Don't Deny Me: Part One Read online

  “Late-night snack?”

  Alice winced. “Oh, my God. Wow. No!”

  “You sure? Bernie made it, you know it’s good.” Dayna grinned and sliced off a piece, then put it on a small plate. “Mick do you want … where’s Mick?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he went to bed.” Alice eyed the cheesecake and put a hand on her stomach. “I can’t believe I forgot how much we eat at Bernie’s house. And drink. Damn, I’m gonna have to roll myself home.”

  Dayna licked the tines of her fork. “No kidding. If I make it home without busting the zipper on my jeans, I count myself lucky.”

  Alice pulled the cheesecake a little closer to cut herself a sliver. “I know I shouldn’t eat this, but I’m going to anyway.”

  “What’s life without inappropriately eaten cheesecake?” Dayna dragged the fork through her cheesecake, but didn’t lick it this time. She gave Alice a long look, instead. “Pretty cool seeing those movies, huh? I’d forgotten some of that stuff. I guess we all are getting old.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Alice said lightly.

  “Lots of memories. And some regrets, no?”

  Alice looked at the other woman. They’d met at Bernie’s years ago, and since they were both girls often ended up sharing the bathroom. You learned a lot about someone else when you had to use the same shower. They both lived in Central Pennsylvania about forty minutes apart, and kept in touch through occasional texts or e-mails, but it wasn’t as though they spent hours every week chatting on the phone or anything. They got together for lunch or dinner every so often, or met at Jay’s. Alice liked her quite a bit. Dayna had a great sense of humor and a way of putting everyone around her at ease in a way Alice had always admired. But they’d never been particularly close.

  “I try not to regret things,” Alice said after it had become impossible not to say anything without this becoming weird.

  Dayna nodded. She drank, then went to the fridge for a large bottle of seltzer water. She poured them both glasses without asking Alice if she wanted one this time, and Alice took it to sip gratefully.

  “Maybe you should go talk to him,” Dayna said. “Maybe he’s waiting for you.”

  Alice didn’t pretend not to understand what Dayna meant. She rolled her eyes. “If he is, I’m sure it’s not for the conversation.”

  Dayna laughed wryly. “Maybe not. Paul and Jay out there, they’re talking about something dire. You can see it in the way they’re standing.”

  Alice looked. “And Jay’s smoking. I thought he gave that up. I guess he only does that with Paul, though to be honest, I thought he gave up Paul, too.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Did Jay say they were getting back together?” Dayna’s tone was super casual, though her expression was anything but.

  “No.” Alice sipped more seltzer, letting it settle her stomach and gave the other woman a curious look. “I asked, but he claimed he was done with Paul, done with a capital D. You know they’ve been on and off forever. They get back together, then they split up, then the next thing I know, they’re going away for some debauched weekend in the Bahamas or something. I try not to judge.”

  Dayna winced. “Paul can’t stay away from him.”

  Alice looked again through the doors, uncomfortable at watching even from this distance. It felt intrusive, even voyeuristic. “That’s how it is with some people.”

  “Yeah. Some people you can’t shut the door on, even when you should.”

  Dayna’s voice had gone raspy and rough. She gave Alice a wobbly, watery sort of grin. From the deck a brief flare of raised voices turned both women’s heads for a moment. Dayna didn’t have to say a word, but suddenly, Alice understood a whole lot more than she had before.

  “Even when you should,” Alice said by way of agreement.

  Dayna swallowed hard and lifted her chin. She took a deep breath, visibly getting herself together. “Stupid hearts, always gotta break.”

  If Alice saw Dayna only once every few months, she saw Paul even less often. She’d never been friends with him the way she’d been with any of the others, knowing him more through Jay’s eyes than anything else. And it was hard to like Paul when she knew how much he’d hurt Jay, over and over. Jay might’ve been able to forgive him, but Alice had always found it harder. Now that she had this sudden insight into the reason for at least a few of the breakups, she liked him even less.

  “Does Jay know?” Alice asked.

  Dayna shook her head. “No. And I don’t want him to know. Jay’s my friend—”

  Alice laughed sharply, unable to hold it back though it came out harsher than she’d intended.

  Dayna flinched. “He is. Believe me, that makes it all so much harder, because Jay’s my friend. But I love him.”

  The French doors opened. Paul whirled through them, Jay on his heels. Whatever had happened outside, both men were keeping it close to the vest. Jay gave Alice’s shoulder a squeeze as he passed her. Paul, very carefully, Alice thought, didn’t look at Dayna at all. Or maybe Alice was seeing things that weren’t there because she knew something she hadn’t before.

  “I’m heading to bed,” Jay said.

  Paul nodded. “Me too. Night, everyone.”

  In the silence after the men had left the kitchen, Dayna let out a long, shuddering sigh. She dug back into the cheesecake with a vengeance, and gave Alice a look. “You want coffee? I’m making coffee.”

  At this hour, coffee would keep her up until dawn, but it seemed unkind to refuse or abandon Dayna so she could also go to bed. And she didn’t want to, really, did she? Not to her own bed, anyway. Alice wanted to slip down those back stairs to Mick’s basement room and crawl in beside him, to wake him if he were sleeping with her hands and tongue and lips. For the first time this weekend, she was smart enough not to give in.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll drink some coffee.”

  While it brewed the women bustled with cleaning the kitchen. Not saying much, the revelation of Dayna and Paul hanging between them. With full mugs, each of them took a seat at the island and sipped in silence, until at last Dayna broke the mutual quiet.

  “Does it ever go away?”

  Alice blew on the coffee to cool it and give herself a chance to reply, uncertain what, exactly, Dayna was looking for. Comfort or validation. Maybe condemnation. Alice only had one answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The wanting.” Dayna added cream and sugar to her mug and stirred it, but didn’t drink again. She shrugged and gave Alice a bleak look. “I mean … I wasn’t going to come this weekend. Cookie had invited me months ago, and I figured if you could be here with Mick, I could stand to see Paul. I knew it was important. Twenty years, you know? I wanted to be here for them, but I also knew he’d be here. They’d both be here. And I didn’t want to see them together.”

  “They’re not together.”

  “I didn’t want to see him,” Dayna corrected herself. “And know there was no way he’d look at me. Not the way he used to, like there was nothing else in the world that mattered but the sight of me. Or worse, what if he did look at me that way? What would I do then, when I know that even if he still wanted me, there was no way for it to happen?”

  Alice had no answer for that.

  “I would have to pretend everything was okay when it’s not, because I look at him and my heart still breaks. So, I want to know. Does it go away? The wanting,” Dayna asked.

  Alice wrapped her hands around the mug, which was really too hot to hold, but something in the sting against her palms was somehow soothing. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

  “Shit.” Dayna gave a shaky laugh. She went to the cupboard and pulled down the bottle of Baileys, adding a shot to her mug and offering it to Alice, who refused.

  “So why did you come for the weekend, then? If you felt that way? And to be honest, Dayna, I’d never have guessed if you hadn’t told me. I know Jay and Paul have had their ups and downs, but I would never have known you were involved with any of it.”
>
  “Thank God. If Jay knew it, I couldn’t forgive myself. It only ever happened when they were split up, Alice. I swear it. I know Paul might find it impossible to commit to any one person, but I promise you, I was never with him if he was with Jay.”

  It made it easier to know, though Alice still wished she didn’t. “I won’t tell him. It would only hurt him, and I don’t have any desire to hurt Jay for any reason.”

  “Me neither. Which is why I never said anything. Why I put on the smile and act like looking at Paul doesn’t shred me open. I don’t want Jay to know, but I don’t want Paul to see it, either. I couldn’t bear it, you know?” Dayna sipped her coffee with a wince. “If he knew how much it hurts me, that he still affects me so much. I decided to come because not seeing him seemed like a worse torture.”

  Alice laughed. “I almost didn’t come, either. But so much time had passed, I thought it would be okay.”

  “And was it?” Dayna gave her a solid, knowing look.

  Alice shook her head.

  “Fuck,” Dayna said. “We’re both fucked, huh? Well, at least Mick looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.”

  “Does he?” Alice asked, startled and pleased, flushing at the thought.

  “When you’re not looking at him. Yes. He does. And it’s been how long?”

  “Something like ten years.” Saying it out loud made it seem like so much longer.

  “That’s a long time,” Dayna said.

  Alice nodded. They both drank coffee. The clock ticked louder than the sound of their breathing, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Alice turned the mug around and around in front of her, contemplating how some time changed some things and left others completely the same.

  “Do you still love him?” Dayna asked quietly.

  Alice looked at her. “I don’t know if I still do. But … I think I still could.”

  “So what do you do about that?”

  “I don’t know.” Alice shook her head. “Things have changed. Or not. It’s just a weekend, Dayna. You know things are always different when it’s just a party. It doesn’t mean they can last, or be real.”

  “Shit. Yes.” Dayna sighed.

  More silence. Alice yawned. Dayna smiled.

  “To open doors.” Dayna lifted her mug.

  Alice clinked hers against it. “May we learn to close them.”

  * * *

  I wanted to drink in the memories of you, absorb and consume them. I sat unmoving. Breathing, breathing, trying to keep myself covered in the way being with you felt. Trying to hold on tight to the memory of how it had been, that first time I saw you. It was like trying to grab a glass out of a sink full of soap. Slippery, sliding, and ultimately, the choice became hold too tight and shatter it in my fist, or drop it and watch it break all over the floor.

  Everything about us had broken. The question was, could it ever be fixed? Or, like a glass you glue back together, would the cracks always mean we could never really be whole?

  —Mick to Alice, unsent

  * * *

  Mick wanted to be asleep, but when another hour passed and he did no more than toss fitfully, he swung his feet over the side of the bed. There was no hint of light around the edges of the window shade, and he didn’t feel like checking his phone for the time. It could be any hour after midnight and before sunrise. It felt like 4:00 A.M., which had always been, in his opinion, the shittiest hour to be awake. There was no good reason not to be sleeping at four in the morning. It meant you were sick or having bad dreams or had been making bad decisions.

  He’d made some very bad decisions.

  There was no help for it now, though. He could blame it on being unable to stop himself. He could tell himself the sight of her had made him lose his mind just enough to put aside reason for the sake of lust. He could try to convince himself that he shouldn’t be held responsible for what they’d done—booze, old times, nostalgia. But he couldn’t make himself believe any of that.

  The truth was, he’d wanted Alice the moment he saw her again. He could’ve, should’ve stayed away, been polite and distant. It would have been okay. But no, now he’d touched and felt and smelled her, tasted her, and how the hell was he supposed to go back to not knowing her anymore?

  With a groan, Mick scrubbed at his face, running his fingers through his hair until it stood up like he’d been in a tornado. Resting his elbows on his knees, he pressed his face into his palms for a minute or so, thinking maybe the floor would tilt beneath his feet. But nope, he couldn’t even blame his wakefulness on drinking too much. Shit.

  Stretching, he figured it was better to get up than try to keep sleeping when it was obvious there wasn’t going to be any rest for him tonight. Sunday morning was going to dawn whether he wanted it to or not. He might as well accept the fact he’d be up to greet it.

  First, a shower. Cold, to keep himself from sinking into erotic reminiscences of the afternoon and Alice in his bed. It didn’t help much. Sure, the frigid water goose-pebbled his skin, but all he had to do was flash back to the feeling of her underneath him, and his cock started twitching. He stroked a hand along it and bent his head into the spray with a groan. Another stroke. A shudder. Not even the fact that his teeth had begun to chatter could stop his cock from getting hard when he thought about Alice.

  Mick stroked a little faster, feeling his balls tighten. He pressed his forehead to the wall of the shower, letting the water hit his back in stinging spray—the pain, fuck yeah, he could admit that it made this all a teasing torture. A little faster. A quick palm of the head, then all the way down. He gripped the shaft and fucked into his palm.

  Imagining her.

  They hadn’t fucked for real in the past two days, but that didn’t stop him from remembering how it had been in the past. He groaned again, his hand no good replacement for Alice. Her slick heat. The way her body tightened around him when she came. There’d been times when they’d spent hours in bed, when he’d moved inside her, mesmerized by the look in her eyes when she finally tipped over the edge. When he’d been buried balls-deep inside her as her orgasms rippled over her, and he’d felt every single spasm on his cock as he stayed still. His fingers couldn’t replace the squeeze of her on him now, but damn, he was trying.

  Faster. This wasn’t going to be easy. Cold water, the fact he’d already come once in the past twenty-four hours and he was no longer a teenager … the fact his hand was his own and not hers … but closer, he was getting closer. He bent his knees a little, one hand on the shower wall, the other still working on his cock. He closed his eyes.

  “Fuck me,” he imagined Alice saying. Pleasure speared him. “Make me come,” he heard her whisper, and everything inside him tensed. Over the edge, hard, his climax short and sharp and somewhat unsatisfying. A little fraught with guilt. He spattered the shower wall and gasped, shuddering. Blinking. His cock softened faster than usual as the cold water became impossible to ignore and he actually bit his tongue with the chattering. It hurt, too.

  Rinsing himself and the shower of any evidence he’d just spent himself like a horny kid, Mick turned off the water and got out to towel off. A glimpse of himself in the mirror didn’t make him feel any better. He looked puffy eyed and scruffy, his hair a mess. He sneered. Glowered. Ah, shit, there was no helping it, he looked like 4:00 A.M.

  Wearing a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt he didn’t bother to button, bare feet, hair still wet, face still bristly, Mick went upstairs to see if he could round up some coffee. Someone, God bless them, had made a pot that was still warm, and he filled a mug. Added sugar. Took a minute to smell the glory that was coffee. Then went out to the deck to watch the sun rise.

  Alice, bundled in a fleece blanket, was in one of the lounge chairs, only her face peeking out.

  “Hey,” she said softly, not like she was surprised to see him at all. Almost as though she’d been waiting for him.

  Mick set his mug onto the railing and leaned against it. “Haven’t you been to bed yet?
”

  She shook her head. “Dayna made coffee about an hour ago, and I was dumb and drank some.”

  “Ah.” He turned to look out over the yard and the sky above the tree line at the bottom of it. “Sun’ll be up soon.”

  “That’s what I’m waiting for.” With a yawn, Alice stretched under the blanket. “If I make it.”

  “Want some more coffee? You might as well. It’s going to be daylight soon.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  But he was already going inside to pour her a mug, adding the sugar and cream the way she liked it. Or she had liked it, back then. Uncertain, Mick brought out the mug and handed it to her.

  She sipped. “Perfect.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “You still know,” she said quietly.

  Mick didn’t answer. He faced the impending sunrise and drank his own coffee, thinking that action would make it easier to pretend as though he was trying to avoid talking to her on purpose. He’d never been able to fool her, though. Behind him, he heard the shift of her on the chair and the soft swish of the blanket as it fell away. He tensed, closing his eyes, waiting for her touch.

  It didn’t come.

  The hint of her breath on the back of his neck teased him for a second, but Alice didn’t touch him with anything else. She put her mug on the railing next to him and leaned on it. She shivered a little in the chilly morning air. The sky was starting to brighten enough that he could easily make out the curves and lines of her face even without the light from the kitchen.

  “Why do I feel like you’d still know everything about me, Mick?”

  He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t. How could I?”

  “You know how to make my coffee. You know how to make me come,” Alice whispered. Her arm brushed his sleeve. He didn’t move.

  He forced the words. “I never knew everything about you, Alice. Nobody ever knows everything about anyone.”

  “You knew enough. More than anyone else ever did before you, or has since.” She went quiet.

  Both of them watched the sky getting paler. She sipped her coffee. Mick had lost the taste for his.