Page 93 of Off the Mark
“I always did. I always was.” I offered a tiny smile. “I was clearly pining for you too.”
He pulled back but his face stayed close, thumb moving to my lower lip. A slow, intentional drag of skin over skin. He stared at my mouth with an intensity that made me want, want,want.
“Will you come home with me tonight?” he asked.
There would be no going back for us after this. The second I stepped inside his house, I’d be hurtling toward love or hurtling toward heartbreak. I couldn’t know one way or another. That was the danger.
That was also the trust. So I listened to the gut instincts I relied on to tell me how fast to take a turn and the exact angle to hit a jump. Those instincts had always meant freedom to me. Speed, light, height,flying.
“Yes,” I promised.
21
CHARLIE
An hour later, Rowan was trying to—unsuccessfully—push me out of his childhood home.
“Alice,” he sighed, “if you show Charlie and Tabitha one more embarrassing video of us singing when we were kids, they’re gonna leave us. Then you’ll have two brokenhearted men laying around here, and I know you don’t want that.”
I was curled up on the couch, my limbs heavy with a loose relaxation I hadn’t felt in a while. My stomach ached from laughing at a series of ridiculous home movies, my chest ached from watching Alice dote on Rowan, and every inch of my body was painfully aware of Rowan’s physical presence.
Though that seemed intentional on his part. He’d sat next to me on the couch, his arm stretched across the back, his index finger teasing across different parts of my body. The nape of my neck. The curve of my shoulder. The dip of my spine beneath my shirt.
Every so often, Alice would peek over and smile to herself like she had a secret she didn’t mind keeping.
I was stumbling through that quicksand sensation again, feet slipping and unable to catch hold. But this wild lack of control was caused by how deeply this night was making me want a whole lot of things I never thought too much about. It was Alice’s gentle affection and these adorable home movies and the worn, soft couch beneath me.
It made me want to call my dad and bring him out here for dinner. Made me want to work even harder to save our house, his home, the place like this that brought him comfort even with its share of bad memories. It threw all the budget motels and long drives I did into stark relief.
It wasn’t racing that made me feel empty at all. Just all the lonely isolation that built up around my life without me realizing it, like high walls around a castle. Even my tiny studio felt temporary and impersonal—I spent so little time there that it was hardly even decorated.
Where was my actualhome?Where was my actual community, like the way Alice described?
“Break up with you two? I won’t hear of it,” she said, nose in the air. “Oh, Rowan, before you go, can you get down the new wine glasses I bought last week? I told Midge I’d bring them to kiddie pool night.”
He dutifully followed her into the kitchen, and though I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, the rise and fall of their voices held a sweet comfort. Tabitha plopped into the empty seat next to me and nudged my arm.
“Do you wanna hang out before you leave the city?” she asked.
I pointed at my chest. “Me? But, uh…” I cocked my thumb towards the kitchen. “You know this is…we’re not…well, I don’t knowwhatwe are right now.”
Dean cleared his throat. Tabitha shot him a covert look, then said, “Things are sometimes complicated. I get it. But you’re funny and cool, and we both have shitty moms, so that’s already a lot in common. No matter what’sreallygoing on between the two of you, you’re still important to Rowan. And he’s important to me. By the transitive property, we’re best friends.”
I was blushing like a nervous middle schooler at the cafeteria. “Oh. That would be…kinda cool to hang out then.”
“Girls’ night it is.”
I held up a finger. “I do have a slight reputation problem right now. So perhaps…?”
“Wanna drink whiskey and gossip over bad TV in the privacy of my own house?”
“Hell yeah. And I could give you some pointers on motorcycles too, if you want.”
She peered over her shoulder. “You hear that, Dean? Your smoke show of a wife is getting a motorcycle.”
A smile played on his lips. “I never doubted you, Tab.”
A burst of music came from the sidewalk outside. Dean pulled the door open, grinning at whatever he saw there. “Yo, Eddie, did you get a cat-sized chair for Pam and Tiffany?”
