Love to Love Her YAC (23 page)

“We’re friends,” I say. “I go to WSC as
well.” I look pointedly between the two of them. “And how about
you?” I ask.

Reggie opens his mouth to respond, but
Rhiannon answers before any sound comes out. “We practically grew
up together. Our parents are old friends.”

Reggie closes his mouth again and nods
slowly, studying me now in a way that’s similar to how I’ve been
scrutinizing him ever since he walked up. I can tell there’s more
to it than what’s in her tidy little response, but I don’t
push.

Reggie and Luke place orders with our
waitress while insisting Rhiannon and I go ahead and eat so our
food doesn’t get cold. “Do people still have to remind you to eat
like I used to?” asks Reggie as Rhiannon takes a tentative
bite.

“Not really,” she says through a sheepish
grin. His not-so-subtle allusion to a time when he was the one to
take care of her is almost more than I can take. I struggle to
convince myself that wasn’t some sort of stupid power play on his
part. Besides, Rhiannon isn’t the type of girl who likes to be
fawned over or looked after.
Maybe that’s why they didn’t
last
, I think to myself with an inward smirk.

The meal drags on for decades. Rhiannon and I
finish long before the guys, but the ditzy waitress doesn’t bring
our check until the last fork is on the table. “Here, at least let
me get yours,” says Reggie as he reaches for the bill. “It’s been
forever, it’s the least I can do.”
Is this guy a fucking
idiot
? I gape at him and look to Rhiannon for her reaction to
this absurdity.

“No no no,” she says. “You don’t owe me
anything. Seriously, Reg, I don’t want you to pay for it.” He
relents as she slaps her debit card down on the tray, and I’m stuck
wondering whether she would have let me pay for it.

Rhiannon – 8:00 PM

B
lake’s shoulders
are bunched in irritation or anger as we walk out of the
restaurant. He seems pissed about something bigger than the mere
fact of our surprise dinner companions.

Reggie gives me one final hug goodbye and
makes me promise to keep in touch before he and Luke start heading
in the opposite direction.

I blow out a pent up breath as I look back at
Blake. I’m reminded of the furrowed forehead and hard look in his
eyes that night at Solace when he saw me dancing with Andy. “I’m
sorry about that,” I say. “I didn’t mean for them to sit with us.
Reggie isn’t always the most tactful, and he’s hard to redirect
once he gets an idea in his head.”

His forehead smoothes out, and his shoulders
seem to incrementally relax. “Not a big deal,” he says in an
indifferent tone that belies the anxious set of his jaw.

We walk to his truck without speaking. He
remains quiet as he unlocks my door and takes my hand to help me up
into the cab. I can tell the gears are turning in his brain as he
skirts around the front of the truck and takes his seat behind the
wheel.

The engine rumbles to life as he rotates the
key in the ignition. He turns to look at me, one hand gripping the
steering wheel and the other covering the knob on the gearshift.
“Is there someplace we can go to talk?” he asks, his eyes
beseeching.

“Sure. Go up here to the next street and turn
right,” I tell him as I pull my seatbelt across.

I instruct Blake on how to get to Vesco City
Park. He noses into a parking spot by the skate park, which is now
deserted. The emptiness of the parking lot and stillness of the
trees might be disquieting if it wasn’t for Blake’s calming
presence. His hands and feet move in concert as he shifts and cuts
the ignition; the engine stills, and an all-consuming silence
settles over us.

I look over at Blake, but he isn’t looking
back at me. Instead he’s staring out the windshield at some point
on the distant horizon.

“You’re more than just old friends with that
guy, aren’t you?” he asks finally. His tone isn’t accusatory per
se, just curious.

I sigh, knowing there isn’t any point in
denying it. “Yes,” I reply. “He was my boyfriend throughout most of
high school. We broke up during our senior year.”

Blake nods, staring down at his hands as they
lay open against the steering wheel. The silence returns, and I
fidget uneasily in my seat.

“How did you know where to find me?” I decide
to start with an easy question.

“Spencer.”

I nod, shivering a little. It feels cooler
now that the heat isn’t blasting from the vents.

“I was really worried about you. I had no
idea where you went.” He looks at me, through me. “That night…It
wasn’t just nothing to me, you know? I couldn’t figure out why you
ran off.”

I cringe, knowing he’s right. “I’m sorry,” I
say for the third time tonight, wishing I didn’t always have to
fuck up so I wouldn’t have to say it as much. “I know I should have
called you. When my dad called after you left that morning all I
could think about was getting here to be with my sister. Then I
just…I don’t know, I needed time to think. You know?”

“Yeah, I do. I know we haven’t really talked
about it, but you should know Spencer told me what’s going on with
Tawny.”

I look away, desperate to keep the tears
burning at the back of my eyes from spilling out. I nod. “I figured
you knew.”

Blake reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“That’s part of why I came. You have a great family, and I knew you
weren’t going through it alone, but I couldn’t stand to stay and
just wait on you to come back, knowing you were here hurting.”

“It’s helped having you here,” I acknowledge,
still afraid to look at him, wishing I could rely on him as more
than a friend.

We’re quiet for a moment. I manage to compose
myself, breathing in and out deeply. I can sense Blake is waiting
for me, giving me however long I need. I feel inordinately grateful
to him in that moment, because time and quiet are two things most
people don’t know how to give, feeling instead like they have to
fill every pause with some pithy saying about faith or the will of
God.

“What’s the other part of why you came?” I
ask quietly. I can almost hear his words before he says
them…something like I’m a great girl and all, but what transpired
between us can never happen again.

“Jordan cheated on me,” he begins.
Well
that wasn’t what I was expecting
. My head snaps to look at him.
He winces at the distressing memory.

“Not recently,” he clarifies. “It was fifteen
months ago. With this guy named Max she used to work with.”

I turn my hand in his so I’m the one
squeezing his palm, encouraging him to go on.

“I was devastated when I found out. My knee
jerk reaction was to break up with her, and I did for a little
while.” He breathes out a long, injured sigh. “She begged me to
take her back, and eventually I did. I somehow convinced myself
that maybe I was the one to blame. I always knew the long distance
thing was going to be hard on us. I thought maybe I wasn’t being
attentive or trying hard enough. So I started going to visit her
more often, calling her more, that sort of thing. It was hard with
school and everything, but I thought it was important to try and
rebuild our trust, so I made an effort to go home at least once a
month—until lately…” His voice trails off and he looks at me, his
eyes smoldering in the white blaze of a nearby streetlamp.

“I haven’t been back once since I met you,”
he states. He chuckles lightly to himself and shakes his head as he
turns to face out the window, his hand still clasped in mine. “The
funny thing is, it didn’t even occur to me till recently. I started
realizing other things, too… Like the fact I can’t remember the
last time we said ‘I love you’…

…And I began to think it wasn’t all just a
coincidence.”

When Blake looks back at me, his eyes are
pleading with me to understand. “It’s over with her, Rhiannon,” he
whispers, holding my gaze without blinking. “It’s been over for a
long time.”

I’m dumbfounded. Suddenly I remember that I
haven’t taken a breath in what feels like about five minutes. My
lungs expand as the air rushes in to fill them, re-oxygenating my
brain so I can begin to think properly.

The damn tears are back, stinging at the
corners of my eyes. This time I don’t bother trying to choke them
back down. A thin sob escapes my lips without my permission, and I
jerk my hand free to bury my head in my hands, shaking my head.

Blake is at my side in a second, his arms
constricted around me, his hand gentle on the side of my face as he
tries to get me to look at him. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he says.
The anguish in his voice is unmistakable.

“I’ll never forgive myself,” I say miserably.
The tears seep into my mouth as my lips move, tasting of salt.
“Please believe me—I never, ever meant to come between you.”

“Rhiannon,
stop
. Stop it right now.”
The harshness of his voice startles me into silence. “Things are
bad between Jordan and me, do you understand? They have been for a
long time, since way before you came into the picture. You have to
listen to me, baby, okay? I did some things with you I shouldn’t
have, and I am willing to accept one hundred and ten percent of the
responsibility for that,
especially
if anything ever
happened that you weren’t comfortable with
.
But I am
absolutely
not
sorry about ending things with Jordan.”

I allow his words to sink in, trying to
believe them.

“Look at me,” he says.

Timidly I glance up. The look on his face is
intense, like he could start breathing fire at any moment.

“All that time I wasted…” he says, his voice
softer, more imploring. “I kept thinking I was doing the right
thing, giving her a second chance, working my ass off to make it
work. But where was her effort? Where was her commitment?”

These questions are clearly meant to be
rhetorical, so I stay quiet.

“I want you, Rhiannon. That’s what I came
here to tell you. I don’t just mean I want to have sex with you,
although I’ve thought a lot about that, too—hopefully that much
should be obvious by now. I mean I really, really
like
you.”
A smile starts in his eyes, crowding out the sadness that resided
there moments ago. “And I drove two hundred miles because I
couldn’t wait to finally tell you.”

Blake – 9:00 PM

T
he silence is
deafening, and it seems to stretch on for days. Rhiannon is looking
at me like she can’t decide if I’m full of shit, even though I
basically just served her my heart on a silver platter. Her
expression begins to change, running the gamut from calculating to
doubtful to cautious and finally to elated. She flushes with the
prettiest smile I’ve seen yet, and my heart breaks out into a full
gallop.

She looks as if she might say something but
then thinks better of it. Instead she swings her right leg over my
lap so she’s straddling me on her knees and plants a chaste kiss on
the tip of my nose. She draws back, peering down at me with dancing
eyes, and I surge forward to capture her lips. I tug on her full
bottom lip with my teeth, rolling it back and forth as I swipe my
tongue along the inside of her mouth, and she responds with a moan
as she reaches up to hold my face in her small hands.

She tangles her tongue with my own as she
lifts up a couple of inches off my lap before coming back down
again. She shifts against my erection, and I squeeze her hips to
anchor her in place. “Sit still, babe, okay?” I pant between
kisses. “I don’t think you want our first time to be in my
truck.”

She buries her head against my neck and
nibbles on my earlobe, causing another swell of yearning to break
loose within me. An involuntary growl escapes me and I lift her up
and swiftly reverse our positions so she’s pinned against the seat,
breathing heavily with a teasing smirk plastered across her face. I
ravage her neck with my tongue and lips before forcing myself to
slow down and cover her with gentle caresses that run chills up her
spine.

“Oh shit, Blake,” she breathes suddenly. I
shift away to look at her, silently begging her not to make me
stop. “It’s late—I told my parents we would just be gone to
dinner.”

“Seriously?” I ask her, blinking. “You have a
curfew?”

“Not really,” she sighs. I’m dismayed as I
watch her squirm out from beneath me and rake her fingers back
through her hair. “I just think they have enough to worry about.”
She glances up at me, implicitly pleading with me to
understand.

I let out a slow, deep exhale and nod in
resignation. “Okay, let’s get you home,” I say, feeling like a
teenager sneaking around with his girlfriend after curfew. I crank
the engine on the truck and start out toward Rhiannon’s parents’
house. Looking out now at the passing streets, with Rhiannon
sighing contentedly as she nuzzles up next to me, I feel an odd
sort of affection for this little desert town.

Rhiannon – 9:45 PM

T
he motion detector
light on the side of the house snaps on as Blake pulls in on the
far side of my car. The interior of the house is already dark
except for a dim light that streams from the kitchen. Blake removes
his key from the steering column, but neither of us moves. The only
sound is the pinging of the engine as it cools down. After a minute
the floodlight clicks back off, submerging us in the shadows of
night. The lack of sound and light gives the impression of being in
a black hole, robbed of all senses but touch.

When Blake’s hand closes around my thigh it
causes me to jump in surprise and him in turn to chuckle. My eyes
slowly begin to adjust to the darkness so I’m able to distinguish
Blake’s shadowed profile from the blackness of our surroundings,
but nothing more. My skin prickles, and my susceptibility to his
touch expands in the context of my inability to see.