The Light of Day (10 page)

              “Have you ever had to change who you were, and in the process realized just how much you missed out on the first time around?”

              He nods slowly.  “I think I can relate to what you’re saying.”

              I think about his arm and feel like an asshole.  Of course he can.  “Sorry.”

              “Don’t be.  We both have a past, Blue, and neither of us wants to rehash it, but that doesn’t mean that shit won’t sneak up from time to time, shit that a friend can help you deal with.”

              It’s the perfect thing to say, which again makes me wonder just how much I’ll be able to resist him.  “Do you want to be my friend, Handsome Jake?”

              “I think we’ve already established that.”

              I smile.  “Not a friend with benefits, or a baseball bunny.  A friend, a real one, the kind you’re comfortable grabbing dinner or a beer with — though I won’t be drinking it — talking about your bad day with.  Sharing exciting news with, even though you’re not sleeping together.”

              He looks at me for a minute, those brown eyes serious and steady, and I can tell he’s really thinking about it.  Most people would have just rattled off an agreement, but not Jake.  When I ask him something, he understands there’s more to it, that I’m not looking for the easy answer, but the real one.  Finally, he inclines his head.  “Yeah, I do.”

              I sigh, and if it sounds a little like relief, neither of us acknowledges it.  “I want to be your friend, too.  I think I just realized how much I want that.”

              He doesn’t say anything, just stands and tugs me toward him and then his arms are around me and my head is on his shoulder, and for a second I just let him hold me.  It’s not scary or heavy with implications or expectations. It’s just right.  He’s hugging me like he cares, like I matter, and I don’t feel so alone.

              “I don’t know about the other stuff,” I tell him, as we pull away and he just shakes his head.

              “Blue, it’s no secret that I want you, but I also want this.  So, let’s have this while we can, and when we move to something more, we can rely on the foundation we’ve built to help us through.”

              “
If
we move to something more,” I correct him.  “I told you, I’m still not sure.”

              He just grins and reaches around me to open the door.  “Just remember, you weren’t sure about being my friend but you’re the one who just asked me.  That’s what we call a prologue in literature.”

              “Wow, you really are a nerd.”

“Name calling, is it? Just for that I won’t tell you where I found your keys this morning.”

“The freezer again?”

He shakes his head.  “Basket underneath your desk… you know, the one with your knitting needles.  That’s quite a sweater you’re making, Blue.  At least, I think it’s a sweater.  Kinda hard to tell.”

My lips are trembling on a smile and when he continues to stare at me, I let go and laugh, closing my eyes.  “It’s supposed to be a sweater,” I confirm and he just smiles wider.  “An admittedly ambitious project, since I barely know how to knit a scarf.  No one was supposed to know about it.”

“Since we’re friends now, I won’t tell anyone.  But I do call dibs on being the first to see it.”

I nod.  “Deal.” And then I take the hand he offers, and together we walk back to where my friends are waiting.

Chapter Fifteen

Jake

“Do you ever take a day off, Blue? You know, sit back, enjoy, over-indulge?”

              “You wouldn’t be asking me that if you’d known me even a year ago.”

              She shifts from one side to the other in her warrior pose (yeah, I know the name of it now), and I do the same.  We’re in some grassy park area with some other early morning crazies, overlooking the river and stretching after our run.  In my head I’ve come up with ten alternate, and highly appealing, ways to spend a rainy morning with Cora, none of which includes a five mile run followed by douche-worthy stretching in some park.  Though, I suppose if this were a scene in a movie, it would probably be a romantic one.

              The fog just rising above the water, the lights of the buildings twinkling through the heavy mist, the early morning silence that hasn’t yet been interrupted by commuters.  I can see it clearly: the onscreen lovers would be talking while they stretched, and then one or both of them would shift just so and they’d come face-to-face and, before the audience knew what was happening, they’d be engaging in some sort of wrestling match that was just a ploy on the hero’s part to get the heroine pressed up against him in all of the right places.

              A fucking ingenious ploy.

              And then they’d kiss and wander back the way they came, none the worse for wear, the intent of their departure clear enough they may as well say to the camera,
Yeah, we started this, now we’re going to finish it
.

              None of that romance exists here, and that’s not just because I’m holding back and waiting for Blue to make the next move.  The barge chugging down the river is loud, the mist is thick and consuming, and only half of my attention is on the idiot poses she’s leading me through.  The other half is on the homeless man sleeping under the bench twenty feet away.  He hasn’t moved in the almost thirty minutes we’ve been here since finishing our run, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s asleep, too cold to move, or dead.  I’m watching for any sign of life or movement from him so I don’t have to go make sure it isn’t the latter before we take off.

The mist has made everything squishy and muddy, so as appealing as my fantasy of throwing Blue to the ground and wrestling with her in her skin tight running pants and Padres ball cap is, if I push her to the ground, playful or not, she’s going to take my balls from me.  Since I’m rather attached to that portion of my anatomy, I block out those thoughts as much as possible and go back to the conversation I’m trying to carry on with her.

“I’m not talking about drinking and sex — though, if you really think you’re missing out on who you used to be, I’ll get drunk and let you take advantage of me.  Isn’t role play part of therapy?”

Her laugh is a little shocked, and I can’t help the surge I get every time I get her to give me a real one. 
              “That’s generous of you, but I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Offer stands, in case you ever need it.”

“You’re such the giver, Handsome Jake.”

This time I grin fast and meet her eyes.  “No complaints before.  Which is why,” I continue before she can retort, “I’m thinking we should go do something fun today.  Isn’t it one of your days off from work?”

              She nods and switches to her next pose, which I follow half-heartedly.  The homeless man has moved, so now that I’m not fearing his death, I’m on alert to make sure he doesn’t try and bring us to ours.  “Then let me take you on an adventure.”

              She finishes up with the pose that has her standing straight up, eyes and arms to the sky so her body is one long, lean, line, and I’m momentarily struck speechless as I watch her.  Something about the way she moves, sexy and efficient and so goddamn confident, has the ability to drain every other thought from my head, leaving me with only one: her.  We’ve been living together for almost two months now, and in that time we’ve turned several corners.

              We’re friends, and roommates.  We do all of the things normal people living together do, like share the grocery shopping, complain about loss of hot water and who’s controlling the TV remote.  She prefers to have music on when she’s home, I like video games and SportsCenter.  She likes fashion magazines, I like books.  She likes pop and dance music with a trendy feel, I like old school hip hop, with some outlaw country and new indie rock thrown in to balance it all out. (Though I did get caught with some classic Brittany Spears on a playlist the other day, and had to handle it while she laughed for over an hour.)

              She’s been more forthcoming in our relationship as of late, asking questions as well as answering them, and though I haven’t asked any more hard ones yet, I know our relationship has progressed.  Without being able to explain why, I know she trusts me, as much as she trusts anyone, and because of that I’m craving the next step, a step I know she yearns to take but doesn’t because she’s afraid.  That’s the part I’m hung up on, and the part that’s making me keep my promise to try and think of her first.

              I know she’s had relationships in the past, including the ex-husband, and it seems they’ve jaded her.  Jaded I can handle.  It’s the fear that’s holding me back.  I don’t know why she was in rehab, other than she casually mentions it every now and then, but I suspect that the reason she holds back has more to do with that than her previous relationships.  I’m trying to be patient because Ryan’s words come back to me every now and then and, whatever Cora’s been through, I don’t ever want her to be afraid of me. This means I need to step up my game and show her I can be trusted all the way.

              “What do you have in mind for this adventure?” she asks, as we walk back toward our apartment.

              I swing my arm over her shoulders and smile.  “It’s a surprise.  Dress warm, though, I feel like being outside.”

~

I take her to the zoo because it’s somewhere new for her too, even though she grew up here.  I pause momentarily after we park, suddenly realizing that she might not like the idea of visiting caged animals.  When I say this, her brow furrows and she asks why.

“You know, happy animals, happy meat, all of that stuff you talked about the first night I moved in.”

She smiles and shakes her head.  “I’m not that much of a do-gooder, yet, Handsome Jake.  I don’t eat meat from abused animals because it’s just plain bad for me and I want to be healthy.  My conscience doesn’t extend too much beyond that.  Mia’s the natural philanthropist in the family, not me.”

I smile and take her hand, leading her to the gate. It’s crowded, despite the midweek visit and the misting rain, and for a couple of hours we wander among the throng of people through exhibits, laughing and admiring the animals and reptiles, though she shook like a leaf when we entered a part of Africa and saw the python.  If I accidentally sought out some more reptilian habitats after she curled into me and held on for dear life, well, who could blame me?

              She makes me pose in front of the warty pigs, and I snap a few photos of her in front of the giraffes.  When her fingers are stiff and her hands are like blocks of ice, and even our rain gear isn’t working to keep us dry anymore, we call it good and I take her to grab a sandwich at Lardo’s.  On the way home, she dozes off, her head resting on the seat, her face toward me.  I park in my spot and lean back to watch her, wondering how the hell I’m ever going to get over her.

              Which is a weird thought to have because I’ve never had her, but in the few months that I’ve known her something in me has shifted, changed, become lighter.   The anger, the despair, and the grief that I carried around the last six months have lessened, until some days I forget that they were ever there.  There’s irritation, and plenty of annoyance, but at the end of the day, I walk home to Blue and all I feel is happy, even hopeful.  That’s a scary fucking thing, but it’s also right.  I can’t explain it any further than that.

              We’re friends, and she might laugh at me if she ever knew that I value her friendship as much as I value the idea of more.  It’s the truth, though.  Being with Cora shows me exactly what I wanted from my relationship with Lise, and even assumed we had.  That’s a lie, though, because Lise wasn’t in love with me, and though I cared for her, I now know I wasn’t in love with her either.  Looking at Cora, I won’t verbalize what I feel, but there are words floating around in my head, in my heart, that tell me that whatever she is to me, it’s more than anyone else has ever been.

              When her eyes flutter open, it takes her a moment to orient and in that time I take the step, pushing into her space, the fingers of my left hand tracing her jaw line and her cheek, up into her hair and around to cup her neck.  She doesn’t pull back, just keeps her eyes wide and steady on mine.  When my lips brush hers, once, twice, her fingers dig into the fabric of my shirt and she angles her head just a little.  That’s all the encouragement I need.

              My tongue traces her lips, followed by my teeth and, when she gasps, I take advantage and dip inside her mouth, tracing her tongue with my own, drowning in the flavor that is only Cora.  Her hands are in my T-shirt still, gripping it so tightly I’m surprised it doesn’t rip.  And her lips, Christ, her lips are driving me insane as they slide together with mine.  When she sucks my bottom lip into her mouth, I think I might die.

              Instead, I fight with her seatbelt until it’s off and then my hands streak to her waist and under her shirt until I feel her skin, burning to the touch, as if she’s a furnace, ready to combust from the inside.  My lips leave her mouth long enough to trail down her neck and to her collarbone, absorbing the flavor of her there.  Her breath is shallow and when she grips my hair and yanks, I give in and fuse our mouths back together.

              We kiss until we’re breathless and our lips are raw.  When I pull away, the windows are fogged, but all I can look at is Cora, with her swollen lips and wide eyes, as if she can’t believe what we just did.  I’m a little shaken myself, the aftershocks coursing through me until I’m mortally afraid I might tremble.

              At some point, I pulled her halfway out of her seat so we’re pressed together chest to chest, one of my hands at her back, under her shirt, the other gripping a fair amount of her very firm ass.  I don’t let her go, even when I see the fog clear from her eyes to be replaced with a kind of budding panic.  She’s not terrified yet, but in about thirty seconds she’s going to be.  Time to do some damage control.

              “You don’t regret this.”

              Her brow wings up and though it wasn’t what I had planned on saying, I go with it, much more comfortable with her annoyance than her fear.  “Is that right?”

              I nod.  “That’s right.  Whatever you’re telling yourself is wrong with what we just did, stop.”

              The eyebrow notches higher.  “Keep telling me what to do and
you’re
going to regret it.”

              I remember back to December when we were dancing at the wedding and she was flirting a dangerous line, admitting that she never submits.  At this moment, I feel like going head to head with her and showing her I don’t either, that I always win when I play and that I have no intention of breaking that streak now.

“We have something here, Blue, you can’t deny it.”

              “Yeah, we do have something here, a friendship and a lease, which is why we need to be smart.”

              “Smart doesn’t mean acting like this was a mistake.  We’ve been headed here since that first night Cora and, now that we’ve finally made it, I won’t back off.”

              Now she shoves out of my hold and I let her, both of us sitting back in our seats.  “I won’t be told what to do, Jake, not even by you.  I’ve done that once, and I can’t do it again.”

              I don’t let myself get sidetracked by that comment, but I shove it to the back of my brain to ask her about it later.  “I’m not telling you what to do, I’m asking you to try.  Just try, Blue,” I say and stop her denial before it comes.  “Did you have fun today?”

              She hesitates and I can tell that she’s considering lying.  Why this makes me more attracted to her is anyone’s guess.  After a second, she sighs and nods.  “Yeah, I did.”

              “Then let’s have more fun, and this time let’s kiss while we do it.  Kissing makes everything better.”

              I expect a resounding hell no.  In the very least, some knee jerk resistance, but instead all I get is a thoughtful stare.  Holding my breath I wait, and after a minute she smiles, and I feel it all the way to my core.  “Well, it was a pretty great kiss.”

              “Please, that was just a warm up.  Wait until I hit my stride.”

              She laughs and I grab her, planting my lips on hers again, holding her against me, knowing, even while she doesn’t, that she’s mine now and I’m hers.