Page 14 of Devil in Disguise
The hot guy you met when you were eighteen wasn’t your life partner, though. Especially not when you were on two completely different roads. She wasn’t even sure she believed in life partners. She sure hadn’t seen much evidence of that working out.
Maybe that was the real reason he’d said no. Because he knew that.
Another reason to be sad.
She wasn’t going down without a fight, all the same. If he didn’t think she wanted him? The real him? She was going to show him she did. All she needed was a chance.
She’d worry about the “not-forever” part when it turned up. For now? It sure felt like forever. And what did you have except now?
She was going to try.
8
Adult Life
He’d thought,before he’d got that text,I can’t do this anymore.When he was lying in bed watching baseball on TV with no more than a quarter of his attention, having done his best to satisfy himself after the most frustrating night he’d spent since he was fifteen, and it had barely scratched the surface.
When you were fifteen, every orgasm felt the same. As in: great. And when you got to have one inside a girl? It felt all the way past great. It felt spectacular. When you got a little older, though, you found out that some orgasms could be better than others, and a few of them could be better than that. But the ones you had by yourself, after four frustrating months alone and then a night when you’d tortured yourself past bearing, when all you’d wanted was to show a nineteen-year-old virgin exactly how it was done, to make her see why no other guy but you would ever do, and instead, you were alone in another empty hotel room like the hundreds of other empty hotel rooms you’d been in, and it was your own stupid fault?
Yeah. Not so much. And she didn’t get it. He felt like he’d explained so many times, but he couldn’t make her see.
He couldn’t do this.
And then she said something like that. Something that had him holding the phone in both hands, reading that message over and over again, like hewasfifteen. When she showed him the heart she kept wrapped up under that layer of toughness, showed him the sweetness he’d felt from her when they were dancing in the dark. When she showed him that it wasn’t about football, and it wasn’t about money, and it wasn’t even about sex. That it was about the two of them. About her heart, and his.
He texted back,I’ll invite you.He couldn’t think what else to say, though, so he just hit the button. But finally, he could sleep.
That was why, though, on a warm Portland evening almost a week later, after another day of minicamp, at the beginning of a brand-new season when he’d have to earn his starting spot all over again the hard way, he wasn’t hauling his tired butt home for an ice bath and focusing on tomorrow. Instead, he was headed over to Harlan’s weird-ass house to help eat the enormous ice chest of ribs he’d gotten up too early to deliver that morning, the ones that had been marinating since the night before in his special-recipe rub,afterhe’d brined them the night before that. Annabelle had put them onto Harlan’s smoker that morning—at the right time, he hoped—after Owen had written down the instructions and attached a video, too, just to make sure she got it. She was the only one with a day off today, so it had had to be her, but she’d be a whole lot less likely to get involved with a video game and forget than Dyma would, so there was that. He’d left her some cherry wood as well, because Harlan didn’t take barbecue nearly seriously enough, and a container of Texas Barbecue Juice he’d made using his secret recipe, so Annabelle could mop the meat with it as it smoked. Also a pot of borracho beans and a tub of vinegar coleslaw, plus one of potato salad.
And, yeah, he’d done quite a bit of food prep yesterday.
He hoped Annabelle had followed those instructions. He wished he’d been able to smoke the meat himself, because good barbecue was kind of bred in the bone, but “enough time to smoke ribs right” didn’t exactly go along with “NFL season.” NFLoffseason, yeah, but his football camp for kids started in ten days, and as soon as that was over, training camp started. He was running out of time.
Tonight’s gesture was stupid, maybe, because this was a present Dymawouldn’tlike. Jennifer and Annabelle, sure. Jennifer would love it, pregnant meat-lover that she was, and the girlfriend’s mom was important, but Dyma? She’d like the beans and the salads, but all his best stuff would be lost on her.
Another thing a cattle rancher probably shouldn’t do: fall in love with a vegetarian.
Never mind. He had a finite number of moves, and he was using them. He couldn’t take her to Paris and speak French or whatever, and he wasn’t good at the whole private-jet, rich-guy thing Harlan did so well, even though Harlan hadn’t grown up any fancier than Owen had himself. Owen had horses and barbecue and the Texas two-step, and maybe the sort of Longhorn football you could call “the tough kind.” He had some engineering geekiness, he knew what Bernoulli’s Equation was, and he knew how to be strong and work all day. And that was about it.
He punched in the code at Harlan’s gate and pulled into the circular drive next to his art-museum house with his heart beating like a hammer. As soon as he did, the oversized bank-vault door opened, and out came Dyma in a rush, the way she always moved, like no space could contain her energy. Her hair damp, and wearing another short little sundress, even though she’d been at work today, which meant she’d showered and changed as soon as she got home. Maybe for him.
This dress was tie-dyed in pale blue and pink, it laced up the front, and when he pulled her in for a kiss, the fabric was as soft as an old T-shirt. She was barefoot, too, and wearing that light perfume. Worked for him.
She kissed him with her usual enthusiasm, and then she kissed him better. Her tongue in his mouth, her hand around his head. She was all the way wrapped around him, in fact, and he wasn’t going to be in any kind of shape to say hello to her mom.
She buried her face against his neck, finally, and said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“Who, me?” He held her a little more, just because he was so damn glad to see her. “What happened to all that confidence?”
“It was sitting around with my friends that night in Idaho, after you left me.” She had one hand on his face now, which she could do because he was still holding her up. “I realized how different I felt from just a couple of months ago, since everything happened, my mom getting pregnant and moving to Portland and being there for Annabelle and everything, when I kind of had to face … all of real life for the first time. Adult life, it’s felt like, but I haven’t even lived on my own and supported myself yet. I thought about how differentyoumust feel by now, and it started looking like a pretty big gulf, you know? But then,” she went on, getting her breezy tone back, “I remembered how you danced with me and kissed me and put me up on that counter, and I thought—nah. I’m still reasonably awesome, and you’re stilltotallyawesome, and I could just tell you how I felt and that I appreciated everything about you, and you’d probably give it another shot, because you’re loyal like that. I hope. I’m not going to give up on this unless you give up on me. There can’t be anybody in this world better than you. The Tao says, ‘Love is a decision, not an emotion,’ and I’ve decided.”
He wasn’t sure he’d quite gotten all that, but he’d gotten the main point. He said, “Hell, no, I’m not giving up on you.” He put her down, finally, because at some point, you had to, and asked, “How was one more day with the donuts?”
“Hot. Busy. I thought selling donuts would be great. Who doesn’t like donuts? It’s better than Burger King, sure. The music’s better, too. But I don’t want to eat donuts ever again. In mylife,and I’ve been there less than a week. Hot grease, anyone? It’s a good bike ride, though, getting home up the hill. Between that and Harlan’s personal training, I’m going to be so ripped by the time I head up to school. Check out the biceps.”
She showed him, smiling out of her whole pretty face, with its double dimples that you wanted to explore with your tongue, and he wrapped a hand around her upper arm and said, “Yep. Making progress. Wait until we get you on a horse. How does next week sound, or the one after that, for Wyoming? You’ve got to have a couple days off sometime.”
“I’m already figuring out how to do that, no worries,” she assured him. “I’ll trade with Annabelle, maybe. I’m so there. And come on. Show me yours. Flex for me.” With the sidelong look from under her lashes that still got his heart pounding.
