No Regrets (8 page)

Everything starts to spin. “Oh man.”

Tate wears a huge grin and clearly thinks this is hilarious. It’s not hilarious, it’s a disaster. He rubs his chin and the smile vanishes into a grimace. I notice a purple bruise by his lip.

I reach up and touch his jaw. “What happened?”

“Eh,” he shrugs. “You’re not the only one that made a scene on at the party.”

I point to my own rash. “We’re twins.
Except you like the attention.”

When I explain how I got the burn
, Tate doesn’t even try not to laugh. “I just feel bad because I know you were nervous about going and then I ditched you. I’m just glad Henry came and got you.”

I glance across the pool where Henry has his back to us, skimming the pool for leaves and debris with a large net.
My eyes linger over the way his muscles tense and how broad his shoulders seem. “Yeah, he’s the real hero of the night. Costume or not.”

Tate chuckles and says, “Figures,” under his breath. “I put all this work into my Herculean body and he gets the accolades.”

“Go home, Hercules,” I say, stashing my bag in the office and climbing into my chair.

A group of kids walk through the gate including Mrs. Robinson’s kids. A teenage girl holds the hand of the youngest and I assume she’s the babysitter.
I focus on the pool but I see Tate corner Henry. I can’t help but wonder what they’re saying and more than once they glance in my direction. Anxiety fills my chest. Tate’s playing some kind of game, and Henry? Even though I don’t want to admit it, I’m attracted to him big time.

A kid, a teenager really, bounces on the diving board, flying high with his arms stretched wide, before slicing through the water in a perfect dive. He emerges, shaking his hair out of his eyes, comfortable and confident. I glance back at the boys. If only I could navigate these two with the precision of that diver.

Chapter Eight

That night I get a text from Henry. It’s late and the apartment is quiet. I’ve got a writing journal next to me on the bed, opened to a blank, wordless page. I pick up the phone and slide my thumb over the screen.

What are you doing?

Nothing—can’t sleep
.

Me
either. Come see me.

Now?

On the steps.

That’s so far away.

You’re so lazy. Do you want me to carry you?

Give me five minutes
.

I close the journal with a snap and kick off my quilt. It only takes me three minutes to get downstairs.

*

Tricia’s margarita sits half empty on the table in front of her. Josh is at the bar looking for a refill and I sip a soda and try not to puke when I get a whiff of the tequila.

Motorhead is pretty packed for a summer week night. People get
excited about dollar fishbowls, I guess. We’ve staked out the back corner, which makes me nervous because it’s so dark that I can’t see how dirty everything really is.

“
So, okay, time for the round-up. Me first,” Josh says, joining us at the table. “Davey and I went out three times last week. Once to the movies where he held my hand. Then to play mini-golf where we had our first kiss by the windmill, and then finally he met me for lunch this afternoon between my classes.”

“So does that count in the three date rule?” Tricia
asks, between sips on her straw and checking her phone screen.

“Maybe. Depends on the next one I think,” Josh says. His eyes have a dreamy look.
He’s smitten alright.

“What about you?” I ask Tricia.

“Work, work, work. I have met this hot intern down at the courthouse though. I may try stalking him a bit.” She brushes her long bangs out of her face. “How are your boys? You hook up with one of them yet?”

I choke on my drink. “Boys?”

“Please, we’ve seen you and Henry coming and going for the last couple of weeks. You guys look chummy.”

“We’re friends,” I admit.
Friends who work together, carpool together and sit up half the night talking together. “Just friends.”

“And Tate?” Josh asks. Tricia checks her phone again.

“Tate is good and is super flirty but just a friend.” They both look doubtful. I fiddle with the strap on my sundress. “Seriously. I don’t know what he has going on but something’s up. He may have a girlfriend or something. Maybe he’s taking a break like he said. Whatever it is, there’s no spark between us.”

“You’re hopeless,” Josh says. “Two total hotties and you can’t work it up to make a move on either of them.”

I bite the inside of my cheek because although he’s right, he may not be for long. Henry and I have been getting closer lately. Our past is holding me back and I’m not sure how to deal with it.

“Oh I do have some news to share. Next week
, Henry and I are going up to the overnight camp to lifeguard for the weekend. Double the pay and Tate pulled rank on us.

“Overnighter?”
Josh raises his eyebrows hopefully. “So Operation Payback is still in effect?”

“No,” I shake my head. “I’m done with that. Henry is a good friend and I’m trying to move past all that hurt and anger. It’s time.”

We leave the bar and hop on our bikes. Even at this time of night it’s hot as hell, but the breeze from riding feels good on my face and my hair blows back, cooling my neck. Tricia and Josh weave their bikes back and forth, laughing like maniacs and I worry one of them will break their neck, but somehow they manage to get back to our neighborhood in one piece.

I lock up my bike and follow my roommates up the stairs.

“Hey,” I hear from the bottom stoop. Henry leans over the railing overlooking the parking lot. The overhead light is out but I can see his outline clearly from the lamps in the parking lot. Loud bass music throbs from inside his apartment.

The smell of smoke wafts over to me and I see the glowing red tipped joint between his fingers. I watch as he inhales and then exhales slowly. A small grin tugs at his mouth. “I’ve never seen you in a dress before.”

“Technically you’ve seen me in a lot less,” I laugh, escaping his gaze and glancing down at the blue dress I’m wearing. I smooth the fabric nervously with my hands until I feel one of his fingers tangle with mine.

“Have you been drinking?” he asks, his tone serious.

“No. Designated biker.”

I reach for the joint and lift it to my lips, taking a hit. My nerves are all over the place sitting out here with him like this. The warmth spreads through my limbs and I know I’ve got to come clean.

He watches my movement in the dark, eyes on my mouth and down to my legs. I’ve managed to get his attention like I’ve always wanted, I know this. But it feels off to me. He means too much. I don’t want to taint this with manipulation.

“Remember that day at the park we were talking about?” I ask. “Back in high school?”

“I do. You wore a black shirt with a tiny skull and cross-bone on the chest.”

I turn to face him. “So you do remember that day.”

“Explicitly.”

“Then you know what you did to me,” I whisper, afraid this may be the final moment we have together. Airing our dirty laundry.

He stubs the joint on the step and rubs his face with his hands. “I know and I’m sorry. I acted like a dick.”

I scoff. “You broke my heart.”

“Don’t say that,” he begs, lifting his eyes to mine.

“You did.”

“I liked you so much. You were different and fun. I wanted to go with you to prom. I’d planned on it and then I had to go to this family wedding and everything went to hell.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I was eighteen and stupid. I didn’t want you to go with anyone else. I was petrified some other guy would ask you.”

“You made sure no one else did,” I say, barely containing the bitterness.

“Look, I was a dick—hands down. I thought I’d make it up to you when it was all over, but you were pissed and I came back to all the Carter shit.”

“Don’t blame this on me,” I say, knowing full well some of the blame lands squarely on my shoulders.

“I’m not. I chickened out.”

I look away, unable to meet his eyes. His stupid
, amazing, blue eyes. “I had a crush on you for forever,” I confess. “Like forever. I don’t want it to sound like you doing this thing to me was the end of my life. It wasn’t. It just changed me. I questioned my judgment with guys. My intuition. I thought if you could treat me so badly, others could too.”

“Taking this job this summer was a big risk for me. I thought I was ready to handle this—to handle you, but I was wrong.”

“You handle me just fine.”

“It’s all an act—a dare by Tricia and Josh, who want me to break out of my shell and get over my dramas. I thought maybe I could show you what you missed out on
, but that’s just not really me. I’ve liked you for so long, Henry. It feels good to be your friend again. I don’t want to mess anything else up.”

“You’re not messing anything up,” he says, grabbing my arm. “I fucked up.
We fucked up. But I’m really ready to get past it.”

He licks his lips and he’s got that look, the decisive one where I
know he’s going to kiss me. It’s all I’ve wanted him to do for weeks—for years—but my stomach and head hurt too much.

“Don’t,” I say quietly. “Not now. Not like this.”
If this were a cartoon, the girl would have reached inside the boy’s heart and ripped his heart out with her bare hands. That’s what happens when I tell him not to kiss me.

Henry’s
crushed. Visibly. His eyes cast downward and his fingers go in his hair. I feel like my heart’s breaking over him for a second time, but I’m not running away this time. “I’m not angry anymore,” I tell him. “I just need some time to figure out how I want to deal with this. I can’t do the wishy-washy, ‘What does Henry want?’ game anymore. When you’re ready, let me know.”

I turn and race up the steps to my apartment
, afraid to linger even a moment longer.

Chapter
Nine

I drive myself to work the next day
, unable to handle the fallout between Henry and myself. Well, more like, I’m unable to handle the brutal honesty and declaration of love I professed for him the night before.

“You’re here early,” Tate says, looking behind me and running a hand through disheveled hair. “Where’s Henry?”

“We didn’t ride together. I had some errands to run.” I hear laughter across the pool deck and see Mrs. Robinson’s kids chasing each other in the grass. “Why are they here so early?”

“Oh, I told her she could drop them a couple minutes early today. She had an appointment or something.”

“So you’re babysitting them now?”

“Just doing her a favor.
Single mom and all that.”

I give him a hard look. “Are you screwing her?” He shakes his head but I see the way his jaw clenches. He may not be but he wants to. Badly.  “She has kids. Don’t turn this
into some kind of desperate housewives situation.”

“Chicks in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Pip.”

I frown trying to follow his logic. “What the hell does that mean?”

He crosses his arms which make his biceps as big as his head. “It means I’ve been following your no messing around at work rule but I’m not so sure about you and Henry.”

“There’s nothing going on with me and Henry.”

He laughs. “Maybe not yet, but you two are getting awful chummy. Seems to me like if you guys plan on getting it on at work
, then so can I.”

“You’re ridiculous. No one is
‘getting it on’ anywhere. In fact, you’re the one inviting me to parties and hanging out at my house watching TV all night, not Henry,” I argue.

“Not Henry what?”

I spin and find Henry behind me jaw tight and eyes angry. I spot the wadded up note I left on his car saying I’d see him later in his hand and feel a pang of guilt. “Nothing,” I say, tossing my bag into the office and walking away from the guys.

Half way up the ladder to my guard chair
, I feel a hand on my ankle. I look down and see Henry below. “Are you angry at me?” he asks.

I slip my sunglasses over my eyes and say, “No. I just thought we could use some space.”

“We had space, three years. Don’t make this worse than it needs to be.”

Tate climbs the other chair and blows the whistle, letting the kids know it’s okay to get in. He stares at me pointedly and holds his hands up in annoyance.

“What’s that all about?” Henry asks.

“Tate was all over me this morning about us being too close to one another and how we’re breaking the deal about not hooking up with people at work.”

“What? We aren’t hooking up.” But he looks guilty because we both know he wanted to kiss me last night and if our world wasn’t imploding, we would have.

“I know but he’s pissy anyway, most likely because he has a hard-on for Mrs. Robinson and he can’t do anything about it.”

“Probably,” he snorts, looking away. His voice turns serious again and he says, “Will you talk to me about this later, because I have some things to say.”

I swallow and keep my eyes on the pool. “If you want.”

“Tonight,” he says, reaching for the safety buoy off the wall. “No bailing.”

“No bailing,” I promise,
even though I want to. I’m not sure I’m ready for an apology and I’m not sure I can handle it if he doesn’t offer one.

*

I’ve just gotten into bed when my phone buzzes.  The screen lights up my room and I know who it is. I know what he wants.

Home?

Yeah.

Can we talk?

I guess.

Do I need to come get you?

No. I’ll be there.

He’s waiting on the step, no weed this time, thank god, because I need us both to be levelheaded. I move across from him and lean against the railing, in an attempt to keep my distance. Henry has his hair pulled back in a stocking cap even though it’s hot as hell out here. His black T-shirt accentuates his tan and his bare feet tap nervously on the bottom step.

“This is messed up,” he says, breaking the silence.
“What did you mean yesterday when you said Josh and Tricia put you up to this?”

“I had this grand plan to seduce you and show you what you missed all those y
ears ago by ditching me at prom,” I confess.

“You think I don’t know what I missed out on?” he asks. He stands and closes the distance between us. “I knew I messed up the Monday after the dance. I knew I lost my chance with you and I regretted it every day since, but then Josh
and Tricia moved in upstairs. I kept my distance, but then you moved in and it was like some kind of cosmic fate. I knew I had to play my cards right. I saw you coming in and out in that stupid ice cream uniform and I convinced Tate to tell Josh about the job, so that we could work together.”

“You set this whole thing up?”

“Yeah, most of it. I thought you’d work with us at the outdoor pool and that took some convincing.”

“To be fair,” I say. “That was Tate’s fault.
Him and his hyper-libido.”

Henry smiles and takes a step closer. His hand hovers in the air near my hip but he balls it into a fist.
“Can we go back to yesterday? When we were friends?”

“Is that all you want?”
I ask, my chest aching. “Just friends?”

“Can I want us to be friends and something more?”

“You want your cake and to eat it too, huh?” I ask with little humor.

“That’s a weird saying. Is it so wrong to want to eat your cake? That’s what you do with cake, you eat it,” he declares. “And yeah, I want you to be my friend and I want you to be more than that, but not at the expense of one another.”

“I don’t know how we do that,” I admit. “I like you, Henry. I always have, but I don’t know if I trust you. Our relationship feels lopsided like we’ll always know I’m more invested and that can’t be healthy.”

He unclenches his fist and tentatively rests his hand on my hip. I don’t fight him. “You never had to seduce me, Zadie. That’s what you’re missing here. You had me from the beginning. Way back—before senior year. There’s
nothing lopsided about any of this, other than the fact we’ve waited so long to explore it further.”

He’s so close I could rub a thumb over the stubble on his chin
if I wanted. If I let myself. His stomach brushes against mine and my insides fill with butterflies and he cups my chin with his hand. “I want to explore this further if you do,” he whispers.

I’m overwhelmed by his confession and the closeness of his mouth.
He smells clean, like he just got out of the shower and I say, “Don’t make me regret this,” but I’m already on my toes, my free hand wound in his shirt.

The first kiss is unb
elievably soft. Almost like air. His lips barely touching mine. The second comes faster and I feel his stubbly chin. I take his lower lip between mine, afraid to lose contact.

We break apart and his eyes stay closed for a second longer than my own and when he opens them he says, “I just really, really, really wanted to do that.”

“Same,” I breathe.

A dozen questions run through my mind and I want to as
k them all. Henry stops them with another kiss, one that I feel straight to my toes and to every other part of my body, like a wire live with electricity.

“No regrets,” he promises, pushing my back against the wall. I sink into his kiss, tasting his mouth and tongue.

No regrets.

*

He doesn’t kiss me when I get in his car the next morning. Or even when we’re at the convenience store and our hips bump into one another by the candy aisle.
He sings an Aerosmith song in my ear and that wire between us coils live and dangerous. Or at least on my end. We play it cool the whole time, but I’m giddy and wracked with nerves. I’m about to burst into tears of remorseful panic. I don’t have the balls to pursue this. I’m too emotionally bound. I’ll never have the upper hand between us. When we reach the parking lot of the pool he leans over and gives me another gentle sweet kiss.

“Oh thank god,” I say under my breath.

“What?”

“I just didn’t want it to get weird, but I’ve been thinking about your mouth since last night and that’s already weird so…right,” I fade off.

“I’ve been thinking of your mouth, too,” he says with a smile, rubbing his hand over mine.

A vehicle pulls up next to ours. It’s Tate in his
big blue truck and we both move away from one another on instinct. Tate made it clear the day before he’d be furious if we hooked up on the job while we’d made it so clear he had to stay hands off.

It’s nearing July
and the pool is packed. I barely have time to think about Henry over the screaming kids.  Just after lunch, a toddler wandered off from his mother and stepped into the shallow end. Thankfully Tate saw it happen and fished him out before anyone, including the mother noticed.

“You okay?” I a
sk him during a break. He looks a little pale under his tan. Henry stands nearby with an equally concerned expression on his face.

“I’m just glad I was standing there, you know?”

“I didn’t even see him,” Henry confesses. He was across the pool watching the deep end.

“Me either,” I agree. “Not until I saw you jump in.”

“Why don’t you take the afternoon off man,” Henry suggests. I nod in agreement. Tate looks freaked.

“You sure? It’s crowded.”

“It’s thinning out. You know how the families with little kids go home in the late afternoon.”

Tat
e agrees and packs up his stuff but still seems visibly shaken. “Want to hang tonight? We can watch Buffy,” I offer. Henry shoots me a desperate look. “Henry can come, too.”

He perks up at the idea and well, the fact Mrs. Robinson just walked by on her way to the parking lot. His eyes are glued to her body. “Awesome. I’ll swing by around eight.”

Tate leaves and I shake my head. “I sort of feel bad depriving him of that.”

“No you don’t. You’d be super pissed if you walked in on them in the showers.”

I cover my hand over my eyes. “Stop. I’ll have to bleach my brain.”

Henry moves closer but just enough so I can hear him say quietly, “I thought for a minute I was going to be deprived of you tonight.”

“You’ll just have to share,” I suggest, pretending not to be horrified at sounding so slutty.

I glance at the clock and see it’s time to blow the whistle for kids
’ swim. I pass Henry, letting my fingers brush against his. His fingers tug at the waist of my shorts, slipping them next to my skin. “I’m not good at sharing,” he says before walking back into the sun, whistle perched between his lips.

*

“Thanks for sticking around,” I say to Tricia that night. “I know you’ve been working a lot.” I feel like other than Thursday nights at Motorhead I barely see her lately. She’s agreed to stay for the gathering with Tate and Henry to keep the awkward at a minimum. Thank God Josh has other plans or I’m sure he’d manage to get awkward at an all-time high.

“I’m here for you, babe,” she says, eyeing my
frantic pacing around the room with amusement.

We’re in my bedroom, trying on the eighth shirt/short/skirt/dress combo of the night. I toss a T-shirt on the bed.  “Aggh. Nothing’s right.”

“Okay, calm down,” she says, taking me by the shoulders. “What is it you want to convey here. Casual? Sexy?
Stepping out of the friend-zone? Toss you on the bed?”

I stand in front of the closet and flip through the hangers. “It’s not a date but I want to look good. I want to drive Henry crazy. I don’t want to give Tate any ideas. We’re watching TV so it needs to be a little causal. So casual-sexy?”

I watch helpless as she digs through the pile of clothes. “Things were a lot easier with Tyler at Elton. We just hooked up at a party and started dating.”

“You and Henry have a history, a weird one, and it makes things more complicated.” She hands me a purple V-neck top and a pair of shorts.  “Here. These will maximize your boobs and your legs. Wear your hair up so he can see your neck. Full coverage but just enough skin to drive an interested guy mad.”

I start to change but stop when I notice Tricia shaking her head. “Change into a better bra. Push those suckers up.”

Thirty minutes later
I’m squished between Henry and Tate on the couch and we’re watching Season Six, which I’ve managed to forget is the hyper-sexualized season of Buffy. This is oddly appropriate because things between Henry and I seem to have shifted from zero to 90 in the last 24 hours and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d burned a hole in the futon cushion between us.

The third time Henry “accidentally” grazes his fingers across the side of my bare thigh, I fight a tremor.

“You feeling better?” I ask Tate.

“Yeah, that whole thing was pretty horrible. I keep thinking about what would have happened if I wasn’t there.”