Love Locked (9 page)

“As a stray person, invited at the last minute?”

Jed walks in. Beth tugs at his sleeve. “Hey, babe, I’ve just invited Jocelyn to dinner tonight. Tell her she should come.”

He nods. “Definitely. My brother can thank you again for lending him your bike — in person this time.”

Jocelyn’s throat tightens. “Oh? He’s coming?” She’s trying to be casual, but her voice, to her own ears, just sounds choked.

Jed turns to Beth. “You invited them, right?”

She nods. “Yeah, I definitely invited them.”

Jocelyn forces a laugh into her voice. “It’s just I thought he was out of town. I must have gotten mixed up.”

“Oh,” Beth says. “You’re right. He was, but he said he’d be back in time. So … anyway, are you coming?”

Say yes, Jocelyn. Say yes to the world
. She puts what she hopes is a carefree smile on her face, while crossing her fingers behind her back. “Yes. Of course. Why not. What can I bring?”

***

Them.
“You invited
them
, right?” Jed had asked Beth. The word sits in Jocelyn’s brain while she scrubs a loofah across her skin, already bright pink from the scalding temperature of her shower.

“Yeah. I definitely invited them.”
Them
, again. Jocelyn mulls it over as she waits for the polish on her toes and fingernails to dry. She never wears nail polish, but tonight she’s facing
them
.

“… a bunch of couples we know.” “Couples” is just another word for
them
. Lucas and Charlotte. Jocelyn pulls a dress out of her closet with the tags still hanging from it:
Too fancy? No … Yes, too fancy … No
.

She puts it on. She’ll take any advantage she can get.

As ready as she’ll ever be — physically, anyway. Hair shining, nails polished, legs smooth, bush trimmed, hem short enough to show some leg, neckline low enough to reveal a hint of cleavage, Jocelyn leans out her bedroom window to check out the table Beth’s setting for their open–air back–yard dinner. It’s actually plywood on sawhorses, but with a couple of dollar–store tablecloths over it, and decorated with flowers picked by Byron and Lainey, it’s so, so pretty.

Jocelyn’s ready, and it’s early, and she would normally go down to help, so she decides to just do it. She straightens, smooths the skirt of the dress. “Just be yourself.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not like I really have a choice, anyway.”

“Oh, God, you shouldn’t have to help — you’re a guest!” Beth says when she opens the door. She grabs Jocelyn’s wrist and pulls her in. “Although, I just got back from dropping the kids off at my mom’s and my hair’s not done, and if you could just chop some veggies …”

“Of course. Lead me to your peeler.”

It’s good, probably, that she’s occupied — scooping a mound of carrot peels into the compost container — when she first hears his voice. She didn’t realize she’d recognize it — after all, they’ve really only spoken a few times, but it’s deep, with a bit of a rasp to it, and his words come out just a hair slower than average — as though he’s thinking about everything he says before he actually says it.

Desire shivers through her, clenching and releasing muscles deep in her core, sending her shifting from foot–to–foot.

Beth walks in, hair perfectly tamed and gleaming. “Are you OK?”

“Fine! Totally fine. I think I need a few more carrots here.”

Because if she’s peeling and chopping carrots, she can’t be mingling with the arriving guests. With Lucas. And Charlotte. She wants to see him, but on her terms. She wants to spy on him from the sidelines; not be thrust in front of him to say “Hi,” and “Nice to see you again,” and “How have you been?”

Which is why, when the carrots are peeled, she looks around for a green pepper.

“Mmmm … this is an amazing vegetable platter.” A guy, probably ten years older than her, bites a carrot stick in two.

“Glad you like it.” Jocelyn says it absently, not really paying attention to him. Glancing around for Lucas.

“Oh? Did you put it together? Just like my brother to make his guests dance for their dinner.”

“Your brother?” Jocelyn stops scanning the back yard and sharpens her focus on the man in front of her. “Jed?”

“The one and only.”

“Geez … how many of you are there?”

He smiles. Takes another carrot stick. “Well, there’s Jed, who you obviously know. Then there’s our baby brother, who’s trekking through the Himalayas with his hippy wife on their never–ending bohemian honeymoon. There’s me; my brothers call me boring, but my parents are just relieved one of us actually owns a home. And, of course, the confirmed bachelor; the man who’s endlessly hopeless with women …” He pauses and points his carrot stick over Jocelyn’s shoulder. “See? He knows when I’m talking about him — Lucas.”

She whirls around. The movement lifts and twirls her skirt around her legs. The air tickles the soft skin of her inner thighs.
Lucas
.

“Hi, Jocelyn,” he says.

She clears her throat, swallows. “Hi, Lucas.”

“Should have figured you two would know each other,” Carrot–stick brother says. “You’re probably one of the many women who’s dumped him. You look far too good for him.” He scoops up a handful of vegetables and wanders away.

And so Jocelyn and Lucas are staring at each other, and her bedroom window is two floors straight up, and she can’t stop thinking about what happened up there, how much fun it was, how good it felt, and how great he tasted. Before she can stop them, her eyes flick to his fly, and then back up to his face and she says. “Well, that wasn’t awkward at all.”

“Dave’s always had a way with words,” he says.

And then Beth’s on the back stoop, ringing a cowbell — where did she get the cowbell? — and saying “Please sit down. Jed and I are determined to have a real, proper, grown–up dinner party, so there are nameplates on the table, and it’s all boy–girl, and we’re going to serve you, so … yeah, grub’s up!”

Jocelyn’s flooded with love for her quirky, sweet friend. Until she finds her nameplate, right next to Lucas finding his nameplate, and then she’s not sure if the surge of emotion she’s feeling is stronger love, or immense irritation.

How could she?

Why wouldn’t she?

This could be a disaster …

This could be amazing …

Because so much depends on Charlotte. The huge presence of Charlotte, that’s loomed in the background every single time Jocelyn’s ever thought of Lucas. Well, almost every single time …

Jocelyn still hasn’t seen Charlotte. And there seems to be another woman sitting on Lucas’s other side. An older woman, holding his brother Dave’s hand. A woman who kisses Lucas’s cheek the way a sister–in–law would.

And what did his brother say? “Confirmed bachelor,” and “… endlessly hopeless with women,” — is that something you say about your brother who’s brought his girlfriend to a dinner party?

“Sit, please! Please sit!” Beth is calling, and Jocelyn sits, head spinning, and waits until Lucas sits beside her, and then leans over and whispers one word: “Charlotte.”

“What?” he asks

“Charlotte. Where is she?”

“Charlotte,” he says. “Charlotte and I broke up.”

She has a million questions. What does that mean — “broke up?” Did she dump him? Did he dump her? When did this happen? Is he brand–spanking newly available on the dating market? Or has he been single for ages, and never once sought her out?

Jocelyn’s sick of being uncertain. Sick of having her stomach flip over and turn inside–out, agonizing over Lucas. She’s ready to just ask all these questions, once and for all — get them out; not even pretend to have a shred of pride left.

But … that woman who–might–be–his–sister–in–law is leaning over. “Lucas!” she says. “I’m so happy to be sitting next to you. Were you really in New Orleans for your conference last week? I’ve always wanted to go. Tell me all about it …”

And so Jocelyn’s stomach continues to flip and turn, and there’s a bit of churn added too, as she eavesdrops on their conversation, and wills the woman to ask him about Charlotte, and instead gets every detail she’s never wanted about levees, and bayous, the French Quarter, and Bourbon Street.

Chapter Eleven

(21:21)

T
HE FOOD IS GOOD
. Or at least that’s what the guy next to her — somebody Jed works with — tells her.

She can’t think about food. Or about the election coming up in the fall. “Think voter turn–out will be any better than last time?” Jed’s co–worker asks her.

“Um. I don’t know. People are pretty pissed off. You never know how people will react when they’re pissed off.”

“Oh!” His eyebrows fly up. OK, so maybe “pissed off” is a bit too strong for a dinner party, but it kind of matches her mood.

“Are you pissed off?” Lucas’s hand on her wrist, a grab for attention. Little does he know he’s had it ever since they sat down. Her whole right side has tingled from his presence.

She freezes, pulls her arm away slowly, deliberately. Reaches for her wine glass. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you haven’t said one word to me through the salad, or the main course.”

The reasonable answer would be, ‘Well, you were talking to somebody else the whole time,’ but her tight nerves, and the butterflies in her stomach, and the undeniable, impossible–to–ignore tug deep in her core, in her groin, in her pussy, make her distinctly unreasonable, so instead she says, “Yeah, well, the last time we engaged orally, it didn’t end well.”

“Oh. Wow. So it’s like that.”

Jocelyn sighs. “I don’t know what it’s like, Lucas.”

“Everything good here?” Beth is leaning between them with a bottle of wine, hovering the neck over first Jocelyn’s glass, then Lucas’s.

During her part–time university job at a coffee shop, Jocelyn mastered her instant–if–insincere smile. She pushes one to her face now. “Fine!”

“Excuse us,” Lucas says.

“Pardon me?” both Jocelyn and Beth say at the same time.

“I said, ‘Excuse us.’ Jocelyn and I have something to talk about.” Lucas pushes back his chair and stands.

“What?” Beth asks. She looks at Jocelyn.

Lucas holds his hand out to Jocelyn and she hesitates, then takes it. “We’ll be right back,” she tells Beth.

“Or maybe not,” he says. “Don’t wait dessert for us.”

“What …?” They leave Beth still gripping her wine bottle, staring after them.

Lucas leads Jocelyn across the yard, pulls the back door open, and guides her in. As soon as they’re inside, it’s Jocelyn’s turn to ask, “What?” but Jed steps out of the kitchen, clutching paper towels, saying, “Somebody spilled some wine …” His eyes narrow. “Everything OK with you two?”

Jocelyn: “Fine!”

Lucas: “Good.”

And then Lucas tugs at her hand again and pulls her right through the apartment, to the front door. While he fumbles with it, Jocelyn’s eyes fall on the thermostat display on the wall. It tells her it’s 21:21. Well, it would be.

Finally, they step into the communal entrance, where Lucas starts climbing the stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“Up.”

“Duh,” Jocelyn says, but his hand covering hers, and the rise and fall of his butt at her eye level, are robbing her of breath so she doesn’t say anything else.

He stops at the top and waits while she climbs the final step to stand next to him.

This moment. She’s been here before. With him. Dying to get in, tripping to get in, yanking at clothes once they get in. And then, delirious, crazy, breath–shortening, pulse–racing, bliss.

The images are vivid in her mind; sensations weakening her knees, stiffening her nipples, making her pussy ache.

But then the other feelings. The morning–after ones. Emptiness. Sadness. Loneliness.

She swallows hard. “What do you want?”

“I want you to open the door.”

“No.” It’s the hardest thing to say because she wants him desperately, and if last time was a blow job, she can only imagine what this time would be.
Heaven
. But the let–down after. She can’t go through it again. She stares at her front door — painted not the prettiest shade of red, and somewhat the worse for wear after years of having groceries, and packages, and furniture lugged through it — but it’s her final safety barrier from all those searingly painful feelings again. “No. I’m not doing that.”

“Why not?”

“Charlotte.”

He wrinkles his nose. “I already told you, we broke up.”

Jocelyn stamps her foot. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know when. I don’t know why. I don’t know if that means you’re just looking for a rebound.” She looks down at the ground, studies a crack in the old Marmoleum–tiled floor, then gathers her resolve and meets his eyes. “There’s only one thing I do know.”

“What?”

It’s hard to say it — to be honest — and preparing to do it, her heart rate spikes and blood rushes through her ears. But what does she have to lose? Nothing. So she says it. “The thing I know is I can’t take it anymore. I can’t let you treat me like complete and utter shit. I can’t let you lead me on — let me suck your cock — and then leave me flat. I’m not having that again.”

He stares at her. He shifts from one foot to the other. He takes a deep inhale, and a long exhale. “OK.”

“OK what?”

“OK, you’re right. I did that. I’m sorry.”

Tears always threaten when she’s angry, and she hates how weak they make her feel. She fights them now. “‘I’m sorry’ isn’t really good enough. In fact …”
Breathe deeply, Jocelyn. Do. Not. Cry.
“‘I’m sorry’ is a bit of an insult.”

He reaches for her arm, encircles her wrist with his hand. “It’s not ‘I’m sorry,’ like ‘I’m going to say I’m sorry so you’ll shut up,’ it’s ‘I’m sorry,’ like I wish I hadn’t done it.” He pauses. “Listen, pathetic excuse alert, although I’m not trying to excuse it, I’m more trying to explain.”

He looks down — maybe at the same crack she did — before meeting her eyes again. “Meeting you confused the hell out of me. That’s the best way I can describe it. I just … you just … you were so
different
. You made me feel so different. It was like, for the first time ever, I knew what the word ‘attraction’ meant. I was ridiculously attracted to you.”