Everything Nice (4 page)

Her eyes drifted closed as she felt herself being lifted from the floor of the shower. She heard the water turn off and the murmur of two deep voices beside her although she was too exhausted to understand the words. Soft sheets and a fluffy pillow were the last things she remembered as she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Four

Allie tiptoed into Alex’s kitchen, praying she would find coffee there. She was not a morning person and without her jumpstart of java, she was absolutely useless. She’d been pleased to wake and discover herself smack-dab in the middle of two lovely men. Lucky thing Alex owned a king-sized bed. She’d carefully extricated herself from between them, thrown on one of Alex’s T-shirts and left
them
sound asleep. Poor babies looked exhausted. She giggled as she recalled the hottest shower she’d ever taken in her life then marveled over the fact they hadn’t even had actual sex yet.

She was humming softly to herself and quietly sipping her second cup of coffee when she felt someone’s gaze on her. She glanced up to find Charlie, dressed in nothing but his dress pants from the previous night, leaning in the doorway, watching her. She fought back the instinct to drool at his six-pack abs.

“Why did you run off with Jim Griffin?” he asked.

“Where the hell did that question come from?” Allie was shocked by Charlie’s conversation topic.

“Why, Allie?”

She looked at his face and saw such a perfect mixture of sadness and
confusion,
she wasn’t sure how to respond. She shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“He was old enough to be your father. Hell, he was your father’s friend. One minute you’re happy at home and the next minute you’re gallivanting all over the world with the guy. What the hell
was
he to you?”

Allie took a deep breath, trying to calm her suddenly racing heart. How could she explain her decision without hurting his feelings, without seeming like a selfish, heartless bitch?

“Charlie, I was never happy at home. You know that.”

He scowled at her response and she knew he was remembering the night he’d caught her running away.

“You seemed happy to me once your mother started to recover.
Did a pretty good impersonation of it.

“How the hell do
you
know if I was happy or not?”
She couldn’t contain the sudden anger at his words. “You weren’t here, Charlie. You were off at college, drinking your way through fraternity parties and fucking yourself silly with sorority sisters. You weren’t here. You have no idea how I felt.”

Charlie’s own fury escaped and he shouted at her, frustration clear in every word. “Was I supposed to be here? Is that what you wanted? We weren’t dating. We weren’t a couple. Shit, you were still in high school!”

She shook her head, cursing herself for her harsh words. He didn’t deserve her anger.

“No. You were exactly where you were supposed to be. I’m just saying that you can’t stand here and try to tell me that I was happy. Unless you have some mind-reading ability that I don’t know about, you really have no idea how I felt.”

Charlie shrugged and nodded. “So you were unhappy. That doesn’t explain Griffin.”

Allie grinned guiltily and shrugged. “I guess you could say he saved me.”

Charlie turned away from her, crossing the room to pour
himself
a cup of coffee, and she could see from the stiffness in his shoulders that her answer had clearly pissed him off. “Saved you from what?” he muttered so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“From myself.
From my restlessness, my recklessness.
I don’t think I can put this into words that you’ll understand.”

“Try,” he said, turning back to face her. His anger seemed to have faded as quickly as hers and she could see he was willing to hear her out, regardless of the fact he might not like what she was going to say.

“I’m not like Ginny,” she said softly. “She’s a homebody and a creature of comfort. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, Ginny never blinked twice at the thought of giving up college and staying home to help take care of her.” Allie took a deep breath, her next words too painful to admit. “I didn’t. I wish I’d been able…”

“You didn’t feel the same,” Charlie finished for her, walking to the table and reaching over to take her hand in his.

“I’m a terrible daughter. A horrible person, I know that.” Allie swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and tried to blink away the tears filling her eyes.

“No you’re not.”

“Oh please, don’t bother saying any differently. My mother was dying of cancer and all I could think of was escaping, getting the hell away from here.”

“So you’ll never be a nurse,” Charlie teased, and Allie smiled at his jest.

“It was more than running from my mother’s disease. I had this fire inside me, this ache that wouldn’t go away. I was so afraid that I would never see more than the twenty square miles of this shithole town and that I’d die of old age in my parents’ house. Hell, I was terrified I’d die in my childhood bedroom surrounded by fucking posters of Leonardo
DiCaprio
and Brad Pitt.”

“Don’t forget New Kids on the Block,” Charlie joked. “I seem to recall you had an abundance of those guys hanging on your walls.”

Allie laughed. “Don’t remind me. Oh Charlie, there was just so much I wanted to see, to do…to experience.”

“And you couldn’t do that if you were tied to home. But your mother—”

“Recovered,” Allie finished. “Yes, she did. Her cancer went into remission and all was well with the world. Problem was, I’d graduated from high school, taken a shitty job as a waitress and I was still consumed by this damn impatience that told me there was more to life, more to see.”

“So what happened?”

“I was waiting tables at the diner. Jim had become a regular customer after his wife died and we spent a lot of time talking about our lives, our ambitions. It’s strange how much we had in common given the fact my life was really just starting while his seemed to be winding down. One night we started listing all the things we wanted to see, things we wanted to do before we died. We ended up talking until the diner closed. Turned out we shared the same sort of wanderlust. Next thing I know, Jim decided to make our dreams a reality. He offered me a job. I took it and, well…you know the rest.” She stumbled over her half-truth, fully aware of how much of the tale she’d omitted.

“No, I don’t know,” Charlie said shortly. “According to Ginny, you were his personal assistant, but since he didn’t have a damn job, what
exactly
were you assisting him with?”

Allie could tell from his tone what he was thinking—and she couldn’t refute his claims.

“Do you want to know if I slept with Jim?” she asked hotly. “Yeah, Charlie, I did.
So there.
Are you happy? Did you get the nitty-gritty details you were looking for?”

“Your father—” he started.

“Would blow a gasket if he ever found out about the sex,” she interrupted. “And yeah, he wasn’t too thrilled with one of his friends dragging his youngest daughter through what he called ‘Jim’s midlife crisis’ at first either. But after a while he stopped worrying about it and just accepted it.”

“Christ, Allie. He was too old for you.”

“Who says? Why does age make a difference—or anything else, for that matter? It’s what’s on the inside that counts, the rest is just wrapping paper.”

He shook his head, his look a perfect combination of frustration and anger. “Were you sleeping with him when you left?” he asked.

“No, I wasn’t. Shit, Charlie, what’s with this third degree? You got the answer you were looking for. I fucked Jim Griffin—loads of times. So what? And you
wanna
know something else? I loved it. I loved
him
!”

She sucked back a breath at the sobs threatening to consume her. She’d missed Jim terribly since his passing, but she felt strongly that grief was a private thing and there was no way she’d break down in front of Charlie, despite her anger over the third degree.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, pulling her up and enveloping her in his embrace. His compassion and the genuine sorrow in his voice caught her unaware and she felt the tears she’d kept locked away since Jim’s death break free.

“Damn you,” she said as she tried to stop crying. “Why does any of this matter? Why bring up all this ancient history?”

“It’s my fault.” Alex’s voice drifted to them from across the room.

Allie jerked out of Charlie’s embrace, surprised to find Alex in the doorway. Like Charlie, he’d only half dressed and was wearing a pair of tatty jeans. How long had he been listening to their conversation?

“What?” she asked.

“It was my fault you left. I pressured you that night by the bonfire, Allie. You were still young and I asked you for way more than you were ready to give,” Alex replied.

“What did you say that night?” Charlie asked, and Allie could feel the walls closing in on them.
The happiness of the previous night vanishing with the accusations, the jealousy, the suspicions.
How could they have fallen so far, so fast? When she’d woken up this morning, she’d felt years younger and lighter than air. She hated drudging through the past, especially when none of it mattered.

“He said he wanted a ménage. Between the three of us,” Allie replied. “But that’s
not
why I left town.”

“Sure it’s not,” Alex answered sarcastically.

Allie raised her eyebrows at him and grinned. “I wanted both of you even then, Alex. I really did. But
dammit
, I knew what would happen if I gave in to that desire.”

“What would have happened?” Alex asked, and she sensed he was relieved by her words, if not wholly convinced.

“I would have stayed. I would have ended up in bed with both of you and it would have been wonderful and terrible at the same time.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“Because I had too much I wanted to experience, to do. I wanted you, but if I’d given in to the attraction, the passion, I would never have gone off on my own. I would have let myself be sucked into your lives and I would still be working in that damn diner and dreaming of far-off places and reckless adventures. Staying here would have killed me.”

“We would have taken you places, Allie. Let you experience all those things.” Charlie’s words were sincere, yet Allie couldn’t help the laugh of disbelief that flew from her lips.

“Ha! If I’d told you I wanted to bungee jump off a bridge, Charlie, what would you have said?”

His eyebrows furrowed and she watched him struggle to give her an honest answer. “I’d have said it was too dangerous.”

She giggled at his response and leaned forward to kiss him gently on the cheek. “That’s
exactly
what you would have said, and I would have respected your feelings and chances are very good I would have skipped the bungee jumping even though I desperately wanted to try it. How do you feel about skydiving?”

Alex growled. “I would have let you go, but I would have strapped you to me.”

Allie laughed at his confession. “I went solo several times and it was exhilarating.”

“Don’t say any more,” Charlie said quickly. “I have more than enough gray hair from just hearing Ginny read your letters over the years. I don’t think I
wanna
hear firsthand accounts of every reckless, crazy, insane thing you did.”

Allie shook her head, grinning. “I didn’t think any of those things were insane. And I wouldn’t change one second of the past six years.”

“So Griffin let you do all that stuff?” Alex asked.

“I’d known Jim my whole life. He and my dad were good friends, but he changed after his wife died. They were married thirty years and he’d spent the majority of his life working and accumulating a ridiculous pile of money. When Charlotte died, he realized he’d wasted all those years they’d spent together, worrying about trivial things like the mortgage and his firm, not enjoying their life together, their love.

“After we talked that night at the diner, he wanted to see some of those dreams fulfilled and he wanted to give me the opportunity to enjoy them while I was young. So he sold his business and his house, bought the fancy sports car he’d always wanted and we hit the open road.”

“
And
the bedroom,” Charlie added. Allie could detect the slightest bit of resentment in his voice.

“We turned out to be kindred spirits in so many ways…and he really
did
hire me initially to be his personal assistant. At the time we’d left town, he’d been on his own for nearly a year. He was tired of being alone. It was my job to make the arrangements for hotels, airline tickets and so on and, in exchange, he paid the bills.”

“Christ, I can understand why you called it a dream job in your letters to Brooks,” Alex admitted.

“It would have definitely been a hard offer to turn down, and my position with Jim, our relationship, was perfectly platonic the first few years,” Allie continued. “But it was hard not to love him. He was handsome, charming,
intelligent
.”

“You fell in love with him,” Charlie said softly, but Allie shook her head.

“No, I don’t think I did. I loved him dearly, but I wasn’t
in love
with him and he wasn’t in love with me. His heart belonged to Charlotte—always.” She took a deep breath and decided if they were after truth, she’d give it all to them. “We had sex, but our relationship wasn’t exclusive and he certainly wasn’t the only man I slept with these past six years.”

Charlie and Alex’s heads popped up at her words and Allie struggled to fight down her laugh. “Jesus, can you guys say ‘double standard’? Have you both been choirboys your whole lives? Living chaste, pure lives and never touching women?”

Alex shrugged guiltily and Allie knew she’d scored a point.

Charlie continued to scowl. “I don’t want to know about your past love affairs,” he barked.
“Makes me want to kill every man who’s ever looked at you.”

“Including Alex?” she asked teasingly. Her question seemed to rock Charlie despite the fact she’d meant it as a joke.

“No,” he admitted. “Not Alex.”

His words were spoken quietly and Allie could sense his confusion about the emotions his best friend seemed to evoke in him. She prayed she could help them both over the enormous hurdle they were facing. She had been in love with Charlie Anderson since she was in elementary school, and her feelings for Alex had definitely grown into more than mere friendship once they’d reached adulthood.