Maybe I’m not the only one being dishonest here. In fact, I know I’m not.
I take my seat on the lounger and pick up my beer. This time, she sits in the chair beside me. The act is an unspoken truce. We’ll lay our swords down for now.
“I know you’re not the dick you want people to believe you are,” she says after a long beat passes. I open the cooler beside me and retrieve another beer, handing it to her. She smiles her thanks, and I nod.
“What makes you think I want people to believe I’m a dick?”
She shrugs, taking a swig of beer. “I don’t know. Easier that way, I guess. You reject people before they have a chance to reject you.”
“Hmph,” I snort. “I wasn’t aware you had an interest in psychology. Seems as if I’ve missed something in my research.”
Ally shakes her head before leaning back on her lounger. “Nothing to do with psychology. Everything to do with experience.”
We sit for several minutes in companionable silence, enjoying the late summer breeze. The stars shine brighter tonight, revealing shapes and patterns on that giant midnight blue canvas. Even the moon appears bigger, closer than ever before.
“So tell me, Ally. What did bring you here?”
She turns her head toward me and offers a pained grin. “I thought you knew all about me.”
My eyes remain trained on the sky, but I see her. I’ve seen her since the day she strolled into my home and into my life, a halo of fire and eyes birthed from the stars. “I do. But I want to hear you say it.”
I hear her swallow and then the hushed rustle of fabric as she fidgets with a loose string on her dress. “I thought…I thought if I was what he wanted…I thought if I could be-”
“But you are.” I don’t know why I interject. But just the thought of her believing that she is anything less than perfect has my hand tightly locked around my beer bottle. I catch myself and put it down before it shatters in my grip. “I mean…you are what he wants. He married you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” she shrugs. “But of course that doesn’t hold the same connotation as I once thought it did.”
“Once?”
She doesn’t answer, but I hear her sigh. Then without rhyme or reason, I reach over and grab the bottle out of her hands, placing it next to mine. “Come on,” I say, climbing to my feet.
“Huh?”
I hold my hand out, waiting expectantly for her to take it. And why wouldn’t she? Strange man under the influence of alcohol telling her to follow him without explanation, late at night?Sounds legit.
Yet, with those crystallized eyes trained on my earnest expression, slowly she places her hand in mine. She’s trusting me without question, though I’ve done nothing to earn such a gift. But like the selfish bastard I am, I take it, pulling her to her feet. My fingers impulsively lace with hers, causing a contradicting mix of alarm and comfort to surge in my veins. I look down at our locked hands as we both pull away.
“Follow me,” I frown, leading her toward the much smaller guesthouse. I’m breaking another one of my rules: Never bring a housewife into my home.
“I don’t think I should be here,” Ally says, yet she steps inside, taking in my living quarters. I know what she sees: Bare, white walls, no photographs, no personal touches. Nothing to show who I really am. “How long have you lived here?”
“About eight years,” I reply, watching her as she tries to school her reaction.
“Oh. It’s so… clean.” She flashes me a sympathetic smile before looking at the floor.
I frown. I know what she really means: cold and sterile. And the fact that she feels the need to feel sorry for me, as if I am beneath her, irritates the shit out of me. Here I thought she and I shared a common thread—that we were both misunderstood souls in this world of the fake and phony—when, in reality, she is one of them. She has been all along. And how fucking stupid of me to have thought otherwise.
I’m about to tell her to take those sad eyes and get the fuck out, when she suddenly looks up at me, a genuinely warm smile on her lips. “Don’t tell anyone,” she says with a chuckle. “But I’m kind of a slob. Seriously. Cleaning is not my strong point. Is Housekeeping part of the syllabus? Because I think I could learn a thing or two from you.”
I release my aggravation in a relieving breath and turn towards the kitchen to hide my own smile. Shit. Why the hell am I grinning like the damn Cheshire cat? And why do I find her confession so goddamn charming? Like the fact that she’s messy makes her sorta… real?
Without a word, I go to the freezer and set a carton on the marble counter. Allison looks at the container, then looks up at me and, for a moment, I swear I see tears swimming in her eyes before she quickly blinks them away, shielding her face with a curtain of crimson.
“You bought me ice cream?” she whispers with a strained voice.
I shrug though she can’t see me, still refusing to meet my gaze. “You weren’t happy with the selection in the kitchen so….” I shrug again.
Finally, she lifts her head to look at me, her face so full of light that it’s almost blinding. “Thank you.”
Her grateful smile and the weight of those two words hit me like a two-ton semi, bringing me back to reality. “Well, we try to provide you all with the niceties of home. That includes non-baby poop-tasting ice cream.” I turn to grab a bowl and a spoon before opening the carton and scooping out silken ribbons of cream and chunks of dark chocolate.
“Oh. Well, still…thank you,” she replies, buying my bullshit excuse. Because that’s exactly what it is: bullshit. What I could’ve and should’vedone was leave the ice cream in the kitchen and let the staff serve it to her when she was craving frozen, sugary goodness. But no…I had to go and complicate shit and bring it back to my house, giving me the opportunity to satisfy her need, as superficial as it may be.
She’d need me. And not for sex or relationship advice to apply to her marriage. For fucking ice cream.
I slide her the bowl and wait for her to take a bite. She looks up at me with the same expectant expression.
“Well?” I ask, tapping a finger.
A frown puckers her forehead and she wriggles her nose, bringing those freckles to life. “What? You’re not going to have any?”
I shake my head. “For you.”
Ally takes a seat and spoons out the first bite, placing it on her tongue. Her eyelids flutter close in ecstasy and a downright orgasmic sound rumbles from her chest. “Oh my God.”
“Good?” I’m smiling, but only because she can’t see me, too wrapped up in a creamy cocoon of mint and chocolate.
“Amazing,” she replies through another mouthful. She finally opens her eyes, and a deep blush paints her cheeks as if she’s just remembered my presence. “Thanks for this. Sure you don’t want any?”
“All yours.”
Ally takes another bite and puts her spoon down, propping an elbow on the counter and placing her chin in her hand. “If you could only eat one flavor of ice cream for the rest of your life, would you pick Rocky Road or Mint Chocolate Chip?”
“Excuse me?” I sit on the stool across from hers, brows raised in question.
“Just humor me. Rocky Road or Mint Chocolate Chip?” She smiles amusingly and digs back into her ice cream.
I’m not even sure what to make of this girl. First she’s calling me an asshole, and now she’s asking me about ice cream flavors? I frown in confusion.
“Please?” she says just above a whisper. “I haven’t had a regular conversation about something other than shoes or handbags, or who our husbands could be sleeping with, in days. I just need to…forget. Just for a little while.”
I nod and let out a breath, my chest suddenly full of some foreign, unnamed emotion. Sympathy? Yes. But something else too. And it has nothing to do with pitying her.