The Pact(48)

It takes me a moment to tear my mind off the filthy way he said “clench” and know that he’s right. I shouldn’t be with Aaron if I feel this about Linden. Maybe I should have never been with him to begin with. But I thought that was part of life. If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Isn’t that how the song goes? Isn’t that what getting older is all about, realizing we all have to settle sometimes, that you can’t always get what you want? Damn it, why is everything a song from the seventies?

“Stephanie?” It’s Penny yelling.

I look at Linden, feeling like I’ve been slapped back to reality. “Where’s Nadine?” I ask, suddenly worried she’s going to come around the corner and strangle me with her ponytail.

“She went to bed early,” he explains, his eyes darting over to the cottage. The gravel crunches and in seconds Penny appears, rounding the hood of the vehicle.

“Oh,” she says in surprise, looking between the two of us with a well-placed eyebrow raise. “Am I interrupting something?”

I shake my head and brush past Linden, quickly walking toward her. “No, we were just talking about how bad of a kisser I am.”

She smirks. “Uh huh. Anyway, I’m going to bed, just wanted to know if you were okay.” She looks over my shoulder at Linden. “I assume you were taking good care of her.”

“Only the best,” is Linden’s uneven remark.

I don’t turn to look at him. I can’t. I tell Penny I’m tired and too drunk and am going to bed as well. James and Aaron are still outside drinking when I curl up on the pull-out couch and yank the blankets over me. I hear Penny getting ready for bed, then I hear Linden come in. I know it’s him, I can feel his presence. Always.

He stops in the living room, just a few feet from the couch and I try to breathe as deeply and regularly as possible, to pretend to be asleep. I don’t want him to say anything or do anything. I just want him to leave.

Eventually he does. I hear the door to his bedroom close.

But I still can’t sleep.

Not even when James goes to bed and Aaron gets under the covers with me.

I still can’t sleep.

I can only feel Linden’s body against mine, lips on lips, and wonder what’s going to happen next.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

STEPHANIE



“You kissed Linden?” Nicola exclaims so loudly that her daughter, sweet little Ava, looks over at her mom and makes a sad face.

“Must I remind you that it was a dare?” I say, moving over a stack of what looks like over-stylized Barbies with giant heads so I can sit down on her couch.

“Still,” she says, absently rolling the truck on the floor toward Ava who has now moved onto other things, “this is huge news.”

“This isn’t high school.”

“This is huge news,” she reiterates. “Huge.”

It’s Sunday night and after we returned back from the cottage I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to either be with Aaron or to be by myself. The car ride itself was one big container of sexual tension and bad vibes and I desperately needed to tell somebody what had happened.

Penny is too close to James, so I can’t trust her with anything Linden related and I obviously couldn’t go to Linden, which left Nicola.

I felt kind of bad barging in on her like this, especially since her boyfriend was staying the night, but he kindly went out to grab a drink at the local bar so we could have some alone time. We’re with her daughter of course, but Ava is as cute as pie and one of those low-maintenance kids that trick you into thinking motherhood will be a piece of cake.

“Anyway,” I go on, “it obviously meant something to me. And maybe to him. And now I don’t know what to do.”

“You know what to do,” she says adamantly.

“No, I don’t. I don’t know what this is…I mean, am I just being a fucking horndog because I haven’t been getting any lately? Am I just turning to Linden because he’s new and exciting?”

“First of all,” she says, tucking her legs under her. “Linden is not new but he is exciting. And I don’t think you’re being a horndog. I think this is just what happens sometimes when a man and a woman have been friends for too long. And you guys, shit Stephanie, you knew this was bound to happen.”

“Nothing happened,” I repeat.

“Something did. Something changed. You’re sitting here like we’re back in grade school all over again. Remember Joey Pines? You had the biggest crush on him. You have that same look on your face now.”

“We barely talked in grade school.”