He simply said, “No.”
“Come on,” she groaned, her voice bouncing off the linoleum floors, up to the high ceilings with their art deco pendent lights, and back again. “Give me a break.”
Casey came nearer, and she opened her eyes. He was right in front of her. Before she could muster up enough energy to move away, he grasped her upper arms. For a split second, she thought—and almost hoped—he was going to pull her closer. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. She’d told him she wasn’t interested, and this “really good guy,” as Sera had called him, was the type who would honor her request. Damn him anyway.
“I just want to be left alone.”
“To sulk?”
“Don’t judge me. The rest of the town’s got that covered,” she muttered.
“Wow. That is one magnificent funk. I’m impressed.”
“You should be.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I wasn’t.”
“So. Is it really worth it?” Casey jogged her arms as if to jolly her out of her mood, which only irritated her more.
“This is all your fault,” she muttered.
“How is it
my
fault?”
Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly true, but she was crabby enough not to care—and not to take it back. “Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Common Denominator. How do you think? But I’ll have you know I’m not even remotely interested in Jell-O wrestling Celia for you.”
“Jell-O wrestling? I think I missed that part.”
“Stop sounding so intrigued.”
“Sorry. Those are kind of automatic triggers for men. Women, Jell-O wrestling—”
George cut him off. She wasn’t about to have a lighthearted conversation with him today. “Mind telling me how it got to this point? How . . . how Celia and I have been pitted against each other over you?”
“‘Pitted against each other?’ That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Sounds about right to me.”
“I don’t think it’s an issue.”
“Damn right it’s not.”
“Because I’m not romantically interested in Celia.”
“Exactly.”
She waited for him to say “Or you.” It didn’t come. He looked at her steadily, as though waiting for her to ask him about the omission. Damned if she would, though.
“I’ll go out there and make everybody get rid of those shirts,” Casey offered.
George shook her head and fought back a smile. She wanted to be furious with him, but then he had to go and be all chivalrous. “You can’t. Don’t want anybody violating decency laws.”
“Hey, it’s legal for women to go topless in New York.”
“I’m talking about Darryl’s manboobs. We don’t want to cause emotional scarring in children. Adults too, come to think of it.”
“Oh, that.” Casey stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and studied her for a moment. “How about I offer you a sincere, heartfelt, formal apology for all the boneheads in this town?”
“One for each? That’ll take a while.”
“I’d do it.”
“I know.”
Silence for a moment. Then, “I don’t want to be friends with you, Goose.”
She probably should have acted surprised, but she didn’t bother. “I know that too.”
“So . . .”
“Back to being mere acquaintances, then?”
Casey took another step closer, his forehead nearly touching hers as he gazed down the length of her body. “That wasn’t the direction I was thinking we should go in.”
“I told you,” she choked out, her throat suddenly tight, her breathing shallow. “I don’t want to.”
Then he was touching her again, hands caressing her back as he kissed her just under her jawline. Softly. “I don’t believe you.”
“You should.”
“Okay, then.” He dotted her neck with a couple more kisses. “I’ll leave you alone. In a minute.”
“Casey.”
“Mm?”
“You should be with Celia.”
That stopped him. He drew his head back and gave her a puzzled look. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m completely serious.”
“Then say it without your arms around my neck,” he whispered.
She’d barely noticed they’d strayed there. She pulled them back and pressed her hands between her rear end and the wall to make sure they didn’t go rogue again. “You should be with Celia,” she repeated, trying to make her voice sound stronger than she felt.
“Goose. Why are you saying stuff like that? I told you, I’m not—”
“—interested in her. I know that’s what you said. But she’s better for you.”
Casey actually laughed, and it sounded hollow in the echoing building. “Are you telling me to take my medicine?”
“She’s not medicine, and you know it. She’s pretty, and kind, and smart, and sweet, and . . . you two look good together . . . you were good together before . . . and she’s nice and normal. Unlike the person standing in front of you.”
“You’re hardly a candidate for the loony bin.”
“Maybe I am. How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Okay, I’m not swinging-from-the-lamppost insane. But I’m not in any condition to get involved with . . . any guy. Not even you.”
“Aw, Goose, sure you are.”
“Stop telling me how I am!” she cried. “Stop trying to fit the square-peg me-now into the round-hole me-back-then! I’m not eighteen anymore, Casey. I’m a completely different person. And you don’t know that person.”
“I realize you’re not the same,” he said quietly, and she knew he was trying to calm her down with just his voice. Despite how close he was to her, his words were so soft they were almost lost under the invading noise of someone on a microphone, making an announcement, just outside the doors. “And I wouldn’t want you to be. I’m not stuck in the past—unlike a lot of the folks out there. I’m talking about the present. I know you better than you think.”
“Stop saying that, because you don’t. Especially when it comes to relationships. I’ve gone through a lot, Casey, and right now I don’t want to go through any more.”
“Not even something good?”
“It’s never good. It might start out that way, but it never lasts.”
He nodded slowly. “I understand. I read your blog, you know. Every last word of every last entry, all the way back to your first one, after you left your boyfriend. I read about what you went through with him, what you went through with all your other relationships.”
“I didn’t write about my other relationships.”
A grim smile teased up the corners of his lips. “Yeah, you did. You might have hidden them behind other names, but they were yours.”
A rush of heat flooded her cheeks, and she clapped her hands over them. Casey was the only one who’d found her out. “See?” she whispered. “I’m a liar too.”
“That’s kind of harsh. You told me you never expected anyone to read your blog. So who would care, right? At least in the beginning?”
“It wasn’t that many entries. Just a few. And then people started writing in with their real horror stories, so after a while I had plenty to choose from. I should have taken the early ones down, but my readers liked them so much . . .”
“I don’t think the Internet police are going to come after you. In the grand scheme of things, pretending people sent you material for your blog isn’t quite the same as committing mass murder.”
“I was embarrassed all those dating horror stories were mine. I figured it wouldn’t sting as badly if I put fake names on a few of them.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You were in a rough place. You were hurting. God, that Lucifer guy—”
“Thom, actually.”
“Whatever his name is, he really did a number on you. If you aren’t interested in being with anyone now . . . that means he broke you, Goose, and that breaks my heart.”
George felt her own heart aching, and it wasn’t because of Casey’s limitless compassion. She closed her eyes against the sting of tears finally threatening to break the surface. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “He didn’t break me.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
“No,
he
didn’t. You did.”
“What?”
“I didn’t even realize it until recently. Not really. But being back here, with you, and having to face . . . everything, all over again . . . now I know it all started with you.” She forced herself to look straight into his vivid green eyes, which were clouded with confusion. “I wanted you, Casey. I wanted you, and you didn’t want me. I threw myself at you, and you
rejected
me. I know I should have been stronger. I should have shrugged it off. What’s one guy, right? Who cares if Casey Bowen humiliated me? What’s the big deal, anyway? But you have no idea how much you meant to me. I loved you. I was young, and stupid, and I loved you with all my heart. And what you did . . . it destroyed my confidence for years. Yeah, I went out with some idiots between then and now. And I take responsibility for that, and for letting what happened with you affect me so deeply. But it did. I figured if Casey Bowen didn’t want me, I was aiming too high. Why should I hold out for a fabulous guy? Who was I, anyway? Nobody special. So I lowered my expectations. And I got what I expected, guy after guy. That was my own doing, I know. But it all started with you.”
She stumbled to a halt and waited. Casey didn’t say anything, but she watched a veil fall over his expression as he processed this.
Finally, he said, “I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong you are.”
“Seriously? You’re seriously going to tell me what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling?
Again?
”
“You
are
strong, Goose. You were a strong girl, and you’re an even stronger woman. You may not believe it, but you are. And that means there’s no way you could be ‘broken’ by any guy, least of all me. Least of all one night, one kiss.”
“A lot more went on than that, if you recall.”
Casey colored. “Details. The fact is—”
“The fact is . . . it’s not just about what happened between us. It’s that you walked away.”
“Still nothing to do with anything. You’re afraid of getting involved again, afraid of getting hurt. Just admit it, and stop retroactively blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong with your love life. I wasn’t trying to break you. I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“Fuck your manners. I offered you my virginity, and
you wouldn’t take it!
”
“And you think it was easy for me to walk away? A beautiful girl—one I was crazy about, by the way—throws herself at me. Something I’d been thinking about, hoping for, for years—”
“What do you mean, years?”
“Years. That’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? I’d been crazy about you since high school, but I stayed away. And things haven’t changed, by the way.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you stay away from me? Why did you walk away when you could have . . .”
Casey reached out his hand, tentatively tucked it under her hair and cradled the back of her neck. “Because I respected you.”
“Oh,
for God’s sake!
”
“Okay. Because you scared the living shit out of me.” He paused. “That’s a compliment, by the way.”
“Great. I’m a scary bitch. Thanks a lot.”
“You were so smart, and so strong, and so mature. You were nothing like the other girls in high school. I was a stupid teenager—I didn’t know what to do with that. It was safer to date somebody bland, like Celia.”
“So you were a coward.”
“I absolutely was. I wish I’d been different.”
“And what about now?”
He grinned. “You still scare the living shit out of me. But in a good way. And over the years I’ve caught up with you. I think I can handle you.”
“I’m not a horse.”
“Didn’t mean it that way.” He took a breath and slipped an arm around her waist, drew her to him. “Look . . .
I
was young and stupid, not you. And I apologize, from the bottom of my stupid heart, for hurting you. I never meant to. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
George sighed and rested her cheek on his chest. “You’re destroying the entire history I’ve built up in my head.”
“But can you forgive me, Goose?”
“I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s my fault.”
“How about I apologize for not nailing you when you were eighteen? Because I’m
really
sorry about that.”
In spite of herself, George laughed a little. “I’ll bet you are.”
“I am. Even though Sera threatened to beat me up if I ever laid a finger on you.”
George looked up, startled. “She knew how you felt?”
“Maybe she didn’t know how intensely. But she knew I was, um, noticing you.”
“She’s always been a pain in my ass.”
“Mine too. But she wouldn’t be Sera if she weren’t.”
“I guess.”
“So.” Casey pulled her tighter. “We good?”
Silence.
“Goose?”
Still nothing.
“Hey, quit scaring me. What’s your answer?”
The tears were back. George was getting tired of them. Gently she pried Casey’s arms from her and walked out of the building. She held her breath, waiting, but then she heard him following.
It didn’t matter that they walked right into the back of a bunch of thirteen-year-old girls doing a dance routine on the town hall steps. The talent show had started. The audience at the base of the steps was peppered with green and blue shirts, and suddenly they were all staring at her. It just strengthened George’s resolve.
With Casey still at her heels, she stumbled through the tangle of tween limbs involved in some sort of rigid choreography halfway between dancing and cheerleading, made her way down the steps, and skirted around the edges of the crowd. Eyes followed them and fingers pointed—of course they would—but George forced herself to ignore them. There may have been money exchanging hands, bets paid up from Team Celia members to Team George members at the sight of George and Casey together. She ignored that too.