Tonic (21 page)

His lips were against mine, sweeping all other thought away, and for a long time, we just lay there, tangled up in each other, kissing like we had no other purpose. When he broke away, I sighed, wishing the rest of the world would just go away. But it wouldn’t.

Joel moved my hair from my face, peering down at me. “We should get started on those ledgers.”

I drew I another breath, trying not to sigh, but I just didn’t want to. I wanted to lay there, wrapped up in Joel. “I suppose we should.”

He rolled over and climbed out of bed, and I watched him with unabashed appreciation. Tattoos. Everywhere. Well, not
everywhere
, and thank goodness for that. A tattooed dick would be terrifying. But his sculpted back, ass, thighs … all of him covered in ink that told stories, gave glimpses into his heart and soul. It was the most intriguing thing I’d maybe ever seen. I wondered if I’d have enough time to memorize the patterns on his skin, and my heart squeezed in my chest.

“Need something to wear?” he asked as he pulled on a pair of slate gray sweats, and I mourned the loss of the view.

I stretched and yawned, rolling onto my back. “I brought stuff.”

He looked over his shoulder at me with one brow up and the other side of his lip raised. “You’re staying?”

I sat and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “I mean, we have so much
work
to do.”

He snorted as he left the room, heading toward the bathroom. “You have no idea how much.”

I chuckled and walked through the apartment and to the kitchen where I’d tossed my bag, which was heavy with a smaller bag inside full of rolled up clothes. I set it on the table and unzipped it, revealing neat little rows of fabric — pajamas, panties, and a skirt and top for tomorrow.
 

Joel chuckled from behind me. “I bet your sock drawer looks like an advertisement for Ikea.”

I grabbed my pajamas, another sheer, muslin tank and short set, though this one was black. “I don’t really have a designated sock drawer, but if I did, yes, it would.”

“You can’t stand a mess, can you?”

I stepped into my shorts, seeing no point in being modest. “No. I can’t.”

“Then don’t look in my sock drawer.”

I chuckled as I pulled on my top and turned for the bathroom. “Deal.”

He caught me around the waist as I passed and pulled me into his chest, kissing me once, sweetly, before letting me go again with a burning look and a smirk, saying nothing. And I did my best to calm the flurry of butterflies in my chest, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of my mind that whispered that I’d crossed an uncrossable line, and I couldn’t go back.
 

Joel

WHEN SHE CAME BACK A few minutes later, I was already at the table with the ledgers stacked in front of me, working on sorting them. But there was nothing I could do — all of the markings on the ledger covers were in Cyrillic.
 

She twisted her hair into a bun as she took a seat next to me.
 

“I can’t read any of these, Annika,” I said with a frown, wondering how I was going to be of any use.

She smiled and reached into her bag for a little notepad and pen. “Don’t worry. It’s not too hard.”

My brow dropped, very much doubting that. But she jotted out a series of lines and squiggles, noting each one with the Western numbers they represented before ripping off the page and lying it between us.

“Here’s your decoder.”

I found myself frowning. “This is going to take forever if I have to translate the numbers.”

“Only at first. You’ll get the hang of it, I promise. Plus, that’s why I’m here.”

I sighed. “Okay. Let’s start by getting these in order by year.”

She reached for the first stack, and I tried not to look down her loose tank as it hung down, exposing her through the draping. I was unsuccessful and unremorseful, suddenly wishing we were finished here and back in my bed.
 

Annika flipped through the first stack. “I’ll tell you the years and you can keep them in order. Do you have Post-Its?”

My brow quirked as I thought about if there were any in my apartment. “Uh …”

“Don’t worry,” she said as she reached into her bag. “I’ve got some.” When her hand reappeared, it held hot pink sticky notes, and she passed them to me.

“What else do you have in there? A lamp, maybe?”

She smirked. “And a carpet. I also have ruler tape that will tell me exactly how you measure up.”

I smirked back. “I’m curious to see what that would say. I’m betting
Practically Perfect in Every Way.
”

She chuffed. “More like
Rather Inclined to Giggle, Doesn’t Put Things Away.
”

“I don’t giggle, I chortle.”

Annika laughed, that glorious sound, and I continued on.

“And I like to think I’m pretty tidy.”

“For a hairy brute, I suppose I’d agree.”

“Yours would definitely say
Extremely Stubborn and Suspicious.
”

She shook her head, though her eyes were on the ledgers as she sorted them in front of her. “Why am I surprised that you can quote
Mary Poppins
? You’d think I was immune to surprise, when it comes to you.” She handed me the first ledger. “1994.”

I jotted the date on the note and stuck it to the cover of the book, setting it aside. “It was Shep’s favorite movie when we were kids. Don’t tell anyone.”

She laughed and passed me another book. “2002. You just told the producer for your show,
Don’t tell anyone
,” she said, chuckling again.

 
I wanted to laugh, seeing the humor, but something about it hit me funny. “So, we’re not off the record?” I labeled it and set it next to the other one.

Something flickered across her face. “1990. We are and we aren’t. Do you really object to me bringing up Mary Poppins to Shep? I’d really like to try to convince him to do the chimney sweep dance on camera.”

“No.” I labeled it and slipped it under the ’94 ledger. “But I’d like to think most of this is private.”

“2010. It is.” She reached for another as I wrote the number.
 

“Just not
all
of it.”

“’96. Joel, I wouldn’t ever exploit you like that.”

I took the ledger and wrote the number, not offering a response.
 

“Hey,” she said as she rested her long fingers on my forearm. I met her eyes, which were honest and open. “I mean it. I’ll even swear not to say anything unless I’ve passed it by you. No matter how trivial.”

“I believe you.”

Her hand flexed, and she smiled. “Thank you for that. And thank you again for your help with this.” She let me go and gestured to the stacks.
 

“You’re welcome. I’m just glad I have something to offer in the way of help.”

“That you do. 2012.”

I smiled and labeled it.

We dug into the work, spending several hours getting everything sorted and organized, working through the ledgers together, absorbed in the work until Annika was yawning with every sentence she spoke.
 

I stacked up the book we were pouring over — 2015 — and pushed back from the table.
 

“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

She sighed, looking over the books with an air of defeat, something I was unaccustomed to from her. “It’s just so much. I wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

I knelt down next to her chair and cupped her face, turning it to mine. Her hand hung on my forearm as she looked down at me.

“You haven’t. We’ll get it done.”

Her face softened at that, and she leaned into my hand.
 

“Now, come to bed,” I said softly, and she turned her face to press a kiss into my palm.
 

Snow was cold, fire was hot, and I couldn’t walk away from Annika like I’d promised her I would. The facts were as black and white as math, with no room for debate.

I wondered fleetingly if we would ruin each other. If my fire would melt her ice until it evaporated. If her ice would snuff my fire out of existence.
 

I pushed all of that down, deep down into my chest, and I kissed her. Because I had that moment. Later would figure itself out.

When I broke away, I took her hand, and she followed me wordlessly through the apartment. I flicked off the lights on the way through the apartment and guided her to my bed. I reached for the lamp, throwing us into darkness, and we slipped silently under the covers, into each other’s arms. The weight of her, the warmth of her, familiar and foreign. I found comfort in her after a thousand nights alone. Because I’d been alone, even though I hadn’t, not really, only finding momentary reprieve in women who I would never hold through the night. Women who I never considered keeping for more than the moment. It was easier that way.
 

With Annika in my arms, I realized just how easy it had been, how smart it had been to close my heart. Because when you opened your heart, you put it on the line. And my heart was most definitely on the line, exposed, raw against the touch of unfamiliar air.

It was stupid and reckless, and I didn’t care. One day, I probably would. But until then, I’d revel in the feeling, the exhilaration of her.

This was my last cognizant thought, and I sealed it with a kiss in the dark. It was ownership without expectation, submission without consequence. It was her skin against mine, her heart and my own, our bodies together. It was a moment that stretched to an hour and into a night. And I knew I was lost, and she could never know just how lost I was.

Morning came too soon.
 

It was still dark when her phone chimed to wake her. I’d been awake, still and quiet, holding her in the dark, thinking. Thinking too much. But as soon as she opened her sleepy eyes, I smiled like I didn’t have a thought in my brain past that very second.

We dressed for the day, chatting and smiling, eating bagels and drinking coffee around the stacks of books on my kitchen table. I leaned on the doorframe of my bathroom while she put on her makeup, watching fascinated under the guise of conversation as she leaned toward the mirror and darkened her long lashes. My eyes followed the angle of her body, the comical ‘o’ of her lips, even more enthralled as she twisted a tube of red lipstick and pressed the creamy pigment to her lips.
 

She was art. I wanted to draw her. My fingers itched to.

I had a flash of clarity — I realized just how deep the shit I found myself in went. And it went really, really deep.

I left first, scoping out the scene. The stairwell was empty, as was the shop, and even upstairs seemed more quiet than it did once things got going. So we parted before she left with a simple kiss before she walked down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, toward the coffee shop and away from me.
 

The distance felt like a chasm, and I was afraid of heights.

I closed the door with a snick and looked around my apartment. Ledgers on the table. Two coffee cups in the sink. Her makeup bag on my bathroom counter and clothes in my room. My bed rumpled, sheets still smelling of her.

“Fuck,” I said to myself, raking a hand through my hair. And then I picked up my phone.
 

Tell me you’re awake
, I texted my brother.

Little dots bounced as he typed, and a breath, heavy with relief, slipped past my lips.
I am now.

Good. I need to talk to you.

What did I do?

Nothing. It’s what I did.

A pause.
What did you do?

I ran a hand over my mouth.
Annika.

That’s not news, dude.

Just get up and come home.

No response.

I huffed as my fingers banged out a single word.
Please?

Bouncing dots and a hallelujah chorus.
All right, all right. Be there in a bit.

So I paced for a minute. Then I made my bed, erasing any visible remains of the night before. I did the dishes, putting our cups across from each other on the rack, like I could keep her out of my heart just as easily. But it was too late. I already knew that.
 

I’d never wanted anyone so viscerally before. That was the perfect word. Visceral. Animal. Deep and instinctive, beyond my ability to control. It wasn’t love. Not yet, anyway. But if I didn’t stop it right now, that’s exactly where it would go. I could feel the allure of it pulling at my insides, twisting and squeezing to get my attention. As if I could ignore it.

God, how I wanted her. All day, every day, insatiably, selfishly — I wanted her. And more than anything, that scared me.

Years of convincing myself that I was fine. Years of loneliness. Fourteen long years of believing that love was too complicated, too rare to be real. Too rare to be mine. And then Annika walked through the doors of my shop and took a sledgehammer to everything I thought I knew.

Shep walked in looking sleepy and disheveled, closing the door behind him. He took a seat at the table and made to move a stack of ledgers.

“Whoa, don’t touch those,” I snapped, and he glared at me, lips frowning behind his beard.

“You really
are
wound up. Tell me there’s coffee,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest.

“There’s coffee.” I turned to pour him a cup and collect my thoughts. He let me have the silence, probably too tired to pry the truth out of me. I handed the mug over, and he grunted his thanks.

He watched me for a second, and I leaned against the counter, my turn to cross my arms.
 

“I’m not gonna beg for it, Joel.” He took a sip and cursed when he burned his lip.

I chuckled. “That’s what you get for being a smartass.”

His glare sharpened.

I sighed. “Thanks for coming home. I just needed to talk.”

“Then talk already.” He took another, more tentative, sip.

“I’m in deep shit.”

“How deep?”

“Bottomless.”

He frowned. “Explain.”

“I’m not really sure how to. That’s part of the problem.”

He kicked the chair across from him out a foot. “Sit and give it a shot.”