Scaredy Cat (10 page)

Chapter 17

“Do you want to have pizza for dinner?” Blake asked as Quinn turned into her driveway.

“I’d like to, but I’m going out with Lilly tonight.” Quinn stared straight ahead. “Rain check?”

“Absolutely.” Blake opened her door and prepared to hop out. “I hope you have a good time.”

“Thanks.” Quinn slowly turned to look at Blake. “I feel bad for making such a fuss earlier. You were pretty before, more so now.”

“So are you. I’m sure you know that already.” Blake looked away. “Thank you, Quinn, for everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

Blake closed the door, opened the gate, and walked casually to the front door as Quinn watched. They’d just had a moment, and she would put it in her book, hoping it would make the reader feel as warm as it did her. The lines between fiction and reality were beginning to blur a bit as Blake watched Quinn drive away. For a moment, she wished she could write romance into her life. Blake sighed as she walked over to her desk and picked up her phone. She’d twerked, been made over, and was feeling powerful for it all. It was time to call Beth.

Blake was surprised when her agent answered the phone. “Cassidy, hey, I was expecting Beth.”

“She took off at noon for a trip,” Cassidy explained, sounding peeved, probably because she was forced to answer her own phone.

“Oh…cool. Where’d she go?”

“She and the woman she’s been dating are going to Provincetown for a week. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was to get married the way those two can’t seem to be apart. I’ll have a temp in here Monday. Are you calling to tell me that you’ve blanked out again, or is there some other problem? If the answer is yes to either of those questions, you’re going to have to give me a moment to pour a drink because it has been a positively horrible day.”

“Um…no…I just wanted to kick off your weekend by telling you that everything is going well. I shouldn’t have any problems meeting my deadline.”

“Excellent. Do you realize that you’re dropping some of your R’s? You’re starting to sound Southern. Write fast, so I can get you back up here before that takes root.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Thank you for being a bright spot in an otherwise dismal day. I have to run now and try to figure out what Beth did with my backup laptop. The one I like to use gave up the ghost.”

“Okay, good luck.” Blake ended the call without bothering to say goodbye, afraid that the disappointment that was overwhelming her would leak into the conversation. Beth, the only woman who’d come even close to understanding her, had happily moved on.

*******

Quinn did her best to match Lilly’s fervor. She’d not had sex in the thirty days since Lilly had last packed up and headed out to the rig. Her body craved the attention, but her mind asked,
Why bother?
She liked Lilly, but Quinn knew she could never love her. In Lilly’s arms, Quinn couldn’t make herself believe she was being cherished like she foolishly did with Shay. The act meant nothing. She didn’t feel anything but a short period of carnal pleasure.

Roughly, she pushed Lilly onto her back, unwilling to kiss her mouth; Quinn closed her eyes and ran her lips over Lilly’s collarbone.

“What’s wrong?” Lilly asked.

“Nothing, I just want you.”

Lilly released a heavy sigh. “Then have me all you want.”

The words failed to ignite even the slightest spark within Quinn.

Lilly was up before the sun the next morning and was busy shoving her stuff into a duffel bag when Quinn awoke. “Why are you up so early?” Quinn moaned.

“I have to get on the road. I need to be in Loxley before noon to meet with the Realtor.” Lilly ran a hand over her wet short cropped brown hair. “He says he’s got a motivated cash buyer for my house. If I can get out from beneath the weight of that mortgage, I won’t have to go back to the rig.”

“That’s good news.” Quinn rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“It is.” Lilly stopped packing and sat on Quinn’s side of the bed. “It means I might not be back here if the deal goes through, but you could come and visit me. We could go to the beach in Gulf Shores. I’d show you a good time.”

Quinn was so relieved to hear those words pass Lilly’s lips because the previous night had been their last, even before the news. “We’ve talked about this, remember? When it was time for you to return home permanently, we’d lay this to rest.”

“I know,” Lilly said with a nod. “That’s why I didn’t tell you about the pending sale last night. To be honest, I didn’t want to have to have this conversation. I put it off because I hate saying goodbye, and I had hoped just to slip out of here while you slept.”

Quinn sat up. “I’m glad you didn’t.” She pressed her lips to Lilly’s forehead. “Let’s not say goodbye, let’s wish each other happiness instead.”

Lilly stood up quickly and grabbed her bag. She took two steps toward the door and stopped. “I used your toothbrush because I forgot mine on the rig. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Quinn laughed. It trailed off as Lilly’s footfalls did the same through the house. They had no future, but it was still hard to listen to Lilly leave for the last time. She wondered if Shay had felt any remorse when she collected her things, set her keys on the table, and walked out.

Chapter 18

“Another sunny day.” Blake groaned and pulled the pillow over her face. At noon, light was sneaking around the blinds and mercilessly poking at her eyelids. To purge Beth from her thoughts, Blake had thrown herself into her book and had written until dawn. She wanted more sleep, but she knew it wouldn’t come. Aside from the sun, a dog barked outside. She wondered if it was Chuck demanding the food she wasn’t supposed to give him.

Blake climbed out of bed, made a stop in the bathroom, then plodded along stark naked into the kitchen. She never slept in the buff. It made her feel too vulnerable, and she didn’t want to be caught outside like that if she needed to make an emergency exit. But when she crawled into bed that morning, she didn’t care about much. She reached for the coffeepot, then stopped when she heard water running from somewhere inside the house. She’d flushed the toilet, but it didn’t make that noise as the tank refilled. The dog continued to bark, and Blake opened the blinds just a crack to look in the backyard.

Chuck was completely soaking wet and shoved his face into the stream of water Quinn was shooting from the hose. His front paws left the ground as he shook his head and barked, then he went back for more. Quinn’s hair was down and wild, sunlight revealed deeper shades of red, lighter hues, and streaks of blond. She was smiling as she watched Chuck dance in and out of the water.

Blake stepped back, then raced into her room where she pulled on some clothes. By the time she returned, the water had been switched off, and Chuck was no longer barking. Blake opened the door and stared through the screen. Chuck was wandering out of sight.

“I am very selfish and rude.”

Blake pushed open the screen door and found Quinn sitting on the end of the porch swinging her legs. Unrepentant, she gazed up at Blake and said, “I needed a laugh, so I came here to ask you to twerk again, but the house was quiet. I knew you were sleeping. I riled Chuck up so he would bark and wake you, and I wouldn’t have to take the blame.”

“Then why are you confessing?” Blake asked with a smile.

“Because I know you saw me.”

“Yeah, you’ve been caught. Come inside while I make coffee.”

Quinn got up and followed her inside. “I brought a bag of dog biscuits. Don’t let me forget to get them out of my truck.”

“I’m kind of surprised to see you today. I thought you were supposed to be with Lilly this weekend,” Blake said as she set up her coffeemaker.

“Well, that’s over.” Quinn sighed as she folded her arms and leaned against the cabinet. “She’s been trying to sell her house, and she thinks she may have a buyer. If that’s the case, she won’t return to the rig, and she won’t be coming back here.”

Blake stopped what she was doing and looked at Quinn. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it was just kind of sad watching her go. We knew this day would come, we were both prepared.”

Blake clamped her lips tightly together for a second. “Last night, I was feeling really good about myself, so I called my agent’s office. Beth is Cassidy’s assistant. Cassidy told me that Beth had gone away with her new flame. They’re gonna be gone for a week.”

“Are you okay?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Blake said as she spooned coffee into a filter. “Beth was the only woman that understood me. It just got too hard for her to have a relationship in my apartment, and that’s what ended us. It was good otherwise.”

“What did Beth understand that the others didn’t?”

Blake thought as she poured the water into the coffeemaker and switched it to brew. “She was willing to work with me, but the breaking point was when she wanted me to go to her place and I wouldn’t.”

“Why? Because you’d have to ride the subway?”

“No, we could’ve taken a cab.” Blake shrugged. “I didn’t know if I’d be comfortable at her place.”

Quinn narrowed her eyes. “But you would’ve been with her. Wouldn’t that have made it comfortable?”

“No, because if I didn’t like it there, I’d have to take a cab by myself back to my place,” Blake explained. “I’d never done that alone.”

Quinn’s jaw worked for a second or two without her saying a word. “Let me pose the question this way. You’d have rather been in your apartment alone than with someone you cared about in hers?”

Blake was beginning to see the light but still made excuses. “I was different then. I wasn’t trying to work through my issues like I am now.”

“Let me ask you this. Did the idea of being at her place make you as scared as you felt when you petted Chuck for the first time?”

“Um…yes…no.”

Quinn stood up straight and gazed down at Blake. “So you wanted Beth as long as it was on your turf and your terms, anything else was a no go.”

“I guess so,” Blake admitted. “What are you trying to get me to admit—that I’m a self-centered asshole on top of being neurotic?”

“No.” Quinn dropped her arms to her sides. “It just sounds to me that maybe you were more enamored with…” She rolled her eyes. “This is going to come out wrong. Can I just rewind this tape to where you said you weren’t all right, then I can say I’m sorry? Maybe pat you on the shoulder and invite you to go eat ice cream?”

Blake’s brows knitted together. “Real ice cream, not that frozen yogurt stuff? And there’s no tape,” she said, shaking her head. “No take-backs. Say what you were going to say.”

Quinn huffed. “I was going to say that maybe you liked the way she placated you more than you actually liked her.”

Blake stared at Quinn as her heart sank with the truth. “I think you’re right again. I’m beginning to become annoyed with that, and I may hate you just a little bit for it.”

Quinn wagged a finger. “You accepted what I said too quickly. You already knew it, Blake, admit it.”

Blake shook her head and looked back at the coffeepot. “No.”

“No what?”

“No, I won’t admit it.”

“Now you’re just being a tool,” Quinn said with a laugh. She gave Blake a light poke on the arm. “Admit it.”

“Uh-uh, no.” Blake slapped at Quinn’s finger as it moved toward her again.

“Blake.”

“No.”

“I am going to pull the waistband of your underwear over the back of your head unless you admit it.”

“I’m not wearing any, and if you tear my favorite lounge pants, I will…I will be mad.” Blake shrieked when Quinn stuck her finger in her ear. “All right! Why must you torture me this way?” she yelled with a laugh, then sobered. “If I admit that, then it means that I’ve never really loved at all.”

Quinn’s face fell. “That’s not true. I’m sure you did care for her.”

“Now who’s making excuses?” Blake asked flatly. “To get better, I have to face the truth. I’m pretty messed up. So tell me what fearsome task you want me to tackle today. I’m feeling kind of reckless right now.”

*******

“Nope…hell no…uh-uh…no.”

“It’s fun,” Quinn insisted as she held the rope. “It’s not that high, and if you fall, you’ll only go into the water. Can you swim?”

Blake hugged the tree tighter. “What do you think?”

Quinn pursed her lips. “That would be a no.”

“You have me in a tree with birds. One of them could fly down and peck me. I could lose my balance, fall, and die. Isn’t that enough, Quinn? Really? Don’t laugh!”

“We’re not but four feet off the ground, and all the screaming you did while I shoved your ass onto this platform scared every creature away for miles. Listen…do you hear birds?”

“They’re waiting for you to swing so they can attack me. There are probably hundreds of them hiding in the foliage. Which by the way is strange for October. What is wrong with this place? Don’t the seasons change here at all? What is that? What. Is. That?”

“It’s a moth. They don’t bite,” Quinn said with a giggle.

“Oh, it’s funny.” Blake began to curse like she had Tourette’s. “Fuck…fucking…shit…damn…fuck. I want down! I want down now! Shit…damn…hell.”

“Watch me, Blake.”

“Fucking…shit…fuck…shit.”

“Blake! Shut up!”

Blake inhaled sharply and spoke barely above a whisper. “Don’t you scream at me.”

Quinn held up a finger. “Watch.” She grabbed a knot on the rope and pushed off the platform. Quinn laughed and yelled excitedly as she sliced through the air, then returned to land effortlessly on the wooden deck. “Awesome, right?”

“You have demonstrated a fairly decent vocabulary, so I think you should agree with me that awesome is a bit of an embellishment for what you just did,” Blake said between gritted teeth. And then her command of language failed her. “Shitty…damn…shit…poo.”

“Rain Man, you have to let go of that tree and take this rope.” Quinn held it out in front of her. “The water below is only a few feet deep, it’ll pad your fall, and you won’t drown.”

Blake closed her eyes with her cheek pressed against the tree. “If I do it, when I return to this platform, I will most certainly overshoot it and fly off into the brush behind us where there will be birds and snakes, quite possibly boa constrictors. You will have to explain to my parents how I died and why. They will hate you, maybe assault you, then sue you to pieces. Get me out of this tree.”

“There’s only two ways down, and it’s via rope or the ladder. I’ll climb down and catch you if you fall, but I will
not
hold your butt again. And I’d like to remind you that as we stood at the base of this tree, you reiterated that you were feeling reckless and that
you
wanted to do this. Look at me, Blake!”

Blake opened one eye.

“You said that, didn’t you?”

“You cannot hold me accountable for agreeing to this under the influence of sugar. I didn’t eat breakfast. You fed me ice cream during the drive to this place. Until I got up here, I would’ve agreed to climbing the Empire State Building without a safety harness and jumping off holding a string.” Blake whimpered.

“I have a bag of Skittles in the truck. I’ll get them, and you can eat a few if that’s what it takes. Open your eyes, damn it!” Quinn knew it was time to get tough. She’d seen children do what she was asking Blake to do, and she firmly believed that Blake was capable if only she’d try. “You have convinced yourself that you’re gonna die or get eaten by a bird or a reptile. But the simple truth of it is that you will swing off this platform and come back where I will catch you. Do this, and I’ll sleep on your couch for a week, so you won’t have to worry about anything but writing.” Quinn breathed a sigh of relief when Blake opened her eyes fully, and the wheels behind them began to turn. “If you do this, you can do anything.”

“I need a minute…or a…day to consider your proposition.”

“If you let go of this rope and I have to fetch it, I’m gonna be pissed,” Quinn said as she stuffed it between Blake and the tree. “Grab that rope, and hey, you’re an educated woman, you know we don’t have boa constrictors around here.”

“Someone could’ve released a pet.”

Quinn put her arms up and inhaled deeply as a cool breeze blew across her skin. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

“Yes,” Blake said begrudgingly.

“You could feel more of it if you’d only swing out there. Some part of you wants to do it, the part of you that agreed to come up here in the first place. You are your own worst enemy. Stop telling yourself you can’t and just do it.”

“You sound like a self-help book just belched.” Blake grabbed the rope and held it to her chest. Her feet shuffled a few inches, then she stopped. “I hold the knot, then I jump.”

“No, you hold the knot and you push off hard with your feet.”

“I’m gonna do this.”

Quinn pumped her fist. “Yes, you are.”

“You’re going to stay on my couch.”

“Um, yeah,” Quinn said and smacked her lips.

“You said you would.”

“So did you. Now do it.”

Blake shuffled a little more. “I hate you.”

“You won’t after this is behind you.”

“But then I’ll hate you for something else.”

Quinn nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

“Hold the knot and push.” Blake moved closer to the edge of the deck. “Hold on tight. Swing back and you will catch me.” Blake heaved a deep sigh. “Just so you know, if I get killed, I will haunt you. A poltergeist will have nothing on me. I’ll…I…” Blake clamped her eyes shut and pushed off, screaming profanity the whole way. Her eyes were still closed when she sailed over the platform and Quinn caught her. Blake’s legs wrapped around Quinn’s body like a vise.

“Let go of the rope, I’ve got you,” Quinn said with a huge smile. “Look at me.”

Blake’s eyes flew open. “I did it? I really did it?”

“You so did,” Quinn said excitedly as Blake let go of the rope. She hugged Blake close. “You have passed the test.”

“I did that! I did!” Blake exclaimed as she loosened her hold and her feet slowly dropped to the platform. “I rocked it! I beat its ass.”

Quinn stepped back just as giddy. “High five!”

Blake smacked her hand. “I did that! Did you see me? We should’ve filmed it.” In her zeal, she gave Quinn a shove. “I did… Oh.” Blake put both hands over her mouth and peered over the edge of the deck. Quinn lay flat on her back in the mud. “Does this nullify our deal?” she asked lamely.

*******

“Are you mad?”

“Muddy, but no.”

“Are you sure?”

You know…not really, so don’t ask me again.” Quinn shifted uncomfortably on the towel that protected her truck seat from her grimy body.

Blake hung her head. “That was a real downer.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Are you sure nothing is broken?”

“Positive.”

“I’m really sorry, Quinn.”

“It’s okay. You were excited, and I was, too. That makes it all worthwhile.”

“Do you think…you might’ve deserved it a little because you were kind of brusque up there?”

“Blake.”

“It was the altitude.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “We were four feet off the ground, it was you. When you feel that panic coming on, try to just stop and breathe for a second.”

“That’s why it’s called panic. You lose your ability to reason, and the brain just goes haywire.”

Quinn glanced at Blake. “How do we fix that?”

Blake looked out her window. “I’ve paid therapists a lot of money to find that out. The answer is usually pills that I don’t like to take.”