Had To Be You (25 page)

And so was she.

“Matt, do you remember that night, a few months ago, when your parents went to that wedding in Rhode Island?”

He moved to sit upright on the bed, swinging his legs over until his feet were on the floor. Smiling, he reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together to draw her in close.

“You mean the one they got home from really, really late?” He eased her right down onto his lap as his voice lowered. “And no one else was home, leaving us very, very much alone?”

“That would be the one,” she agreed quietly. She nestled her head into the crook of his neck. He smelled like soap and sunshine and fresh air, the solid warmth of him surrounding her.

“Oh, I remember. Of course I remember,” he said, stroking his hand down her back. “If you’re in need of a little refresher, however, I’d be happy to help.”

Rory glanced down, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. Her hand was resting on his broad thigh and she slid it over, moving slightly closer to that soft bulge in his shorts. She knew his body, was familiar with it. She had touched all of him. But she still didn’t know what he felt like.

“This is more about what we didn’t do,” she explained. “And what we only talked about doing.”

Rory wasn’t sure if she only imagined his body going still beneath her.

“Do you?” she whispered, tentatively meeting his eyes. “Remember? Because you told me to tell you when I was ready—when I knew. That we didn’t have to talk about it again.” She held his gaze. “Well, I know now. And I’m telling you. I’m ready, Matt.”

His lips parted, lifting up at both corners, but amazingly enough he seemed to be at a complete loss for words. Another first.

Tentatively, he brought his hand to her face and gently touched his lips to hers before capturing her mouth in a slow, hot kiss. He broke away gradually, and his tongue wet his lips.

“Right now?”

“My mother is going to be home in like five minutes. No, not right now,” Rory replied in amused sarcasm and then softened as she nestled close, resting her cheek in the warm hollow of his neck. “Tonight, maybe?”

He ducked in to kiss her forehead. “Well, I was just going to suggest we go down the old port for pizza, but I guess that would be okay, too.”

She laughed softly as he gave her a tight squeeze and brought her back down onto the bed, rolling them over into another deep kiss. Outside the window, Rory heard a car turn into the driveway. Placing a hand on his chest for leverage, she broke away and sat up, quickly running her fingers through her hair to smooth it out.

She felt it was important to greet her mother in the kitchen, thereby removing all suspicion from her mind as to what they might be up to.

“Come on,” she said softly, giving his t-shirt a tug to drag him with her.

“Wait—hold on,” he replied, keeping his voice to the same muted tone as he grasped onto her hand.

Rory glanced back with a faint, curious grin.

Matt sat up at the edge of the bed with her, and gently smoothed his hand down the back of her hair. His eyes drifted over her face with just a touch of amazement.

“You really want this?”

“Yes,” she insisted quietly. “Don’t you?”

“Eh, I could take it or leave it, really.”

Rory only rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she moved to stand from the bed.

Matt quickly followed, catching her one last time before she left the room. He pulled her back against his solid chest, wrapping one arm around her waist to ease her into his warm embrace, his other hand smoothing a slow path down her tummy in an unexpectedly intimate caress that nearly stopped her breath.

He bowed his head, and she shivered as he whispered in her ear.

“You’re the only thing I’ve ever really wanted in my whole life.”

***

Some mornings you wake to a cloudless blue sky, a warm summer breeze drifting in to gently coax you from slumber with the promise of a new day. Slowly, you open your eyes to those first golden rays of sunshine and think…
“Oh, fuck no.”

It was one of those kind of days for Matt O’Shea.

Rolling from bed, his liquor-ravaged stomach lurched with the sudden movement, the throbbing in his temples escalating to the pounding of a jackhammer as he stood upright. It apparently hadn’t been enough to be pleasantly drunk all evening, so he had to go and get ugly wasted at the end of the night.

He briefly flirted with the idea of flinging himself over the balcony railing of his bedroom loft to end it all, but then surmised the fall would probably only bruise or break him and not finish him off.

Entering the shower, he practically whimpered in pain when the sharp, jetting spray first hit his skin. The steam rising carried leftover fumes of alcohol mixed with the stench of stale cigar smoke, which caused him to feel a bit nauseated and lightheaded.

Maybe he could just drown in here. Don’t most accidents happen in the home?

He stepped out onto the cold ceramic tile floor, head bowed as rivulets of water ran down from his soaked hair, he stopped to consider the possibly of slipping and—if all went well—hopefully cracking his skull open. He had to admit, however, there was a certain indignity in being found dead naked, in your own bathroom.

Towel slung around his waist, he trudged back upstairs to his bedroom to pull a shirt from his closet, his fingers fumbling with the buttons. Sadly, even though whatever part of his brain controlled dexterity had been impaired, all other parts remained fully intact and functional, his memory of the previous evening’s events as clear as the sky outside his window. He closed his eyes on a miserable sigh, leaning to rest his weight against the doorframe.

This couldn’t be happening.
Not now
.

After dressing, he found his way to the kitchen to down half a bottle of Gatorade. Death by dehydration might be a little too agonizing and, more importantly, there were no guarantees as to how long it would take. Time was of the essence here.

Glancing at the clock, he groaned softly and searched around until he located his wallet and keys. Slamming the door shut behind him, he jogged down the stairs and stepped out onto the already busy sidewalk crowded with tourists and pedestrian traffic. Traveling the three or four blocks to the bar, he thought about how, in cartoons, grand pianos were always randomly falling from buildings to crush people on the sidewalk below (and why he couldn’t be that lucky).

Keeping his head low, he breezed past the deck patio, passing by the main bar to make a beeline for his back office, mercifully spared from having to say hello to anyone. Closing the door behind him, he walked over to his desk to slump into the swivel chair. Muttering a few quiet curse words, he leaned forward to drop his head into his arms.

Hearing a knock on the door a moment later, he lifted his head from his desk.

“Yeah?”

Casey poked her nose in, obviously using some restraint in her knowing smile.

“How are you feeling today?”

Matt had to admit that was an interesting question. After only a couple hours of sleep, so hung-over that his eyeballs felt like they were ripped from their sockets, dipped in acid, and then shoved back inside his skull, just starting what was probably going to be at least a fourteen-hour work day, while all he could hear, repeating over and over and over in his head, was the girl he had been in love with for his entire life telling him that she finally wanted to be with him, exactly six days before he was set to marry someone else—well, how could everything
not
be okay?

He tried to rub the guilt and remorse from his weary eyes.

“Everything’s just great,” he muttered sarcastically.

She narrowed her eyes. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Can you just give me a minute here?” he replied. “And close the door? Thanks.”

Casey looked concerned, but then nodded and did as he said. Matt only sat there a while longer until he finally heaved his body up to stand.

Jerry was setting up behind the bar.

“Coffee?” he asked, sizing him up in a single glance.

As Matt’s stomach felt like it was tied up in knots, he shook his head, wincing inwardly at the mere effort. That was nothing, however, compared to the sudden, stabbing pain he felt inside his gut only moment later when he spotted Amanda outside, marching up to the front entrance with her mother, aunt, and cousin trailing behind. Why hadn’t he just killed himself when he had the chance?

He smiled weakly as she came through the doors, his voice small and strained.

“Amanda…hey.”

“Hi,” she replied with a rather tight smile, and lifted up to give him a light peck on the cheek. “
You still smell like beer
,” she hissed softly into his ear.

The relatives stayed behind outside, lingering in the sunshine near the harbor side deck. Matt glanced past her to lift his hand, offering them all a feeble greeting through the big front windows, which they returned in kind. Still, he was unable to shake the feeling he somehow faced a firing squad—granted, one that looked more like it was dispatched from Mary Kay than the military.

“And you need a shave.” Amanda added, although this time she seemed to temper it with some begrudging amusement.

“Woke up late,” he mumbled with an uncertain chuckle, rubbing his hand over the dark stubble.

He was suddenly unable to look her in the eye, like it was some kind of betrayal when he all he could hear was someone else’s voice in his head.

“So, how was it?” she asked.

“Ah, it was okay.”

“Well, we’re in a rush this morning. Did you leave your apartment unlocked?”

Matt only furrowed his brow in confusion.

She touched her hand to her forehead, and his stomach sank to notice a hint of distress in the gesture. “Matt, I was planning on moving some of my things in today. That’s why everyone is here to help. Don’t you even remember? We
just
talked about all this the other day.”

He desperately scrambled for footing, some recent recollection to latch onto and bring it to the front of his memory, pushing all the rest to the back. It was no use, however, his mind was already so overcrowded with the past.

“Look, I really didn’t want to bring this up right now, or right here,” Amanda continued. “But I talked to my brother this morning.” She paused to hold his gaze, and the wounded look of doubt in her eyes hurt worse than his hangover. “He told me what he saw when he got there, Matt. Do you want to explain to me what your ex-girlfriend was doing at your bachelor party? Or why you were all alone with her out on the beach?”

A reasonable question, yet it was one that Matt didn’t quite have a good answer for. “She’s staying at Danny and Kevin’s. You know that. It’s right down the beach from there. She came with Lindsay, Bobby’s girlfriend,” he offered lamely, as if that might explain everything. “They just stopped by to say hi.”

Her voice crested sharply with disbelief. “At one o’clock in the morning?”

Matt only lowered his eyes to the ground, wishing for an act of God to just come along and smite him—that he could be smote. Wait, or would that be smitten? No, that didn’t sound right at all. That only sounded like something that would get him into even deeper shit.

“And, while we’re on the subject,
why
is she even still at your brothers’ house?” Amanda persisted. “Didn’t you say she was going back to New York?”

“Did I say that?” Matt frowned, scratching at his temple, really wishing he could hire someone to take inventory and stock of his brain at this moment and get everything filed away in its appropriate spot. “Because I—”

“Matt, what’s going on?” Amanda suddenly interrupted in a deadly serious tone. She almost sounded scared to hear his answer.

He swallowed nervously, terrified to give it. “Nothing.”

“Why were you out on the beach with her? I want the truth. And I want to hear it from you.”

He realized the futility of any further attempts to talk his way out of this, especially since he was doing such a bang-up good job thus far.

“We were talking,” he said. “I was talking to Rory on the beach. We stepped outside for some air, and we talked.”

“Just you and her? Alone at that hour?” Her eyebrows now formed a thin peak of skepticism. “And you want me to believe that nothing was going on. That it was purely innocent? What were you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling sick again. “Stuff.”

“
Stuff
?” It was as if she’d managed to divide the word into several different syllables, each one filled equally with the sound of disgust.

“It was nothing.”

“I don’t know if I believe you.” Amanda shook her head as she turned to leave. “I’m not even sure I know who you are anymore.”

“Amanda, wait…”

She left the bar without even glancing back, her cousin pausing just long enough to shoot him a fairly withering look of contempt.

Jerry came up to stand next to him, watching them walk away.

“She seemed pretty pissed off.”

“Ya think?”

“Eh—women, right? What are you gonna do?”

Matt glanced after Jerry as he walked away, asking himself the very same question.

SEVENTEEN

Rory tried to steady her trembling hands as she haphazardly shoved her clothes into the tiny suitcase, futilely trying to squeeze shut the cover before finally realizing that she’d acquired more while here than she originally packed.

She started to tug some things out, but gasped in dismay as she pulled too hard and heard a small ripping sound, her favorite shirt catching on the latch. She regarded the jagged tear with stinging eyes before fisting it into a ball and angrily tossing it into the nearby wastebasket.