Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(22)
“Topher. Abuse doesn’t have to leave black eyes and welts to qualify.”
My throat closed up and my heart began to race even faster. My breath came short and shallow, like there wasn’t enough air in the room. “Don’t. Please. Just . . . I can’t go there.”
He was right, and I knew he was right, but the sound of that word made me feel like I was on the verge of majorly wigging out. It brought up all sorts of knee-jerk denials. I just couldn’t cope with the concept. They were perfect, right? Nice, successful, popular, educated people with a beautiful home and tons of friends. They couldn’t have been abusive. It didn’t compute.
I’d probably have to work with my therapist on that once I got settled somewhere and started seeing one again.
“All right. It’s all right.” Brendan rubbed his hand soothingly back and forth across my shoulders, just offering comfort and support while I pulled myself together. After a moment, he drew away and ruffled my hair. “Here. I’ve got one more thing for you.”
He went back into the kitchen and rummaged around in a cupboard I couldn’t see. Then I heard the burring snick of a lighter, and he turned to reveal a plate with two gorgeously decorated cupcakes on it, each with a candle—one shaped like a two and the other like a one so that it read twenty-one.
I burst into watery laughter. “Oh jeez, I didn’t mean for you to really get me cupcakes!”
He shrugged, setting them down before me and smiling brilliantly. “There needed to be something to put the candles on. I imagine Morgan is going to want to get you a cake or something when she’s here next, but for now this will have to do.”
I tried to stop giggling long enough to catch my breath and blow them out. It took two tries, but then I pulled off the candles to lick the frosting from their bases. We peeled the paper cups off the cupcakes in companionable silence, humming appreciatively with the first bites. As I chewed, his hand returned to my shoulder.
“You’re a bright, beautiful young man, Christopher Carlisle. And it’s their loss they drove you away. But I’m glad you see that you deserve better than that. Don’t give in on that, okay? Demand that people respect you, no matter who you are or choose to be. You’re worth respecting.”
He slid his arm around my shoulders in one of those half-hug/squeeze things. Platonic. Nothing inappropriate about it at all, except for that teeny-tiny flare in the screwed-up wiring of my brain that didn’t know how to respond to kindness from a gorgeous man except with attraction. It wasn’t a come-on. He wasn’t trying to get into my pants and, truly, I didn’t want him to. He was just comforting and encouraging me. Which was, frankly, better than his coming on to me ever could be. So much better.
After a moment, I told that f*cked-up part of my brain that confused affection with lust to cool it and leaned against him, accepting what he offered.
“So,” he said when we were licking the last crumbs of our cupcakes off our fingers. “Would you like to go out for coffee or something? My treat.”
“Actually, would you mind if we just hung out here? Watched a movie, maybe? I don’t really need to go out again tonight.”
“Okay. Let’s get the dinner dishes cleaned up and we’ll do that.”
We chose The Hobbit this time, which Brendan hadn’t seen. I was only too happy to gush fanboyishly about it to him. We sat at opposite ends of the sofa and lost ourselves in Middle Earth. When he laid his arm across the back of the sofa, stretching, I made myself ignore the fact that it was nearly within touching distance, and refused to read more into it than there was.
Maybe your saving grace will be yourself
You know better than anyone else
—Casey Stratton, “The Window Will Close”
“Okay.” Mo took a sip of her mocha, leaning on the piano as the keys tinkled out lazy scales under my fingers. “That sounds amazingly hot.”
“Mm, girl, you have no idea.” I sighed, closing my eyes. The hickeys from my night with Jace had faded. The afterglow had . . . well, it had mostly faded, except for the occasional ripple that snuck up to goose me at odd moments.
Like just now, describing it to Mo.
“So where’s this guy from? Any chance of you seeing him again?” Her eyes were avid, making it clear what she hoped the answer would be. It wasn’t that Mo had to get her vicarious thrills off my sex life; she had one of her own, occasionally, and didn’t need mine. But comparing notes—or war stories—was always a favorite pastime. Honestly, though, I think some part of her hoped I would find a steady, though I wasn’t sure why. She was always asking me if I’d be seeing my hookups again.
I shook my head, trying (and as always, completely failing) to figure out the fingering of the intensely complicated bridge from the concert version of “Opaline.”
“Nah, he was a vacationer. From Chicago, I think he said. Not that I wouldn’t do it again, given the chance, but yeah, it was a one-off.”
“Chicago’s not that far.” Mo shrugged, frowning.
I gave her A Look and changed songs, returning to fingering a gentle melody on the keys. “We didn’t even exchange numbers. Or email addresses. Hell, Mo, I don’t even know his last name . . . and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know mine either. So, yeah, that’s not gonna happen. It was a good time, now it’s done and I need to get back to figuring my shit out.” I hadn’t had a lot of luck with that in the weeks since she had left. I’d gotten a call from a temp agency for a two-day reception job at a company that designed business forms, and a half-day gig just sitting in the office of the temp agency doing some filing while waiting to see if an emergency “need someone right now” call came in, but other than that, nothing. The local restaurants weren’t even hiring bussers or wait staff, thanks to the glut of college kids like me on summer break. I was getting worried enough that I was almost ready to bite the bullet and start applying for fast food jobs, though I knew that was a dead-end road that would exhaust me, keep me from finding a better job, and pay me less than I needed for tuition anyway. Or (shudder) telemarketing. “What about you? Any raunchy deep-woods hookups with the other camp counselors you’d like to dish about?”