town in the middle of nowhere, that’s her right.”

“The bar is called The Pour House,” Sean spoke up.

“This is my brother, Sean,” Brody said and Harrison walked over to shake Sean’s hand.

“And this is my bar,” Sean said, after they shook. “Can I get you something?”

“It’s noon,” Harrison said and Ashley leaned forward to grab her glass of wine.

“I know, Harrison,” she said with the great, naughty twinkle in her eyes that Brody was growing to love. “That’s why it’s fun.”

Idiot, he thought, tired of lying to himself. He wasn’t growing anything. It was grown.

I love her.

To his feet, across the sky, he loved her. Everything he felt for her was accumulated and gathered and the gross weight was he loved her.

“Hell, why not?” Harrison said, pulling up stool. “I’m on vacation.”

“Brody? You want a beer?” Sean asked. Hope was in his eyes. Not in Ashley’s though; she knew better than to hope for too much from him. She may love him, and may actually be convincing herself that he loved her too, but she had no expectations of him.

Watch this,
he thought, and said, “Yeah, I’d love one.”

Ashley turned radiant eyes toward him and pulled out the stool on the other side of her. Sitting between her brother and Brody, he could see she was unbearably happy.

And it was a good feeling to give her that.

He kissed her head as he sat and caught Harrison’s surprised look.

That’s right,
Brody thought,
your sister is messing with the bodyguard again.

Harrison didn’t look happy about it, but that didn’t surprise Brody.

“So, what is it you need to tell me?” she asked.

“The news hasn’t hit Bishop, Arkansas?” Harris asked, rubbing a hand over his face.

The man did look stressed.

“What news?” Ashley asked, cupping her hand over her brother’s.

Harrison glanced around the room, as if unsure a dive bar was the right place for news-breaking.

“It can wait,” he said, smiling like all was right in his world. “Why don’t you tell me about this project of yours.”

The man could lie, Brody would give him that.

Brody had never planned a party in his life. As a kid he put the chairs where Linda told him to and stayed away from the food until the guests arrived.

But Saturday night he was the commissioner of all of Sean’s party prep.

Why am I surprised?
he wondered. This was his whole life with Sean.

“Hey!” Brody was pouring ice into the wells in the bar when Harrison came in wearing jeans and a polo shirt.

Politician at rest, Brody thought.

“Hi.” Brody put the bucket on the ground.

“Ashley told me to meet her here.” Harrison looked around the empty room. “Have you seen her?”

“She’s trying out the shuttle schedule and picking up some people,” Brody said. “She should be back soon. How was your night at the Peabody?”

“That place is amazing. Beautiful.”

Brody grabbed the white Christmas lights he was told to put around the table where Sean was going to set up the food.

“You want some help?” Harrison asked, pointing to the lights.

“Hanging lights? Sure.”

“I thought this was a party?” Harrison asked.

“Sean’s out back cooking food. Ashley’s picking up the guests. It will start soon.”

He pulled the masking tape out of his back pocket and tore a strip off for Harrison.

“So Ashley looks good,” Harrison said as they began taping the lights. “Seems good too, better than she’s been in years. This idea of hers for the senior shuttle, it’s great. It could be a national initiative, if she wanted to do it.”

Brody stretched out the lights across the front of the table.

“It kills me to say this, but you were right,” Harrison said. “You were right to bring her here.”

“It was her idea.”

“Still. You took good care of her.”

“I’m not taking any payment,” Brody said, taping the lights to the table.

“Why?”

Brody plugged in the lights and the table lit up.

“I love her.”

Harrison stared him down. “How does Ashley feel?”

“How do you think?”

“She loves you.”

With great satisfaction, Brody nodded.

“My family won’t like this.”

“I don’t care if they do or don’t.”

“Ashley will. In the end, she will. She always has, that’s why she’s run away, because she wants Mother to love her like Ashley wants to be loved and can’t stand that she doesn’t.”

His words had the weight and heft of truth. They hurt when they hit him.

But they galvanized him too, put his feet down firmly into his purpose.

“I won’t be so easy to get rid of this time,” he said.

“Excuse me!” cried a voice from the other room and Brody happily left Harrison, and his jaw on the ground, to enter the bar.

It was Simone Appleby, the star of
What Simone Wants,
who breezed in the front door, a short man wearing glasses beside her.

“Welcome,” Brody said. It sounded like
Get the hell out of here,
so he tried again. “Come on in.”

“My crew led me to believe this was a dump,” Simone said, looking around with the icy white imperial beauty that had made her famous.

She looked like her daughter, Monica, but it was only surface. Monica radiated warmth, this woman’s ice went down deep.

“Your crew has bad taste,” Brody said, not about to listen to anyone, not even beautiful television stars, make aspersions against his brother’s hard work. His own hard work.

Simone smiled, like a shark trying to be friendly. “Agreed. Do you have a decent Chardonnay back there?”

Doubtful. “Yes, we do. For you?” he asked the man with her. In his own estimation he was doing all right being the bartender.

“A Manhattan.”

Brody had no clue what was in a Manhattan. So much for being a bartender. Luckily, Jim Gensler, Sean’s weekend bartender, came up behind him.

“Got it,” he said and Brody was saved.

“Wow,” Harrison said, entering the room and catching sight of Simone. “Are you who I think you are?”