Until Now (17 page)

Missed dinner
.
Nice young man
. I sat up.
Shit
. It was Sunday. I’d slept through dinner at the Monahan’s, and I hadn’t even called to say I wasn’t coming. And now Ryan was here, checking on me like the nice young man he was. Or maybe he was here to yell at me. And I looked and felt like death warmed over, twice.

“Be right down,” I told Steve, who nodded and disappeared. I got out of bed and bolted to the bathroom, not bothering to change out of my wrinkled work clothes. I brushed my teeth and washed my face in record speed, then combed my tangled hair. It would have to do.

Downstairs, I found Ryan in the foyer, stroking Leo’s golden fur and chatting with Steve about the bookstore. They all looked up as I approached, my eyes trained on Ryan’s face, gauging his mood. He met my gaze and smiled, but it was thin. Mechanical. Uh oh.

“Let’s sit out on the porch,” I said, taking his arm and leading him toward the door. If he was going to tell me off for all the shit I’d pulled in the past twenty-four hours, I’d rather he did it out of hearing range of Taylor’s family.

“What happened to you?” Ryan asked once we’d settled on the porch swing, facing the street. “We waited for you at dinner but you never showed up.”

I inhaled slowly, catching the scent of fresh cut grass and barbecue. It was a beautiful evening, warm and still, but I felt too anxious to enjoy it. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep when I got home from work and didn’t wake up until ten minutes ago.”

He studied my face for a moment, as if searching for signs of deception. I could imagine him looking at his ex-wife in the exact same way. “Really?” he said. “Is that the only reason?”

I stared back at him, confused. Okay, so he wasn’t angry. Nicole hadn’t told him about seeing me with Cody. He didn’t feel insulted that I’d missed dinner and didn’t call. The expression on his face was
concern
. He thought
he’d
done something wrong. “I fell asleep,” I told him. “That’s all.”

He sat back, making the swing move slightly. “Okay. I just thought…I wondered if Friday night freaked you out or something.”

My mind flashed back to that night, the weight of his body against mine on the green couch, his warm hands on my skin, leaving imprints of fire wherever they went. “No,” I said, relief washing through me. “Definitely not.”

His face relaxed and he took my hand, weaving his fingers through mine. “It’s too bad you missed dinner,” he said, smiling for real now. “Nicole brought her new girlfriend.”

“Oh?” Another wave of relief. He definitely didn’t know that his sister and I had crossed paths last night. “What’s she like?”

“Quiet. Nice. The opposite of Nic, basically.”

I laughed. “Did your parents like her?”

“Yeah.” He brought our entwined hands up to his mouth and brushed his lips across my knuckles. “But they like you more.”

I felt it again, that hard, shameful twinge in my gut. The same twinge I’d felt last night in the filthy bathroom stall, when I sat crying over all the bad things in my life, and then again over all the good things that I didn’t deserve. Like Jane. And Ryan. And the twins. Everything always came down to Drake and Lila, how much I missed them, how lost I felt without them, the giant void they’d left behind that I kept trying to fill with all the wrong things. The nagging fear that it would always stay empty.

“Hey,” Ryan said softly. He swept his thumb across my cheek, smearing a tear that had escaped. “What’s wrong?”

I turned away, drying my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Nothing,” I said, my voice cracking. “It’s just…the twins. I missed their birthday party. ”

Ryan was silent for a moment, digesting this. “It was today?” he asked. When I nodded, he added, “Did you get to talk to them, at least?”

I made a scoffing sound. “Yeah, right. I no longer exist.”

“You do to them,” he said.

For some reason, this made me feel a little better. I still existed to the twins, in spite of what the grandparents said or did. I looked back at Ryan, my eyes brimming with fresh tears. “I miss them so much.”

He reached for me, pulling me against his chest. I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight, my cheek resting just under his collarbone. “I can’t even imagine,” he said, stroking my hair, smoothing it behind my ear. “If Mason was suddenly taken from me like that…” He cleared his throat, the reverberation of it echoing through his chest. “I mean, he’s…everything. Losing him would destroy me.”

I nodded, because that was exactly how it felt. Like being destroyed. Shattered beyond repair.

“I definitely wouldn’t be handling it as well as you are,” he went on, planting a soft, admiring kiss on the top of my head.

There was nothing I could say to that, at least nothing that wasn’t a lie. So I kept quiet and pushed my bare foot against the porch railing, making us swing.

I made it through Wednesday, the twins’ actual birthday, by sheer force of will. And not
my
will, either.

“Here,” Taylor said, shoving a jumbo bag of popcorn into my arms while Michael passed me a bucket-sized cup of Diet Coke.

“You guys can’t expect me to eat all this,” I said, juggling the items in my arms as we moved away from the concession stand. “Is your goal tonight to make me vomit?”

“No,” Taylor said, like I should have known what the goal was tonight. Which I did. I’d figured it out the minute she and Michael showed up at Bay Street a few minutes before my shift ended and asked if I wanted to go out for dinner. Knowing they weren’t about to take no for an answer, I’d agreed. Now, after stuffing me with Southern barbecue and chocolate peanut butter pie at Smokehouse, they were now trying to distract me even further with a movie and massive amounts of popcorn.

Oh well. I guess this was better than what I’d originally planned to do after work, which was head back to the Brogans’ house, take a few Tylenol PMs, and cry myself to sleep.

The movie they’d chosen involved a lot of action and fight scenes, a guaranteed diversion from my troubles. During the end credits, I turned my cell phone back on and saw that I had a text from Ryan.

Doing ok?

I felt myself smiling. He’d been checking in with me all week, making sure I was okay and not spiraling toward a mental breakdown.
Yeah
, I texted back.
At movies with Taylor and Michael.

Good
. A long pause followed, then:
We still on for Saturday?

I felt a nudge on my leg and looked up. Taylor and Michael were standing in the aisle, peering down at me, waiting for me to get up so we could leave. Oops. I sent a quick
yes
to Ryan, gathered my still-full trash bag of popcorn, and got to my feet.

“Who was that?” Taylor asked, giving me an assessing look. Whatever she saw in my expression made her grin and say, “It was him, right? The…um, Ryan?”

I nodded, stifling a snort. She’d been about to say “DILF,” but she couldn’t very well call a guy that in front of her boyfriend. But Michael, ever observant, caught the slip.

“
The
Ryan?” he said, holding the theater door open for us. “Did he turn into an inanimate object?”

“Robin has that kind of power over men,” Taylor said, nudging me. It thrilled her that I’d gotten friendly with Ryan. He’d brought me pink roses, after all, and was clearly a Nice Guy.

“You’d be nuts not to go for it,” she’d told me the day after the Masino Ristorante fake-date, when I’d called to give her the scoop. “He’s so cute, and even your names sound good together.”

I’d laughed. If only that was all it took to make a relationship thrive.

“When are you seeing him again?” Taylor asked now as we crossed the lobby to the street exit.

“Saturday. We’re having dinner.” I didn’t want to say
where
we were having dinner, or what we’d probably do
after
having dinner, but Taylor had an uncanny talent for picking up on my unsaid words.

“Sounds like fun,” she said, shooting Michael a soppy, private look that I didn’t even want to decipher. Going by their expressions, and the way they gravitated closer to each other, I assumed they were remembering
their
first time together.

“Yep,” I said loudly, trying to jolt them out of their little flashback moment before I really did vomit. “Looking forward to it.”

Taylor tore her gaze away from Michael to smile at me, and I knew she’d heard these unspoken thoughts too: I wasn’t just “looking forward to it.” Saturday, along with work and sleep and the kindness of friends, was getting me through the week.

* * *

Luckily I didn’t have to work on Saturday, because Wade would’ve chewed me out for sure. From the time I rolled out of bed at eight, I was completely useless. My nerves jangled and I couldn’t sit still for longer than a minute. This was ten times worse than the anxiety I’d felt before the fake date two weeks ago. Because regardless of what happened tonight, just dinner or dinner plus more, this was definitely a date, and definitely real.

I knew exactly where Ryan and Mason lived. The L-shaped, four-floor apartment building was just off the first exit for Oakfield and visible from the highway. I’d driven past it dozens of times since it was built a few years ago.

But tonight I wasn’t driving past it. I was flicking on my turn signal, veering onto the exit ramp, and pulling my car into a space that said Visitor Parking. Then I was stepping into the building’s air conditioned main entrance. And pressing the button next to Ryan’s name. And walking up a short flight of stairs to the second floor, turning left, and coming to a stop in front of door number 208. I did all of this almost mechanically, like my body had taken over for my reeling, disconnected brain.

Ryan swung open the door before I could even knock and greeted me with his most disarming smile. And the moment I saw him, standing there in his perfectly-fitting jeans with his jaws shadowed with stubble and those Bradley Cooper eyes sparkling at the sight of me, everything in me unravelled. He was just
Ryan
, the guy who sat next to me at his parents’ dinner table every Sunday and made terrible Lego horses and shared his chocolate stash with me. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and smiled back.

“Hey,” he said, slightly breathless, like he’d sprinted for the door. “Come on in.”

I stepped inside, inhaling his familiar scent as I brushed past. He must have showered when he got home from work, because instead of smelling like soap, books, and chocolate, he just smelled like soap. Not that I minded. Nothing, not even the most expensive colognes, could beat the unadulterated scent of clean male.

“Have you been cooking?” I asked, sniffing the air as he led me through the apartment. It was small, but bigger than Taylor and Michael’s and definitely more modern with its sleek dark floors and big windows. There was a balcony off the living room, and a full eat-in kitchen with white cupboards and new-looking appliances. Pictures and drawings and colorful magnetic letters covered the surface of the fridge. The place felt…homey. Like his parents’ house.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, moving over to the stove. “I’ve been at it all afternoon. Left work early and everything.” He glanced back at me, grinning. “Hope you’re not expecting gourmet. I’m no expert when it comes to cooking, but I
can
do a basic tomato sauce. Mom made sure we knew enough not to starve or live off ramen noodles before sending us off into the real world.”

I hung my purse over the back of a kitchen chair. “See, basic tomato sauce to me comes in a jar with the word
Ragu
on the label.”

He laughed. “Me too, usually. But for you I wanted to put in the effort.”

My face felt warm, and it wasn’t from the steam in the kitchen. No guy had ever cooked dinner for me before, and very few had bothered to “put in the effort” when it came to anything. As I watched Ryan at home here in his kitchen, stirring and taste-testing and adjusting burner knobs, I suddenly felt a rush of affection for him so thick that I couldn’t stop myself from going over, wrapping my arms around his waist, and hugging him from behind.

“Thanks,” I whispered, pressing my cheek to his shoulder. I could see his smile out of the corner of my eye.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “I think I need to make you spaghetti more often.”

I bit his shoulder lightly and then let him go. If we stayed pressed together like that much longer, dinner would be ruined.

Leaving him to his sauce, I wandered into the living room, inspecting everything just like I’d done in his childhood bedroom. This space, however, was much less spacious and easier to examine, since it mostly consisted of a couch, chair, TV, and several toys that had likely trickled out from Mason’s bedroom. I sat down on the cozy gray couch and picked up the detached plastic arm of some sort of green action figure from the cushion beside me. I twisted around to set it on the end table beside me and almost let out a scream. There, mounted on the table between the couch and the window, was a silver cage containing a large, fluffy, orange and white rodent. And it was staring at me, its beady little eyes steady on my face like it was contemplating bloodshed.

“Um,” I called out, not taking my eyes off it. “Who’s this?”

“Who’s what?” Ryan replied from the kitchen. “Oh, you mean the guinea pig? She belongs to Mason. Her name is Tyrone.”

“
Her
name is Tyrone?”

“Mason’s obsessed with
Backyardigans
and watches it on Netflix all the time. His favorite character on the show is this orange moose named Tyrone. The guinea pig is definitely a female, but Mason didn’t care. So Tyrone she is.”

I stuck one finger into the cage and wiggled it at the guinea pig, who remained unimpressed. The twins would’ve loved this thing. They also would’ve loved watching
Backyardigans
with Mason. It was one of their favorites too.

Shaking off the reminder of them, I got up and went back to the kitchen. Ryan turned to look at me.

“I think this is ready,” he said, and then he started to move past me, presumably to get plates out of the cupboard or something. But I reached out and stopped him, placing my hands on his forearms and my face inches from his. He gazed down at me, his throat moving as he swallowed. It was sweet torture, not kissing him first, but I liked it when he took the lead. So I waited, his warm breath fanning across my forehead, until he weaved his fingers into my hair, tilted my head back, and closed his mouth over mine.

Knowing we were alone, with no kids around to interrupt and no crackhead thieves nearby to break in and murder us, gave our kissing an almost frantic edge. He pressed me against the counter, knocking what sounded like a glass dish into the sink beside us. We barely noticed, intent as we were on exploring as much bare skin as possible without actually removing any clothing. I slid both hands under his shirt, greedily touching all the places I’d missed during our last make out session at the bookstore. The dips and curves of his chest. The hard ridges of his spine. The smooth skin on his stomach. I couldn’t get enough of him.

A while later, when we came up for air, the room seemed significantly darker.

“It’s probably sticky,” Ryan said, removing his hand from the back of my jeans.

I sputtered out a cough. “What?”

“The pasta. It’s probably all clumpy and sticky by now. Inedible.”

“
Oh
. The pasta.” Kissing him had clearly fried my brain. “I don’t care.”

“But shouldn’t we…fill up?” Smiling, he leaned in to nibble on my earlobe.

Oh God. I wanted to be filled up, all right, but not with food. On the other hand, he
had
gone to a lot of trouble. I heaved a sigh and stepped back. “I suppose.”

Dinner itself barely registered beyond the tastiness of the sauce and how hot Ryan looked in the muted light of the kitchen. If not for those two perks, I would have been perfectly happy eating ramen noodles or even skipping dinner altogether.

“Sorry I don’t have any wine to go with this,” he said at one point. “I rarely have any alcohol around. Habit, I guess, from living with Chelsea.”

“It’s okay,” I said, both to halt any conversation about his ex-wife and also because I didn’t
want
any wine. I never felt like drinking around him, especially not tonight, when I felt drunk enough already with lust and anticipation.

“Should we clean this up or…?” I said once we’d finished eating. I was just the right amount of full.

“Nah. Let’s leave it.” He stood up, holding out a hand for me to take. “I want to show you my room.”

I laughed as he hauled me to my feet. “I’ve heard that line before,” I teased. “No way am I falling for it a second time.”

He drew me toward him, kissing me, and all of a sudden my nervousness returned with a vengeance. My body must have stiffened up in response, because Ryan pulled back and looked at me. “You okay? We don’t have to go in my room, you know. We can stay out here and clean up. Or we can go in the living room and watch
Backyardigans
with Tyrone. I don’t care. I just like having you around.”

Damn it. Now I wanted him even more.

“Show me your room,” I said.