Strong Enough Page 10

  We both went silent, the tension between us so heavy I felt smothered by it. The hum of the refrigerator receded as my heart thundered louder in my chest. He leaned toward me slightly, and it took all my willpower to stay still. Kiss me again. I want you to. I want it all.

  His breath came faster, his chest expanding and contracting. I knew what I’d feel if I put my hand on it—the riotous banging that clamored inside my ribcage too.

  “You should hate me for last night,” he said, his voice deep and quiet.

  “I don’t.”

  “I hate myself for it.”

  My heart squeezed. “Why?”

  “Because it’s wrong.”

  So that’s it. “Didn’t it feel good?”

  He closed his eyes and exhaled. “It felt fucking incredible.” Then he looked at me again. “But Maxim, it’s not who I am. Do you understand? I don’t want that. I can’t.”

  “Okay.” As much as I wanted to argue, I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. His problem wasn’t with me—it was with himself and his beliefs, and he’d only dig his heels in deeper if I pointed out the truth. But having me here had to make it worse for him. “Derek, I should find somewhere else to stay.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t want you to go, I just—we just have to forget it happened,” he insisted, as if I’d said otherwise. “That’s the only way.”

  “Okay. That’s what we’ll do.” I’d agreed with him, but you’d have thought I hadn’t from the tortured look on his face. Don’t look at me like that. This isn’t what I want, but you’re not giving me any choice.

  A second later, his phone vibrated on the counter behind us. He jumped up and grabbed it. “Hello.”

  Grateful for the breathing room, I sucked in lungfuls of air free of his scent, willing my heart rate to return to normal.

  “Yes. You want to talk to him?”

  I turned in my chair and Derek handed me his phone. “It’s Ellen.”

  “Thanks.” I brought the phone to my ear and watched him leave the kitchen and go into the back hall. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Maxim!” Ellen chirped. “Are you busy?”

  I heard the bathroom door shut. “No.”

  “Want to head over to the bar? Derek said he’d bring you.”

  “Oh. Sure. Do I have time to clean up? I was working in the yard this morning.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ll want to shower when you get home from the bar anyway. I always do.”

  “Okay. I guess I’m ready, then.” If I could get my pulse to stop hammering.

  “Super! I had a barback quit this week and I’m short-handed. See you in a few.”

  “Sounds good. Bye.” I ended the call and set the phone on the table as Derek came back into the kitchen, looking much more like himself. Calm, cool, in control.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Almost. I’m going to change clothes really quick. My laundry still in the dryer from last night?”

  “Yep.” As if our previous conversation hadn’t happened, he picked up his phone and leaned back against the counter, focused on the screen. God, he could go from hot to cold quickly—and from cold to hot just as fast, like he’d shown me last night. It was dizzying. I grabbed my clean clothes from the dryer and headed upstairs to change, grateful for a reason to leave the house.

  Seventeen

  DEREK

  Why doesn’t he care?

  It was making me crazy. Everything about him was making me crazy. The way I wanted him, the memory of last night, the fact that he seemed completely unbothered by the fact that I was demanding we forget anything happened. In fact, it had been me to bring it up again at the table! How fucked up was that?

  But nothing I said had provoked him, and his ability to remain cool and detached while I was coming out of my skin made me want to scream. He’d been totally into me last night! The blowjob had been his idea! Why. Didn’t. He. Care.

  Worse than that, why did I care so much?

  After a silent car ride to the bar, I’d dropped him off and drove in fucking circles for an hour, trying to get my head on straight. When that didn’t work, I parked at the mall and went into a few stores, telling myself to pick out a birthday present for Ellen but grabbing a bunch of things for Maxim instead. Maybe it was seeing him in my clothes that was the problem. Maybe if I took away that strange and possessive sense of closeness, I wouldn’t be so confused. On my way home, I called Gage and asked if I could stop by. I needed distraction, and his house was always in complete chaos.

  “Sure, man. Come on over. We’re in the yard.”

  Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on their patio, a cold beer in my hand, watching their kids splash around in a little plastic pool. Lanie was in the house prepping kebabs for the grill, and Gage was sitting next to me, blowing up a giant alligator float that was way too big for the pool. When he was done, he handed it to Pennie, his oldest, and told her to share it.

  “No,” she said, running away with it. “Uncle Derek, watch me!”

  He tipped back his beer. “Whose idea was it to have kids?”

  “Come on, you have great kids.” I applauded and whistled when Pennie took a flying leap into the pool on her raft.

  “I know, but they ruined my life. Hey, Will!” he yelled to his five-year-old. “Don’t push your brother like that! He’ll fall in, and I’ll have to get out of this chair to save him, and I don’t really want to get out of this chair!”

  “I heard that!” Lanie hollered through the screen.

  “You hear everything,” muttered Gage. He set his beer on the table and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. His arms were crossed over his stomach, which showed the first traces of a belly. “God, I’m tired. Remember when I could stay up past ten o’clock and not be exhausted the next day?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Those were good times.”

  I took a slow, long sip of my beer. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t trade what you have to go back.”

  “You wouldn’t?” He raised his voice. “Pennie, if you try to ride that on the ground, it will get a hole in it!”

  “No way. You’ve got it all, man. I envy you.”

  He glanced at me. “Envy me? Of what, my soul-crushing mortgage? My Dad bod? My messy house? My ability to change a dirty diaper with one hand?”

  I winced. “Maybe not the diaper thing. Or the Dad bod. But everything else—your easy relationship with Lanie, your house full of kids, your Saturday soccer games and Sunday barbecues. I wish I had all that.”

  “No marriage is easy,” he assured me. “Half the time Lanie and I want to strangle each other. The other half of the time, we want to strangle the kids. But you’re right. I wouldn’t trade it.”

  I lifted the bottle to my lips again. “Told you.”

  “So have a family,” he said, as easily as he would say have a kebab. “What are you waiting for?”

  “The right person, obviously.” I laughed gruffly, but it was fake. “I can’t seem to find her.”

  “Carolyn seems cool.”

  “She is, but…I don’t know. She’s perfect on paper, but there’s not much chemistry. I’m afraid of getting serious with her and never feeling anything more than I do now.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I like her a lot, but…”

  “You don’t want to bang her.”

  “No,” I admitted.

  He ran a hand through his unruly brown hair. “Dude, do not marry a woman you don’t want to bang, because that is the only person you have permission to bang until death do you part. Did you hear that? Death.”

  I frowned. “Right.”

  “Maybe you’re being too picky,” he suggested. “I know you hate hearing that, but maybe you don’t have to have the A-plus-on-paper woman. Maybe you should look for the woman you want to bang who’s like, a B-minus on paper.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I mean, you could have anyone,” Gage went on. “Girls have alw
ays lined up to be with you. How hard can it be to find a cute little twenty-nine-year-old neat freak who loves vacuuming and hates sand as much as you do?”

  “I don’t hate sand,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just don’t like the way it gets everywhere.”

  “I’m fucking with you.” He hit me on the arm. “Look, give it some time. If it’s not happening with Carolyn, then move on. It’s bound to happen with someone.”

  I nodded, tipping back the beer again before glancing over my shoulder to make sure Lanie was still in the house. Then I spoke quietly. “Do you ever get the urge to cheat on Lanie? Like, are you ever attracted to other people?”

  “I wouldn’t say I have the urge to cheat.” Gage spoke softly too. “But yeah, I’m attracted to other women sometimes. I’m human. But I don’t act on it. Not worth it.”

  “What do you do about it? To make it go away?”

  “It sort of goes away on its own once I think about what I have with Lanie. I’ve never been so attracted to anyone I’d risk losing her or hurting my family.”

  Of course not. But that didn’t help me.

  Gage crossed his arms over his chest and went on. “Probably the most tempted I’ve ever been to sleep with someone I wasn’t supposed to was when I fell for Lanie. We’d been friends for so long, and I’d dated one of her roommates, and she was kind of seeing this douchebag named Brodie. There were all these reasons why we shouldn’t hook up. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Then one night, she broke it off with the douchebag, and I was like fuck it—I need to see what this is. We might ruin our friendship, but I need to know.”

  I nodded in understanding, because I got that—the desperate urge to understand what you felt. I wished it were as simple as that between Maxim and me.

  But in our case, I’m not sure I wanted to know. What good would it do me?

  I stayed at Gage and Lanie’s for hours, eating and drinking and letting their kids climb all over me as the sun set behind the hills. They were noisy and sticky and their popsicles melted all over my shirt, but I didn’t mind. This was what I wanted—family and friends in the backyard on a warm summer night.

  Around nine-thirty I got a text from Ellen telling me she’d bring Maxim home later, so I didn’t have to wait up to come get him. By then, the kids were getting to that sunburned-and-tired meltdown stage, so I said goodnight and headed home.

  My house felt emptier than usual.

  Eighteen

  MAXIM

  “You survived.” Ellen grinned and handed me an envelope with cash stuffed inside. “Here you go. It’s a little more than a hundred bucks. Sorry it’s not more, but it was kind of slow tonight. Eventually I’ll pay you weekly, but for now I’ll pay you at the end of your shifts.”

  I couldn’t believe it. A hundred bucks, right now? That was a quarter of my rent to Derek! Even better, it was the first money I’d made in the U.S. I thumbed through it in disbelief, wishing I didn’t need this money and could frame it as my first big achievement here. Ellen might not think a hundred bucks was a big deal, but I felt rich. And so, so grateful. In fact, I had to turn away from her, scared I might actually tear up. “Ellen, thank you so much. You have no idea how glad I am to have this job.”

  “Of course. What are friends for? I hope it wasn’t too terrible.”

  “Not at all.” I’d been so busy the first few hours, the time had flown. I spent most of the time assisting Ellen behind the bar, washing glasses, refilling ice, running down to the basement to get more beer and wine, and occasionally taking food orders to tables if the wait staff was slammed. The last couple hours I’d spent helping Ellen clean up and restocking the bar, with only a quick break for dinner.

  “We can take off now. My other manager is going to close up.”

  “Okay. What do I owe you for the shirts?” When we’d arrived, she’d given me two black T-shirts with the bar’s logo on them. One I’d put on right away, and the other was folded under my arm, along with the shirt I’d worn here.

  “Nothing.” She laughed. “That’s your uniform.”

  She called goodnight to the staff that was left and we went out the back door to where her car was parked.

  “Jump in,” she said, opening the driver’s side door of a beat-up Jeep.

  “You don’t lock your doors?” I went around to the passenger side and attempted to get in, but first Ellen had to throw a bunch of things that had been on the seat into the back—water bottles, coffee cups, clothing, shoes, plastic bags.

  “Nah. What for?” She started the car as I buckled up. “Nothing worth stealing in here, and if someone wants this piece of shit badly enough, they can have it.”

  I laughed. “You are so different from Derek.”

  “Oh Jesus, his car is ridiculous. You could eat off the floor.” She backed out of her parking spot. “Not that he lets anyone eat in it. And he practically has heart palpitations any time he has to ride in mine.”

  I couldn’t resist asking more about him. “Was he always so neat and organized? Even as a kid?”

  “Yep. Always kept his bedroom perfectly clean, never left his toys out, used to love washing his bike more than riding it. His friends would be like, ‘Derek, it’s called a dirt bike! It’s supposed to have dirt on it!’”

  I laughed, picturing that gap-toothed, dark-haired boy I’d seen in the picture over the fireplace scrubbing away at his spokes. “I can see that.”

  “He’s such a good guy, but he takes himself so seriously sometimes. Always has.”

  “But he’s so successful. He’s got that beautiful house, and a good job, a great car. He takes such good care of everything. He’s so generous to everyone. He seems perfect to me.” For a second, I thought I’d said too much, but Ellen didn’t seem fazed.

  “He’s pretty close to perfect, I suppose. If you’re judging by appearances. But I don’t know how happy he is.”

  I had to know more. “You don’t think he’s happy?”

  She thought for a moment. “I think he’s lonely. But he doesn’t really talk about his feelings.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “But I know he wants a family and thought he’d have one by now, and I think that affects him. I don’t know if he’s told you, but he had a really serious girlfriend for a while. In fact, he bought the house intending to move into it with her. They were going to get married.”

  My stomach felt like I’d swallowed rocks. “Oh.”

  “He had this perfect life all mapped out—the house, the wife, the kids. Then she broke it off, and I think he’s been sort of lost ever since. Felt like he’d failed, and if there’s anything Derek hates more than dirt, it’s failure.”

  I smiled, but I felt for Derek. My biggest fear was failure, too. Questions I didn’t allow myself to ask were constantly threatening like storm clouds in the back of my mind. What if I couldn’t make it here? What if I had to go back to Russia? What if I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, driven enough to achieve what I wanted?

  “Part of that comes from our parents,” Ellen went on. “Or at least our dad. He was really hard on the boys growing up—strict rules, high standards, lots of pressure to be the best at everything, whether it was sports or school. I probably had it the easiest, or maybe I just cared the least what my parents wanted.” She laughed. “I was the black sheep. I spent a lot of time being grounded.”

  “But you turned out pretty successful, too.”

  “Thanks.” She flashed me a smile. “That was fun last night, wasn’t it?”

  You have no idea. “Yes.”

  “And I’m so glad I got to meet Carolyn.”

  “Have they been together long?” I felt guilty even asking, like it was disrespectful to Derek. But I couldn’t help myself.

  “Not too long. And I don’t think it’s too serious between them, but since the breakup three years ago, he’s hardly dated anyone. I don’t know if he’s just ridiculously picky or if there really isn’t anyone out there good enough for him,
but it’s such a shame, you know? Here’s a guy who’s dying to have a family, and he’d be the best husband and dad ever because he’s got a great career and great house and he loves taking care of people, but he just can’t meet the right girl. Maybe Carolyn will break the spell.”

  I didn’t think so, but I wouldn’t say that to Ellen. In my mind I heard Derek’s voice. The problem is me. Sometimes I don’t know what I want.

  Unbelievably, Ellen said this next: “I’ve even wondered if Derek was gay.”

  My pulse pounded in my ears. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I mean there are some signs. I’d never ask him flat out, but I have wondered.”

  I had no idea what to say. Thankfully, Ellen was a talker.

  “It’s hard because we were raised to believe it’s wrong. I love my dad, but he can be a real asshole about some things, and that’s one of them. He grew up in a religious household in a very conservative part of the country, and that was all he knew. When we moved out here from Ohio and first started to see gay couples, he made a lot of negative comments about it being unnatural and immoral and all that. It’s bullshit, but he believes it.”

  “Does Derek believe it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But Derek has always wanted my father’s approval, more than any of us. I don’t see him doing anything that would lower himself in our father’s eyes, even now.” She waved a hand in the air. “And anyway, I could be way off. He’s always dated women, and I know he planned to marry his ex. He’s probably not gay. He’s just a perfectionist. Please don’t tell him I said anything.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. And I wouldn’t.

  But my heart ached for Derek. The more I learned about him, the more I realized that the problem wasn’t that he didn’t know what he wanted, the problem was that he did know—he just didn’t like it. He didn’t want to want it. It wasn’t right in his eyes, it wasn’t natural, it wasn’t perfect. But he couldn’t make it stop.

  It explained why he’d done what he did last night in the kitchen, and why he ran away afterward. It explained his excuses this morning. It explained why he said he hated himself.