Do You Take This Man (75)

“No. It’s not pathetic.” I unlinked our fingers, the punch-in-the-gut feeling from earlier returning, horrified that he’d think I’d . . . well, that he’d think I’d do something like that. I rested my hand against his cheek, guiding his chin so he faced me. “Lear, it’s not pathetic, and I’d never throw it in your face,” I said, examining his expression. Our eyes locked. For a moment—really, a split second— he rested his cheek in my hand. “I had no idea.” I thought about him getting so sunburned getting the nursery ready for Penny and her wife, what it must have been like for him while he painted that room.

“Thanks for listening,” he murmured. “I don’t talk about it.” He dragged his face away from my hand and returned his forearms to the railing.

“Maybe you should.” I was frozen, our tender moment leaving me feeling as confused as ever. I simultaneously felt like comforting him and avenging him, like finding his ex-fiancée and lawyering her into submission, to try to take away the pain he was obviously covering up.

“Maybe I should,” he said into the air, the sentence almost wholly swallowed up by the breeze and the crickets and the creek gurgling below. “I thought being like this—like a guy who didn’t care—would work, and it hasn’t. It still hurts. I still care.”

I thought back to meeting him, to despising him, and I followed the tense line of his jaw. Truth was, I’d wanted to think he was a jackass, but I’d changed my mind early on. For a long time, I’d known he was something kind of special. “I never thought you were a guy who didn’t care.”

He grunted in acknowledgment, and we both stared at the water. Torn between wanting to comfort him and not having any idea how to do it without putting myself and my heart somewhere dangerous, I just stood next to him, listening to the lapping of the water below.

“What can I do?”

He pressed his palms to his forehead. “Nothing.”





Chapter 40


Lear





I SCRUBBED MY palm down my face and shuffled into my kitchen, squinting against the sunlight and peering into the fridge. I can’t believe I told her all that on Friday night.

Looking between a bottle of orange juice and a six-pack of beer, I scratched the back of my neck. July twenty-fourth. I reached for the beer. Fuck it.

I paused with my hand around the neck of a bottle when someone rang my doorbell. I was going to ignore it, but they kept ringing, the sound reverberating and setting my teeth on edge. “Dammit,” I muttered, taking the bottle with me to the door. When I whipped it open, I froze, seeing RJ standing there, two cups of coffee in her hands.

“About damn time,” she said, pushing past me. Her pale blue T-shirt stretched across the swell of her breasts and she sported leggings that hugged her thighs. Her hair was pulled on top of her head, and I must have been gaping.

She set down the coffee and crossed her arms over her chest, lips pursed to the side, and her gaze fell to my beer. “Breakfast?”

I matched her posture, crossing my own arms, but the beer was in the way. “What are you doing here?”

“Get dressed,” she said, leaning against my couch and sipping from one of the cups. She nodded toward where I stood in a pair of sweatpants that hung low on my hips.

“You usually tell me to take my pants off.” I set my beer aside and tried to forget about opening up to her the night before.

“I’m usually bored when I tell you that,” she said, smiling behind her cup. “I’m up at seven a.m. on a Sunday. Your dick is not impressive enough to be up this early. Get dressed. We’re going to play soccer.”

“Soccer?”

RJ set down her cup and placed her palm on my chest, pushing me down the hall. “A guy I work with plays on Sunday mornings. He invited us to join.”

I stared down at her, still trying to piece together her words with her hands on my bare chest. The fog was clearing from my head, and I met her eyes, feeling their warmth, seeing her soften for a moment before she replaced that expression with one that was more classic RJ. “Shut up. If we’re friends with benefits, this is the friends part,” she said.

“I didn’t say anything. I’m just shocked when you’re nice to me.”

“Well . . . don’t get used to it.” She gave me a last push toward the basement and walked back down the hall, her hips swaying in those leggings. “We have to be there in thirty minutes, so hurry.”



* * *



? ? ?

THE PARK WAS mostly empty, the grass still dewy, and clouds hung low in the sky. RJ waved to a group of men gathered on the field, and a prickle of jealousy rose in me when she jogged toward one of the men, a tall blond, and gave him a wide smile and high five.

“Wedding planner. This is my friend Eric,” she said, motioning between us.

The guy stretched his hand out for me to shake. “Wedding planner. I’m sure you have a name Ruthie has decided to ignore?”

“So, people do call you Ruthie?”

“Lear, this is Eric, who is going to regret so many things on Monday.”

He laughed, and I took his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

RJ looked around, pausing on another man with a baby strapped to his chest. “There she is,” RJ said. She waved in my direction before walking toward the guy and the baby. “Entertain each other.”