Sex on the Beach (Cosmo Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin) (7 page)

Chapter Nine

Beating Alan three times at darts had put a small amount of the spring back in Jeremy’s stride, but it didn’t last. He picked up the guy’s tab as a consolation prize, and they talked past each other for a while. Jeremy slumped over his beer, talking about Amanda and feeling sorry for himself. He knew he was mumbling, knew he was giving off an impression of surly drunkenness, but he didn’t care. It suited his mood. Because, as he told Alan in a dark moment, he didn’t believe she was coming back to him. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it didn’t sound like anything he could give her.

“It’s like she wants to negotiate things, but I do all that at work, I don’t want to come home to it. I just want things to be the way they’re supposed to be. I shouldn’t have to engage in high-level negotiations just to have a relationship with my
wife
, you know?”

“Sure. You want stuff to be easier than that.”

“Well. It doesn’t have to be
easy
, just...”

“Not adversarial?”

“Yeah.”

Alan didn’t seem that interested in the conversation, but he was a polite guy. Patient, easygoing. Willing to tolerate a certain amount of angst as long as the beer kept flowing. “So why’d you move, anyway?”

“It all seemed to make sense at the time. I don’t hate California, but I figured a new start, close to my big clients, great city. And I like rooting for underdog teams. But I didn’t mean to write it in stone.”

“Right.”

“I never believed all that crap, you know? Before I met Amanda.” Had there been such a dark time in his life? It was hard to recall a world without her in it, even if she was in another state. “Then she was there, and it was like
psshhfffttthh!
” Explosions. Fireworks. Angel choirs. “And I’ve been screwed ever since. Because I can’t think about anything else, but I don’t think she’s comin’ back, man.”

Oh
,
fuck.
Fuck
,
I
can’t believe I said that.
I
can’t be giving up on this.
No.

“You don’t?” Even Alan sounded surprised, but now that Jeremy had said it out loud, it rang horribly true.

“I don’t.”
Do I?
The bartender distracted them, tapping next to Jeremy’s empty beer glass. “Yeah, one more then close me out, please. I’ll pick up his, too.”

“Thanks. I’ll get yours next time. We may be here tomorrow night, the way things are going.” Alan stared into the last half inch of beer in his own glass, looking about as enthusiastic as Jeremy felt. Poor guy, he seemed to be going through some serious shit of his own. Why would either of them want to hang out with the other, in their current state?

“God, I hope not. No offense.”

“No, this sucks. It’s so fucking happy in here I wanna hurl.”

Jeremy could sympathize. When the fresh cold beer arrived, he lowered his head and pressed his cheek to the glass, hoping to cool some sense back into his fevered brain. “Fuck it. At least I tried, right?” The last refuge of the hopeless.

“So...you going to CES this year?”

It was the big West Coast technology conference. Jeremy would be there with bells on.

“Subject-changing time, huh? Yeah, and my booth will be the one with the crowd in front of it.”

“Oh? Big new product launch?”

Jeremy chuckled, the sound feeling somewhat foreign, given his overall gloomy mood that evening. “Nah. One of my tech writers who’ll be there is some kind of yo-yo whiz. Knows all these amazing tricks. He convinced me to do yo-yos as our promo item, with the logo on them. He’ll draw the crowd doing his thing, and people will want the yo-yos to take home to their kids, so...”

Alan looked skeptical. “Yo-yos? How did you even find that out? Did the guy have it on his résumé, or what?”

“No, it’s just something he does at the office, during breaks. And meetings, sometimes. We’re pretty informal, and a lot of the team work spaces have plenty of room for pacing around and making big gestures. Or, you know, playing with yo-yos.”

“Team work spaces? Do you have, like, swinging pod chairs or maybe a monkey on-site? I’m getting a Google/Pixar kinda vibe.”

Alan sounded sarcastic, but Jeremy suspected the snark was born of jealousy. Who
wouldn’t
want a Pixar vibe at work? “No pod chairs, no monkeys. But there are a lot of modular couches, and people are allowed to bring their dogs to work as long as the dogs are well behaved.”

It had been one of his best moves, though he’d had his doubts when one of his employees first suggested it. Still, he’d committed himself to a collaborative business model, one where he set the goals and let his teams decide how best to meet them. The pros and cons of the dog decision had been discussed by all the stakeholders, just like any other project or product. Potential outcomes were considered, assessment criteria for success defined, and a plan generated. He’d expressed his concerns but let the plan move forward, and to his vast surprise it had become one of the best features of the office. Some of their finest product innovations had been cooked up the same way.

“Yo-yos and dogs. I sort of want to work there now,” Alan confessed. “Don’t tell Julie. She’s still pretty pissed at you.”

“Mum’s the word,” Jeremy assured him.

“I’m kinda surprised, though. I had you pegged as a strict rules-and-regulations kind of boss.” Jeremy must have looked taken aback, because Alan glanced up and immediately started trying to unsay it. “Not in a bad way, you know. Just because of the whole thing with Amanda. You didn’t seem like you’d be very flexible about—okay, I’m gonna shut up now and drink this beer.”

“Okay.”

Okay.
It was a fair assessment, if he was being honest with himself. His natural inclination
was
to micromanage, and he had to work hard to overcome that. He couldn’t escape it entirely, either, because ultimately the buck stopped with him. It was his name on the letterhead, his neck on the line. He was still the lead developer. And although his employees could meet their goals in their own way, it was Jeremy who set the goals to begin with.

In that sense, he suddenly realized, he was
not
actually a collaborator. His employees, sure. But not him. Working with a team to arrive at ends he’d already dictated wasn’t the same as working with a team to decide what the end would be in the first place. He wasn’t
in
the chain of command, he
was
the chain. And he was good at what he did.

And that, Jeremy suddenly understood, was his problem. Because Amanda didn’t need a boss or a minion, she needed a collaborator. The one thing Jeremy was not. But that was what he had to be, her equal in the hierarchy, not above or below.

He almost didn’t hear Alan’s suggestion that they call it a night, so stunned was he by the revelation that struck him next.

There is no hierarchy
.

It was an epiphany, a liminal moment he would never forget, and even as it happened he knew he’d better write it down as soon as he could to make sure it still made sense in the morning. Just in case it was the beer talking.

He all but race-walked back to his room and grabbed the hotel notepad the moment he walked through the door, scribbling the cryptic message his mind had sent him.

It felt late, and he was surprised to check the time and find it was only ten o’clock. Amanda would be back from her dinner with Julie soon, he supposed. He had a little time to think things over, make sure he really understood the implications of the no-hierarchy thing. That lasted about two minutes—two minutes of staring at a notepad with
there is no hierarchy
scrawled on it—before he decided what he really should do to pass the time was watch a movie.

For some reason he was thinking of
The Matrix
, so he spent some time looking for a streaming version. Finding nothing, he conducted a brief flirtation with the notion of piracy but ended up—as he always did—simply purchasing a download from a legitimate vendor. Not because of nobility, particularly, but because of paranoia about getting caught. Or so he told himself, at least.

Neo, Morpheus. Blue pill, red pill. Hot leather-wearing chick. It all sort of melted into a blur. He didn’t recall nodding off, but he woke with a start to the raunchy beat of Rage Against the Machine under his ear. Peeling his face off the iPad, he watched as Neo soared off over the digital rooftops. Every programmer’s best dream and worst nightmare.

It was almost midnight, and still no sign of Amanda. He checked his phone. No texts or missed calls, either. Had she come by and seen him through the window, gone away again so as not to wake him?

He wanted to text her, but...almost midnight. Suddenly he couldn’t stay on the bed another second, couldn’t risk staring at that phone screen until the digits ticked over to a new day with no word from her. Since he couldn’t leave, either—maybe she was just having a great time with Julie, maybe she was on her way to his room right now, tipsy and amorous—he decided the only other option was to take a shower. Or, as he would later refer to it, “That Fateful Shower.”

Chapter Ten

He wasn’t there.

It honestly hadn’t occurred to her that he might not be. That he wouldn’t answer the text she’d sent a minute or so before she arrived, that she wouldn’t see him, or at least his silhouette against the blinds, as she trudged down the path to his cottage.

Amanda had steeled herself for this, fortified her courage with alcohol, even made sure that her favorite red-and-white polka-dot sundress still looked reasonably ironed before making the trip over from her and Julie’s room. Looking good always helped her feel better. More confident. She’d made a plan, prepared for difficulty. But she had no contingency plan for what to do if the dreaded moment never happened. The butterflies in her stomach slowly morphed into bats as she stared into Jeremy’s empty room. Then into eagles. Then one giant pterodactyl.

Where was he, anyway? Still out drinking somewhere with Alan? She didn’t think they had enough in common to make small talk for that long. Had he found a different kind of drinking partner? Or, worse yet, a different kind of partner altogether to spend the night with? Probably not. But he could have. And after she talked to him, that would be somewhere in his future. Somewhere in hers, too.

And then she started crying. She wasn’t even sure why. It was ugly-crying, too, the kind that nobody else should ever see. She sat down heavily on one of the big patio chairs, pulling her knees up under her skirt and resting her head on them as she tried to will the sobs to stop.

She was done. She was just...done. And it had happened almost without her noticing, she now realized. Sometime during the conversation with Julie, the semi-serious talk of daddy issues, the true extent of which Julie was happily unaware. Amanda was aware, and the importance of all that ancient crap obviously hadn’t dwindled despite her determination not to let it affect her. She’d kept it to herself, but that hadn’t killed any of it.

And she resented that. She’d spent years putting her history with her dad behind her. Why did it get to play any part in determining who she ended up with? Because it just did. Because that was how people worked. Just like people married their parents. She’d tried to pick somebody like her mom. Self-directed, motivated, independent and confident. Instead, she’d ended up with Jeremy. He was gainfully employed and, as far as she knew, he’d never gambled. But the one-sided decisions, the win/lose mindset, the way he thought one grand gesture could wipe out any multitude of minor transgressions...those were just like Dad. And she couldn’t live with that.

She’d expected to feel even more anguish at deciding it was really, truly over. Instead, she felt only a great wash of calm finality, a soothing buzz of acceptance that eased her tears a notch. Enough for her to notice the chill in the air, the smell of a tiki torch.

Something rustled in the bushes, making her lift her head on sudden high alert. A stalker? A large predator? Did Hawaii even have predators?

Then whatever it was started whistling a hula song, and Alan sauntered through the foliage, doing a terrible job of trying to act nonchalant. His fake double take when he “noticed” her was truly a disgrace to actors everywhere. Lucky for him he wasn’t trying to be one of them.

“Alan, seriously. What the hell?”

“I was gonna go see if I could tell whether Jules was back in your room yet. Then I heard you, so I came over here. Are you okay? Wait, did Jeremy... Do I need to beat him up or something?”

The image of Alan attempting to beat up the new improved Jeremy was almost enough to make her smile. It was sweet of him, though. She tipped her head up and sniffled, trying not to let anything ghastly escape her nose. “I haven’t even seen Jeremy tonight. You were his date. You tell me if he needs beating up. I came over here because he didn’t answer his phone, but he isn’t here, either.”

“He isn’t? That’s weird. We came back here at the same time, and I thought he went in. Are you sure your phone is working? Maybe I can—” He reached for his pocket, presumably to pull his own phone out, but the pocket was empty. “Or not.”

“No, it’s okay, anyway. I should go back to my room. Coming over here was probably a bad idea. Or no,” she amended, allowing herself to acknowledge at least part of the reason for her tears. The realization she’d have to go through this gearing-up process again at least once more. She’d have to convince herself all over again that it was necessary, and honestly she was finding herself to be a pretty tough sell. “It was probably a really good idea and if he’d been here and I’d gone through with it while my nerve was up, I’d be better off. No time to second-guess myself. Which I’m absolutely doing now. Shit.”

She wasn’t planning to go anywhere just yet, though. Not until she was sure the crying was more or less ended. Right now the occasional sob still hiccuped its way to the top.

Alan all but twiddled his thumbs for a bit, then finally—reluctantly, if she wasn’t mistaken—muttered, “Did you want to talk about it?”

She really should have given him more credit. He was a
very
nice guy, and he was trying so hard to help. “No. No, I should get back.”
As soon as you leave so I can wipe my nose on a leaf or something
.

But apparently, he was staying as long as she was.
Maybe I can scare him away with emotion words.

“Okay. Well, I can walk you—”

“You know, I came here planning to finally put all this behind me. Jeremy, the breakup, all those bad feelings. I was over it. Then he’s here and it all comes rushing back, and obviously I wasn’t over anything.” It was true. All true, and to her horror Amanda found that once she started talking about it, she couldn’t stop. The only way out was through. “I was coming to his room to tell him I hadn’t changed my mind, there’s no way this can work, we just want different things. But you know the first thing I thought when I knocked and he wasn’t there?”

“Um.”

“
Relieved
. I was relieved, because I was so sad to think about not seeing him anymore. I really missed him. Like, really, really missed him. Which is stupid, because if we can’t figure out where to live, how can we figure out anything else?”

Ugh
. She was sick of this topic, but she was stuck with it. Poor Alan. That would sure teach him not to be a nice guy.

“Damn.”

“I know,” she agreed.

He sat down on the concrete railing. “Okay. Look. You and Jeremy, you’re both really smart. Between the two of you, you can figure out the logistical stuff of who lives where. I think you both accidentally picked the same hill to die on, and then once you were fighting from those positions, you got entrenched. Once people are in their foxholes, lobbing bombs, nobody’s gonna be brave enough to come out first. Right?”

War analogies?
Really?
Oh
,
sweetie
,
I
think I finally get what Jules sees in you.
“Okay.”

“It’s not a love problem. It’s a fear problem. This all sounded a lot better in my head than it does coming out of my mouth.”

I’ll bet it did.
“No, keep going. I want to see where this foxhole analogy is headed. You could go so many ways with that.”

The tears had dried up at last, and her nose was gradually returning to its resting state of snot production.

“I think what I’m trying to say...I’m trying to say that somebody has to be brave enough to stand up out of the foxhole and say, ‘Hey, this is stupid. We’re on the same side.’ And yeah, you might get blown up. But if you stay in the trench, you’re going to...I don’t know. Die alone down there or something. Get dysentery. Bad things, is the point.”

Amanda laughed, surprising herself as much as Alan. “I get it, I get it. You can stop now.”

“I’m glad you get it because I have no idea what I’m even talking about, here.”

“I think what you were trying to say is that love is a leap of faith, and maybe it’s time for me to leap.”

“That sounds way better and used a lot fewer words.”

“It’s all that practice summarizing research.” She lowered her legs from the chair with a sigh, smoothing her dress out to see how bad the damage was. “And you know what? I think you’re right. I’ve been focusing on the wrong things. And I also think I owe you an apology for being kind of a bitch to you since...oh, since forever.”

He chuckled. “Nah, it’s all good. You were pretty much like all my sisters.”

The door latch clicked, the metal-on-metal snap very loud in the still night air. It was Jeremy, wearing boxer briefs and rubbing his head with a towel. He looked between them, clearly puzzled.

Everything. She felt
everything
when she realized he was there, that he’d been there in his room the whole time. That wasn’t just her kink, standing there looking clueless. That was her whole world. It was that simple, and that hopeless.

“Uh...hi?”

She stood up, her legs trembling. This wasn’t going to go the way she’d planned. Not one bit. It had
never
been destined to go according to plan.

“I knocked, and you weren’t there, and you hadn’t answered my text.” Her voice was still scratchy from crying.

“I was in the shower.”

There was not even an implied
duh
. Not in his tone, not in his eyes. There was only hope, love, desire, determination. And a hint of desperation that she hated knowing she’d put there.

Over the heavy tidal thud of her heartbeat, she heard Alan say something, but she couldn’t pay attention to anything but Jeremy. Who had been in the shower. She hadn’t even considered that. But of course, the shower.
Duh.

Somehow, she found herself pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist. She could hear his heartbeat even louder than her own. Louder than the ocean.