Tessa
I admit it: I’d chickened out.
I worked the rest of my shift last night without texting Andrew. Without calling him. I stayed in my overheated house last night, and I didn’t text him this morning, either.
I went over and over it in my head. I should tell him that I’d said no to Nate. But then again, that sounded like I owed him that information, like we were in a relationship. Which we weren’t.
He’d never answered me, so I didn’t know if he cared if I said yes or not. Maybe he didn’t. Did I want him to care?
Why was I overthinking this? We were friends, right? Friends shared things that happened to them. I’d had friends before, even male friends. Why was it so hard to be friends with Andrew Mason?
I was too confused to go to his house after my shift, to sleep in his bed as if we hadn’t had that awkward conversation. Being in his house at night, alone with him, felt too intimate.
And here was the truth: I wasn’t intimate with people. Friendly, yes. Sociable, even flirty—yes. But my parents had treated me more like a friend than as their child, and I’d been on my own early in life. I’d never had a best friend or a long-term boyfriend. Relationships like that didn’t happen when you were trying to make it in L.A., where all relationships were shallow and a little bit selfish.
Even when I dated guys in L.A., there was a question of what that guy could do for me—or what I could do for him. If one of us had ever actually seen real success, the other would have been gone in a heartbeat. The relationships I had were never the kind that could withstand any sort of test. And, I realized, I had kept it that way on purpose.
It was easier. You didn’t get hurt if it didn’t really matter.
But now, I realized the truth: Andrew mattered. Whether he was my friend or something else, he mattered. And by not texting him, by not talking to him, I’d been an asshole. No friend would act the way I had.
So—after a long, sweaty night in which I tried vainly to sleep in my grandmother’s bedroom, next to a fan—I got up my courage and decided to try and fix it. The phone wasn’t going to cut it, either. I needed to go over there.
I put on my Get the fuck out of my business shirt, because that shirt always gave me courage. I put on jeans and flip-flops. And I walked over to Andrew’s house.
I did not expect to see the woman in the front window.
Too late, I realized there was a car in Andrew’s driveway. He had a guest, and she was watching me with a surprised look on her face. She said something, probably to Andrew, and then she vanished from the window. The front door opened as I stepped up onto the porch, my steps reluctant now.
The woman who stood in the doorway was in her mid-fifties, strikingly beautiful, and obviously Andrew’s mother. The resemblance couldn’t have been more clear. She smiled at me politely, and I knew how Andrew had been so blessed in the genetics department.
“Hi there,” she said. “You must be Andrew’s neighbor.”
“I’m Tessa,” I said, shaking her hand. I was sweating hard under my T-shirt, both from the heat and from nerves. “I live across the street.”
“I’m Rita, Andrew’s mother.” The woman’s gaze dropped briefly to my chest, then back up again. “How nice of you to visit. Come in.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’d just met Andrew’s mother while wearing a T-shirt that said Get the fuck out of my business on it. Way to go, Tessa. I followed her into the living room, where Andrew was sitting in his wheelchair. He was wearing nylon workout pants and a gray T-shirt that fitted his torso and showed off his chest and his tightly muscled arms. His dark hair was a bit mussed and he had that trim dark beard on his jaw, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His eyes when he looked at me were dark and tired and filled with some kind of pain I couldn’t quite read. I felt my heart squeeze hard in my chest.
“Hey,” I said.
He was fighting it. Whatever it was, the mood that was dragging him down, he was fighting it. I watched his face go hard and his gaze go intentionally cold, the walls going up. “You met my mother, I see,” he said.
There was none of his usual humor, the back-and-forth, the teasing. Had I done this to him? Or had she?
“Would you like something to drink?” Rita asked. “There’s juice in the fridge. And ginger ale, though I didn’t think Andrew liked ginger ale.”
I looked at him. He didn’t like ginger ale. I did. “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
“Have a seat,” Rita said.
I dropped onto the sofa. I probably shouldn’t ignore Rita—she seemed like a perfectly nice woman—but I couldn’t help it. The only person I wanted to look at was Andrew. “Can we talk?” I asked him.
“Not really,” he said.
“I got a call this morning,” I said. “From the casting agency. They say I got the job.”
His expression got even harder, if that was possible, his jaw twitching. “That’s great.”
It was. It was great. I was going to model bras for a catalog and make a few thousand dollars just to stand there with my breasts barely covered. It was the thing I did, the thing I was good at. It was easy, much-needed money. “They want me to start tomorrow.”
His voice was flat. “That’s great, Tessa. Is that it?”
“Should I leave?” Rita asked.
“I have to be on set for nine o’clock tomorrow,” I said to Andrew. “It’s my day off from the bar, so that works out. The problem is that the air conditioner repairman comes tomorrow, and when I booked the appointment, I thought I would be home.”
His face held no flicker of expression. “So you need someone to take care of it while you’re out? That’s fine. Tell them to come here when they arrive. I’ll handle it.”
I searched his face, trying to read what he was thinking. “That’s really nice of you.”
He shrugged.
The air was thick as molasses, and after a moment of silence Rita said, “You know, I don’t really follow what’s going on.”
Andrew’s gaze flicked past me to his mother. “It’s okay, Mom. Tessa and I are friends.”
That word, friends. The flat way he said it. The look in his eyes.
No. Fuck no. Fuck, fuck, fuck no.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and turned toward Rita, addressing her myself. “The fact is, I was a complete asshole to Andrew yesterday, and I came over here to apologize.”
Rita’s lovely face went a little bit hard, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Something flickered behind her eyes that was deep and complicated, love and fear at once, and I wondered what she was thinking about. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a voice that could probably terrify an army of wait staff. “Andrew doesn’t need to be mistreated by anyone. Perhaps you should leave.”
“Jesus, Mom.” Andrew closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips tiredly to his forehead. “I’m not a toddler.”
“Andrew, you know you—”
“Stop.” He said it so sharply, with so much command, that I wondered what she’d been about to say. There was something beneath the words that I didn’t understand. He opened his eyes and looked at Rita. “Mom, you can go now. I can talk to Tessa alone.”
Behind my shoulder, I felt her hesitate. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like that this strange woman admits that she’s…that she’s…”
“An asshole,” I finished for her. “I think the T-shirt gives it away.”
“Can’t you go be an asshole to somebody else?” Rita said, obviously forcing the curse word out.
“Mom,” Andrew said. “I can handle it. You can go.”
She paused again, looking at him. Then she turned and left.
I didn’t blame her for her attitude. I liked her for it, actually. At least someone, somewhere, was looking out for Andrew. Trying to protect him from people like me.
When the door closed behind her, I turned back to him. “We need to talk,” I said.
“I’m not doing this.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“This.” His eyes blazed now, and he motioned to the air between him and me. “Whatever this is. This thing. It’s why I don’t let anyone into my house, Tessa. Because I don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I shot back. “Emotions? Friendship? Giving a shit about someone?”
“All of it.”
“Well, it’s too late. You’re already doing it. I’m already here. And I was a jerk last night, and I’m fucking sorry.”
“For what?” He was getting angry now, letting it show now that Rita was gone. “For getting asked out? For going on a date? For being a normal person who would like to meet someone and get laid? You’re single, Tessa, and you’re a fucking hot bra model. Go do what you need to do. It’s none of my business.”
“That isn’t what I’m apologizing for,” I said. “I’m apologizing for texting you about it like you’re in the friend zone, when you’re not.”
That stopped him for a second, and then he was angry again. “Tessa, get real. I’m in the permanent friend zone. We both know it.”
“Why?” I said. I pointed to his chair. “Because of that?”
“Not because of the fucking chair,” Andrew said. “Because of the man who’s in it.”
Our gazes met for a long, silent second. Both of us were blazing hot, and my throat was still choked up. I stood up and walked toward him.
“Tessa,” he said, his voice a low warning.
I ignored it. I stood in front of him and put my hands on the back of his chair, leaning over him. All the way down. Sure, I was wearing the obscene T-shirt, but underneath it I had nice tits and I wasn’t afraid to use them. I never had been.
I bent lower, lower. Brushed my cheek against the stubble of his beard and felt it against my skin. I loved the feel of a man’s beard, to be honest. Somehow harsh and soft at the same time.
He smelled good. I knew he would, because I’d smelled his scent in the bed I’d slept in. Clean, soapy, a little bit sweaty because he’d probably been working out. I nuzzled him lightly, feeling the heat of his skin, the pulse in his neck, and I tilted my mouth toward his ear.
“I said no to the date,” I told him.
I heard him take a breath. He put his hand on the back of my neck, under my hair. Then he stroked slowly up the side of my neck, his skin gentle on mine, moving up beneath my ear until his palm cupped my jaw.
Against his neck, I closed my eyes. Andrew had never touched me before. It felt so good I wanted to cry. I never wanted it to stop.
He kept his hand there, and we stayed that way for a long moment. It was an embrace, almost. Or as close as either of us was willing to get.
Then Andrew turned his head so his lips were against my ear, his breath against my neck.
“Tessa,” he said. “Go home.”