Unmistakable (25 page)

However, I’m resigned to the fact that I’m not going to be welcomed back to the table without him, so I place myself directly in his path.

Déjà vu. This is not going to end well, but I march on anyway.

“Luke.”

“For fuck’s sake, Stella, get out of my way.”

“No.”

Unnatural ice blue. It makes me dizzy. I wait for the fire alarm. I wait for the words:
It’s not going to work, Stella.

There are no words. No fire alarm.

Just fireworks. Hope is the most dangerous illusion of all.

I meet ice with ice. “I was sent to see whether there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable. So, is there anything that I can do?”

His laughter is not merry. “Stop lying to your parents. Any idiot can see that you and Holden are together. He was touching you under the table.”

“He
is
my friend. I am not lying.”

“Just omitting, then.”

I take a deep breath. “We took the same flight from Atlanta. He didn’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, so I invited him to come here.”

“Do you realize how sick that is, Stella? You’re his student. He is disgusting, and you’re just as disgusting for going along with it.”

“Technically, I’m not his student anymore. I finished up the independent study right before we left for Thanksgiving.”

“I don’t give a damn about technically. He’s too old for you.”

I deliberately ignore his comment about age. “Oh, so you care about my personal business again? Interesting.”

“Damn right I care about your business when it’s probably illegal.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“You think I’m being ridiculous?” He raises his hand like he intends to touch me. Just before flesh touches flesh, he yanks his arm back. “Do you have any idea what Jack would do if he were here? Any idea of how ridiculous he would be?”

He just used Jack’s name to win a fight with me.

It’s never been an even playing field, which is mostly due to the fact that I’m in love with him and he cares less about me than one of his stupid whores, but that was outside the lines.

“You are not my brother. That has been made abundantly clear by prior events that you perhaps wish I had forgotten,” I say defiantly.

Direct hit.

“I’ve forgotten them.”

I believe him, and with that realization, the need to fight deserts me. “You still have no right digging into my personal business.”

It cheers me slightly that I’m not the only one who looks deflated. “Your personal business is probably illegal. It’s definitely immoral.”

“Immoral?”

“Immoral.”

“Interesting. Do you consider it immoral to sleep with someone who tells you that they love you when you have no interest in anything but...what was it you said? Fucking. Oh, I get it. That never happened, did it? So, you can still convince yourself that you’re riding first class on the morality train.”

He kicks one of the bricks on the site of the patio, and I watch as it crumbles into a little mound of dust.

“That was a mistake. You didn’t mean what you said. I don’t know why you would lie about that, but you did. You had to.”

He can’t say the words aloud, not even to accuse me of lying to him. I want to call him out on it, but I simply cross my arms over my chest instead. He doesn’t deserve anything from me besides scorn. He certainly doesn’t deserve my stupid, groveling, crazy, overwhelming love.

“This is my house,” I say finally.

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Then why are you here?”

“I wouldn’t have shown up if I had known you were going to be here!”

His voice is a roar. I cover my ears, but when he speaks again, the words are cloaked in a considerably more dangerous whisper. “Did you know that your mother calls me every holiday? She also calls me to see how I’m doing on a weekly basis. Do you know why she calls me, Stella?”

I do know why. Because I don’t call her.

“Yes. I’m sorry for that.”

“You should be sorry.”

He kicks at another brick, but I see right away that his heart isn’t in it.

“You can leave this house, Luke, but you are eating a piece of pie first, because you will not disappoint my mother. You owe her.”

“Yes, I do,” he says finally.

I can’t stop myself from uttering just one more question.

“How did it come to this, Luke?”

It’s obvious that he has no idea what I’m asking. I breathe deeply and try again.

“We were friends. Once I stopped being an annoying little brat who followed you and Jack around everywhere, the two of us... we were friends.”

He’s still unresponsive, but it’s a contemplative silence and not a dangerous one. I can’t bear to lose him again. I can’t stand to think that once he walks out of this house, I’ll be reduced to hiding behind bushes to get a glimpse of him with his arm around a beautiful girl.

“We could just pretend that nothing ever happened.” My voice trembles. “That’s what you wanted, right? We could be friends again.”

“We were never friends, Stella.”

It’s the final dagger. I have to hope that he’s lying, for some reason or another, but when I look into his eyes, all I see is truth.

Every muscle in my body aches from want. From need. From total, utter defeat.

I concede. Game, set, and match to Luke. With all the dignity I can muster, I spin around to face him before I open the door to the kitchen.

“You can take another minute or two to pout, but you need to have a piece of pie before you leave. Otherwise, my mother will think we’ve been fighting, and I don’t want that.”

I give myself five seconds. I grip the kitchen table, I smooth my ravaged face from the inside out, and I grab the pecan pie from the counter.

I’ve figured out a couple of things about myself in the past three years. The opposite of weakness is not strength. It’s survival.

I am a survivor, even if the attempt to do it kills me.

I
don’t say goodbye to Luke when he excuses himself after shoveling a piece of pie down his throat in record time. I don’t answer any of my mother’s unspoken questions, because I know she already has the answers.

As soon as my dad realizes that Holden is not a threat to my non-existent virtue, the two of them decide that they’re best friends. I don’t join their conversation about the 49ers, even though I’m itching to throw in my two cents about the wide receiver corps. At halftime, Holden and my father move on to a heated debate about the Oakland As.

Football was one thing, but I’m losing all sense of patience here. Luke’s probably off screwing some Berkeley girl who likes kale. And okra. And quinoa.

Jerk.

My mother threads her fingers through my hair. “Tom?”

“Yes, Caroline?”

“We need to stop holding the kids hostage. They deserve to have some fun. Holden mentioned a Thanksgiving night party at a club in the city, and I think it would do Stella some good to get out of the house. Maybe she’ll remember how much she loves to visit.”

“Why would they want to do a thing like that? Your former student here has some pretty fine ideas about...”

“Tom.”

Her professor voice is not to be ignored.

“I’d love to talk more sports,” Holden says diplomatically. “But I’ve seen what can happen when I disagree with Caroline.”

He and my father exchange a knowing look and both men chuckle.

My mother ignores them and turns to me. “You two have fun tonight. Within reasonable limits, of course.”

Up until this moment, I was completely unaware of any plan to go out and listen to music, but there’s always a method behind my mother’s madness, so I nod obediently.

With that nod, the budding friendship between my dad and Holden is put on hold, but my mother is undaunted. Regardless of Holden’s brilliant ideas about free agent signings, the thought of his baby girl going out with a man is too much for my father. He threatens to explode.

Holden tries to reassure him. “I’ll bring her back safely, sir.”

My father does not look reassured. My mother places a kiss on the top of my head like I’m eleven instead of twenty-one, and my father murmurs some vague threats, but Holden and I both manage to escape without any serious damage.

When we get to the car, he opens the door for me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says brightly, turning the key in the ignition. “That was fun.”

“A very demented soul could call it that.”

He sneaks a quick look at me. “Come on, Stella. Cheer up. We went into Thanksgiving with a TBD status, and we left it with a determined status, and it is not exactly the one I was looking for. I am perfectly within my rights to be pissed at you, but you’re the one sulking.”

He’s teasing. I think he’s teasing. I still feel terrible.

“Holden, I am so...”

Before I have time to finish my apology, he stops the car in the middle of the street. We’re not on a heavily traveled road, but it isn’t safe. I start to protest; he silences me with a look.

“I thought we had gotten past apologies a long time ago.” He takes my chin in two of his fingers and trains his eyes on me. “I’m attracted to you. I think you’re attracted to me. But like I said, I don’t play games, and I certainly don’t play games when there’s love involved.”

I open my mouth to deny his accusation, but his glare, a fearsome expression completely at odds with his beautiful face, silences me.

“You love him.”

It’s a statement and not a question, but I’m compelled to respond. I nod.

“Don’t you ever apologize for that. You can apologize for anything under the sun, but never for that.”

His jaw twitches as he puts the car back into gear. I don’t comment on it, or the raw nerve that his words exposed.

“Do you really want to go listen to some music or was that just a show to get you out of your parents’ house for the night?”

“Music,” I murmur.

“Then let’s go listen to music like friends sometimes do. Face it, Stella, you’re stuck with my friendship whether you like it or not.”

“It’s a good thing I like you, then.” I manage a small smile, which turns the corners of his lips up.

“Better. Keep that up. Maybe your face will get stuck like that and you won’t have to pretend anymore.”

My smile fades as I remember Luke’s words.

We were never friends.

He’s probably right. I certainly never wanted him to be my friend, not even when we were kids, and I don’t want it now. I want him to be every bit as in love with me as I am with him.

“Don’t think about him. It only makes it worse.” Holden’s voice, rich with hidden meaning, tells me that he is intimately acquainted with this kind of pain.

“Does that really work?”

“Some people say it does.”

So...that would be a no.

When we reach a stop sign, he reaches over to pat my hand. “The ache doesn’t go away. I can’t lie to you about that.” He glances out the window. “But it does get easier. You find people whose company you enjoy. You distract yourself with work. You choose a suitable alternative and attempt to convince yourself that you’re not settling. You try to forget what it feels like when she touches you.”

I don’t call him out on the pronoun use. But I do wonder about the girl that Holden loved. She must have been extraordinary.

A few minutes later, he responds to the words I didn’t realize I said aloud.

“She was magical.” Then, more quietly, “Don’t settle for mediocrity, Stella. Let love be a magnificent victory or a magnificent defeat. There’s no in between when it comes to losing yourself, body and soul, to another person.”

Neither of us says much else on the long drive back to the city. Every once in a while, I catch him looking at me with undisguised concern, but my own pain is too fresh to allow me that same unselfishness with him.

He plants a brotherly kiss on the top of my head when we reach our destination. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a total mess?”

I swat his arm. “Just every day of my life. By the way, thanks for the moral support, Dr. Evans.”

“I could charge a couple hundred bucks an hour for that kind of real talk,” he says, with a perfectly straight face.

I can’t help it. I laugh and he gives me the same kind of victorious look that Izzy always does. You find people whose company you enjoy. I just might be able to manage that.

My eyes fix on the outer shell of the club. Neon lights, dirty windows, broken bottles littering the parking lot, and a line of decidedly grungy patrons that extends down the block. I feel like I’ve entered the twilight zone. Or a bad gangster movie.

“This is your old hangout?”

He picks up on the surprise in my voice, although I thought I did a pretty nice job of keeping it hidden. “See? You seek out company that you enjoy, and sometimes, you get to surprise the poor little rich girls.”

I bristle, but his smile is too kind for me to really enjoy the fight. Like Izzy, he heads straight for the front of the line. Unlike Izzy, he doesn’t need feminine wiles to get past the bouncer.

“Hol-den,” the guy says, slapping his hand. “It’s been years, man.”

“Yeah. I’ve been here and there. You got anything good tonight?”

“Open mic. We had auditions yesterday and picked a couple of the best.”

“Promising?”

“You never know.”

The guy eyes me, then looks back at Holden with a wary expression. “She with you?”

“Yeah. Stella, this is Eric. Eric, Stella. You two will never meet again.”

I offer him my hand, but Eric has another greeting in mind. He pulls me tightly to his chest. “If you ever get tired of pretty boys, you just come down here,” he whispers. “The two of us will have a little talk.”

His wandering hands make me question the true nature of that little talk. Still, I’m more amused than offended.

Holden is definitely more offended than amused. “She just got her heart broken. Leave her alone.”

Eric releases me. “That’s some bad shit,” he says, shaking his head sympathetically. “Sorry to hear that, Stella.”

“Shit happens,” I say, surprising all three of us.

“That it does,” Eric says. “Stay away from Holden over here if you don’t want to end up with another broken heart. He’s bad news for the ladies. True story.”