I cleaned up and came out to join the bachelorette party fifteen minutes after Jacob left. I debated leaving too, but I didn’t want Amy to think her
announcement had sent Jacob on a death spiral that I had to leave to nurse him through. I mean, it had sent him on a spiral, but my staying at least made it seem less of a big deal.
When I got upstairs, everyone was in the kitchen melting wax and listening to Michael Bublé. It was Jane, Jill, Jewel, Gwen, Joy, and then half a dozen women I didn’t know but vaguely recognized from the engagement party.
It felt like I’d walked onto the set of a comedy. I stood there with just- fucked hair at the bachelorette party of the woman my fake boyfriend was in love with, while Jafar weaved through feet under the table squawking, “Alexa! Order garlic bread!” and the Amazon Echo was replying that garlic bread was already on the shopping list. It was all I could do to not maniacally laugh.
Someone shoved a cocktail at me that I tasted and then held until the ice melted because it was pure tequila with a drop of guava syrup. Then I made a stupid candle.
I had to move out of Jacob’s house. I couldn’t stay with him after this. I didn’t even know how we’d continue to do this fake relationship for the couple of weeks we had left. It was going to be so awkward and so
physically painful to even hold his hand, now that I’d crossed this colossal line.
I was trying not to think too hard about how good the sex had been. It wasn’t really working.
He was such a good kisser. It wasn’t even funny how good he was. If he’d kissed me before this, I would have been a goner weeks ago. I started to get worked up even thinking about it.
All I could think about was touching him, the way his tongue had tasted and how he smelled and the sounds he’d made.
I thought about how he’d made me touch him. The way he’d yanked my underwear to the side. Rougher than I would have expected from him. Unapologetic. He was not shy with me at all. I had a feeling I’d only scratched the surface today, that Jacob would be full of surprises in bed. I could almost picture him pinning me with that quiet, reflective gaze he has before pushing me up against a wall, pulling my underwear down, telling me what to do…
Oh my God, see, this was my problem. I couldn’t even focus.
I looked down at my candle. The wick was crooked. I’d been making this thing with the only two brain cells that hadn’t been dedicated to the sex tape I was rewatching in my head.
I was a mess. How could I be harmless to him when I couldn’t even be harmless to myself?
Some little part of me said that maybe if we started a sexual relationship, it would lead to more. Maybe he would eventually get over Amy and fall in love with me. We were already friends, we had physical chemistry. A lot of chemistry. Like, a disproportionate amount. We didn’t have love, but that was still two out of three, right?
Pathetic.
Imagine trying to talk yourself into a friends-with-benefits situation in which you were head-over-heels in love and you knew he was actively wishing you were someone else.
I hated myself.
My sulking was disrupted when some drunk woman named Shannon who’d been talking too loudly and wearing a maid of honor hat stood up and clinked her fork to the side of her glass. Everyone looked up from their project.
“A toast!” she bellowed.
She was barely able to stand. This oughta be good. Amy smiled and everyone lifted their cocktails.
Shannon swayed for another moment. “To Amy,” she slurred, holding up her martini. “A woman who would have been married years ago if Jacob hadn’t strung her along! Huzzah!”
The party fell into an instant hush.
Amy set her mocktail down. “Shannon, that’s not true—”
Shannon scoffed. “What do you mean??? It so is?! He lost the best thing that ever happened to him because he’s too anxious to function.” She laughed at her own joke.
All my jumbled, discombobulated emotions suddenly jerked to attention and honed in on her like a laser.
“He functions just fucking fine,” I snapped.
The room collectively gasped. Shannon blinked at me like she’d just realized that I was here. She peered around red-eyed, looking for allies. She didn’t see any.
“What?” she said, throwing up a hand. “He didn’t even go in the limo.
What man can’t handle a bachelor party?”
I set my untouched drink down with a clink and glared at her. “He has social anxiety. You expect him to come to some loud-ass limo party with your verbal-diarrhea husbands, and you wonder why he didn’t suddenly turn into some social butterfly? He should get credit for even trying. You have no idea how hard he has to work to just fucking show up. And he does it because that’s what love does—it shows up. He’s shown up for Amy and his brother since the second this started. He has been a goddamn saint through all of this. He is not the asshole. You’re the asshole.”
Jafar squawked, “ASSHOLE!” from somewhere under the kitchen table. Every mouth in the room was open. Amy was wide-eyed, Jane was red,
Jill was nodding, Jewel looked like I had her vote for president, and Joy was stifling a grin.
I stared down Shannon until she looked away first. Then I pulled the keys out of my purse, got up, and left.
I drove to the gas station down the street, bought seven different kinds of candy bars, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. Then I drove back to the house, snuck in through the garage door, and went straight for the sunroom, where Grandpa watched TV.
“What the hell do you want?” he muttered when I came in. “Give me any crap and I’ll change my mind.”
I wheeled him out the sliding glass doors and into the screened-in gazebo in the wooded part of the yard.
I took off his oxygen, moved his tank, opened the pack of cigarettes, and held one out in front of him just out of reach.
“I know you’re of sound mind, so I know you understand when I say that if you choose to take this, it may worsen your lung condition. You would be smoking against my medical advice and probably to your detriment.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Shut up and give it to me.”
I rolled my eyes, lit the cigarette, and handed it to him. Then I dropped into a chair and started eating a Snickers like it was a burrito.
The old man eyed me. “Tough night?” “You have no idea.”
He took a long draw on his cigarette and blew the smoke in rings. “You having trouble with my grandson? Want me to straighten him out?”
I snorted. “Can you make him love me?” “Doesn’t he already?”
“No,” I said. “No, he doesn’t.”
He took another puff. “And here I was thinkin’ he was the smart one.”
He finished his cigarette and I gave him another one. I opened a Milky Way and sat there eating it while I stared through the screen into the dark abyss of the yard, contemplating all my questionable life choices.
Jacob never said he loved me back.
I said it to him so many times and not once did he say “You too.” But he did let me know he thinks of me when he jerks off. I’d be absolutely thrilled about this if he also happened to be in love with me as well.
If I had any question about what this was for him, that was my answer. I had to bury my face in my hands.
This was my fault. All of it.
He’d been crystal clear with me since the beginning, that he was in love with someone else. This was completely on me.
Maybe if I hadn’t gone off and told Amy that Jacob and I were living together, I wouldn’t have moved in there and wouldn’t be so worn down from seeing him in gray sweatpants every day.
Maybe if I’d tried to calm him down in a way that didn’t involve straddling his lap, I would have had the fortitude not to have sex with him on a futon in his mom’s basement.
I groaned. I had sex with him. On a futon. In his mom’s basement. I was like a parody of myself.
Even though this was just sex for him, now that I wasn’t going to be doing it again, he was going to feel rejected and like he did something wrong, because that’s just how Jacob was. And I was going to feel embarrassed and like I couldn’t count on myself to make the right decisions, especially when it came to him. The only way I could be sure it wouldn’t happen again was to stay away from him.
I’d still keep my promise. I’d attend his family functions through the wedding. But I couldn’t ever be with him alone and I couldn’t spend time with him outside of the agreement.
I’d messed this up. I’d ruined the time we had left.
I still had my face in my hands when I heard footsteps. A second later someone opened the gazebo door. I looked up. Amy stood there.
We stared at each other in surprise. Then she looked over at Grandpa smoking and her mouth fell open.
My jaw set. Fuck it. “Go ahead,” I said, sitting back in my seat. “Tell Joy. I don’t even care.”
Amy blinked at me. Then she held something up. A pack of Marlboros.
“We all give them to him,” she said sheepishly. “Well, the girls do. It’s sort of how you know you’re in the family? When you start sneaking Grandpa cigarettes. He smokes a pack a week.”
“Two,” he said proudly.
I turned and gawked at him. “What?”
He didn’t reply, but he looked pleased with himself. I looked back at Amy. “How does Joy not know?”
Amy shrugged. “She does. She told Greg as long as she’s not enabling it, she can’t feel guilty about it. And she said he likes the chase? That it keeps
him sharp?”
Grandpa looked at the glowing end of his cigarette. “I always could make the ladies do whatever I wanted. Haven’t lost my touch.”
I shook my head at him. Unbelievable. “You almost ran me down with your wheelchair. Several times.”
“You got out of the way, didn’t you?” He managed to get a laugh out of me.
Amy stood there for a minute, looking self-conscious. “Can I sit?”
I blew a breath out through my nose. Then I nodded at the chair across from me. She sat down on the edge of the seat like I might change my mind and make her leave.
She licked her lips. “I’m sorry about Shannon,” she said. “She was out of line. She was very drunk, and I sent her home.”
I didn’t reply.
“Jacob never strung me along,” she said, going on. “He didn’t do anything wrong. And you were right. I never really appreciated how hard it is for him to show up—I didn’t do enough to take his anxiety seriously. I deserved what you said. Probably more than anyone.”
She peered back at me.
I looked away from her. “Do you want a Twix?” I mumbled. “Oh God, yes.”
I dug into the plastic gas-station bag and handed her the candy bar, and she unwrapped it and took a bite. She closed her eyes while she chewed. “Thank you,” she breathed. “I am starving, all the time.”
I studied her for a moment. “How many weeks are you?” I asked.
“Eight.” She took a deep breath and glanced at me. “Honestly, I’ve been so sick and exhausted I didn’t even want to do this party.”
“Is that why we made candles instead of pole dancing somewhere?”
She laughed a little. “The candles came out pretty awful, didn’t they?” “Mine has a hair in it.”
She cracked up and I couldn’t help but smile. She finished the candy bar and rested her head on the back of her chair.
I lit another cigarette for Grandpa. “Don’t you need to go back in?” I asked her.
“Nah. I told everyone I was feeling sick and needed to go lie down. Joy moved everyone into the living room and she’s showing them vibrators she likes.”
I looked over my shoulder toward the house. “Oh, man. I’m missing that?”
“Like you need it?” she said in an amused We-both-know-what-kind-of- earth-shattering-sex-Jacob-is-giving-you kind of way.
I bobbed my head at the comment that I would have had to pretend to understand just an hour ago. God.
“Is it true he didn’t get in the limo?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”
I don’t know what it was. Maybe that she looked sort of vulnerable sitting there. Or maybe it was the genuinely concerned way she was looking at me. But I didn’t want to lie about it.
“We had a fight.”
She peered at me. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t press for more information. But I decided to give it to her anyway.
“I think I’m a little more in love with him than he is with me.” Amy blinked. “I seriously doubt that.”
I scoffed.
“No, I mean it,” she said. “I have never seen him the way he is with you.” She shook her head. “He never wanted to live with me or spend time
with me. He didn’t look at me like he looks at you.”
She was wrong, of course. Jacob didn’t feel any sort of way about me. I wasn’t really living with him. I wasn’t even really dating him. If anything, this just showed what a good job we’d done making everyone believe. But I did appreciate her saying it, trying to make me feel better.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “You know, I thought—at first—that maybe you were only with him for the kidney,” she said, sounding a little guilty. “But I was wrong. I can see that you really love him and how good you two are together.” She smiled a little. “It makes me really happy that he’s found that. He deserves that.”
I studied her face. She meant it. She really did want him to be happy. This was the moment that I decided to like her.
She was a lot less evil than I had imagined. She wasn’t really evil at all. I could sort of see why all the Maddox boys were in love with her.
It sucks when you actually like the other woman. It sucks more when it happens twice.
An hour later the party wrapped up and I drove to Jacob’s house.
When I walked in the front door, I set my purse down on the credenza and I heard the door to Jacob’s plant room open and him coming down the hallway.
Lieutenant Dan met me first, and Jacob came in after him and stopped and stood in the doorway with his hands slipped into the pockets of his pajama bottoms. He searched my face, giving me one of his quiet looks. The ones where the wheels were turning.
My air mattress was deflated on the floor between us. It had started to sag last night and now it was officially dead. I stared at this, while Jacob stared at me.
I could smell the flowers he’d sent me. He’d put them on the coffee table so I could see them when I woke up. Seeing them made me want to sob. This part was over now. I couldn’t believe how badly I’d ruined this. Nothing would ever be the same. I hadn’t just ruined the quality of the time I had left, I’d also ruined our friendship. Muddied it. Made it weird.
It wasn’t weird for him. He’d wanted this, to add benefits to the arrangement. He’d probably just been happy for the distraction.
It was me who couldn’t deal now.
“You can sleep in my room,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
But I shook my head. “No. I’m going home.” I raised my eyes to his. He paused for a long moment. “Why?”
“I just can’t be here.”
He dragged a hand down his mouth and looked away from me. When he came back, he held me with his tired brown eyes. “Briana. Just…come to bed.”
My stomach flipped. I felt the power of his summons like a whisper into my soul. Come to me, Briana. Come…
I felt my heart reach for him.
It made my eyes dart to his mouth. It made my fast-twitch muscles ping with the urge to fling myself at him and let him carry me to his room and do whatever the hell he wanted to me. Roll on top of me and pull my underwear down and kiss me until my lips hurt again.
But I shook my head. “No.” He peered at me. “Why?”
“Jacob, I need you to help me, okay? Don’t try to kiss me again. Don’t even touch me when we’re not in front of your family. Let’s just get through the wedding and be done with this. Okay?”
“That’s what you want?”
“I just said.”
“Sometimes people say things they don’t actually mean.”
I threw up my hands. “What do you want from me, Jacob?”
He paused. “Everything. I want everything. I want us to be real.”
I laughed almost manically. “What are you even talking about? You are in love with someone else!”
He stared at me. “What?”
I shook my head at him. “Look, I know that this thing with us would be convenient for you. And I appreciate that you find me attractive, I really do. But I’m not going to be your consolation prize because it didn’t work out with Amy.”
“You think I’m—”
“Jacob, don’t bother denying it. I heard you fighting with her the day of the luau. You came out with lipstick and perfume on your shirt and then you asked me out so you didn’t have to dwell on it. Then today you had a panic attack because she’s pregnant—”
“I had a panic attack because you’re texting Levi.” I blinked at him.
“That day at the luau? I was fighting with Amy because she was worried you were using me for my kidney. That you didn’t actually want me. And so I asked you out because I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted it to be real between us, I wanted to make it real. And she was right. It wasn’t.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care about Amy, Briana. I don’t love her. I don’t think I ever did. I’m glad she’s pregnant, I like being an uncle. And you know what? If you’re only with me for the kidney, I don’t care about that either. Because I am so fucking in love with you, I’ll settle for anything. Even that.” His voice broke on the last word.
I just stared at him. For the first time ever, I was totally mute.
“Use me,” he said, his eyes resigned. “Use me for whatever you want.
Just stay.”
The words froze me in place. I had to learn how to breathe again before I could speak. “You don’t love her?” I whispered.
He shook his head slowly. “No.”
We stood there in a thick moment of silence. My heart pounded into the quiet.
“Jacob, I am so in love with you I can’t even stand it.”
I watched this information transform his entire face. “What?” he breathed.
“I’m in love with you too. I thought you wanted her. I thought—” “Say it again.” He swallowed.
“I’m…I’m in love with you.”
I watched the words hit him like a physical thing, pushing the air from his lungs and filling his eyes with hope.
He closed the space between us in three long strides and gathered me to him.
“Say it again,” he whispered. “I’m in love with you,” I gasped. “Again.”
“I’m in love with you.”
He laughed, blinking at me through tears. “This is real?” I asked.
He nodded. “It’s always been real.” I let out a happy sob.
I could feel it in everything suddenly. The way he touched me, the energy coming off him, the look in his eyes. And then I realized that I had
always felt it. This was his quiet. The silence that I couldn’t decipher. It was me.
I was hit with a meteor shower of realizations. I could touch him. I could sleep in his bed and cuddle him on a couch and hold his hand for no fucking reason other than I wanted to. I could kiss him…
He must have been thinking the same thing, because his eyes dropped to my lips.
He put an exploratory hand out to touch me, like he wanted to test that he could. It hovered for a second and then he slipped it gently into my hair at the nape of my neck and put his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. His breath tickled my lips an excruciatingly long moment before he let his warm, soft mouth connect with mine. Every inch of my body came alive.
He kissed me like everything he had was being poured into this beautiful, tender, gentle thing. He folded around me, warm and strong, and I knew I would always remember this living room. The dim lights and the smell of vanilla candles and the limp air mattress by our feet. “Clair de Lune” playing softly from a speaker on a bookshelf, the simple white T- shirt and sweatpants he was wearing that smelled like his body and his soap and Jacob.
I wanted to feel him. I wanted to explore his body like it belonged to me. I wanted to know him with all my senses, with my hands and my eyes and my mouth. I wanted to hear his heartbeat and smell the warmth that clung to his skin.
And he wanted that too.
I couldn’t believe it. It was real. I started to tear up.
Jacob pulled away and looked down at me. “What’s wrong?” I couldn’t even speak, I just shook my head.
He brushed the hair off my forehead with a soft thumb. “What? Tell me.” “This is what it feels like to be truly loved. I’ve never felt it before. And
I didn’t even realize it until just now.”
He smiled at me gently. “Yes. This is what it feels like.”
And we stayed there holding each other, inseparable, immovable, tangled like a tree that had grown into a chain-link fence.
