Until Now (16 page)

“Come on. You know you want to.” Abby folded her arms on my desk and leaned in, reflexively arching her back in a stretch. This position made her sculpted ass stick out, a definite distraction to the guy currently walking by my desk. He tripped over his own shoelaces and then righted himself, his eyes never straying from their target.

“I don’t, actually,” I said, proving my point with a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m just not up for Fusion tonight, Abs. Sorry.”

“But it’s Friday night! And there’s a disco theme! Seriously, you can’t tell me you don’t want to wear platform shoes and do the hustle with a bunch of guys dressed like the seventies version of John Travolta.”

“Yes, I can.” Actually, it
did
sound like fun, and also something I would’ve totally immersed myself in if I hadn’t felt so miserable. Ever since the conversation with Alan three days before, I’d been tired and despondent. Depressed. Drake and Lila were turning three next Wednesday, and I wouldn’t be there to help them celebrate. I wouldn’t get to see them blow out their candles at their party on Sunday. Would the grandparents get them separate cakes and sing Happy Birthday twice like I’d done for their last two birthdays? I doubted it. They didn’t seem like the type to care about autonomy.

“I bet Cody will be there,” Abby said, smiling convincingly.

“So? I haven’t heard a word from him since your party last weekend. I’m not going to chase him.”

She didn’t get a chance to respond to this because Wade came out of his office then to holler at us.

“Shouldn’t you be preparing for your seven o’clock appointment, Ms. Brooks?” he asked Abby. She glanced at his head, which was quickly lathering itself into a high gleam, and slinked off into the gym area. Wade turned his flinty stare on me. “Look alive, Ms. Calvert. Try to act like you’re enjoying yourself.”

I nodded and sat up straight. My gloom must have been rising around my desk like a fog. I couldn’t wait for closing time, so I could head back to my room and crawl into bed. Better than crawling into a vodka bottle, I guess. That was one reason I wanted to avoid Fusion tonight. Drinking while depressed rarely ended well, at least in my case, and I wasn’t in the mood to cry in a filthy washroom stall.

Then, at eight forty-five, the fog of gloom was parted by a sliver of sun in the form of a text from Ryan.

Want to help me close up tonight?

I smiled genuinely for the first time all night. Margins closed at nine on weeknights, the same as Bay Street Fitness, so I knew I couldn’t make it over there in time to be of much help. I also knew that “help” wasn’t what he was really after. All of a sudden, the night ahead didn’t seem so bleak.

Ryan and I had texted back and forth a lot this past week, just short, upbeat messages that lightened some of the darkness in my head. On Wednesday afternoon, I’d popped into the bookstore to visit him, but the place was unusually busy and we didn’t get to talk much. But tonight, after closing, with the lights dimmed and the blinds drawn, I’d have him all to myself.

When I got there at nine-thirty, I found the door unlocked and Ryan in the back room, balancing the cash drawer.

“Are you crazy?” I asked when he looked up from the neat stacks of bills. “I could’ve been a robber, or a serial killer coming in here to slit your throat and
then
rob you. Why didn’t you lock the door before you started this?”

He stuffed the cash into a deposit envelope and flashed me a grin. “Because I knew you were coming.”

“Well,” I said, charmed by that damn smile, as usual. “You’re lucky it was me and not Ted Bundy.”

“He’s dead.” His voice faded away as he disappeared into the tiny bathroom to disinfect his hands. “Which you should know,” he said, appearing again, “seeing as you read all that grisly true crime stuff.”

“I knew,” I said, indignant. “I just said it to make a point. There
are
homicidal maniacs out there, you know.”

“Oh?” His eyes locked on mine as he slowly advanced toward me.

“Not to mention crackheads,” I went on, knowing I was supposed to back up, let myself be chased. But I didn’t want to be chased. I wanted to be captured. “Addicts who are willing to do anything for their next high, even rob a crazy man in his own bookstore.”

He was right in front of me now, maneuvering me back against the scratched wall of the office. He rested his palms on either side of my body, locking me in like Cody had done in Abby’s kitchen. But going by the response between my legs, the way Ryan did it was about a million times sexier. “Point taken,” he said before leaning in to kiss me.

There was no starting slow this time. He crushed his mouth to mine, parting my lips with his tongue as he pressed into me. Soon, I felt more than just his jeans zipper pushing against my abdomen. Impulsively, I reached down and scraped one long fingernail along the straining denim.

“Jesus,” he breathed, jolting backward.

I laughed at his stunned expression. God, I loved surprising him. It was fun. My spirits had lifted significantly from the moment I’d walked in the store. “You taste like peanut butter cups,” I said, licking my lips. “Don’t tell me you have a secret stash of those too.”

He dropped his arms from the wall, his breathing still uneven. “Of course I do. Want some?”

Two minutes later, we were sitting on the green couch with an open bag of mini peanut butter cups between us. The
no food or beverages
rule was officially out the window, warning sign be damned.

“I like your work uniform, by the way,” Ryan said as he took in my form-fitting red tank.

“I wear this every time I come in here. I was wearing it the day we met, remember?”

“Very clearly.”

I shook my head and popped another mini cup in my mouth. “How is that possible? You barely even looked at me that day.”

“I was trying not to stare like a creep,” he said. “It took me forever to think of something to say to you, but you intimidated me so much that I ended up coming across like a douche.”

“There you go with that intimidation crap again.” I put the bag of chocolate on the floor and hooked my leg over his. “I’m just a flawed human being with a fucked-up past like everyone else. But yeah, you did come across like a bit of a douche.”

He laughed and leaned in to kiss me again. This one was gentler, more reserved, but that didn’t mean it was any less hot. Not the way he did it. After a few minutes, I shifted closer and straddled his lap, my knees sinking into the plush cushions. Once I was settled snugly against him, he picked up where he left off, his lips sliding along my jaw, my neck, my collarbone. When they reached the strap of my tank top, his fingers came up to help, nudging it off my shoulder. When his mouth landed there, in that space he’d just bared, I shivered and arched myself against him.

“You’re good at this,” I whispered as he worked his way back up to my mouth.

“Thanks,” he replied, nibbling at my bottom lip. “I try.”

I adjusted my position on his lap, causing him to inhale sharply and dig his fingers into my hips. “Sorry,” I said, not sorry at all.

“You’re driving me crazy.”

“Thanks. I try.” I ran my fingers over his jaw, which he’d let get stubbly again. I was glad. I liked it better this way. “Just out of curiosity…You’re not one of those guys who wants to be with a virgin, are you?”

He looked at me like I’d said
goat
instead of
virgin
. “No. I’d much rather a woman with experience. I definitely wouldn’t want to be your first.”

“But you want to be, um…on my list?”

He raised his hips, fusing us together even more. “You tell me.”

I didn’t need to tell him, because it was obvious. Everything about him right now indicated how much he wanted me. And damn it, even though he was a divorced dad with a train wreck ex-wife and a mother who was determined to play Cupid, I wanted him too.

Leaning back, I slid the elastic band out of my hair, unfastening my ponytail. Ryan watched, captivated, as my long, straight hair tumbled over my shoulders. “Your hair reminds me of butterscotch,” he said, taking a strand between his fingers.

I laughed. “Your sweet tooth is out of control.”

“No, I mean the color. It the same shade as those hard butterscotch candies.”

“Um, thanks, I think?”

He buried his face in my loose hair, his jaw scuffing against mine, and suddenly I didn’t mind that he’d compared me to candy that old ladies kept in their purses. “But it smells like mint,” he said with a trace of surprise, like he’d honestly expected it to smell the same as it looked.

“It’s my shampoo,” I said, a little breathless. His lips had found one of my most sensitive spots—my earlobe. When he realized this, he gave it some more attention, using his teeth to make me even crazier. Finally, when I could no longer stand it, I slid off his lap, reclined against the arm of the couch, and hauled him down on top of me.

“Oh God,” he mumbled a few minutes later, pulling back to look at me. “I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this, but we should probably stop now.”

I blinked up at him, confused.
Again
? First Cody ditches me in the bathroom, and now this? I hadn’t had sex in a year, and
good
sex even longer than that. My frustration was mounting to dangerous levels. “Why?” I asked. Okay, maybe it was more of a whine.

“Because, as much as I want to be on your list, I don’t think here is the best place for it.”

Ah. Right. I’d almost forgotten we were on an old, musty couch in a place of business.
His
place of business. “Conflict of interest?”

He nodded, gazing down at what passed for my cleavage in this position. “Every time I come to work I’d be imagining you naked on this couch,” he said. “I’d get nothing done.”

He had a good point. Also, on top of the whole unprofessionalism issue, I wasn’t currently on birth control and I assumed he didn’t have a stash of condoms in here along with his chocolate.

“Fine,” I said, sighing as I removed my hands from underneath his shirt. I’d only just begun to explore. What a tease.

He lifted himself off of me and sat up, reaching down to rescue the bag of peanut butter cups off the floor. He offered it to me in consolation, like chocolate was a fair substitute for hot, forbidden sex on the couch. I shook my head. My body was still humming, and the only thing that could quiet it at the moment was sitting several inches away from me, fully dressed and looking at me apologetically.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he said, taking my hand and tugging me into a sitting position. “Maybe next Saturday? You could come over. I’ll cook you dinner.”

I smoothed down my tank top, which felt misshapen from all the twisting and stretching it had just endured. “Come over,” I repeated. “You mean, to your apartment?”

“Yeah. Mason’s having a sleepover at my parents’ house that night, anyway. So, good timing.”

Good timing, indeed. I was relieved to hear that Mason wouldn’t be there. That would be weird.

“Okay,” I said, reaching over to squeeze the ticklish spot above his knee. Before I could make contact, his fingers circled my wrist and he pulled me in for a kiss, his stubble scraping against the already-raw skin around my lips. “You drive
me
crazy,” I said shakily when he backed away again.

“Then I guess that makes us even.”

Since I’d bailed on Abby once already, I knew I couldn’t refuse her a second time when she invited me to go out for wings after work the next day. So I agreed, even though the fog of gloom had descended upon me again overnight and I woke up feeling freshly miserable. Even a sweet good morning text from Ryan and the prospect of next Saturday night at his place wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.

Abby and I both got off work at six, changed clothes in the washroom, and headed to Freeman’s, a sports bar downtown that had the best wings in the city. When the hostess asked if it was just the two of us, Abby replied, “No, we’re meeting people here.”

“Meeting who?” I whispered to her as we headed to the dining room area. I got my answer a few seconds later when I caught sight of two men sitting across from each other in a booth up ahead. Damien…and Cody.

Fuck
, I thought as we approached them, Abby grinning like she’d just staged the greatest coup ever. I just wanted some wings.

“What a surprise,” Abby said jokingly as she slid in next to Damien. I shot her a dark look before sitting opposite her, next to Cody.

“Hey, good girl,” he said, reaching over to squeeze my thigh. “How’s it going?”

I shrugged in response, still miffed at him for ditching me at Abby’s party and not calling for two weeks. I’d lost all desire to hang around waiting for some guy to make up his mind about me; I wasn’t in high school anymore.

Our waitress appeared then, and we ordered three dozen wings and two pitchers of whatever beer was on tap. The atmosphere was cheerful and rowdy, but the laughter and sounds seemed to skate off me without penetrating. My senses felt dulled. Even the hot wings, when they arrived, tasted bland and unappetizing. The beer was good, though, so I mainly stuck to that.

“Damn, girl,” Cody said when I drained one pitcher and started on the other. “I bet you could drink me under the table.”

I raised an eyebrow at him like
Is that a challenge
? Never mind that I didn’t even really like beer because it tended to make me sick after a night of drinking it. Never mind that I shouldn’t have been drinking it at all in my current dejected state. Never mind that I wasn’t in the mood for our cat-and-mouse dynamic tonight. I would win that challenge. I’d been drinking guys under the table since I was fifteen years old.

After wings, the three of them talked me into going to Fusion for more drinks. I didn’t want to go to Fusion with Cody any more than I’d wanted to see him at Freeman’s, but I was just buzzed enough to give in. Being with Ryan last night had done wonders to raise my spirits, I reasoned. Maybe being with Cody tonight would do the same.

The bar area in Fusion wasn’t as crowded this early in the night, so we were able to continue drinking without missing a beat. The guys stuck to beer, but Abby and I, undaunted by the old
beer before liquor, never sicker
maxim, upgraded to our regular club drinks, White Russian and rum and Coke. Cody snickered when he heard my order.

“You’re gonna regret that later,” he said in my ear as he stood behind me at the bar.

“I can hold my liquor,” I assured him.

He pressed his groin into my backside. “You can hold whatever you want.”

The bartender slid my White Russian onto the bar and I grabbed it, breaking away from Cody at the same time. I was in one of my prickly moods. I didn’t want to be groped right now, especially not by a guy who obviously only saw me as a toy he could play with and then put away on a shelf whenever he got bored with it.

“What’s with the ice princess attitude tonight?” Cody asked, trailing after me as I headed for Abby and Damien, who’d scored one of the coveted tables near the bar. Ignoring him, I set my glass on the table and sat next to Abby. She caught the look on our faces and rolled her eyes.

“She’s pissed because you hooked up with her and then never called her,” Abby shouted over a sudden burst of music. I kicked her leg under the table, making her wince.

“Seriously?” Cody turned to me, eyes flashing with the same mixture of anger and embarrassment I’d seen several times and could never interpret. I shrugged again, unwilling to admit to it. I wasn’t pissed about him not calling, exactly…I was pissed about everything, and he was trapped in the crosshairs. A casualty.

I ordered another drink.

“I want to dance,” Abby said in the awkward silence that followed. “Damien?”

Damien didn’t respond. He was gazing beyond us to the booth tucked into the very back corner near the washrooms, where two girls—one blond and one redhead—were tangled together, kissing. From this angle, the redhead’s long hair hid both their faces, but it was clear what they were doing. Both guys stared, spellbound.

“I’m dead serious,” Damien said, his eyes never leaving the scene. “I’ll buy you guys drinks for the rest of the night if you put on a show like that.”

The redhead pulled away then, revealing the blonde’s face. My heart thumped. It was Nicole. I watched her smile at the redhead, then bite her lip and look down, a sweet, quietly pleased expression on her face. The redhead smiled back, reaching up to smooth Nicole’s tousled hair back into place.

“They’re not
putting on a show
,” I snapped at Damien, then got up and started squeezing past Cody, whose large frame blocked my way. As I did, Nicole glanced up and saw me. Saw Cody’s hands, snaking around my waist to stop me from leaving. Saw me extricate myself from his grasp and then stumble, catching my foot on a chair leg and almost plunging onto the sticky floor. By the time I’d righted myself again, she’d gone back to gazing at the redhead.

Shame coursed through me, and I changed my mind about leaving the guys to their gawking. “Come on,” I said instead. “Let’s go dance.”

Cody loosened up once we hit the dance floor, but I didn’t. Just like the night we’d met, I twirled away whenever his hands closed around me, only this time I wasn’t playing hard to get. This time, I truly didn’t want him to touch me. But instead of respecting my boundaries, he got frustrated.

“Stop being a tease,” he said in a playful tone edged with exasperation.

Mixing my liquor not only made me sicker, it also made me belligerent. “I’ll stop being a tease when you stop being an asshole,” I said, and then I turned away from him, shouldering through the crowd.

“What did you just call me?” I heard him yell behind me, but I kept going, pushing through the mass until I popped out near the bar area. I paused for a moment to fix my hair, then continued on to the ladies room, the only place he couldn’t follow me.

The bathroom, mobbed with chattering girls in miniskirts and heels, wasn’t much of an improvement over the dance floor. I slipped into the first empty stall and proceeded to do what I’d predicted would happen right from the start—I sat on the toilet and cried snotty drunk tears into scratchy toilet paper until my mascara dissolved and I gave myself a headache.

Pathetic
didn’t even begin to describe me right now.

After a few minutes of this, I exited the stall to wash my hands and reapply my makeup. But before I could do either, Nicole appeared in front of me and backed me into the wall near the condom dispenser.

“What are your intentions with my brother?” she said, her pale blue eyes—identical to Ryan’s—severe and unwavering as they fastened on mine.

In spite of my condition at the moment, I coughed out a little laugh. She sounded like a strict father from the nineteenth century, lecturing a boy who was trying to court his daughter. “What do you mean?” I asked, lifting my hands in a surrendering gesture. She may have been small, but there was nothing harmless about her.

“I
mean
,” she bit out, “he really likes you. And here you are, drunk and hanging off some other dude. What the fuck is that all about?”

I squared my shoulders and eyed her right back. What the fuck, indeed? Ryan and I weren’t committed. Hell, we weren’t even really dating. Neither of us was looking for a serious relationship, so really, we were free to do whatever the hell we wanted. And I would’ve told Nicole as much, if she wasn’t glaring at me like she wanted to stab me in the eye.

“It’s nothing,” I said instead. “I
am
allowed to go out with my friends, aren’t I?”

She continued to study me, her expression softening when she noticed the obvious puffiness around my eyes. “Okay,” she said, backing off. “But just so we’re clear…break his heart and I’ll—”

“Break my face?”

She tilted her head, considering this. “Nah. Damaging that face would be sacrilegious. I’d break something you can’t see. Like your spleen.”

I nodded. Point taken. “Who’s the redhead?” I asked, trying to divert her focus to less violent thoughts. “She’s pretty.”

Now she smiled. “Pretty? She’s gorgeous. Her name is Mariah. We met last weekend while I was doing makeup for a prom. She was my client’s older sister.”

“That’s great,” I said, meaning it. I’d never seen Nicole like this, her face flushed with happiness. What was it like, I wondered, to meet a stranger and just
know
, without a doubt, that you’d be good together? I’d felt that way on behalf of other people, like when I met Michael and knew he belonged with Taylor, but I’d never experienced it firsthand. “Do you think your parents will like her?” I asked Nicole.

The hostility she’d showered me with a few minutes ago seemed to dry up now as she said, “Of course. They like whoever makes their kids happy. They like
you
, don’t they?”

She gave me one last
I’m watching you
look and then walked away, leaving me to cower in the washroom in peace. I slipped back into the empty stall and started crying all over again, this time about Jane and Graham. They
did
like me, it was true, but only because they’d never seen me like this.

* * *

There was a slight problem with my getting to work the next morning, aside from a skull-crushing hangover—my car was still parked at the gym.

Abby and I had caught the bus to Freeman’s last night and I’d taken a taxi home once I finished crying in the washroom at Fusion. Not once had I thought about my car. But now, twenty minutes before my shift was due to start, panic had set in.

“Oh, thank God,” I said when I found Lynn in the kitchen, dressed in her work scrubs and packing a lunch. “Would you mind dropping me at the gym on your way to work?”

“Sure,” she said, smiling. Lynn smiled almost constantly, a feat that made my head throb when I thought about it. Even the
idea
of smiling hurt this morning.

Lynn and I climbed into her minivan and headed downtown, not talking much. I tipped my head back on the headrest and closed my eyes, willing my stomach to settle after each dip in the road.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Lynn asked in her sweet-but-ruthlessly-observant manner.

My eyes flew open and I looked at her. “I’m fine. Why?”

She changed lanes, honking at a guy in a red Jeep who tried to cut her off. “Robin, I saw you when you came in last night. You’d obviously been drinking.”

I looked down at my red tank, noticing too late that it had some sort of stain on the front. Fuck. “Just a couple of beers,” I lied.

“Does Taylor know?”

“No,” I said, rubbing uselessly at the stain. “Are you going to tell her?”

“No.” She flicked on her blinker and turned into the small parking lot behind Bay Street Fitness. My white Sentra was parked at the far end of the lot, just where I’d left it the night before. Lynn shifted the minivan into park and turned to me. “Look,” she said. “You’re an adult. I don’t have a problem with you choosing to drink. But I
do
have a problem with you coming into my house, drunk, while my teenage son and stepdaughter are around to witness it. Okay?”

My cheeks burned. I didn’t remember Emma and Jamie being around when I rolled in earlier than usual last night. I didn’t remember coming home at all. “I’m sorry,” I told Lynn. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” she said, nodding like we’d reached an agreement.

When she didn’t speak again, I opened the van door and stepped down to the pavement. “Thanks for the drive,” I said, unable to meet her eyes.

“You’re welcome. And Robin?”

I looked up at her, cheeks still flaming, head pounding worse than ever. “Yes?”

“I meant it when I said I wouldn’t tell Taylor, but maybe you should ask yourself why you don’t want her to know.”

She shifted into drive and I shut the passenger side door, her words barely registering through the muffled throbbing in my skull. But later, when the pain eased enough to think clearly, I still couldn’t think of a good answer.

* * *

When I got off work at three, I went straight to bed and slept until a knock on the door woke me. I came to with a start, my eyes opening to dull sunlight. My phone said seven-fifteen, but I wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening.

“Robin?” Steven stuck his head in the room and squinted at me. “Oh, I didn’t realize you were napping. You missed dinner, and that nice young man who brought you the roses is here to see you.”