Snark and Stage Fright (26 page)

After I had absorbed everything he had said—and calculated all the time we had wasted, I said, “I was never going out with Dave.”

“But you got so mad that day in my kitchen when I asked about your date the night before. You told me it was none of my business.”

I had to laugh. “I couldn’t see why you kept asking me about it! I had been so nervous about coming over to your house that day, about working with you, seeing your parents again … ”

He twisted his mouth in a regretful smile. “I kept asking about Dave, Georgie, because I was jealous.”

“You were?” I probably sounded way too excited when I said that, especially given how badly I had treated Dave, whom I was hoping was still dancing with Megan’s friend, or even making out with her on the sectional couch we had abandoned when Todd fell on it.

“I was,” he admitted. “I had no business being jealous, but … I was.”

“We only went out once. I did not handle it well,” I sighed, taking his hand off the steering wheel and studying the lines running across it. “I feel really bad about it. We went up to Ashworth and then we came home … ”

“I recall your saying that he ate un-meltable vegan cheese like a gentleman.”

“Yes, and then we went home and … that’s it. Dave’s an amazing guy, and a great friend, better than I deserve, but … I missed you too much.”

“I missed you, too,” he said and his lips met mine. They felt so warm and soft and good that I wanted to devour them, but I returned their gentle pressure until Michael pulled away and asked, “Was this your wish, from last night?”

I nodded.

“Me, too.” He kissed me again, on my lips, on my nose, on my closed eyelids, behind my ears, and he whispered, “I missed you so much,” when we came up for air. After we caught our breath, he said, “Georgie, do you know what Diana and I were whispering about all those times in the cafeteria? She was trying to get me to tell you how I felt and that I missed you.”

“So all the time I was missing you, you were missing me?” I put two fingers on his lips and said, “It seems like we’ve wasted enough time already, doesn’t it?”

He nodded his head beneath my fingers and I put a palm on each side of his face and kissed him. And he kissed me back with all the warmth and yearning that I felt myself.

After we had fogged up the windows a lot, I wiped away a clear space in them and saw that most of the cars were gone.

“Oh, no! I’m supposed to drive Leigh home!”

Michael laughed, low in his throat, and reached out a lazy hand to try to return my tousled hair to some semblance of order.

“I talked to Leigh,” he assured me. “Alistair—is that his name?—was coming to take her home.”

One thing I love about Michael? He thinks of everything.

“Okay,” I said. “But I have a mystery to resolve and then I think we are all caught up on this sad series of misunderstandings: Why was Diana sitting in your lap last week when I came into the cafeteria?”

He frowned, perplexed, and then laughed. “That must have been the day she threatened to sit on me until I told you how I really felt. It wasn’t much of a threat since she weighs about as much as a mouse. But I do remember you looked at us funny.” He grinned a little too smugly and teased, “Were you jealous?”

I decided to wipe the smirk off his face with another kiss. He put his hands on my hips and lifted me onto his lap. And we resumed kissing until we were out of breath, lips bruised, faces chafed.

He said, “We should probably leave before we’re arrested for loitering. Let me walk you to your car.”

When he opened the doors, we looked around to see there were no other cars parked outside Spencer’s. The party had ended and everyone else had left and we hadn’t noticed. We were like the last two people left on this now-snowy planet. So we found my car easily since it was the only other one left on the street, but it was at least ten minutes before I drove away for home.

We’d decided to see what it was like to kiss in the front seat of
my
car for a change.

21 
Comfort and Joy

“I can tell the difference,” Michael admitted when he took his first sip from the mug of almond-milk hot chocolate I’d offered him. “But it’s good.”

He was in my kitchen for a change since we had my house to ourselves on Christmas Eve. Leigh was at church, Mom and Dad were at some faculty thing, Tori was at Trey’s, and Cassie had actually accepted an invitation to attend Mass with Leo Haag from the basketball team. It seemed like a weird first date, especially for her, but I wished her well. My dad wasn’t thrilled about leaving the house for a faculty party, but both of my parents were extremely happy to have me spend my Christmas Eve with Michael. Maybe they were relieved that I wasn’t back to being a dateless wonder, but I prefer to believe it was because they knew I was happy.

Michael and I took our mugs into the living room and curled up in front of the fireplace, where the two older cats were stretched out in front of the tidy flames my dad had left for us. Rufus the tabby sniffed Michael’s pant leg briefly, noted signs of dog smell, and went back to sleep. You could detonate a bomb in the next room and Rufus would just open one eye, note the calamity, and go back to sleep.

“Okay, sit and wait!” I directed, and Michael laughed as I scurried upstairs to my bedroom to grab the box I’d wrapped an hour ago in gold foil and then tied with a big blue bow. When I returned, I found him stretched out right alongside Clover, the calico, his head propped up on one elbow. I checked my desire to throw myself on top of him, though, and handed him the gift.

But he set it down and said, “Yours first,” as he produced a small wrapped box from the pocket of the coat behind him.

I was giddy with excitement as I pulled off the ribbon, eager to see what he’d chosen. I was curious to see what he’d decided was right for me more than I was about the actual contents of the box. But when I opened that box, my breath left me like the smoke going up the chimney. It held a fine silver chain with two small silver charms: a heart and a wishbone.

“Oh, Michael, I love it!” I squealed, throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him until he had a hard time breathing. “It’s perfect.”

“I know you don’t wear a lot of jewelry, but I thought it would look nice on your neck, fitting into that hollow there,” he said, putting two fingers in the exact spot of my neck that the charms would nestle in, then helped me to put it on. “Perfect,” he agreed.

“Well, I got you something for your neck, too, but it’s not as nice,” I warned him, and he opened the package slowly, running the edge of his thumb along the tape to break the seal without ripping the paper and pulling out my sad creation: a scarlet scarf—soft but not too soft—that I thought would look nice with his black pea coat.

“Did you make this?” he marveled, turning it over in his hands. “You really made this?”

“You can tell, right? Because it’s a little crooked on that side. It’s only my second scarf ever. But you should see the first one. It looks like a wolverine chewed on it.”

He wrapped it around his neck and kissed me, running his fingers through my hair and making me feel like I had just presented him with the key to eternal happiness.

“I can’t believe you made this for me. I didn’t even know you could knit!” His eyes were dark but bright and the red scarf looked great against his skin, if I may say so myself.

“I just started, last month, when I was up all night every night because I was nervous about the show. And I didn’t know what to get you, so I thought with a scarf, even if it looks awful, you’ll know that I was thinking about you, stitch by stitch, the whole time I was making it.”

“That’s the best part of it,” he said. He pulled me down onto the floor with him and we kissed and caressed each other until we were breathless. It was so good to feel his skin again, to luxuriate in his touch that both produced and relieved such profound ache in me.

“So,” he rasped when we took a break for air, “this time you’re going to be more honest with me about how you feel, and I’m going to
not
be judgmental when you tell me. That’s the plan, yes?”

“Yes,” I promised, burrowing my head in the space between his neck and shoulder. “And I will never, ever laugh from anxiety again, especially in delicate moments. I’ll just excuse myself and vomit, very quietly, into the nearest receptacle.”

He kissed my head and brushed the hair off of my face. “So what was the phrase you thought of at that delicate, inopportune moment in my bed at the Cape? The one from one of your mom’s romance novels?”

I never should have told him everything I’d thought that night. It provided way too much material for teasing, but I guess that is the risk you take when you choose emotional nakedness.

“Um, pulsing pillar,” I divulged, my face no doubt the color of Santa’s suit.

“That’s terrible writing,” he scoffed, and I was so grateful that he could actually chuckle about this now I wanted to press him to me like a teddy bear. “And a terrifying concept. I can assure you that I have nothing like that on
my
person.”

I started kissing his neck and when he growled happily I said, “I like everything about your person. Everything. And when I told you that night that I love you, that wasn’t just the heat of passion talking. I meant it. And I still do.”

He sat up and looked down at me, smiling, and ran one hand down the length of my neck. I closed my eyes, wishing that this moment could last forever so that I could never screw things up again.

“Me, too. I never stopped loving you, Georgie. I’m just not always sure how to deal with it.”

I burrowed my face into the warm hollow between his neck and right shoulder, saying, “I know. I feel the same way. But I would rather figure it out together than be apart anymore.”

I sat up and wrapped my arms around his torso from behind. He leaned against me, and we watched the fire crackle and hiss for a while, the flames like ghosts or bad wishes disappearing up into the sky, far away.

After a while he asked, “Have you ever seen the ocean in winter?”

“No.”

“You should. You would like it. The ocean and the beach look very different than in the summer, and no one else is around, so it’s like you’re the last person on earth, just you and the seagulls. You can’t swim, obviously, unless you’re a polar bear, but I like the ocean in winter almost as much as in the summer.”

I leaned my head forward to rest on his shoulder and said, “I’d like to see it.”

He turned, smiled, and our noses were touching. I could smell the hot chocolate on his breath.

“Let’s get up early the day after Christmas and drive down to my parents’ place on the Cape and I’ll show you what I mean.”

I laughed and pulled one of his dark curls around one finger and pretended to be shocked. “Don’t tell me you are trying to lure me back into that bedroom again! So soon?”

“Nope. We don’t even have to go into the house.”

“I wouldn’t mind, actually … ” I assured him.

He lifted my chin with two fingers and looked at me and I could see in his eyes everything I wanted him to feel. “We’ll get there, in time,” he promised. “When you’re ready. Because I only want to get there with you.”

We kissed and I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest because I knew he wasn’t just talking about going to his room at the beach house. I knew that “getting there” meant a whole lot more.

And then he started laughing.

“You’re crying again!” he said.

“Happy tears,” I admitted, and he wiped one away with his thumb, shaking his head.

“I have to get used to this new emo Georgia.” He laughed.

“I know! I cry all the time now.” I dabbed at my eyes. “I cried yesterday at a commercial urging people to become foster parents. Now that it’s open, I just can’t put the lid back on the box.”

He took my hand and squeezed it a little, and we sat and smiled at each other for a long time, like a pair of imbeciles, without a thought between us, until he said, “Do you know, that in all the time I have known you, I have never seen your room?”

“I share it with Tori. It’s small and messy, at least on my side. Right now there are three pairs of pants and last night’s pajamas on the floor.”

“Sexy! Wait—do you mean the PETA T-shirt you wore on the Cape? With the yellow chick saying, ‘I am not a nugget’?”

“Maybe. Wanna see?”

He nodded. I took his hand and led him up the stairs and into my room. I knew I had plenty of time to show him around before Tori or my parents got home. And I was ready now, for so many things.

STEPHANIE WARDROP

Amazon international and multi-category bestselling author of SNARK and CIRCUMSTANCE, CHARM and CONSEQUENCE, PRIDE and PREP SCHOOL, PROM and PREJUDICE

Stephanie Wardrop grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, a town mostly famous now for having a railroad in the Monopoly board game. Overeducated, with an MA in British and American Lit and a PhD in English, she was lost in academe for many years, teaching writing and literature on Long Island, in Las Vegas, in Colorado, and now in western New England. But she always wanted to be a writer and is thrilled to be able to say that dream’s come true at last. She’s married with two kids, five cats, and a crested gecko and when she’s not teaching, writing, or hanging out with any of those creatures, she loves to bake, to explore, and, of course, read nearly everything she can get her hands on.