Alexis—
It was a level of fear, of utter panic, when I saw Marshall jump over the bar and into a pit of hysteria. Without thought or consideration of the repercussions, I ran toward him, toward the pandemonium, but a pair of arms wrapped around my waist to stop me.
“Marshall!” I screamed.
“Hold up, Alexis,” Wells shouted. “Don’t. Let them do their thing.”
I struggled against his grasp. “No! He could be hurt. Do something!”
“Let them do their thing! They’ve got it!”
And the moment he said it and I stopped fighting him, I saw that he was right.
I don’t know how they knew, but in addition to the two Ginger security guys, another three bouncers from nearby bars did, in fact, handle it. They came in, pulled the fight apart, and had the glass and the douche bag contained in a matter of seconds.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
Just as the words left my mouth, I saw Marshall emerge, his hair and clothes disheveled, blood running down the side of his face.
“No, he’s not!” I screamed.
I began to struggle again, unaware of just how hysterical I was getting and what that meant. I didn’t care. I needed to get to him.
Wells’s grip loosened as Marshall stood, but before I could get to him, the douche bag caught him off guard, and his fist landed squarely in his face with such force Marshall was almost lifted off his feet.
And my heart stopped.
Douche bag was tackled and being dragged out by the time I reached Marshall.
“Oh my God!” I said, dropping to my knees next to him. “What the hell were you thinking?”
But his eyes were glazed over, with no focus. They fluttered shut, and the panic set waves across my body.
“Marshall!” I shouted at him, shaking his shoulders. “Shit!”
Wells was calming the crowd that was now beginning to retreat after watching the show fight, but as soon as he saw Marshall still on the ground, his expression told me he was experiencing the same thing I was.
“Wells,” I cried out. “Call an ambulance!”
“Knock it off,” Marshall mumbled, coming back around. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine. Blood covered the side of his face, and the area was swelling rapidly. His “I’m fine” came out more like “Biam phfind” as his hands gripped the side of his waist.
He wasn’t fine. He was hurt. Something was wrong.
“I’m serious, Al,” he groaned. “Just give me a second to get it together.”
Wells knelt down next to us. “Ambulance should be here any minute.”
“Fuck that! I said—” Marshall struggled to sit up, but doubled over his side as his attempt failed.
“Will you shut up?” I said. “You’re hurt. Don’t try and pretend you’re not.”
“This is my bar and they can’t see me all messed up. What the hell happened, anyway?” he asked.
“That asshole saw you talking to his girlfriend, I guess,” Wells said. “He started getting loud about wanting to kick your ass, and I radioed to Dave. When he asked him to leave for being a drunk, threatening jackass, he broke the glass and went after him. I think you sort of remember after that, right?”
Marshall’s clouded eyes wavered between Wells and myself before lifting to the ceiling. It was obvious he was trying to recall all that went down, but it wasn’t connecting . My heart beat against my chest, worry and fear continuing to pump through me. I was always the calm, rational one, but that didn’t happen tonight. Just like Marshall jumping across the bar to save what was his, my reaction wasn’t that far different. Instinct and a rush of seeing someone you knew, you cared about, hurt, and logic wasn’t anywhere in sight.
And I didn’t know what that all meant.
There wasn’t time to consider it, either. The paramedics arrived moments later, and I didn’t know which was worse—the way Marshall was looking, bloodied, bruised, and black-and-blue. Or his mouth that was mumbling about everything that happened.
He swatted the paramedic’s hand away that was attempting to check his pupils. “What part of you doesn’t understand that I can see fine?”
“Marshall,” I hissed. “Let him do his job.”
Wells leaned in to me, whispering in my ear. “He isn’t right. I can tell. He may have his cocky tone, but not with anyone working for him or anyone in the bar.”
I nodded because he was right. The dynamic that was Marshall was something I was still trying to piece together. Six years was a long time to be out of someone’s life, but it didn’t mean you forgot how that person acted or how they made you feel. Marshall was always somewhat brash, but something else was different now. There was a hardness about him, a rough-around-the-edges thing that had nothing to do with his once clean-cut appearance to tattooed, bearded boy.
One of the paramedics was talking to Wells while two others were now helping Marshall into a chair. I stood up, inserting myself into the conversation between Wells and the paramedic.
“He’s going to freak,” Wells said to the male paramedic. “But he has no choice, right?”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“They want to take him in to the hospital,” Wells said.
“Well, then he’ll go,” I said.
“Yeah, but—” Wells popped and extended his head in Marshall’s direction, his eyes opened wide. “Getting carried out of here on a stretcher? He’ll lose his mind.”
“He’s sitting up now, but he needs to have that blow to the face looked at and I’m pretty sure he has at least one broken rib,” the paramedic said.
“Shit,” I said, looking in Marshall’s direction.
He was clearly in pain, but he was also a man. There was no way of telling if the hit in the side didn’t do damage or if was “male pain”—that common ailment that inflicts itself on the Y chromosome. The female population was unaware if the inability to handle pain was something that men carried with them in their testosterone or if it was safely tucked away in their penis.
“Someone needs to follow them there,” Wells said with raised eyebrows.
Now that would be weird.
“I have to stay here. There’s no way we can leave these guys on their own, especially after what went down,” he said. “And he knows no one else besides the staff that’s here right now.”
It wasn’t a question, then.
“I’ll go with him,” I said.
And it was no easy feat.
He bitched and moaned like, well, a bitch the entire time he was talking. When he wasn’t talking, he was sulking, which was fine because he wasn’t talking.
Three hours in the emergency room, X-rays, along with a physician’s once-over, and they released him with pain meds for a bruised and thankfully not broken rib. The blood on the side of his face was from a nasty bump, and his eye was so swollen and black-and-blue that cold compresses were recommended to help. If anything got worse, he’d have to go back.
Or we’d have to go back.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, rising from the hospital bed. “You don’t have to stay with me.”
I reached him in time to lend a hand, which he didn’t take. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do.”
He stood for a moment, gathering his bearings while gripping his side. There was no choice. I had to take him home and stay with him. He was so hopped up on pain meds, and with the hit to the head, someone needed to keep an eye on him. With Wells working, still keeping an eye on Ginger, it was me who was on Marshall duty.
“Wait here,” I said as we slowly walked to the exit. “I’ll bring the car around.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbled.
I stopped and placed my hands on my hips. “Drop the macho shit, Marshall. You got the crap kicked out of you tonight.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” he snapped. “I was there, and I think you’re being a little dramatic.”
“How do you figure?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘got the crap kicked out of me.’ I was…surprised, and every dude has been there a time or two.”
“I don’t really care. In fact, fine. Walk to the car. Crawl if you want. Do you want me to still give you a ride home, or would you like me to find you a broom so you can fly?” I asked.
He tried to stand tall, to assert his stance or whatever, but the pain in his rib stopped him. I winced because he did, and even though he was acting like an immature jackass, it didn’t mean I didn’t care. We’d been friends, great friends, before I left. It wasn’t like I hated him. I never did. Even with us coming together like we have, with all the anger from him and hurt it caused me, thinking of those years wasn’t without fond memories.
“What?” he asked.
“What what?”
“You smiled?”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”
I was afraid of divulging and had to consider if showing even a little bit of my hand was wise. I wanted to remind him of those times, the times when there was laughter and friendship. That there was a time in which we were part of each other’s lives, and even though I left Chicago, left him, it didn’t mean I forgot. Over the years, I tried to forget it all, but with him back in my life, seeing how he got hurt tonight, those memories rose.
I wanted to tell him this, but there was still so much indignation that rolled off him. I saw it in his eyes. It scared me that maybe he’d never get over what I did.
But there were moments the last few days, especially tonight, when I saw a fragment of something else behind those eyes.
Desire.
I think he saw it in mine, too.
I wasn’t ready to know for sure yet if he was feeling the same. In fact, I wasn’t sure I ever would be. It would be reckless of me to allow any thoughts I had toward him to dictate action. I’d done enough damage, and I wasn’t going to inflict any more, especially on Marshall.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked.
I shook my head, releasing my thoughts. “Nothing. Are you ready?”
“I don’t know. Are you?” he asked, a tiny glimmer of a smirk emerging.
Who the hell knew?
“I’m never ready but always ready, all at the same time,” I said.
“Why doesn’t this surprise me?”
It shouldn’t.
Things were quiet on the drive back to his house except for when he was giving me directions. My eyes focused on the road, while his stared out the passenger window. At a stoplight, I glanced over at him. Even without the car moving, there was enough of a strong wind to blow his hair around.
That hair.
It still blew my mind.
This was the same guy who probably had his own stake in a hair gel company a decade ago. He was all hard body, perfect hair, and button-downs. Aaron and him were like a page out of a Brooks Brothers catalog.
Now everything was different.
How he looked. My name.
My name. It reminded me of something from earlier.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Sure,” he replied, his eyes still looking out the window.
“You called me Al earlier. Do you remember that?” I asked.
Without turning his head, I couldn’t see his expression. His head tilted to the side slightly, and the absence of a response told me he didn’t remember.
The light turned green, and I knew his silence meant time was up. “It’s all right,” I said. “I was just wondering where it came from.”
“I fucking hate Alexis,” he said, speaking to the wind. His tone was quiet. Simple. And the way he spoke it, I almost didn’t hear him because the wind almost swallowed his words.
“You hate me?”
“The name,” he said. His head turned, and I snuck a quick glance before bringing my eyes back to the road. “It’s the name I hate.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He said he hated my name. That wasn’t something easy to process. Furthermore, who the hell even says that?
He sighed loudly. “Sorry, but you’re Lexie. Do you know how weird it is to call you something else?”
“It’s not that different.”
“Everything is different.”
“Well, I guess a lot can happen in six years.”
“Yeah, I get it, but why did you change your name? Aaron wasn’t going to try and hunt you down.”
“It wasn’t Aaron I was afraid of,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “I didn’t want anything to do with the old me, with Lexie to hunt me down. It was myself I was afraid of.”
Silence again.
“First one on the right,” he said, referring to his home in a small three-floor apartment building.
I pulled to a stop in front of it.
“Wait there,” I said, putting the car in park. “And I’ll help you out.”
I opened my door and was about to step out, but Marshall grabbed my hand to stop me. “Hold up a second.”
“You okay?”
“No,” he answered.
He looked like he wanted to say more, the way his eyebrows drew together and he bit down on his lower lip. With his eyes cast downward, staring at our hands, I couldn’t understand what was happening. The only thing I knew was that his hand was still on mine, and every moment that went by, I could feel his grip changing…softening. The tips of his fingers slid between my own as his eyes darted to mine.
And in one expression, it was all right there again.
It was all the heat and curiosity from the night of the opening days ago, and the same from just hours ago. He wasn’t just looking at me.
He was staring into me.
He licked his bottom lip, his hold growing tighter again. “I need to tell you something,” he said. “Or rather, ask you something.”
“All right.”
“I don’t remember calling you Al, but I can see why I did,” he said. He shifted in his seat, rounding his body to face me directly. “I like it.”
“Okay,” I replied with confusion. “Thanks?”
“I think I should call you that. I want to call you that if it’s okay?”
“You’re asking me permission to call me a nickname of my name?” I asked.
He smirked, and I could swear, even in the darkness, under the blond beard, I saw him blush for the second time ever. “Yes. I’m asking if it’s okay if I call you Al, because I can’t fucking identify you by either of your other names.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew Lexie. I knew her well, and you’re not her anymore. There are parts, and I’m even speaking apart from physical appearance, I see that are familiar, but you’re so different. Alexis is this new person you created to run away from Lexie. I think she, or you, whatever, is a hell of a business owner and an amazingly talented baker, but she has such a sadness around her it makes it hard for me to breathe when I’m too close to her.”
“And who is Al?”
“Al is the girl I can’t stop thinking about, the girl who is getting under my skin and is so off-limits to me it makes my head spin to even go there.”
I knew it wasn’t my imagination.
He felt it, too.
And he felt exactly how I did.
I was right.
It was wrong.
Or maybe it was drugs talking.
That was a much more logical explanation.
“Marshall,” I said softly. “I—”
“Al is the girl who sat with me for hours at the hospital and tried to make me laugh. She’s the girl who had always been beautiful, but now I’m beginning to see how beautiful she is in a completely different way. Al is the girl, you are the girl, I think about kissing endlessly.”
I wanted him to stop, to tell him it was the drugs, the possible head injury talking. I wanted to tell him when he remembered, if he remembered, he would regret it.
But I didn’t want him to stop because it may be the only time he would say it.
I was tentative when I asked, “And then what?”
“And then I wake up and know it’ll never happen. I can’t go where my best friend was before me.”
His hand lifted away from mine, and with it what was left of my dignity. A fleeting moment, something that I put a minute amount of hope in, came and went. Maybe it wasn’t even hope. It was foolish to even imagine, and as much as his words built me up and then tore me down, they were the truth.
No. It was a moment. We had a few of them. There was a familiarity between us from long ago. It was a natural reaction to something, I didn’t know what, and once verbalized, once it hit air, the truth destroyed it.
The truth often did that.
He was already struggling to get out of the car by the time I refocused. “I told you to wait,” I snapped. “Do you want to hurt yourself further?”
I flung my car door open, stepped out, and slammed it shut. It was no surprise that by the time I reached Marshall, he was already standing, ignoring my instructions once again.
“Do you have to do the opposite of everything I say?” I asked. “Do you do it just to irritate me?”
I waited for him to argue back with me, but he didn’t. He went back to staring like he was in the car, with his hot and cold intentions making me feel like I was losing my mind.
“I have to tell you one more thing, Al,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” he said.
His blue eyes shimmered from the moonlight. It was clichéd and silly that I was even noticing, but it made him appear so handsome. It was another moment—both of us standing under the moon, the sky watching everything that was happening. How many others were standing under the same sky, wondering and waiting and thinking how different their lives could be?
“For what?” I asked, finally responding to him.
“For still understanding me.”
* * *
I got him situated on his couch once inside his apartment, complete with him moaning and groaning.
“This is gnarly,” he said, trying to tug his shirt off over his head.
I rushed to his side. “Here,” I said, assisting him.
He didn’t resist, and with minimal amounts of cursing, we had it off. My eyes wandered around his chest, the smoothness of his skin and hard lines of muscles decorated with endless stories. He leaned back against the couch, and I was back on nurse duty.
I hurried off to get him a fresh shirt and pain medication, but when I returned, he was already asleep. He’d gotten himself onto his back, resting his head against a stack of pillows, with his hands folded neatly in front of him.
I didn’t know whether to be concerned that he dozed off so quickly or not. Aside from poking him awake or using a mirror under his nose to check his breathing, I concluded I was overreacting. At least, I hoped I was.
Grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch, I laid it across him. I slid to the floor next to him, beyond exhausted myself, resting my head on the cushion of the couch near his face.
“What am I going to do with you?” I whispered to a sleeping Marshall. “Why now? Why you?”
A pain radiated from the center of my chest outward, and I knew what it meant. I lifted my hand and gently brushed it across his hair that had fallen into his face. Instead of retreating after, or perhaps I never should have been doing it at all, my hand hung in the area until I found myself touching his skin. The tips of my fingers lingered above his arm, his chest, before a feather-like touch brushed across them, tracing the lines of his tattoos.
”She’s gone, but she’s everywhere,” read one in a beautiful script in the center of his chest, large enough to extend from shoulder to shoulder. It was flanked by enormous angel wings spreading across his rib cage and inward. It was difficult to make it all out in the dark, but the empty space was filled with flowers, timepieces, and a lion’s head.
My eyes focused on his forearm, scattered with dragonflies surrounding a lighthouse reaching from wrist to elbow.
And there was the Superman symbol, brightly colored and appearing to emerge from torn skin on his right shoulder.
So many stories.
I wanted to know them all.
I drifted off to sleep but would startle awake. I’d take a few moments to make sure he was okay, and he was, still asleep in the same position. When I woke, the sun had already shown her face, and I was lying flat on the floor. My back ached as I pushed myself up, tossing off the blanket that had found its way from Marshall to me.
Marshall.
He wasn’t on the couch.
And when I checked the rest of the apartment, he was nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t until I checked my phone that I saw a text from him.
Marshall: Early start. Didn’t want to wake you, even though you looked uncomfortable as fuck. See you later at drop-off.
Four minutes after he sent the first message, another one came through.
Marshall: Thanks for everything. Really.
* * *
I returned home just before Phoebe arrived, and we made the daily cupcakes together as I told her the full details of the night before. Her questions were endless but were a great diversion. I didn’t want to think about anything relating to the part of the ending I wasn’t telling her.
The eyes.
The energy.
Us.
I didn’t know if it was all real or not, and that made me frightened so much so that I had to keep my distance.
I had to keep her behind to finish up some other orders and then make some deliveries. It was up to me to do the drop-off at Ginger. By the time I got there, I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know what to expect.
“Hey,” he said, emerging from the office.
He looked like hell, and…not. He’d cleaned up well from the night before, and while he seemed to be standing a tad taller, I could tell he was still hurting from the bruised rib. The swelling around his eye had gone down, but now the entire area was an angry purple color. Even with all that going on, the plain black T-shirt and jeans he was wearing looked anything but.
“Hey,” I answered, setting bakery boxes on top of the bar. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad.” He shrugged. “Sorry for taking off this morning. I just, you know. Anyway, what’s in here?” he asked, tapping the top of the boxes and looking everywhere but at me.
I was half hurt he wasn’t going to say more about leaving without saying good-bye, but the other half was fine with avoiding everything altogether that happened the night before.
“They’re chocolate bourbon pecan pie cupcakes with a butter pecan frosting. I have the others in my car.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Chocolate bourbon?”
I smiled. “No, I’m not kidding, and yes, they are that good.”
His fingers ran along the top of the box before sliding one under the taped edge. My perfectionist tendency emerged when I wanted to tell him he was going to tear the box, but I held back. The lid flipped up and Marshall’s face lit up, as my heart started beating faster.
There was something about seeing a person get so enthusiastic about a creation you made. It always thrilled me, and seeing Marshall do it, after the plethora of treats of mine he’d had, was another level.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to the insides of the box. “How much will you rage if I eat one?”
“Not at all. I mean, you need to taste to know how to sell right?”
I watched as he lifted one out and carefully peeled back the decorative wrapper before biting into it from top to bottom. His eyes fluttered shut as I heard a soft moan leave his lips.
It was almost indecent to watch.
So, I left him alone with his edible orgasm, which seemed like a good name for some treat I made in the future, and went back to my car to gather up the rest of the boxes. When I returned, he was licking his fingers of the remnants of the butter pecan frosting.
“Al,” he said. “Those are…I don’t even know. What’s a word for more than fucking incredible?”
There was never a time when someone complimented my sweets that I wasn’t pleased, but it was the other thing he had said that made my heart skip a beat. He called me Al. I didn’t know what it was about it. Maybe it was that he adopted a name only for me, that he was the only one to call me that, but it was endearing.
I smiled. “I think fucking incredible is the right term for it.”
“Is this it?” He pointed to additional boxes of beer brownies, margarita doughnuts, and Fireball turnovers I brought in.
“Yeah.”
“Awesome. Before you take off, there was one other piece of business I wanted to talk to you about.”
Shit. He was going to go there. He was going to bring up last night and what happened in the car. I’d hoped he’d save both of us the embarrassment of reliving it, or maybe it was just me that wanted to be saved from it. I needed to play it cool and not let him see how the whole thing had affected me.
“Oh? What other piece of business?” I asked.
“Well, I assume you were here last night to talk to me, you know, before you saw Monday Night Raw go down, because Phoebe told you I needed to talk to you.”
Or maybe it wasn’t about the car situation.
“Yes. That’s what brought me in. What’s up?”
“Tipsy Treats aren’t lasting long at all here. Everything is sold out by a couple hours after opening, and while you’ve been bringing in more than initially contracted for, I think we need to talk about how we can keep the inventory flowing.”
“Phoebe and I are stretched as thin as we can be. Keeping up with you guys along with other orders has us at max.”
“I get that, and while it’s your business, maybe you need to think about hiring another employee.”
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it, but the way Phoebe and I worked together was so perfect. It was hard to find someone like her, and the notion of adding another person into that wasn’t a thing I wanted to do. I gripped the end of my hair and started twirling it around my finger as I considered how to handle this. On one hand, it wasn’t a bad thing to do for the expansion of the business, but my intention with Tipsy was never to be something bigger than I could handle on my own and with just one other person.
“I see that you’re panicking or some other shit,” he said. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but know we need to come up with some solution.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know what?”
“That I’m panicking. I’m not.”
“You’re twirling your hair,” he said, pointing to my finger. “You only do that when you’re freaking out. And by the way, when did that start? You never used to do that, did you?”
“One, I’m not freaking out or panicking. I’m only thinking. And I don’t know when I started doing it. It seems like I’ve been doing it forever, but I guess not. No one else around me knew me…before.”
He ran his hand down and across his beard as he shook his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“For what?” I asked.
“For…whatever. I don’t know.”
We were silent for a few moments before our eyes were back on each other’s, and we locked.
Hard.
And the moment was there again.
I took it all in because I knew there would be a time later, when I was alone in bed surrounded by quiet, that I’d want to remember it. I wanted to dissect every single breath, every blink, so I could try and decipher what the hell was happening. What was this thing between us that was growing and deepening despite us trying to avoid it?
“You know, Al,” he said in a tone that exuded suggestiveness. “I know I was high as fuck last night, but I can’t shake something from last night that keeps coming back to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Where were you last night after you left me on the couch?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m asking you.”
“Well, someone had to watch you.”
“You were close.”
“I was.”
“I felt you, smelled you. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or dreaming. Your hands were in my hair, running across my skin.”
“Yes.”
His head tilted to the side. “You slept…on the floor? Like where I found you?”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer, running his tongue along his lower lip, as his eyes fixated on my mouth. “And why did you do that?”
I could’ve lied. I wanted to lie.
But I’d lived a lifetime of them, and I didn’t want to anymore.
“Can you walk me to my car?”
He appeared confused but nodded before following me out the door. No words were exchanged as we crossed the parking lot to my car. It was only the energy.
What had happened.
What was happening now.
There was no way he didn’t realize why I asked him to walk me to my car.
Every guy knew.
When we reached it, I paused next to the driver’s side door, and there was zero hesitation when he stepped in front of me.
Close.
And then closer.
Almost nose to nose, our heights matched. He was so close I could smell him, the sweetness of the cupcake he’d only just eaten and his cologne. Or maybe it was soap or shampoo. I never asked what he wore or what it was because it seemed like a violation of rules, like I wasn’t entitled to know. I did conclude that whatever it was, it worked. It worked on him. It was clean and sexy and the perfect balance between.
I started to panic, turned my head, avoidance being my only defense.
“Why did you want me to walk you to your car?” he whispered, his warm breath of words against my ear.
I shrugged, but I was lying. I’d been alone, so very alone, for so long. Physical contact, conversations that made me think, and mutual intentions were such a distant memory that getting an unexpected breeze of them into my life had me reeling. I wanted him, and it scared me that I was following that. That destruction that would be the follow-through was too overwhelming to consider. I could see the wreck in front of me, and I was walking directly into the devastation.
His fingertips fluttered next to mine, the subtle touch making me shiver from nothing to do with the weather. I knew he was staring without looking and that one small close of the gap between us, one turn of my head, would light the world up in flames. It wasn’t what I intended, nor was it what I wanted. Just a walk to my car to keep him next to me a little while longer, but now that lie I told myself was about to give me away.
My eyes continued to focus on the pavement and the orange embers of a discarded cigarette, someone had tossed from the street, next to the toe of my shoe. It seemed strange I was so close, but I didn’t destroy it.
“Al?” he muttered.
And then it wasn’t about what was right or wrong, or needing or wanting.
It was about me.
It was about him.
Us.
I rotated my head to bring my eyes back to his.
And then there was nothing else to say.
No more questions.
No more answers.
His lips touched mine, so tentative at first to gauge if I would kiss him back. I did, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. We sighed against each other’s lips as heat rose all around us. One kiss, and we retreated only slightly, glancing into each other’s eyes for reassurance, before our mouths, our lips, were back where we both wanted them to be.
On each other.
My hands wrapped around his neck to bring him even closer, as I was backed up into my car. His body pressed against mine, and with no place for me to run to, I melted. Our lips parted simultaneously, our tongues meeting together with mutual moans. His hands slipped around the small space behind me, gripping the fabric at the back of my uniform dress in his fists, before releasing and moving them up and down.
I tasted what was left of my cupcake creation on his tongue, the hint of bourbon and chocolate, and it made something move inside me.
All I could think was this wasn’t just a good kiss. This was an amazing kiss—a kiss that I’d remember. It wasn’t crazed or rushed, but it wasn’t tentative. It was desire and longing coming together in a movie-worthy kiss sequence.
He moved. I moved. Together. Perfectly.
Cars passed by, alarms went off, and the conversations from people walking down the street behind us, going about their lives like they had no idea the world was imploding, were all there.
But I heard nothing.
It was only his hands in my hair, his mouth on my neck, and his panting breath against my skin. My fingers dug into his hair, yanking him closer, but with no room for him to move, he nudged my legs open with his knee and stepped in between them.
He paused for a moment and I startled.
I asked, “Is this okay?” as I continued to stare at his lips.
We were out in the open, outside the bar, for all to see. Any of his employees or people who knew me could’ve seen.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
A question with a question, and there was no right answer. Logic and reason would bring me to one direction. His pleading eyes that my own had drifted to would lead me to another.
“Yes,” I whispered.
I wanted more. I wanted him.
All of him.
I wanted his words against my lips and his hands on my bare skin. I wanted to trace the tip of my tongue across every one of his tattoos and know their story. I wanted us to kiss all the bad memories away and remember how good it was to be wanted.
And as I looked at him straight on, feeling him hard against my leg, I knew he wanted the same.
His eyes were closed before our lips met again. Pushed and pulled and back and forth we went, and I didn’t want it to stop. My hand fumbled behind me to unlock the car door to get us inside, but as I grasped the handle, he pulled away once again.
He rested his head against my forehead, his chest heaving. “No. Don’t,” he said. “Not here.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m not going to fuck you in the bar parking lot, that’s why.”
I wanted to joke, to tell him I wasn’t going to and didn’t want to sleep with him, but I knew whatever bullshit line I gave him, he’d see right through. He was so good at that already.
This moment had crossed my mind more times than I could count, but I was still unprepared for where we were at. I needed to remind myself that this was me with Marshall, not Lexie with Aaron’s best friend.
Him. Me.
Together.
“Do you,” I said, turning my head and pressing a kiss to his neck, his stubble tickling my lips, “want to take me somewhere else to fuck me?”
He groaned as my tongue flicked against his skin before he sighed and pushed back. “Yes, I do, but—”
“But what?”
He shrugged and averted his eyes from me. Now it was obvious it was his turn to fight the angel and devil. It was easy to get swept away, to take hold of the moment and let nothing else matter. It was always fleeting, though. The spell broke as soon as reality hit. I didn’t blame him, though, because it would’ve come to me sooner or later. It just happened to him first.
“I get it,” I said without waiting for a response.
I shifted around and opened my car door, but Marshall’s arm reached across me as his hand slammed it shut.
“I don’t think you do,” he said. “Would you look at me?”
I glanced over my shoulder without turning completely. “Marshall. I get it. I do. And you’re right.”
“How do you even know what I was going to say?”
“Because I’m not stupid. We can’t. Ever. Or I don’t know, maybe we could, but could you imagine?”
“No, I can’t, but that is what fucks me up the most.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see you, and you look like her. You talk like her. You move like her. Hell, you even smell like her.”
I shook my head because while I understood what he was saying, it didn’t matter. He’d never be able to look at me and separate the girl who caused so much hurt to his best friend and the girl standing in front of him now.
“You’re not her anymore, Al. You’re not Lexie. Christ, will you turn around already?”
I complied, folding my arms in front of my chest. “I am still her. I always will be. I can change my name, move far away, get a job, whatever. But I’m still Aaron’s ex-wife. I’m still the person, the woman, the mother that did all the things you remember. It’s me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, brushing his hand against my arm before tugging on one so I’d unfold. “Of course, it’s still you, but everything about you is different. You are different, and with that you’re new to me, but I don’t know how to fucking reconcile who you were. I don’t know how to separate the two.”
He was getting frustrated, kicking some dirt at his feet. I wanted to help him, tell him I understood, because it was the same way for me. I just wasn’t sure if I could.
“You know what?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“I haven’t dated anyone since I left Aaron.”
His eyes opened wide as he tried to conceal a smirk. “Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. No one.”
“You mean to tell me that you haven’t had sex in, I don’t know, six or more years?”
“I didn’t say sex, Marshall.”
His head tilted to the side, processing what I’d said. I knew I could go on to explain that the physical needs associated with loneliness is entirely different than romantic ones. I could help him to understand that sex didn’t have to equate love. I was sure he would get that. But I wasn’t sure he’d get why.
I patted his chest, willing to stop the moment. It was all so exhausting. “For the record, you’ve showed more self-restraint than I’m capable of. Thank you,” I said.
My car door was flung open, and I slid into the seat before he could say a word.