Perfectly Charming (A Morning Glory Novel Book 2) (6 page)

Ryan Reyes.

She still reeled at the thought that the skinny kid with the runny nose and strange comic book obsession had evolved into the hunk ambling beside her. Now that she knew, she could see traces of the boy he’d been. Same brown hair, even when burnished caramel by the sun. His eyes were the same golden green that had stared unblinkingly at her from behind the microscope. He’d been such an odd duck, smarter than his teachers, always sharing strange facts. And he’d watched her. Like, all the time. And he’d followed her around school, peeking out behind lockers. She’d known he had a crush on her and tried to be nice about it. Benton? Not so much.

Her ex-husband hadn’t been the most tolerant of Ryan’s public adoration of his girlfriend. Cocky, smart-aleck, and a bit wild, Benton took exception to the kid her friends had dubbed her puppy. Jess hated when Benton got jealous and resorted to bad behavior. They’d broken up several times over his possessiveness, but then Benton would do something endearing and beg her forgiveness, and she couldn’t resist. Perhaps her desire to fix people had led her into nursing. She’d always thought she could patch the holes Benton had inside him and use the balm of love to help him be the man she knew he could be. And she’d loved him. He’d crack a smile at her, nose her shoulder with a little whimper. Then his warm brown eyes would fill with an apology, and she’d take him back. She’d never been able to resist Benton’s charm, his dashing good looks, and the way he could play her. And when it came to playing her, Benton had been the genius.

Love was a funny thing. But after the pain, the heartache, the refusal to believe she and Benton were over, her love had finally withered. Love didn’t last if it wasn’t watered, given sun, or tended. Love didn’t last when one of the people stopped giving a damn and walked away. Now her love for Benton was a brittle tree waiting for a strong wind to blow it over.

“So why fishing?” she asked, kicking at a wave and drawing her thoughts from Benton and the tearing in her heart every time she thought about what they used to be.

Ryan shrugged his broad shoulders. “I never went fishing as a kid. Always wanted to.”

She didn’t know what to make of that answer. This guy, a veritable genius who’d scored perfectly on the ACT, blown the SATs out of the water, and skipped three grade levels, ran a fishing-charter service. Of course, there was nothing wrong with that, but everyone had always thought the Brain would do great things in the scientific community. His parents had always pushed him to excel. Her mother took yoga with Ryan’s mother at the Calvary Church of Christ community center, and she’d occasionally mention Ryan’s accomplishments at Stanford and Caltech. Every now and then, when Jess caught an episode of
The Big Bang Theory
, she’d think about skinny Ryan in a lab coat writing formulas on a whiteboard, hanging out with other geeky friends. That vision made her happy, like Ryan was doing what he was meant to do. Not shivering in some locker somewhere, deemed a loser because he didn’t play football or crush beer cans with his forehead.

But this Ryan—the one who lived in Florida, did Jell-O shots, and passed out naked (splendidly so) on the beach—was something she never expected. Things didn’t compute.

“But what about your other work,” she persisted.

“What other work?” he asked, turning to her, his eyes crinkling as he faced the sun. Sliding on the sunglasses hanging around his neck, he hid his gaze from her.

“Don’t you have a doctorate, and you discovered something to do with stem cell research or something like that?”

“Yeah, I have an MD and a PhD. The scaffolding for stem cells was a side project I got lucky on. I sold the procedure to a biomedical company and retired from science.” He stopped and turned to stare into the horizon. The sun hovered over his right shoulder, and his hair feathered in the sea breeze. He looked strikingly gorgeous, the antithesis of what he should have been—pale, erudite, with feverish eyes. He looked like a guy who should be standing on a boat, wearing tropical fashions and drinking imported beer from a bottle. “I like fishing.”

So much weight sitting in those three words. They said, “Back off,” “I don’t want to talk about it,” and “Don’t define me.” Jess decided to let the conversation go.

“So what else do you like to do besides find fish and play tennis?” she asked, moving to the other side of him and stopping to pick up a tiny shell that resembled a unicorn horn.

“I shoot pool. And I teach a beginner karate class for kids on Thursday afternoons.” He paused for a moment before saying, “and I kill it on ESO.”

“Eso?”

“Elders Scroll Online. It’s a MMORPG—massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I’m a sorcerer, but I don’t usually tell girls that, you know.” He smiled at the water, looking a bit sheepish. “But since you already know I’m a dork, I can be honest.”

“You’re not a dork,” she said, laughing at the very idea of anyone thinking this guy with his tan legs and hard body, not to mention her next-door neighbor fawning over him, was anything but—what had the Chinese-takeout guy called him?—oh yeah, a player. He certainly looked the part. He had a veneer—bright and shiny like his smile.

“Not any longer. Or at least not much,” he said, those teeth so white against his tanned face. “Look.”

Her gaze followed his pointed finger out beyond the sand bar to where two dolphins rolled over the incoming waves.

“Dolphins,” Jess said, awe welling inside her. She’d always loved the graceful mammals with their sweet faces and playful curiosity. And who didn’t like a dolphin? Really. This was why she’d told Jill Grover from Staff Pro she’d take the job. Didn’t even have to think about it.

“See them a lot here,” Ryan said.

“Then I know I’ll like living in Pensacola. Especially since I have an old friend with me,” Jess said, not taking her eyes off the two frolicking dolphins.

“You won’t tell everyone about me, will you?”

Jess jerked her gaze to him. “About you?”

“Like how I once was,” he said, his gaze seemingly on the two dolphins.

Those infernal glasses hid his eyes, so she couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. His tone sounded light, but it made her wonder if the idea of outing him as a geek made him uncomfortable. But she couldn’t figure out why. Did anyone really care that he played video games online or had an IQ in the 150s? She didn’t, but she didn’t know Ryan well enough to make a judgment. Perhaps being whom he’d once been had scarred him in some way. Maybe all that time locked in the storage closet or gym locker had caused an aversion to anything geeky. Or maybe Ryan was in hiding. Like he’d invented some terrible neurological weapon and was forced to hide from the Russians or the Chinese. He was hiding in plain sight. Jess nearly snorted as her imagination ran away with her. So silly. But maybe silly was good. She needed a bit of lightness in her outlook.

“If you don’t want me to say anything, I won’t. I’m not sure why it’s a big deal, though.” She tacked on the last part so he would know she accepted him for who he’d been and who he now was.

“Thanks.” Ryan turned back toward the path they’d taken. “It’s almost seven. Lin is always on time.”

“Then we should head back.” She turned to start walking but stopped and faced him. “Hey, Ryan.”

He stopped. “What?”

“You know there’s nothing wrong with who you were, right? I know people teased you about being smart, but most were jealous as hell they didn’t have half the brain you did. You are incredibly gifted, and I hope you’re not ashamed of that.” God, she sounded like her mother. She wanted to snatch the words back even though she’d given them out of kindness . . . or perhaps as an apology for not standing up for him more when he was a kid. Not that she’d tolerated anyone being mean to him, but that she’d never tried to fix it in the first place.

She couldn’t read his face. He stopped walking, growing still. The corners of his mouth tilted down as he nonchalantly lifted a shoulder. “You’re the first person from my old life who’s shown up here in Pensacola. Guess I can be honest with you—you know too much about my past for me to be anything but.”

Jess didn’t say anything. She waited. Her therapist had told her she lacked listening skills, said she was too busy dashing into the fray, ready to fix things.

Be still and listen.

Ryan shoved his hands into his pockets. “I never disliked who I was. Sure, I had some scars, stayed away from guys who looked like they might torment me, but I was as well adjusted as could be expected.”

“Nothing wrong with being smart,” she said. “So why leave something you were meant to be?”

His brow lowered before he shrugged. “Because it was an empty life. Look, one night I worked late in the lab at Caltech. When I went out to my car, I found the battery dead. No reason. I never leave anything on, my OCD doesn’t allow for it, but the battery had given up the ghost. I tried calling a few colleagues, to no avail, and the security guard couldn’t help me. My apartment wasn’t far, so I decided to walk home and take care of the battery situation the next day. You know, I’d never done that, just walked home. As I crossed streets and passed houses, life opened up around me. It was as if I pushed open a door and a scene would unfold. One couple was fighting, hurling nasty accusations at each other while standing beside their van. One house had a bunch of guys sitting around on the porch, drinking beer, playing guitar. A little farther down, a couple with their baby arrived home. They were laughing and singing a funny song about eating beans and farting. And then right before I reached my apartment building, I found a drunk guy sitting on a trash can talking to a skinny mutt.”

Ryan stopped talking.

“So?” Jess prodded, not understanding why a walk home would necessitate such a huge change.

“The bum looked at me like he could see who I was. Then he shook his head, like he felt sorry for me.
Him
feeling sorry for
me
. I had just sold my discovery to a huge pharmaceutical company for a few million dollars, and he felt sorry for me?” Ryan paused, giving a little laugh. “At first I was offended. But then he pointed his long finger at me—and it was like something from a Charles Dickens novel, I swear—and said, ‘You need a dog. Go with him, Ace.’”

“I told him I didn’t want his dog. I was allergic, and besides they were messy and needed constant attention. But the bum looked at me and said, ‘Well, that’s what you’re missing, huh? Some dirt.’” Ryan held out his hands in a
you see what I mean
gesture.

“And because a drunk bum said you needed some dirt, you walked away from—”

“No, it was more like the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. I mean, the guy was pretty wasted, and I didn’t really trust his brand of therapy, but it was a lightbulb moment. I could see I wasn’t truly living.” Ryan drew a circle in the sand with his big toe. “As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, I realized I’d never had a fight with a woman. Hell, I’d never had a relationship with a woman. I didn’t have buds to drink with . . . I had never even been drunk. No pets. No prospect of children. No silly songs to sing. Nothing. My life was . . . a vacuum. I’d missed out on so much by living this plan my parents had conceived for me—or maybe it was one I never questioned. Either way, it pissed me off.”

“So you quit your life?”

Ryan smiled. “No, I didn’t quit. I started living, truly living. I became a man who didn’t live for work. I needed more than scientific discoveries to keep me warm at night. I needed to plunge myself into a life worth living.”

Jess shook her head. “That’s . . . mind-boggling.”

“Not really. It’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I’m having experiences, getting dirty, making mistakes, doing all the things I never got to do because I was too busy being a prodigy . . . which, by the way, is a synonym for
nerd
.”

Experiences.
That’s what Benton had said he wanted. Benton had gone through high school and college dating only Jess. The day they’d graduated from high school, she’d tossed her cap into the air with the rest of her class, and Benton had kissed her and told her they were in it together. And she’d believed him. They’d married six months out of college, obtained jobs close to Morning Glory and bought a fixer-upper. They’d carefully set their feet in the lines they’d sketched out.

But Benton, too, hadn’t thought out what it would be like to marry the girl he’d started dating when he was a freshman. He hadn’t been thinking about experiences. He’d given up being a single guy with his own place, he’d forgone dating women who didn’t have curly hair and a past with him. Personally, Jess had always thought those sorts of experiences overrated. Why would Benton want anything but a woman who loved him? But Benton had wanted more, the way Ryan had.

Jess didn’t tick that way. She’d always known what she wanted—a flexible career, a white picket fence, and a family smiling back on yearly Christmas cards. She’d seen her American dream laid out in a ten-step plan.
Do this. Then that. Go here. Wait. Move ahead.

For a while, it had worked.

Until that word cropped up—
experiences
.

“So what did your parents say?” she asked, still trying to wrap her mind around the fact he’d chucked everything he’d worked for. And why? Because he thought he’d missed out on things that weren’t all that great. Waking up in vomit after a huge party . . . not fun. Fighting over who didn’t pay the water bill . . . still not fun. Bad guitar music, stinky dogs, and songs about farts . . . perhaps somewhat fun, but not worth tossing out winning a Nobel Prize.

“Who cares what my parents thought? I had scholarships, and though they helped me with living expenses, it didn’t give them the right to control my life. They’d planned my life for me—rushing me through high school, making me go to physics and computer camps all summer long. They lobbied the counselor to allow me extra course loads every semester. My father chose the medical school I attended, and he was crushed I didn’t take the surgical residency offered to me by Johns Hopkins. So, no, they aren’t happy I ‘threw away my career to catch fish.’ In their minds I’m wasting myself. That’s the phrase used every time I call. So I don’t call much. They don’t seem to mind.”