Deeper

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” He shook his head.

“No. It’s just the truth.”

“Did you want to forget me?” he asked her after a moment.

Bess sighed, but answered. “After a while. Yes. After a while I just put that summer behind me.”

Nick shook his head, turning. He sank onto the bed, his arms crossed low over his stomach as if it hurt. He rocked a little and groaned, then looked up, face bleak. His cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore the same faint sun-kissed blush of pink, and the rest of his skin was as tawny as it had always been, but dark circles had lodged beneath his eyes. Lines that had nothing to do with age bracketed his mouth.

“I wanted to come to you,” he whispered in a soul-sick voice. “I remember, now. I said I’d find you. I wanted to. But instead—”

She shook her head and went to him. Their knees touched when she sat next to him. She took his hands from their grip on his stomach and put them around her, and she pulled him close. His face nestled with perfect precision into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, and hers found the same place on him. She closed her eyes. She breathed him in. She touched him. Once upon a time the sun hadn’t risen without her thinking about Nick’s smile, and the wind hadn’t blown without it whispering his name.

“You’re here now,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”

Chapter

08

Then

“What’s going on with you and Nick?” Missy wasn’t subtle enough to pretend she didn’t care.

Bess, on the other hand, was clever enough to pretend she didn’t know what Missy was talking about. “Nick?”

“You know who I mean.” Missy jerked a thumb toward the living room, which bounced with the usual party.

Bess let her gaze follow. Nick leaned against the wall near the hall, tipping a beer to his mouth and talking to Ryan. It was a near mirror of the pose in which Bess had first seen him. It affected her even more this time, but she kept her expression bland when she looked back at Missy.

“What about him?”

Missy scowled. “What’s going on with you two, that’s what.”

Bess shrugged and tipped the glass blender container—God knew where it had come from, or even if it was clean—toward her cup. Brian had made frozen margaritas. She sipped and her eyes watered instantly at the burn of tequila. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right,” Missy said, her own eyes narrowed.

Bess sipped a bit more to hide her smile. “This is strong, that’s all.”

“Especially for a Miss Goody Two-shoes who doesn’t drink.” Missy crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter. The position shoved her cleavage out of her tank top. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Nick?” Bess looked again. This time, he was looking back. And smiling. It was the smile that got Missy, Bess was sure of it, and she smiled, too. “Nothing’s going on with him.”

“I saw you,” Missy hissed. She was on her way to being drunk, but not quite there.

Bess flinched as a fine spray of margarita-scented spittle flew from Missy’s lips. “Saw me what?”

“When you went to the bathroom,” she said. “You walked past him!”

Bess laughed and inched away to get out of the soak zone. “Oh, c’mon. So does everyone who has to go to the bathroom, Missy. He’s standing right there.”

Missy shook her head. “No. No, you—” she stabbed her finger toward Bess “—you…sidled.”

Bess burst into laughter that turned a few heads, even over the sound of the Violent Femmes pounding from the speakers. “Look who got herself a Word of the Day calendar.”

Missy didn’t appear insulted, but she did look crafty. She gulped the final dregs of her margarita without even a grimace. “I saw you touch him when you went past.”

She hadn’t, actually. Over the past week, as he’d managed to stop in almost every day to see her, Bess had thought about touching Nick. She always thought about it, but never did it. “You’re drunk. You didn’t see anything.”

“I saw you,” Missy insisted. “I saw you thinking about it, Bessie.”

“How the hell do you see anyone thinking about anything?”

Missy made a face. “Just because you’re pissed I told you he’s gay…”

“I think he’s the one who’s pissed about that. Not me.” Bess couldn’t help looking for him again. Touching him with her eyes. Now he was deep in conversation with Brian, whose hands were waving, but while Bess missed the sizzle that came from Nick’s gaze meeting hers, she also liked watching him when he wasn’t looking. She could drink him in that way.

“I’m talking to you!” Missy snapped her fingers in front of Bess’s face.

She heaved a sigh and gave Missy her attention. “Nick and I are just friends.”

Missy spluttered into laughter. “Oh, right. Nick? You and Nick the Prick? He’s not friends with any girl unless he’s fucking her.”

“Whatever, Missy.” Bess tried to pretend hearing that didn’t bother her, but her friend wasn’t too drunk to know when she’d struck a direct hit.

“Yeah, yeah. You say whatever.” She pointed across the room. “Ask Heather about him. She’ll tell you.”

Bess wouldn’t ask Heather for a glass of water if she were on fire. She looked up, though, to see Heather standing with her hip cocked, talking to Nick. Heather flung her fall of long blond hair over her shoulder and twirled a piece of it around one finger. If she pushed her boobs any closer to him she’d be holding his beer in her cleavage, Bess thought, and turned away.

Missy looked triumphant, then put on a mask of sincerity that might have fooled someone as drunk as she was, but didn’t convince Bess. “I was only looking out for you, Bessie. Nick’s bad news. And you have a boyfriend, remember?”

As if Bess could forget. She hadn’t told Missy about the sort of. “We’re just friends.” She tried to make the words taste better by swallowing them with a swig of margarita. It didn’t work, and made her cough. Missy pounded her on the back.

“I’m just saying,” Missy said, but nothing else, as if those three words were explanation enough.

Across the room, Bess watched Heather lean in close to Nick, who didn’t pull away. And why should he? The blonde had big tits and a small ass and a flat stomach. Heather could suck the chrome off a truck hitch. She didn’t “sort of” have a boyfriend.

“Slow down with that drink,” Missy advised as she poured herself another. “That bitch Brian’s a fiend for the alcohol.”

For maybe the first time in her life, Bess wanted to get drunk. Instead she put down the cup and left the party. At home she declined an offer by her older, married cousins to join in on a game of gin rummy. She stretched the phone cord as long as it could reach, out onto the deck, and though it wasn’t their appointed time she called Andy, anyway. The phone rang for a long time before his brother answered.

“Andy’s not home.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back? It’s Bess.”

Did she imagine Matt’s hesitation? The sympathy in his voice? Would Andy’s brother tell her the truth if she asked him to, about the other girl whose letters Bess had found in Andy’s desk drawer?

“I don’t, Bess. Sorry.”