Текст книги "Every Second With You"

Автор книги: Lauren Blakely

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Every Second With You
No Regrets – 2
by
Lauren Blakely

This book is dedicated to my readers, to every single one of you lovely, awesome, amazing people.

Thank you for making dreams come true…

xoxo

Lauren

Chapter One

Harley

The moonlight streams across his beautiful face, but I can’t bear to look at him. I stare out the window; the slats of the blinds chop silver streaks from the moon that shine through my room, and I wish I were anywhere but here, on top of the covers, in bed with the man I love, on the night of my twentieth birthday. I don’t know how to be false or fake with Trey, but I don’t know how to tell him the truth right now, either.

“Hey,” he says softly, brushing strands of hair from my forehead. “Are you feeling better?”

I wince inside, but put on a brave face for him, adjusting the pillow to busy myself, as if it’s absolutely vital to find the perfect alignment for my head. Anything to avoid eye contact as we lie side by side, the pinball machine sounds of late-night New York City mingling with Sara Bareilles playing on my phone.

“My head still hurts,” I mumble, rubbing my palm roughly against my forehead to exorcise the headache I don’t have. I couldn’t very well tell him that my stomach hurt. That I’d thrown up my birthday cake. I might as well put an advertisement on my forehead saying “I’m preggers.” And that’s the one thing I can’t tell him. Not yet. Not tonight.

I claimed I had a migraine from the stifling August heat, and it had made me nauseous. I only wish I had a migraine. I’d welcome a headache from hell with open arms, because a headache would go away.

Instead I will spend the night in this strange twilight state of hiding the truth from Trey on the outside, while on the inside I’m grappling with the massive detour my future just slammed in front of me. And it’s so damn unfair. I’ve been running a race for so long, an endless, ragged one, and I finally crossed the yellow tape of the finish line, triumphant on the other side of love, and hope, and possibility. And now it’s as if an invisible hand has plucked me from the ground and sent me straight back to the starting line.

Only this time I have even more to lose. I have everything to lose.

“Do you need an ibuprofen?”

He believes me. Of course he believes me.

“I took one already. Just waiting for it to kick in,” I say, but there’s nothing true in those words.

I want to be honest with him, but I don’t have an earthly clue how to say the only words that could scare him off. Not just far, far away, but to another time zone. Another continent. And not for the usual reasons a guy would be freaked out to have a pregnant girlfriend, but because of what it means to him.

Loss.

I cling to the faint hope that the test was wrong, that I can retake it tomorrow morning. I exhale hard, wishing for one pink line so desperately I feel as if I’m clutching the possibility of it in my hands, a precious, fragile thing.

Trey skims his hand along my bare arm. “I hate that you don’t feel well. Not just because it’s your birthday, but because I don’t want you to ever hurt,” Trey says. His touch feels so comforting and reassuring, and yet I don’t deserve it because I’m lying to him. I shift my gaze around the dark room to the closet door, the open window, and the sky blue dresser I snagged from a woman in the building next door when she was moving out.

“Hopefully it’ll be gone in the morning,” I say; and that’s more than a hope, it’s me begging the universe.

He leans in and kisses my forehead, pressing his soft lips against me in the most tender, caring way. “But I’ll take care of you. You know that, right?”

“Sure,” I say, but I don’t actually know that. That’s what people promise to each other, but words are easy. Backing them up is the hard part. Will he take care of me if he knows why I don’t feel well? Will he take care of me when I’m big and round and fat? Will he take care of a kid?

“Because, you know, I could be a really good nurse, don’t you think?” he says with a sly smile, then raises his voice, affecting a high-pitched tone. “Do you need a cold compress, sweetie? How about a sponge bath?”

Despite the ominous feeling in my chest, I manage one small laugh. I try not to let on that I’m withering inside. I play along with him instead, making eye contact finally. I nearly melt when I look into his beautiful green eyes—eyes that know me inside and out, that make me want to spill everything to him. But I know how to pretend, so I fake happiness. “Nurse Trey now, is it?”

He lowers his voice, making it deep again as he runs his hand along my hip, tugging me close. “I’ve got just what the doctor ordered.”

I want to laugh. I want to be fun and silly. I wish we were having just a normal night, so I try it on for size. “What did the doctor order?”

“The doctor says you need another birthday present,” he says into my ear, his breath hot against my neck. He presses his lips to my skin, and I’m tempted to let my mind go blank, to drug myself in the moment as he burns a trail of kisses to the hollow of my throat. His lips find mine, and he brushes me softly, then in seconds, he deepens the kiss. I nearly cry because I want terribly to stop time and kiss like this all night long, and all my life, too, but it feels like an injection of a false reality, and I know it’ll all fade by morning.

I break the kiss.

“I think I just need to sleep,” I say, and then I turn over, and stare at the shadows crawling across the wall, my companions in furtiveness.

He kisses the back of my neck gently, easily shedding the heated potential of a moment ago. “Feel better, Harley,” he whispers. “I loved spending your birthday with you. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I say as I close my eyes.

Then he tucks the covers around me. He spoons me, his strong body curving around mine. For the first time since we’ve been together, we’re going to bed to sleep. In minutes, his breathing turns slow and rhythmic. He’s never had trouble falling asleep, nor have I.

But tonight, I don’t sleep. I lie awake, my mind both a speedway and a traffic jam. I’m racing, darting, but I keep returning to the same stalled-out shoulder on the road. Replaying how this could have happened. Trying to pinpoint the time when the condom failed.

The night in his tattoo parlor? Or maybe the time after we all went out to see a band? Or the quickie in the bathroom at the coffee shop a few weeks ago? Because we don’t hold back–we come together. Over and over, bodies slamming into each other, lips joining in a frenzy, consumed with need, and want, and heat.

But when it happened is irrelevant.

What matters is what’s next, and where we go from here. I don’t have a clue how to be a mother. Hell, I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. I’m only halfway finished with college, and having a baby isn’t anywhere on the curriculum. But this is the real kick in the pants—I can’t think of two people less equipped to be parents than Trey Westin and me. The former sex addict, and the ex-call girl. We’re the butt of a joke.

* * *

When the sun blares through the window the next day, it might as well be shouting Life’s a bitch, sucker. Try to hit this curveball.

I shower and dress quickly.

Trey stretches languidly in bed, his arms rising above his head, the covers snaking down to his waist. His beautiful chest is on display, his body a canvas for art, from the birds on his pecs to the sunbursts on his shoulder.

Usually, I savor this sight. Now, as I stand in the doorway, I want him out of my bed so badly. I want to kick him out of my apartment with my combat boots, and then run, run, run like a madwoman to Duane Reade.

He smiles lazily at me as if this is just another day. Not Judgement Day. “Want to get some bagels?”

I shake my head. “I forgot I had a paper due. I need to go turn it in.”

He sits up. “Summer classes suck, huh? I’ll go with you.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I really need to take care of it. Can I meet up with you later?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Um. Sure. But do you even have to ask that question? Don’t we meet up every day?”

I force a laugh. “Yeah. Of course. I just don’t like to take anything for granted.”

That’s the truest thing I’ve said to him in the last twenty-four hours.

I lean in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Bye. I need to run. You can hang, or let yourself out. Or whatever.”

He loops his arms around my neck, holding me close, and I resist the desire to squirm away. “Is your headache better?”

“Getting there,” I say, as I slip out of his embrace, and furrow my brow, affecting my best I-still-have-a-headache look.

I dart into the bathroom, close the door and grab the plastic bag with the test in it. I hid it under the sink last night; I wasn’t about to leave the evidence in the wastebasket. I jam it to the bottom of my purse.

Then I’m gone. Out the door, down the stairs, around the block, heart pumping wildly, feet pounding the concrete, the high summer heat relentless in its assault. Beads of sweat drip down my back.

Two more blocks. One more block.

I toss the plastic bag into a trashcan on the corner, and it nearly slips onto the sidewalk from my sweaty palms.

I wipe my hands on my skirt and grab the door of the drugstore. I yank it open, glancing once behind me. I don’t see anyone I know.

I find the aisle with the pregnancy tests, snag two, and rush to the counter. I tap my foot as I wait for the woman in front of me to buy gum. Spearmint or cinnamon? She lifts each pack, considers them. My heart jerks with sick envy. Spearmint, I want to shout. See? It’s easy to make that decision. But she picks cinnamon, unwrapping it and popping in a piece as the clerk hands over her change.

When it’s my turn, I plunk the boxes on the counter and scan the perimeter, hoping Trey doesn’t have a sudden need to buy gum or anything else. The woman at the register looks exceedingly bored as she rings me up, and I want to reach across, shake her shoulder and say, “Don’t you know my life is about to change? And I just want spearmint, okay?”

Instead, she dumps the tests into a plastic bag without a word and thrusts it at me.

“Thanks,” I mumble, then swivel around and march to the restroom at the back of the store. I lock the door and press my hand against it, trying to steady myself as a wave of fear tackles me. I breathe out hard through my nostrils, offering a plea to anyone who’s listening to tell the universe to stop mocking me.

But ten minutes, two more tests, and a fresh wave of morning nausea later I have my answer – and it’s neither spearmint nor cinnamon.

Chapter Two

Trey

Paper?

She has a paper due?

She’s taking a writing class, and I’m pretty sure the assignments are of the creative story variety, not “papers.” Strange answer, but as I brush my teeth, I realize something seemed off about Harley all morning. I stop brushing, rewind the last twelve hours—her headache, her rush to leave, and most of all, her not wanting to have sex. Come to think of it, she’s seemed out of sorts ever since we were watching that movie last night, after we ate the birthday cake.

I tense for a moment, shoulders tightening, as a one-syllable name flashes through my head like a blaring neon sign.

Cam.

Is she talking to him again? Is that why she’s being so weird? Is she toying with going back? She better not be. Because that’s a line she can’t cross.

I grip the sink with my free hand, take a deep breath, and try to settle my jump-to-conclusions nature. I listen for the sound of my shrink’s voice in my head, telling me to slow down.

I won’t assume the reason she’s weird is that she’s talking to him again. Maybe it’s because this is the first time she’s ever celebrated a birthday without her mom being a part of it. Even though the woman is a witch, I bet Harley misses her. And I suspect she doesn’t want to admit that, either, tough girl that she is. I finish brushing my teeth, ready to pat myself on the back. My shrink would be proud that I didn’t act on my fears. I spit out the toothpaste, and leave my toothbrush in the cup holder, next to Harley’s.

Seeing my green toothbrush next to her red one, carbon copies of the ones at my apartment, reminds me of how ridiculous having two places is. The back and forth is pointless, since she’s at my apartment or I’m at hers every night. That’s what I should have done for her birthday. Asked her to move in with me.

I file away Harley’s skittishness for the rest of the day, instead plotting the best way to ask her to live with me as I work the afternoon shift at No Regrets, inking a trio of frat brothers by imprinting Greek letters onto their biceps. It’s usually the kind of tat you see three dudes decide to get on a dare when they’re wasted, but they’re stone-cold sober, so I guess this is what they want.

“Dude, this is awesome,” one of the guys says and high-fives me.

“Looks good, man. See you later.”

Then I head to my parents for the weekly dinner visit. School starts in less than a month, and I have one semester left before I earn my degree. Translation: only one more semester of these visits, and then the parental handcuffs come off.

The maroon uniformed doorman nods at me. “Good evening, sir.”

“Hey there,” I say. It’s strange, so strange that he has to act all deferential to everyone who comes and goes through the lobby of this Upper East Side building. I want to say Dude, I’m just like you. But once I’m inside the building, I lose all thoughts of the doorman because I see a pair of legs I’d recognize anywhere. Even from the back—maybe especially from behind, because that was her favorite position. Me, nestled up against her as she bent over the white marble bathroom counter of a $5 million apartment, all long, lean, shapely legs, her underwear at her ankles because she couldn’t wait to be fucked. Her long brown hair flows down her sexy back and she’s wearing workout shorts, sneakers and a tank top. I rub my eyes as the elevator doors close, sealing her inside. I don’t even see her face, but I know those legs belong to Sloan McKay in 15D.

She moved out three years ago, only a few weeks into our affair. The only woman I wasn’t the first to leave. My heart pounds furiously at seeing her and I want to slap it, tell it to have zero reaction, because my heart belongs to Harley and it’s fucking embarrassing that anyone else would cause this sort of uncontrollable chaos in my chest.

I duck into the nook with the mailboxes, close my eyes briefly, and slump against the wall, reminding myself that even if I run into an ex, it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m about to have another meal with my parents, and that’s nearly as pleasurable as having my teeth pulled, so seeing Sloan is nothing.

Sloan, and her long legs.

Sloan, who used to show me the paintings she was working on for the gallery show she hoped to land someday, who liked to talk about art and passion, who always told me I made her feel things no one else did.

Sloan, who dropped hints she was thinking of leaving her husband before she just took off one day from the building. I hadn’t seen her since.

But Sloan isn’t Harley. Sloan isn’t the one I’m in love with. She’s not the girl I’m asking to move in with me.

I turn around, and head upstairs to my parents’ floor.

“Good to see you, son,” my dad says, offering a hand to shake, then clapping me on the back. Like I’m just another good old pal here to visit. “We ordered Chinese food tonight. Your mom didn’t have time to cook.”

Like this is news? My mother never cooks.

“Chinese is cool,” I say.

“Great,” he says. “Let’s go get her. Let her know you’re here.”

Inside her office, she’s tapping away on her desktop. She holds up a finger, the sign to wait. “Just sending in this prescription for Vicodin for a tummy-tuck patient. Be one more second,” she says, and then hits the button on her online prescription software that will send the recipe for numbness to the nearest pharmacy

I wouldn’t mind a Vicodin right now—anything to take the edge off eating scallion pancakes, cold noodles, and pepper steak while making fake conversation with my parents. Nothing has changed since the night a few months ago when I showed her the tats all over my body to remember my dead baby brothers, the ones she pretends never existed. Nope. It’s business as usual. Come to dinner. Talk about school. Be a good boy. See you later.

“So, Trey,” my father says when he’s done, folding his napkin and pushing away his plate. “Final semester. Have you given some thought to what happens come December when you graduate?”

I clear my throat and take a drink of water, wishing it were beer. “I thought I might go to nursing school,” I say, and I manage it with a straight face, flashing back to my joke last night with Harley.

My mother’s eyes brim with curiosity, and it’s the greatest evidence of an emotional reaction I’ve elicited from her in years. “Nursing school. That would be fantastic,” she says, and I want to roll my eyes and say, “You can’t think I was serious?” But they’d be thrilled if I became a nurse, because I’d at least be in the right field. And as far as they’re concerned, the field I’m in is the wrong one. I don’t tell them that when I graduate in December, I want to do what I’m doing right now: designing art on bodies.

We talk more about school and nursing, and it’s kind of amazing in a sad, pathetic way that my mom can chat endlessly about medicine and never about the losses that sliced our family into a before and an after. When she’s done, she surprises me by saying, “Your father and I would like very much for you to bring Harley over sometime.”

I nearly spit out my water. “What?”

“Yes, we’d like to meet her. Can she join us?”

“Um, okay,” I say, and soon after that I head out, texting Harley in the elevator, but when I reach the lobby I stop the message because there she is again.

Sloan.

On the street. Sliding into a cab. She’s not alone. I can’t see whom she’s with. But I feel dirty for even noticing her, and I hope to hell she’s not around when I bring Harley with me. I don’t want my present running into my past.

Chapter Three

Harley

A stick-skinny mom in khaki shorts pushes a blonde girl in a swing, and I catalogue the mom’s blasé attitude. Her listless hands on the chains. Her cell phone pressed hard against her ear. Her eyes rolling as she half-heartedly gives the kid a push on the back. The girl kicks her legs, pumping them, trying to fly higher, to touch the yellow ball in the sky with her toes.

“No,” the mom says into the phone, her lips a pink slash across her face. “I asked you to be home by five thirty. I have Pilates class, and you said you’d be home.”

Her voice makes my chest hurt, a deep hollow ache all through my bones.

I’m in Central Park at the playground, and the sun is baking my shoulders. Sweat drips down my tank top so I tug it away from me, but the relief is temporary. The sky is in a punishing mood, lashing the city with brutal heat.

“But that’s not what we decided earlier. Don’t you remember?”

The mom has claws in her voice, but I bet the person on the other end is just as pissed off. I bet they go round and round like this every day, fists raised, two boxers in a ring. Jab, jab, hit, hit.

“Higher. Push me higher,” the kid shouts.

The mom ignores the request.

I drop my head into my hands, and my forehead is slick against my damp palms.

This could be my life. Not the playground, because I don’t mind that. Not even kids, because I guess they’re fine, all things considered.

But fighting with Trey.

Arguing, over who’s doing what.

Getting annoyed.

Rolling my eyes.

Not loving, not caring, not cherishing the other person.

Look what happened to my parents when they had me. Dad cheated, they split, and now he’s so far gone I don’t know where he is.

Look at Trey. The babies his parents lost decimated their family.

That could happen to us.

I can’t stand the thought of us being ripped apart. I finally righted the sinking ship of my life, and now it’s capsized again, with one stupid mistake. My phone rings, and it’s probably Trey, so I grab it from the pocket of my jean skirt, sliding my finger across the screen.

“Hello,” I mumble into the phone. I must be a sight. Hanging out at the playground, hunched over, and sweaty.

“Darling.”

My skin crawls. I swear there are fire ants all over me hearing her voice. The sound I’ve avoided since she tried to buy me back.

“Yes,” I say, stripping my voice to its bare necessities. “What is it?”

“Your registration form for the fall semester arrived,” she tells me. My mom used to pay for my school, so she received all my forms. She doesn’t pay for college anymore, but the university hasn’t quite gotten its records updated.

“Just put it in the mail, please,” I say, but my throat hitches, and I can feel tears pricking the back of my eyes. Great. I’m barely pregnant, and I’m already hormonal. This is going to be a fucking fiesta. But the one thing I won’t do is let her hear me cry. I suck back the tears.

“I think it would be easier if you stopped by to pick it up.”

I shake my head, even though she can’t see me. “No. Just mail it to me.”

“It’s overdue, Harley. You need to turn it in.”

“Then I’ll go to the school and pick up a new form.”

“Well, darling. It’s Friday, and it’s due at the end of the day, so perhaps it would just be easier if you stopped by to pick it up. You can even fax it in from here.”

I breathe out, hard. I don’t have any fight in me right now. I don’t need to be pregnant and kicked out of school. “Fine. I’m at the park. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I stand up, and my stomach roils for a moment, and I’m sure I’m going to yak again. I clasp my hand over my mouth, but the feeling subsides quickly, and I walk away.

“Let’s go. Your dad is in charge of you now,” the mom says sharply to her kid.

My god, parents suck.

I’m going to suck so fucking soon.

* * *

My plan was to meet her at the door, hold out my hand and take the form. But then I had to pee, so mother nature won. Now I’m washing my hands in the hallway bathroom, and then I dry them on a soft, and surely expensive, lemon yellow hand towel.

When I return to the living room my mother waits for me, perched on the edge of her royal blue couch. Her eyes are red, like she hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s usually so sure of herself, but she’s clicking and unclicking the band on her watch, a strange little tic that tells me she’s not the Barb Coleman who conquers the world right now.

Still, I want to rip that nervous look off her face because I hate all that she did, all that she didn’t do. But then there’s a primordial part of me that longs for what we never had. That wishes I could drop down on the couch next to her, lay my head in her lap, and tell her that my life is about to change irrevocably. What should I do, Mom? She’d smooth my hair, offer some wisdom, and tell me she’d help me through it. That she’d be there, every step of the way.

“Can I have the form now?”

“Of course,” she says, reaching for it on the table and handing it to me. I grab a pen, spread out the form on a paperback from my purse, using it as a hard surface as I fill in the boxes while standing. I don’t want to sit down. That would imply I’m comfortable here. I’m not, and I never will be.

“Harley?”

“Yes?” I ask, glancing up from the boxes and blue ink.

Hope sneaks into her eyes, and nerves steal into her voice. “I’d like to try again.”

I shake my head, return to the form. “Mom. We’ve been there. I told you there’s no starting over.”

“I know. You did.” Click of the watchband. Unclick. Metal against metal. Like her and me. “And I’ve thought long and hard about what you said. And I’ve made a grave mistake.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, keeping my guard up as I finish filling in the last few boxes.

She sighs, and then clasps her hands together. “You were right,” she says, her lower lip quivering slightly. Barb Coleman is rattled. Call the presses. “You said I should have confronted Miranda about what she did to you. About the blackmail.”

“Yeah. You should have,” I say, jutting my chin out, reminding her of how she dismissed me so easily.

She nods several times. “I should have. I own up to that, Harley. I do. And I want to confront her now. To do everything I can to stop her from publishing that—” She stops, and it’s as if she can’t finish the sentence. She’s reached the part in her bizarre act of contrition that she can no longer stomach. “–that book.”

But I have no problem saying the name. “Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict.”

She winces, her nose crinkling. “Yes. That one.”

“So, you’re going to do what? An article on how she blackmailed a former call girl? Expose her?”

“What would you like me to do, darling? What would make you happy?”

Erasing one of those two pink lines would make me happy. We’re talking erupt into a tap-dancing, heel-clicking fool kind of delight. But while I used to care deeply about hiding her secrets and closeting all of my own, this book isn’t important anymore.

“You know would what would make me happy, Barb?”

She straightens her spine, sits up taller, a puppy dog wagging its tail for a treat. “What would make you happy, darling? Anything. Name it.”

“I would like to use your fax machine and send this in.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders fall, but she gestures to her office, and I head into it. I position the paper in the fax machine to send, but the light is flashing red. It needs ink. Typical. The woman can expose wrongdoings of any high-ranking public official, but god forbid she actually maintain the technology in her office.

I grab some toner from the cabinet, open the machine, remove the used toner, drop the old toner into the recycling box, and slide in the new one. I set the box on her desk, next to her laptop, but the box knocks the corner of the computer askew, exposing a vintage card the color of eggshell.

I quirk my eyebrows. It looks like a birthday card. My mom hasn’t had a birthday recently. But I have.

I don’t think twice about snooping. I want to know why there’s a card hidden under her laptop. I grab it, open it, and gasp when I see my name on the inside. Then I cover my mouth so I don’t make a sound as my eyes roam the words.

There’s no envelope. No return address. But this is a card from my grandparents, who had promised to send me a birthday card every year.

Who never did.

Who always did?

My hands shake as I slip the card inside my purse, tucking it into the inside pocket. I check it once, twice, three times, and then zip it up. I slide the form through the fax machine, tapping my foot, urging it along, waiting for the sent notice. Once it’s there I rip it out, leave my mom’s office, and nearly run for the door.

“Thanks for the fax machine,” I say.

“Darling, do you want to talk more about next steps? How I can make this right for you? Can I take you out to dinner? Chat over sushi?”

Her voice is static, a late-night radio background blur to the noise and chatter of the last twenty-four hours.

“Another time,” I say, and leave her behind.