Apples & Oranges (The This & That Series) (19 page)

I was moving too fast. This is why he’d dumped the ever-available
Stacia. Soon it would be me throwing myself at him in the Triple D’s parking lot.

“I love you, too, Marisol.”

I released the breath I’d been holding. “Gah! Oh, thank God, because I was afraid you were going to tell me to buzz off. Do you know I’ve never said that to a man before? Well, my father, I suppose. But I’m not even sure I meant it. Because I’ve been infatuated with a man before, but I’ve never wanted to, like,
give myself
to someone before. You know? Inside and out, you know? I don’t—”

“Marisol, shut up.”

I looked up at him and blinked. “I, uh, okay.”

His gaze was heavy. “I’ve haven’t said that to anyone since Belinda.”

“Do you mean it?” I gulped, suddenly insecure. “You’re not trying to—you know—get into my pants or anything?”

Demo shook his head. “No. Are you trying to get into mine?”

Giggling, I leaned back onto my elbows. “Baby, I’ve been trying to get into your pants since I met you.”

“Well, then I’m out of here.”

He turned to leave the room, and I jumped to my feet to grab his arm. “Come on, Demo, don’t leave me now. I’m just getting started with this whole opening up thing—”

In a flash, he’d
turned around, swept me off of my feet, and placed me down on his Greek flag quilt. Once his shirt had been peeled up over his head—and dear heaven, he was every bit as glorious beneath his shirt as he was from the neck up, and you can take that fact right to the bank—he started to pepper the skin on my neck and collarbone with kisses.

I dug my hands into his hair as he started to unbutton my blouse. “Demo?”

“Hmmm?” He lifted his head and gave me a heavy lidded gaze. I could feel his heart thudding through his chest, and his fingertips were leaving a trail of heat across my ribcage underneath the thin silk of my shirt.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For bringing me to life.”

“I think you’re the one who brought me to life, Mar.” He brought his mouth back to mine, opening my lips with a warm swipe of his tongue.

Closing my eyes, I let the sensation take over my body, setting it on fire and lifting me off of the bed. The only sound in the room now was our baited
breath, our bodies moving across the worn quilt, and our hearts thrumming in unison.

Maybe we’d brought
each other
to life?

Chapter Sixteen

             
When Demo brought me home early the next morning, my feet didn’t touched the front walk as I wandered into my house. In fact, I don’t think they’d touched the floor as I fed Cocinero, watered my plants, walked upstairs, or started to fill the bathtub.

             
Yup. I was in love. And walking on air.

             
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said out loud to Cocinero as I undressed. All these years avoiding falling for someone, avoiding commitment like the flu, and sidestepping any man that had deeper feelings for me than the desire to screw.

I’d been missing out.

Going to bed to someone you love is so much better. There’s connection on levels that I hadn’t even realized existed. Being with Demo was like coming home after years and years of travelling. And waking up that morning, wrapped in his arms?

The safest place in the world.

And the sex?

A hysterical giggle burst from my throat, and
Cocinero meowed.

“Shush,” I scolded him, covering my mouth and leaning against the counter. Images scrolled through my mind, the night before playing out like a vividly colored, slow motion film. Arms, legs, eyes, lips, skin
, sweat… too much to process again. I felt weak.

The sex was amazing. Ah. Maze.
Ing.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My lips were still swollen from hours and hours of kissing. The skin on my neck was pinked and raw from Demo’s early morning whiskers.
And my hands? My hands still smelled like him. Gasoline, soap, and… something so undeniably
male,
it made me dizzy.

You have no idea, Marisol…

Standing up straight, I touched my lips and stared at my reflection with wide eyes.

When a man loves you, it’s the most incredible feeling in the world…

Gasping, I stepped away from the mirror and ducked into the shower. I looked just like my mother twenty years ago. Before all of her plastic surgeries. Before all of her marriages. Before she became the bitter, money-hungry, plastic shell of a woman that she is now.

I remember the day she’d said that to me like it was yesterday.

It was eleven in the morning, and I’d been torn away from Saturday morning cartoons by the sound of the front door shutting. When I’d crept into the foyer and looked out the window, a man wearing dress slacks, and carrying his shirt in his hands was walking down our driveway to a waiting cab.

I’d gone up to my mother’s bedroom, which was usually off-limits, but that morning her double doors were wide open, and I’d wandered in to find my mother laying on the bed with a dazed grin on her face. The sheets and blankets were everywhere, twisted and sweaty, and a lamp had been knocked over. Gasping, I ran to her.

“Mommy, are you al
l right?” I asked, climbing onto the bed next to her.

She’d rolled over, and I realized she was naked under the corner of her sheet. “Good morning, Marisol,” she’d said lazily. Her hair was loose and wild, tumbling over the pillows in thick waves; and her lips were red and swollen. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine,” I said, looking away. It embarrassed me that she didn’t have one of her fancy nightgowns on. “How are you?”

“Perfect,” she purred, reaching out and playing with my hair. “Oh, kiddo, just you wait.”

“Just I wait for what?” I asked, bringing my eyes back to hers. She looked so pretty that morning. So much prettier than when she wore makeup and fancy clothes. I wished I could see her like that more often—except maybe with clothes on.

“Oh, Marisol, you have no idea.” She sat up and looked at me intensely. The sheet was barely covering her top half now. “Just wait until a man loves you. And wants only you.”

“Loves me?” I squeaked. I knew about boys and girls. One of my nannies had brought her boyfriend over one night, and I’d watched them making out for hours before they made me go to bed. And some of the girls in my class already liked boys. As for me? I wasn’t really sure what I thought about them.

“Uh huh,” she’d said excitedly. “When a man loves you, it’s the most incredible feeling in the world.”

“Daddy loves me.” I smiled at her. I wasn’t sure if it was true, because he never called me anymore. But before he’d left he’d told me he loved me. So it had to be true.

My mother’s face dropped. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about when a man in
in love
with you. When he wants to take you to bed with him, and can’t get enough of you. That’s the most incredible feeling in the world.”

I thought for a moment, looking around the room. There was an empty wine bottle in the trash, and a men’s tie hanging from the curtain rod. I remembered the last time I’d seen this room in a state like this, and nodded. “Like the way
Daddy wanted Nanny Hanna.”

My mother’s face paled, and she looked around the room like she’d just woken up. Blinking, she pulled the sheet tighter around her body, and gave me a push. “Go,” she ordered. “Go on. Go find something to do. Leave me alone.”

“What did I do?” I asked, sliding off of the side of the bed. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean to talk about Daddy.”

Her face crumpled. “Daddy never loved me. Or you. He left us, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but—”

“Shut up!” She yelled, her tears taking her mascara down her face with them. “Get out of here, Marisol. Do as I tell you. I am your mother.”

I wanted to spend time with my mom. I wanted her to tell me what it felt like to be wanted by a man some more. And why it was so wonderful. I didn’t want our time together to be over yet. “But I want to talk about love some more,” I begged. “Please? I’ll be good. I’ll just listen. Please?”

My mother stood up, tugging the sheet with her. Patting me on the bottom, she moved me closer to her bedroom door. “There’s nothing to talk about, Marisol. Love is just something men say when they’re screwing you silly.”

Her door closed in my face before I could ask her what she meant. Two months later, I’d gotten my first stepfather, and the rest came on average every four years after that.

I let the scalding hot water soak my hair and run down my face. When Demo said he loved me, he’d meant it. I knew it. I could
feel
it right down into my soul. There was no way I was going to let the bitter words of my dysfunctional mother under my skin now. Not when I’d finally let myself fall for someone so perfect.

I heard a buzzing sound coming from my bedroom and chuckled to myself. It was probably either Candace or
Lexie, calling to see how my date with Demo went. And as much as I wanted to share all the details—every… single… one—I wanted just a few more minutes to keep it to myself. It felt too personal. Too deep to change into coffee talk while their kids played in the next room.

Cocinero
meowed outside the shower stall when the buzzing sound returned. “Persistent, aren’t they?” I called to him as I scrubbed my hair. I was going to wear it down today. Demo said he liked it loose.

Sigh.

I finally understood what Lexie and Candace were talking about when they said their husbands were their best friends. Demo and I had spent the night talking and laughing about everything under the sun. We’re made omelets at three o’clock in the morning, wearing nothing but our smiles as we sat across the table from each other, swapping embarrassing high school stories.

I knew now how Candace felt when Brian walked into a room and she sighed to herself because of how much she loved him, and how much he loved her. I used to mock her for being so whipped, and now? Now I was the one sighing. What a strange turn of events.

The buzz sounded again, and I rolled my eyes.

“Well, they can just wait. Can’t they,
Cocinero?” I said, letting the water flush down my back. He yowled as I started to sing a Buddy Holly song from the night before. The ringer on my home phone rang out, making me jump a foot in the air. “Geez. They’re downright pushy today.”

I climbed out of the shower and wrapped a towel around myself as I shuffled to my bedroom. Sure enough, when I picked it up off of the base, it was
Lexie’s cell number flashing on the screen. I wiped my ear off with the corner of the towel, then answered. “Fine, you pushy bitch, you. But I’m not telling all of the sordid details, because they’re mine. All mine. Do you understand me?”

There was a pause, and then a choking sound. “M
-mar?”

My blood ran cold. “
Lex? Are you hurt?”

“Mar, we need you,” She sobbed. “Right now.”

I was already in my closet, yanking clothes off of hangers. “Where are you?”

“South Spokane General,” she cried. “It’s…
it’s Brian.”

“Brian?” I pulled a shirt over my head. “Oh, God. What happened?”

There was a pause, and I could hear the sound of a loudspeaker in the background, paging a Doctor Smith. “He’s…”

“
Lex? Lex, are you there? What happened to Brian?”

Her voice wavered, as she struggled to get the words out. “He’s
gone
, Mar.”

Chapter Seventeen

              When I was about fourteen years old, I snuck out of my mother’s house and went to a party with some friends. On the way home, we T-boned a Cadillac and we were all rushed to a hospital in Hollywood. For over eight hours, I sat in the waiting room at the hospital with twenty stitches in my forehead, waiting for my mother to answer her phone and come pick me up.

All of the other kids had long since been picked up, and there I sat with a hospital social worker who was on the verge of taking me to a foster home when my mother finally stumbled in. She was wearing a skimpy, sequined party dress and smelled like whatever club she’d spent the
night in, and hadn’t even noticed that I was missing until her assistant had checked her voicemail.

W
hen I walked into the South Spokane General that afternoon after Lexie’s call, it made that excruciating night in a California hospital seem like a walk in the park. My teenage embarrassment and pain paled in comparison to the grief I witnessed when I ran into the waiting room with still wet, uncombed hair to find Lexie holding Candace her arms as she huddled on the floor, wailing with grief.

Brian
had gotten to the fifth hole of the gold tournament before dropping to his knees from a heart attack. Fletcher performed CPR until the paramedics arrived, and he crashed in the ambulance during transport. By the time Candace and Lexie met them in the hospital parking lot, he was gone.

At thirty-
five years old, he’d dropped dead on a sunny golf course with his best friend watching. They’d had no indication of heart issues, no warning signs of impending heart failure. To look at Brian, there was no hint that he was going to drop dead and leave a wife and three kids behind.

It was unthinkable. Unimaginable.

I tried to talk to Candace, but there was nothing I could say to soothe her distress. She was hysterical. Inconsolable. So much so that the ER doc had prescribed her a sedative and sent her home with her parents.

Lexie
and I spent the rest of the afternoon with Brian and Candace’s kids. Crying, rocking, and comforting Ellie as she sobbed for the loss of her father; and explaining and re-explaining to five-year-old Quentin what’d happened to his daddy. I lost count of how many hours I logged sitting in Candace’s creaky wooden rocking chair, brushing two-and-a-half-year-old Aubrey’s hair back from her sweaty head as she keened for her mommy, completely perplexed by the mayhem around us.

But no amount of comfort w
ould be enough for those kids. They’d lost their father. Their mother was a wreck. And Candace had lost the love of her life.

Reminders of their love were all over their house.
Black and white photographs from their wedding; framed snapshots of the two of them on scattered vacations; pictures of an ecstatic Brian holding each of his newborn children. A framed love letter written to Candace by a very drunk Brian during a frat party his junior year of college. The preserved calla lilies that Candace carried on their wedding day.

When she’d met Brian the first time, Candace had charged into my dorm room with her blonde hair flying in all directions, her blue eyes shining. “I’ve met him!” she’d cried, throwing herself onto her bunk and kicking the air wildly.

“Met who?” I’d asked from my perch, hanging halfway out the window, where I was sneaking a smoke. We’d
known each other for three months, and while I’d tried very hard to hate her for being so all-American and peppy, she’d won me over, and I already adored her.

She sat up and beamed at me. Her cheeks were pink, and she clasped her hands beneath her chin. “My future husband. I met him. And I love him.”

“Love him?” I’d laughed. “Do you even know him?”

Tears filled her eyes. “No. But it doesn’t matter. I looked in his eyes and just knew. I
knew
, Marisol. Do you understand?”

Dissolving into tears for the hundredth time, I pressed a kiss to the now snoring Aubrey’s damp head. I hadn’t understood what Candace meant that day in my dorm, but I understood now. And I was finally ready to listen to what she’d been telling me for ten years.

“
Lex?” I called, standing up carefully so as not to wake Aubrey. I came around the corner to find Lexie and Fletcher sitting at Candace’s dining room table, going through photo albums.

“She finally passed out?”
she asked, her voice hoarse. I noticed that one of her hands was covering Fletcher’s on the table top, and my heart tightened. Fletcher looked horrible, dark circles shadowed his eyes, and I’d barely heard him utter a word in hours.

“Yeah.” I walked over to a playpen set up nearby and slowly lowered Aubrey onto the mat. “Listen, I need to go home to grab my phone charger and some clothes for tomorrow.”

She wiped her eyes. “Yeah. Okay. Are you coming back?”

I nodded. “Give me an hour or so. When I get back, you two can go home to your own kids. Okay?”

Fletcher looked up at me, his eyes shining with tears. “Thank you for being here, Marisol.”

I tried to take a breath, but it felt like a large animal was sitting across my chest. I had to get out of that house. I needed air. I needed Demo. “You’re welcome,” I said quickly. I wanted to say so much more.

I’m sorry you lost your best friend today. I’m sorry your CPR didn’t work. I’m sorry you had to watch Brian die right in front of you.

But nothing I could say would make anything better. And for once in my life, no crass joke was going to cut the tension.

“I…” I opened and closed my mouth a few times before waving. “I’ll be back.”

I didn’t drive to my house. Instead, I drove through downtown and over the river to the Audubon Park area. It was late—after
nine—so the neighborhood was quiet as I pulled up in front of Demo’s house. There was a light on in the living room, so I knew he was awake. Maybe waiting for me. He’d called and texted several times earlier in the day, but I’d not yet responded. What the hell was I going to say?

Hey, sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. My best friend’s husband kicked the bucket today, and I’ve cried so much that I look like my mother, post plastic surgery. Talk to you later. Thanks for the mind blowing sex last night.

Yeah. Not so much.

Making a beeline for his front door, I didn’t look at, or even think about, anything besides getting into that house, and feeling Demo’s arms around me. I’d finally found the one man in the entire world I loved, and come hell or high water, I was going to hold on to him for the rest of my life—

The front door swung open. “Marisol?”

I smiled weakly, my finger still poised over the doorbell. “Hi.”

“I haven’t heard from you all day. I was worried.” He stepped out of the door, pulling it shut behind his back.

Well, that was weird.

“I, um, something came up.” My voice shook and I reached for him. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

For a split second, his arms went around me as naturally as taking a breath. They felt warm, safe, perfect. And then he stiffened. “Something came up around here, too.”

My shoulders shook as I pictured Candace on a gurney in the hospital, a needle in her arm as the nurses sedated her. “Let me go first,” I whimpered, my tears soaking the front of his black tee shirt. “Please… if I don’t tell you now, I don’t know if I can get it out.”

Demo held me at arms length. “Hey, are you crying?” He used his thumb to swipe away the moisture on my face. “What’s wrong?”

I told him everything. How my best friend lost her husband and now she was a widow with three small children. How she’d spent the bulk of her adulthood devoted to the one man who fit in her life, completing it, like a puzzle piece. How I loved him more than I even knew how to articulate, and that I never intended to let him go. That if I had a chance to have a tenth of what Candace and Brian had had, I never wanted to be without him again.

“Oh no,” Demo said, pulling me close and resting his chin on top of my head. He rocked me back and forth as I cried. “Oh, no, no, no, no. Shit. Oh, shit.”

Hiccuping, I pulled back and looked up at him. “Are you all right?”

His face was different. Gone were the crinkles on either side of his eyes, and his dark brows were knit close together. “Marisol, we have to talk.”

The curtains on the living room window shifted, and a chill ran through me. Blonde hair. I saw blonde hair. I backed away from him slowly. “Demo, please tell me that nobody’s inside your house.”

He grit his teeth together. “I… yes, there
is.”

Grief and pain were quickly replaced with rage. “Please tell me that isn’t
Stacia who just glared at me through your window.”

Demo took a step closer to me. “Listen, I can—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because the door opened with a shrill creak. Stacia appeared in the doorway wearing a tight black dress and a smug smile. “Demo? Are you coming back in?”

“You have
got
to be kidding me.” I stepped out of Demo’s reach and backed down the stairs. “Okay, I really need to hear you say that she wasn’t invited here tonight, Demo. I need to hear that she showed up, and you don’t want her here.” When he stood there saying nothing, my voice rose to an embarrassingly loud level. “Listen. I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m needing to hear right now, okay?
Please tell me she’s not welcome here, Demo
.”

“Why wouldn’t I be welcome here?”
Stacia stepped forward, one hand on her stomach.

Holy hell.

“Marisol, Stacia stopped by tonight to tell me something.” Demo followed me down the steps, but I backed away from him. He dragged a hand through his hair. “Dammit. I’m still processing it all myself.”

My eyes flicked from his face, to
Stacia’s hand rubbing her flat stomach, and then back to Demo. “It all? What does
it all
actually entail? Because from where I stand, it’s not looking so good.”

Stacia
looped her arm through Demo’s. He moved to the side, but her grip on his elbow remained strong. “You should tell her,” she whispered. “It’s not fair to keep her in the dark. We’re all adults here. We can handle ourselves.”

“You’re giving me entirely too much credit, my dear.” I clenched my hands at my sides, and turned my focus back to Demo. “Please. Just tell me what’s going on. I’ve…” My breath halted, and I had to take a second to compose myself. “I’ve had such a horrific day.”

Demo’s face was pale. “Marisol, Stacia is pregnant.”

My heart screeched to a halt, and I stooped over like I’d taken a punch to the gut. “This is real,” I told myself, wiping my sweaty hands on my legs. “This is really happening.”

Demo stepped out of Stacia’s grip. “Mar, let’s talk about—”

I put up my hands. “No. Let’s not talk.” Yanking my keys out of my pocket, I forced myself to smile, despite the fact that my heart was completely annihilated. “Listen, congrats.
To both of you. Demo, you said you wanted a family.” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. “Well… here you go.”

He called my name, but I could barely hear it over the buzzing inside my ears. Thankfully, I got into my car and drove it a few blocks away before I had to pull over because I was so blinded by tears.