Sleeping with Beauty (31 page)

“I don’t want coffee, Grady. I want—”

You.
He paused by the door, his heart wanting that answer so badly, he’d been stopped in his tracks by the need to hear it. “If you’re going to keep me from the much-needed nirvana that is my bed, then I do want coffee,” he said, cutting off whatever she’d been about to say. Safer that way. Once he was sufficiently caffeinated, he’d risk the more dangerous conversational territories.

“I didn’t plan on talking to you this late,” she told him. “I thought you’d be home earlier.”

He didn’t ask her how long she’d waited out there for him. His guilt column was quite full already, thanks.

“I just couldn’t stand this any longer,” she said. “If for no other reason than it’s stressing Jana out and she doesn’t need that right now.”

He punched the button on the coffeemaker. Hard. “So, you’re here because you’re worried about Jana?” First he didn’t want her here confronting him about his bad behavior, then he got angry when it wasn’t all about him. Christ, but he wanted to go to bed.

“I’m here because I’m worried about all three of us. I don’t understand why things can’t go back to the way they were.”

She had no idea how badly he’d prayed for the same miracle. More sober than he’d like to be, he briefly considered skipping the coffee and going for the beer, but decided against that course of action. As tired and screwed up in the head as he was, no telling what he might say if he was chemically impaired.

The first fumes of perking coffee fueled his stamina instead, and he turned to find her lounging in his kitchen doorway. She’d shed her winter jacket. So he was now treated to the view of her small and apparently non-Wonderbra-enhanced breasts pressing lightly against one of her dad’s worn-out Georgetown sweatshirts. His body responded anyway. Because apparently he was so pathetic and starved for her that she could wear burlap and he’d still get hard. He turned back to the coffee. And tried really hard to think about anything that didn’t have to do with Lucy or his bed. Together or apart.

“Things aren’t the same, Luce,” he told her, digging the half-and-half out of the fridge, hoping the blast of cold air would provide some much-needed relief. “You know that better than anyone.” He shut the door. Okay, it might have qualified as an almost-slam. He didn’t look at her, so he didn’t know if she’d noticed or not.

“Goddammit, Grady, what the hell is so wrong with me fixing myself up a little?”

Because you fixed yourself up for the wrong man, when I would have gladly taken you the way you were!
he wanted to shout. Instead, he made big business out of selecting just the right coffee mug and digging a spoon out of the dishwasher. “Nothing.”

She snorted. “Yeah, you always go out of your way to avoid me for weeks—weeks, Grady!—over nothing.” Then, just like that, her anger seemed to evaporate and she slumped back against the wall just inside the door. “I know I left you that night and I’m a thousand times sorry for that. It was a horrible mistake to make. But, my God, don’t you think you’ve punished me enough?”

No,
he thought selfishly,
because it doesn’t come close to how much I’ve punished myself all these years.
Unfair? Sure. Did he care at the moment? Not really.

“You abandoned me, too, only in a much worse way. And you won’t even talk to me about it, or let me try and fix it. That hurts. A lot.”

Join the club,
he thought. It wasn’t fair for her to get to be the martyr when
he
felt like the one who’d been abandoned. Somehow he didn’t think she’d see it that way, though.

“No comment? Are we that broken?” She pounded her fist against the wall, startling him into looking at her.

When he saw the raw pain on her face, it was all he could do not to throw his spoon down and pull her into his arms, hold her close, apologize for everything. Then beg her to never leave him again.

Be a man. Grow a pair.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you—”

Her eyes flashed. “If you even think about trotting out the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ crap, then you deserve to lose both my friendship and Jana’s.”

Impatient, almost desperate now for his fix, he pulled the coffeepot out and shoved his mug beneath the filter. “I haven’t lost anything with Jana,” he said defensively.

“Don’t bet on it.”

He glanced up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means she hates this as much as I do. You don’t think that your treating me like a leper puts her in an awkward position? And if you’re such a good friend to her, you’d know that’s the very last thing she needs right now.”

“So you camped out in my hall to force a peace treaty for Jana’s sake.”

“For all our sakes. Have you been happy with the way things are between us lately? Or is it just me and Jana who are miserable?”

“Of course I’m not happy about all this.”

She threw up her hands. “Well, then, why in the hell haven’t you tried to do anything about it?”

“I did try!” he shouted, no longer able to keep his anger in check. “I came to the damn reunion to show you I was still in your corner. We all know how that turned out.”

She had the decency to look abashed. “Okay, I deserved that.” She glanced up then, through those short stubby lashes of hers, and his anger bled out. Like it always did. “I tried to apologize,” she said quietly. “You wouldn’t take my calls. It’s been almost a month, Grady.”

A month during which she’d been out with Jason Prescott four times. That he knew about, anyway. A month that he’d spent working himself to the brink of exhaustion so that when he did finally crawl in bed at night, he didn’t have to lie there and imagine what they might be doing with each other. To each other.

His fingers curled into his palms and he’d never wanted so badly to hit something. Hard. Jason’s pretty face would have been handy.

Slowly he flexed his hand and turned back to his coffee mug, which was full almost to spilling over. He carefully swapped out the pot for the mug. “Sure you don’t want any?” he asked, working hard to keep his voice smooth and even.

“No. I don’t want any coffee.” She came to stand behind him and it took all his willpower to not leave the room. Or turn and grab her. “I just want you to talk to me. Tell me what’s really wrong.” She rested her hands on his shoulders and his hands tightened so hard on the mug he was surprised he didn’t shatter it. “You know, we all go through big changes in our lives. Jana is pregnant, for God’s sake, which terrifies me even more than it does her, which is saying something, believe me. And you’ve handled that okay.”

Because Jana getting pregnant didn’t take you away from me.

Maybe he should just say it, he thought morosely. Just put it out there. It wasn’t like he had much to lose at this point. Their friendship was toast, as things stood, so maybe he should finally suck it up and go for broke.

“It’s this thing with Jason, isn’t it?” she said quietly.

And any hope he had of telling her how he felt vanished. Because she had “this thing with Jason.” And though he was a grown man, secure in himself, confident about his place in the world . . . part of him was still that dorky teenager who knew he could never compete with the likes of golden-boy Jason Prescott. Ten years ago he hadn’t had to. Jason had screwed up his chance for the best thing going, all by himself. Leaving Grady to be the shoulder, be the one who put the pieces of her broken heart back together . . . even if it put an enormous strain on his own.

Now? Now it was too late. He’d wasted ten whole entire fucking years when he’d had the upper hand. Or whatever edge he’d ever had, anyway. Blown all to hell. Because of complacency. And his chickenshit heart.

“It’s not about Prescott,” he heard himself say. Because, when you got down to it, it wasn’t. It was about him not taking chances when he should have. And then unfairly taking it out on her when she’d moved on with her life.

“Sure it is,” she said, not buying that lie for a second. “You’ve never liked him, even before the stupid prom.”

So, okay, maybe it is a little about Prescott.

“I know it’s confusing after the big whoop I made about him in high school, to be going out with him now, but people change.”

“Not usually,” he muttered. Once an asshole, always an asshole. He wondered if the same was true about chickenshit hearts.

“Well, you and Jana will just have to learn differently.”

So, Jana was still on his side. That made him feel marginally better. “I don’t really want to hear the nitty-gritty about your dates, thanks.”
Because they might be even worse than the ones I’ve already constructed on my own.
“And I definitely don’t want to look at him across the table at Thanksgiving.”

“Actually, that’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. And partly why I’m here. I didn’t want to wait until the holiday to clear things up, because I’m not even sure that we’re having a holiday or what we’re doing. Or if we’re doing anything.”

He turned around, which had the added benefit of dislodging her hands from his shoulders, but the disadvantage of putting her that much closer to the one part of his body he didn’t need her close to. He tried not to think about it. Gripping the counter behind him to keep from grabbing her, he said, “What in the hell are you talking about? It’s Jana’s turn, right? I mean, I know she’s not feeling great, but—”

At the look on Lucy’s face, and her accompanying, “Shit,” he frowned.

“What don’t I know?” he asked.

She raked a hand through her hair. He took partial pleasure in the fact that, even with all the blonde streaks and the flatironing, at two in the morning, her locks still reverted to lumpy Lucy hair. He curled his fingers into a tighter grip on the counter, to keep from ruffling her bangs. He was a hopeless case, really.

She huffed and swore again. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.” She looked at him, all accusatory. “I thought you said you were talking to her.”

He lifted his hands. Tactical error. “I have! I can’t help it if she’s keeping something from me that I couldn’t possibly know she was keeping from me.” He needed to do something with his hands. Immediately. So he raked his fingers through his own hair, which only proceeded to tangle it up more. He needed to get a haircut. He always needed to get a haircut, but it was even worse than usual. “I’m too tired to be having this conversation.”

“Jana is going to Canada for Thanksgiving. Dave thinks his family can help her come to terms with being pregnant.”

“I’m an only child and a man, to boot, and even I know that’s a plan doomed to fail.”

“Yeah, well, she sort of hurt Dave pretty badly when she confided her fears about motherhood to him.”

“She did tell me about that.”

“So she’s doing this more for him than because she really thinks it’ll work. He just needs to feel like he’s doing something to help her, that’s all.”

“Which means . . . one of us is supposed to do Turkey Day?” Grady realized immediately why Jana hadn’t told him.

A second later, the light dawned on her face. “She’s playing peacemaker, isn’t she?”

Peacemaker, matchmaker, who knew what was going on in Jana’s head.

Lucy shook her head. “You know, if she realized just what a nurturing person she really is, she wouldn’t be so freaked out about the baby.”

“I don’t think it’s just about her ability to be a parent,” Grady said.

Lucy looked at him. “Yeah, me either. She’s worried about all of it. About her life, her career, whether she’s up to the dedication it requires. I think she’s worried she’s going to be like her mother.”

Grady snorted. “No way. She’s stable, married to a great guy, with a steady job. Three things her mother has never done individually, much less concurrently.”

“Or her father. Who didn’t even stick around to see her born,” Lucy went on, undeterred. “I’m not saying it makes any sense, okay? Just that she has little confidence in herself when it comes to this big step. She hasn’t even told her mother yet. And the only other people she can talk to besides Dave and his happy brood of reproducers, is us.”

“Who have the collective experience of navel lint when it comes to babies.”

“Exactly.” Surprisingly, Lucy smiled at him. There was a shadow to it, mostly in her eyes, which effectively crumbled any resistance or anger he might have left to hide behind.

“What?” he asked, because there was a message that went with that sad smile.

“Nothing. Everything. I miss this. You know. Talking. Figuring shit out. Communing as one. No one thinks the way we do about stuff.”

Not even fucking Jason Prescott?
he thought, but managed by some miracle not to voice out loud.

“Jana didn’t tell you because she was afraid if she did, you’d work through Thanksgiving and we’d never get back together.”

And Jana was right. He probably would have.

“It would mean a lot to her if we could put aside this . . . whatever it is we’re having, and spend the holiday together,” Lucy went on. “We don’t even have to cook a turkey. We can get Chinese carryout and watch football all day and never even talk to each other. She’ll never know the difference. But she will know if we don’t see each other. She just will.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “It’s like pulling freaking teeth, I swear. You’re so stubborn and you make me crazy on a regular basis and I have no idea why I’m killing myself to force a reconciliation between us. Except I refuse to consider the alternative.” She reached behind him and grabbed his coffee, downing half the mug before he could take it out of her hand.

“Hey!” he protested. “Get your own mug.”

“You weren’t drinking it.”

Only because he’d completely forgotten about it.

“So, can we at least agree to give Turkey Day a shot? My place is fine with me if it is with you. Or we can meet anywhere you want. Who knows, it’s three weeks away. Maybe by then we can have an actual productive conversation about it.”

Only if fucking Prescott gets hit by a truck.

“Maybe if it’s at some kind of normal daylight hour, that would help.”

“Like you have such a thing as ‘normal’ hours. But fine, name a time and a place and I’ll be there.”