Back To U

chapter Nine

Dinnertime is critical for bringing the family together.





She'd run to the bathroom to brush dinner out of her teeth, traded her shoes for slippers, called her mother to check on her, and dumped her change jar on the bed to sort out the pennies. Forty-seven was a good number to parlay into a poker fortune. She put them in a clean sock for transport and swung it as she headed back to absorb the rules of bluffing and trash talking, and then her phone rang.

She hesitated since she'd already talked to her mother, and Missy was unlikely to call. Missy could be calling, though, but so could Max. He could call just to gloat over winning the bet, as if she needed to lose any more to the man.

The phone rang again, and she was a gambler now, wasn’t she? She picked up the phone, practicing bold optimism. "Hello?"

"Someone took my picture."

Damn. She sucked at all forms of gambling. But she still might possess untapped skills at bluffing. "Someone took my picture, and I merely retrieved it. I didn't sign a release form, so the photo and any said likeness cannot be used without my express written permission."

Max paused on the other end, and she hoped he would be awed at her use of said likeness and give up, but bold optimism wasn’t working for her either.

"I expect more from you, Gwen. You're not going to weasel out of it like that are you? Really? I'm very, very disappointed."

Okay, she sucked at bluffing, so she’d attempt trash talking. She tried to remember exactly the phrasing Jason and Bryan used against each other. "You think you’re a winner, but you’re going down. You are nothing but a fiery blaze of loserdom, my man--" She nearly dropped the phone when Steve appeared in the doorway.

"Are you tryin’ to trash talk me, woman? You really don't lose well, do you? I had no idea. Again, the disappointment is deep."

"Steve." It had been two months since she’d seen the man she used to see daily, daily for nearly two decades. He was so familiar to her, and she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed familiar, the sounds of her house, the sweet smell of the pantry where the brown sugar and vanilla seemed to dominate the rest of the dried goods. She wanted Steve to take her hand and walk her back into her life, but he peered into the room as if reluctant to enter a dark closet.

She knew that look, and while his mid-sized build, mid-brown hair, mid-green polo shirt, complete with embroidered pony, might lull a stranger into thinking he’d be genial, she understood he was there to get his way. She just didn’t know what he wanted anymore. Her hand cramped, and she remembered the phone. She lifted it slowly to her face, "I have to go, sorry," and hung up.

"Am I going to get a sorry?" Steve crossed his arms over his chest, no longer looking like an insurance agent so much as a disapproving, pissed-off husband.

Husband. Well he wasn't, was he? She’d signed the papers he’d asked her to. And she could so bluff. "Don't even give me that look."

His chin came up in a move of irritated surprise. "Excuse me? What look would that be? The husband--"

"Ex."

"Gwen."

He said her name so evenly, so calmly, she wanted to be comforted but felt more irritated than anything. "Don’t Gwen me." She didn’t even know what that meant. It was a ridiculous expression, but she was standing, at thirty-nine, in a dorm room with forty-seven pennies in a sock, so ridiculous seemed appropriate.

Steve shook his head, a pretty strong show of disapproval for him. She’d seen him do it to Missy once or twice when Gwen had called him in for back-up, but she couldn’t recall it ever being aimed at her. He didn’t put on a strong show of approval either, but she’d always sensed his mild thumbs-up for how their life was going. Until, of course, he’d left.

"Gwen, I assumed you were at the house. None of the neighbors called me about mail piled up or any unusual activity, and then I stopped by."

"You stopped by?" That surprised her as much as his appearance at Belmar. He hadn’t been home in months, and she felt she needed to brace herself. He must have tracked her down to tell her the papers were filed, and it was done.

"I know that the empty nest is difficult for women. You haven't been yourself for quite a while, but I assumed you'd take this time at home to think about your behavior."

"My behavior? You're the one who--"

He held up his hand, and she realized if it had been any closer, she might have bitten it. Wow, with that kind of impulse she could move out of the world of bluffing into the world of action.

"While it is true that I'm the one who moved out, it was, in part, to help you, Gwen."

She opened her mouth but only managed to suck air in.

"I don't think you’ve really come around in all this."

She wished she had a witness to give her some perspective on the craziness unfolding. She needed a solid witness not manipulated by language, like Guy. "What would that look like? Do I beg? Pleeeeease, Steve, I'm sorry you walked out. Help me make it up to you? Are you f*cking kidding me right now?"

He held up one finger and seemed to work at regulating his breathing. "I don't F do anything. I think things through, which is more than I can say for you right now. Women often lose perspective at your age."

Had he really just said that? Her perspective had been to give him most of her life, maybe all of it. "I have been nothing but--"

"Been is the operative word, honey. You are, right now, living here I assume."

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest.

He spoke very slowly as if every word was underlined in a speech bubble next to his mouth. "I went by the house. What did I find? No one lives there. Everything's in the house, mind you. I already knew my daughter had run off with a band..."

She felt a mother’s instinct to defend her young, as flaky as her young might be. "She's not a groupie, Steve. She’s in a band."

He looked up at the ceiling, waited out the interruption.

Even she didn’t understand how Missy thought a Lynard Skynard tribute band was a good career move, but she murmured, "It's not like she joined the circus."

"Circus?" He waved around the room. "My wife has run off to this ridiculous place. What ill-considered impulse is that?"

Ill-considered? Check. Impulse? Damn, he had her there. She hadn’t planned to go to college or live in the dorm or pretty much anything else she’d done in the past month.

"I assumed you were at home, thinking about your life, Gwen. Because, I'll be honest with you, it's a bit of a train wreck."

She opened her mouth again, but nothing came out.

"Now, I think we can manage this, I do. But first, your use of Missy's college money is unacceptable."

The college savings account? Their college savings account? "I helped with that money too. And it’s for education. That’s what I’m using it for." She thought of the years she’d been so careful with the household money to make sure they were putting enough away for college. Why shouldn’t she benefit one semester from that? Missy didn’t even want it. And then she spotted Guy in the hallway, wearing nothing but boxers and one sock.

She met Steve's eyes, hoping she'd not clued him in that someone was behind him. But he slowly turned then took a step backward when he saw the skinny, mostly undressed boy grinning in the hall.

Guy waved and then rubbed his index fingers and thumbs together indicating he needed money. Clothes and pennies? What the hell kind of poker were they playing now?

She watched Guy set off towards his room, and Steve turned a horrified face to her, demanding, without words, some really good clarification. She just didn’t have any to give. "Guy ran out of money at the poker game."

Steve seemed to think that through then headed down the hall in the direction Guy had come from.

She ran after him, but he beat her into the lounge where Annie sat at the head of the table, fully clothed and wearing Jason’s hat backwards. Steve scanned the poker players one by one, and she followed what he was seeing. Jason, no hat, shoes, or socks. Hayden minus his glasses. Bryan in a t-shirt and camo green jockey shorts, and a shirtless Max.

She kept her eyes high and made a phone motion to Max, but he just shrugged, "Called from the lobby."

Steve seemed to finally take in the whole of it and zeroed in on the one person he could lose his temper over. "Max."

Max studied his cards, "Steve," and laid them out. "Full house."

Annie’s eyes narrowed.

"Oh, yeah, sister. You’re not playing with a bunch of farm boys anymore."

Bryan started to protest, but Max glanced at the olive green underwear out of the corner of his eye, and Bryan fell silent.

Turning to her, Steve waved his hand behind him as if everything was too distasteful to witness anymore. "Explain this to me…"

She sighed. "I made a roast."

Jason tried to help her out. "Elvis spanked that girl in Hawaii, and we played penny poker, and then Bryan thought about the time he played strip poker with… what was that girl’s name?"

Bryan seemed to think about it while Max shuffled and dealt with speed and precision.

Steve ignored everything behind him and focused on her. "You are a forty-year-old married mother, and you’re here. You’re living in a closet." He whispered and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "He is here." He straightened and got louder. "And a bunch of half-naked kids are at your… family dinner?"

Jason jumped to her defense. "Venus said we shouldn’t play strip poker. She’s been pretty strict since the vodka hangover. We were playing for pennies until she left to, you know, get more pennies. And she had cider this time, said no Red Bull and vodka. It kept me up all night."

She pointed to herself. "It kept me up all night. Not Jason. I don’t know if it kept him up all night."

Jason frowned and pointed to the couch. "Fell asleep right there, remember?"

She tried to smile at him for his assistance, however damning it was, but Steve reached for her arm and pulled her into the hallway. They stood in front of the elevators, and he dropped her arm to push the button. "I can see that this isn’t a good time to have a conversation adult to adult. We will when you are."

They both watched the numbers light up, the doors open. Steve stepped in, clearly believing he had scored a major hit, and she focused on the wrinkles down the back of his slacks. He’d managed to iron the front of them, but maybe didn’t realize there were two sides.

She watched the doors close, and then Steve’s hand stopped them, and she waited. What more could he do? He seemed to consider what he was going to say, looking more thoughtful than he had in years. Would he say the thing, whatever it was, that would make her life okay again?

He shook his head. "This is something your mother would do."

She felt a sharp intake of breath and the heat of tears in her eyes. The elevator closed, and Steve was gone and right, so right she didn’t even want to think about the last, terrible minutes when she’d been insulted six ways to Sunday by a man who, after twenty years, hadn’t once mentioned love. And she hadn’t until just then thought about it either. And who was an adult? An adult might be like the fabled unicorn, a good story but probably not true. And even if it were possible, who’d want to be one? It sucked.

She turned to hide out in her room, but spotted Max in the hall, leaning against the lounge doorway. He looked almost bored, but she had a feeling he’d been watching out for her. She didn’t like the comfort she felt in that or the dark embarrassment that he’d heard Steve or the damning evidence that she was behaving like Ellen, especially when her eyes went right for his chest. And that man had a damn fine one. He’d clearly not stopped doing crunches in the two decades she’d last seen him shirtless, and last run her hands across… She stared at the ceiling. "So, I’m going to my closet now."

"Yeah, here’s the problem."

She knew that tone, the casual one he had when he was in charge and knew it and was gloating in a jerk-somebody’s-chain way.

"You lost a bet. And I am a collector."

She motioned toward the elevator, reminding him she was in a delicate and pained state of… "You wouldn’t."

"Would." He smiled. "Pack your bag for the weekend. Bring a bathing suit. Pink. I like pink. I’ll be in the front of the building in forty-five minutes." He patted his chest, the conceited lout. "Gotta get my shirt."

He swaggered into the lounge like the alpha male a*shole that he was, and she followed him because in the animal kingdom there may not be a female equivalent for the alpha, but superiority didn’t need a label. "Hey, everybody…"

Max’s head shot up, a beast sensing trouble.

"Max is taking us all on a road trip. Run and pack. He’ll be out front in forty minutes."

The guys pushed back from the table like freshmen stuck on campus without cars and ran for the elevator in a herd.

Gwen nodded to Annie. "Would you grab Guy? He’s still scrounging for pennies."

Then she gave her sweetest smile to Max and yelled down the hallway like a trucker. "Boys, bring your swim trunks! Max likes pink." She made an air kiss at him, and gave her hips a little extra sway as she headed toward her room. He wasn’t the only one who could swagger.





Max's life - November 12th, Friday 1989



He’d asked Gwen. Only her. Not Justin, his crying, crying, cry-fest of a roommate. In fact, he’d invited Gwen so they could get away from Justin. Well, not so much away from him. He felt for the guy. As stupid as Justin had been to get serious in the prime of his life, heartbreak sucked, clearly. It could end badly with speed, like the we’re done phone call from the saint Jen-Jen, or it could end badly like the slow-motion car crash of his parent's marriage. The dean and the ice queen. She’d literally been a Duluth, Minnesota queen at some winter fair. It hadn’t surprised him even as a kid.

He turned onto the highway, heading toward the hot springs. He felt, or thought he could, the drag of six people crammed into his Corolla, but he did like having Gwen next to him on the console, could feel her thigh against his when he shifted. But Justin was probably just as close to her in the passenger seat. He felt a flash of jealousy, which was ridiculous. They were all adults and single and Justin wasn’t even someone Gwen would like. She was too interesting, too funny, too full of energy to go for steady and dull.

He watched Gwen mess with the radio, trying to pick up a station in the middle of nowhere and heard Justin sigh over the static. He didn’t really want to leave the poor guy behind, but he didn’t need to bring a whole freaking carload along. He’d said that to Gwen when she’d taken pity on Justin. She’d snowballed right into dragging along her roommate then Rob, who was already half-drunk and really was only a basketball buddy.

And how in the hell had Mandy, Gwen’s bitchy R.A. gotten in? Barely. She’d squeezed in the backseat and shared a seat belt with Molly. Gwen was plenty nice to her. She was nice to everybody, but he didn’t know why. Mandy didn’t deserve it. Even Gwen joked once that it would be just her luck, years down the road, to get one of Mandy’s kids in her classroom.

Gwen found a station, rock, and turned it up. He felt her softness against his arm, hoped that whatever was between them was just sex. Shit. The way his luck was running he’d never know. He’d end up in the hotel bed with Justin and Rob. One would cry and the other would snore.

She smiled at him as the song cranked up. "I know you love this one."





Back to U…





The boys sang Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird from the back, and after a couple of rounds, she’d stopped thinking of Missy singing it in a bar and just let herself be amused. She’d let herself not think about anything involving Steve or the cooking program either. Her ex and Nicola Gaspard weren't going to ruin her weekend. It was shaping up nicely since she’d stuck Annie in the front between her and Max. That move, she knew, was more entertaining than was good for her.

She didn’t know exactly what the man had in mind when he’d called in the bet, but she was pretty sure it didn’t involve the two of them on a road trip with a passel of freshmen, and she shouldn’t underestimate Max’s capacity for revenge. She looked over Annie’s head and studied his brooding profile as he drove down the dark highway to who-knew-where. She may have lost the bet, but she couldn’t help point out how successfully she’d allowed him to collect and still protect herself. "It’s great you have an SUV. Wow, seven people. Not every vehicle could take the whole gang."

Max ignored her, and the boys sang louder about the freebird needing to keep traveling on.

She gave him her best innocent voice. "Wasn’t that one of your favorite songs?"

He stared straight ahead, but she thought his lips thinned a little.

She held up her hands, thumb and pinkies out in Hawaiian party sign language. "Man! Freebird. Man, I love that song!"

Max’s lips twitched. She was sure she’d seen it.

The boys kicked it up a notch, declaring that they were birds that couldn't be changed.

Guy, in a rather high-pitched monotone added something to the chorus that sounded like gratis fugel.

Max turned to her, and they both struggled not to laugh.

She felt tears build up from the effort of holding it in.

Max drove, then turned to her again, tears in his own eyes. "It’s always been my favorite that gratis fugel." He concentrated on driving, but Gwen could see his body shake. She stared out the window and laughed as silently as she could while the boys sang another round.



She’d suspected it about thirty miles into the trip, knew it at forty, and had it confirmed at sixty. Max had taken them on the ultimate college road trip, cheap natural hot springs. The two of them had been to the Curtis Hotel several times before. Good times before.

Everyone piled out of the car and pulled out an assortment of bags. Gwen noted the potholes in the parking lot, cracked sidewalk, and faded green astro-turfed porch and doubted there’d been much profit plowed back into the business. As they stepped into the lobby, she doubted there’d been much profit to plow anywhere. The owners, and if they were new ones, they hadn’t brought much new enthusiasm to the venture, had added a couple of vending machines and a small gift shop.

She called Max’s attention to the closed sign on the gift shop as he carried his bag to the desk. "You’ll have to get a souvenir shot glass before you leave." She smiled at the clerk, "For his collection," and waved Annie closer. "We’ll need a room."

Max put a credit card on the counter. "Three rooms."

The clerk, a local girl looking bored with life already, tapped a pencil on the notebook that housed the hotel register. The new owners hadn’t purchased a computer either. "I got two nons left."

Annie whispered to Gwen, "What’s a nonsleft?" Gwen made a smoking motion, and Annie translated then looked at the girl like she wanted to give her a lesson in annunciation. Gwen didn’t doubt the slowly evolving Annie could do a good job of it too.

"I’ll take the two," Max looked over his shoulder at Gwen and Annie, "non-smoking rooms. The guys can stay in a smoking room."

Annie stepped beside him. "Guy has allergies."

Max looked at her in question, and she shrugged. "He sneezes when he’s around airborne allergens, haven’t you noticed?"

"Okay. Guy can stay with me."

Guy tapped himself on the nose, and Max nodded.

Gwen pulled her wallet out. "I’ll get our room, mine with Annie."

Max seemed to try for irritated but settled on sarcastic. "Oh, no. It’s my pleasure."

She couldn’t help herself. He looked so cute when he was cranky, just like he had when he was the boy she’d known. She patted his cheek. "No, it’s not."

Bryan stepped up to the counter, an elbow on it because the clerk was female. "You got cigars?"

Gwen gave him her mom eye. "A smoking room does not require smoking."

"Venus. Venus. It’s a road trip. Anything can happen." He smiled at the clerk, turning his not inconsiderable charm her way. "You are a very lovely woman."

The nonsleft girl sighed in perpetual boredom. "I’m fifteen."

Gwen took the room card from the girl and knocked Bryan’s elbow off the counter. "And we’re moving…"





The boys, though bitterly disappointed by being unable to find cigars and then getting rousted from the bar, seemed to recover in the large hot pool that had a couple of age appropriate girls in it. Fresh bait. Was that the expression she was looking for?

She approached the edge of the pool area with Annie. Robed. And if God were a woman she’d be able to get into public waters and still stay robed. The Goddess would have eliminated bathing suits from creation along with stretch marks and cellulite. Maybe she'd give women bodies that were not only ageless but adjustable. Anyone could move an inch of ass right up to their breasts or pinch in their waists or lengthen their legs.

Dear god, she’d been in a bathing suit for ten minutes, was still completely covered by a robe, and she was fantasizing that her body was a Stretch Armstrong doll.

She took in a deep breath, designed to calm, but noticed the water gave off a slight eggy smell. The sulphur may be skin soothing, but it couldn’t make any aromatherapy claims. Still, she remembered it didn’t take long before she’d stop noticing the scent. Maybe taking off her bathrobe and exposing herself to a bunch of college kids and a man who last saw her when she was a college kid would be like that too. After a couple of minutes of unpleasantness, she’d hardly be aware of being a thirty-nine-year-old mother. Hell, who was she kidding?

Annie took off her robe, one of the odd cast-offs the hotel furnished. Annie’s was long with embroidered granny flowers, but when she hung it on the peg and headed to the water, Gwen felt a surge of maternal pride. Annie, not without a curve or two, had definitely been hiding her light beneath oversized clothing. The girl needed a trip to the mall when they got back, enough already with the giant skirts and knee socks. She deserved to leave her gopher past behind her and be Annie in the world.

Gwen looked down at her own bare legs and wished she’d found the granny robe first. Instead she was stuck in a ridiculously short yellow terry number with a white and pink striped belt that had not come with it originally. She looked like a… something.

"Damn!"

She jumped when Max appeared beside her and checked out her robe.

"You look like a seventy’s porn star."

Before she could tell him she'd wanted the long granny one, he turned his attention to the pool, although she was pretty sure he was just biding his time to see her ditch the robe. She pulled the belt tighter.

Why had she not anticipated this moment and refused to use the hot pools altogether? Sure, they were the only reason anybody ever went to a place like the Curtis, but she could have said she had a sulfur allergy. Did people have sulfur allergies? And since she didn’t have one at eighteen could she have developed one over time? Over time she’d developed an allergy to wearing a bathing suit in public.

Max pointed to her white knuckled grip on the belt. "You’ve got that all wrong." Over his own naked torso, sporty guy navy swim trunks, and tan legs, he imitated her grip. He gave a girly sigh. "I’ve been waiting all day for the plumber."

She watched him untie his imaginary robe.

"It’s so hot in here. And I’m so--"

"Max!"

"Warm." He shook his head as if disappointed in her. "Why would you think a seventy’s porn star worth her salt would take off her clothing for just any man in a uniform? She’s waiting for the electrician, the one with the big moustache and Albert embroidered on his pocket."

"Albert? Now, an electrician, I’d do." She waited for Max to spar with her some more so she didn't have to expose herself, but he just smiled, went to the edge, and jumped in. She felt a moment of relief and then realized he was covered to the neck and just watching her.

She’d have to strip now, with an audience, and that audience was at her feet looking up and that audience had seen her naked many times when she was eighteen and nineteen, when she was, dammit, at the top of her game. Top of her game, breast wise and butt wise. Hell, it wasn’t like any of her body parts were better at thirty-nine.

She felt chilly in her porn robe, and the water beckoned warm and mineral rich. She noticed Max seemed very relaxed in it, like he could just hang out all night. She supposed he was exacting his revenge for having to haul along a carload of eighteen-year-old chaperones. She didn’t blame him.

Under the thin robe, she could feel the goosebumps pop up on her arms. She didn’t blame anybody ever, did she? Looking back on the evening, she’d let Steve barge right in, insult her, and leave without a word of retaliation. She’d said f*ck but that was about it. He’d said her life was a train wreck. Her life was a train wreck? Her life was a train wreck, and she damn well knew it. She didn’t need anybody pointing it out to her. She was completely obsolete in her own life. A cooking, cleaning, mothering, wifely dinosaur everybody abandoned and then mocked for doing exactly what they’d always wanted her to do.

She realized Max was still watching her but with some growing concern on his face. Pity. Pity probably. He’d aged beautifully, had embraced a vibrant life in which he’d done exactly as he pleased and now reaped whatever rewards he wanted. Meanwhile back at the farm, she’d been put out to pasture. Ready for the slaughter. A hatchet away from being bacon. "I’m unemployed in work. I’m unemployable in life. And…" She pointed to her nose in a crazy Guy move. "I’m forty."

Max shrugged, his shoulders lifting easily out of the water. "January 30th. I know."

She grabbed the lapel of her robe as if she could shake some sense into herself. "I had a child," she yelled. "Things do not go back in the exact same places. They say everything will perk up again, but they’re all lying. And you can try. You can really work at it and make some progress, but it just won’t, not all the way. And then the baby grows up, and they leave you, and they don’t even care. They will never appreciate that you were even there. All the time. Every time. Not perfectly, but really, really you always did the best you could."

Max nodded slowly, like what she was saying didn’t logically follow anything. Men were so dense, so lucky-bastard dense. She felt the tears drip out of her eyes. "And your husband leaves too and why? I don’t know. I should know, but I don’t know. I should care, and I do, but lately I don’t. I really don’t anymore. And he’s right because I am a train wreck. I’m lost. It’s half over, and I’ve screwed the whole thing up. I did things the best I could, but I did everything wrong, and now I am a complete and total f*ck-up."

Max came out of the water with real force, and she thought he would hug her or dart off for Kleenex or just dart off and save himself. He’d done that before. But he stopped right in front of her, and she felt him shake with intensity.

"It’s true that I haven’t known you for the past twenty years. You could say that, and that would be true. But it’s not. Because I don’t think it works like that with people. I think we can adjust to the world, to life, but that we are who we are. And once, a long time ago, I knew you better than I knew myself."

She felt the tears and her breath catch, waiting.

"I won’t listen to anybody talk about you like this. Not even you." He grabbed a towel off the table and left.





She’d gotten in the pool at some point. It really helped a woman get over body issues when life issues took over. Life issues beat the shit out of worries over a little jiggle or two. She relaxed with her head resting on the edge of the pool deck. Maybe there weren’t enough minerals on earth to get her life back on track, but her skin was very slippery under the water, which would translate into some dewiness when dry. She’d have that to look forward to.

Across from the pool in the raised hot tub, Bryan and Jason had run a pair of girls to ground and sat boy, girl, boy, girl. Nature as it should be. Hayden had checked on her before he left to finish some coursework on the laptop he’d brought. He answered the call of genius while his buddies answered the call of hormones. And when it came to hormones… she’d been watching Guy and Annie across the pool. They weren’t touching or talking or even making eye contact, but like the afternoon at the tailgate party, they seemed to have a Zen relationship blossoming.

She suddenly felt tired to her core and knew sleep would be good. The kind that lasted a week or two would be especially good. But eight solid hours she’d take. Making her way out of the pool, she waved at Annie and headed to their room. If she was lucky she wouldn’t even hear the girl come in.





She heard the girl come in. Then she heard the door close, followed by some fumbling for the switch. The overhead light blazed on and blinded her, and she put her hands over her eyes and turned her face toward the pillow, her outrage muffled.

"Here’s the deal."

Max. She sat up in bed, squinty-eyed and blinking. She knew it was his voice but could only make out his basic shape since her pupils had dilated to the size of a cow’s. "What the hell?"

"No worries. I’m not here to play any seventy’s porn games."

She tried to shake off her sleep and confusion. "There were seventy’s porn games?"

"I’m sure there were."

She rubbed her eyes. "Why are you here again?"

"Annie is in my room."

"She is not!"

Max waved around the room, and she checked out the still plump pillow on Annie’s side of the bed. Damn. Should she go get her? "What’s she doing there?"

"She’s an adult. You do not want to know. I do not want to know. I just need a place to stay."

Gwen held up two fingers and bent down one. "Why is Annie in your room and…" she bent down the second finger, "No."

Max held up two fingers. He pointed to one. "It’s not just my room."

She thought about that for a second. Guy? "No."

Max smiled. "Yes."

Huh. Maybe more than a Zen relationship blossomed between the two of them. She really needed to talk to that girl. Annie wasn’t on track yet with her own life and to complicate it with… "Hey what’s the second thing?"

Max looked at his two fingers. "I come in peace?"

"No."

"I won’t even--"

"No."

"Oh, I get it. You don’t trust yourself. That’s okay. You’ve always been like that." Max crossed the room, sat at the foot of the bed.

"No." She kicked her feet, but he was too far away to be affected by it. "Always been like what?"

"We’ve stayed here before."

"I know that."

"You are something in a hotel room."

"Hey!"

"You can’t help it. It’s your nature. I think we’re going to need some rules."

"I think you need another room."

"No vacancies. I’ve tried."

"The boys--"

"Gone with the girls, no idea where they are or where the key is, and I am not going to be surprised by them at four in the morning."

"Like you surprised me at…" she looked at the bedside alarm, "Eleven-fifty?" That didn’t sound as bad as she wanted it to.

"So, no touching under clothing."

"No touching over clothing!"

He scooted around the side of the bed, ran his finger under the strap of her thin cotton nightgown up to where it tied in a small bow. "Can you handle wearing this with me? I’m a little concerned about your ability to abide by the rules."

She slapped at his hand, but he was too quick and was off the bed and headed toward the bathroom. "I'm going to brush my teeth. See if you have something in flannel. I think you’re going to need it. I’ll see if I have anything in flannel. You could use all the help you can get."

She watched the door close. What in the hell was going on?





Max brushed his teeth with more force than was required and kept his eyes on his reflection. He needed to think clearly, be reasonable. He needed a priest maybe, to look back at him and tell him he’d made a mistake thinking he could just stay in Gwen’s room. He’d assumed, at least, there were two beds.

The priest in the mirror… well, priest wasn’t going to work for him. He wasn’t Catholic and never had understood how men who could walk away from sex forever could say anything useful to men who were human. Human and alone at night with a half-clothed woman they’d once had complete and total sexual access to, and while that may sound bad, it was really, really good. It was good at eighteen. It was good at forty. It was good as long as you were still breathing.

He put his hands on the counter, leaned closer to the mirror, his toothbrush jutting out of his mouth. Think. He just had to think. He hadn’t really done that when Annie and Guy had come into the room, eyes locked, completely silent. They might not have been up to anything a roommate couldn’t witness, but the intensity of their nothing was definitely in need of some privacy.

He stood up, pulled the toothbrush out of his mouth and jerked the water on, rinsing and spitting, and what? Was he mad at himself? Yeah, he supposed that was it. He knew it was critical to not be alone with Gwen, ever. He knew staying in her room was beyond stupid, but there he was. Could he get a little smarter at some point in his life? He liked to think he’d evolved past the boys trying to nail the girls in the hot tub, but that same reptilian brain stem guided them all. It was one of the things that made being a guy so great. But this was Gwen.

He set down his toothbrush, splashed cold water on his face, and rubbed it with the rough towel. Gwen didn’t need more complications. He didn’t need more complications. God, he didn’t even want to think about that. Gwen, the most capable person he’d ever met, thought she was a f*ck up? He could top that any day.

So, he was going to go back out there and stop hiding in the bathroom like some virgin on prom night. He was going to keep it light, friendly. No touching. None. She was vulnerable and confused, and he’d completely erase from his mind that moment he’d touched her skin under that little nightgown strap. And also he needed to remember to forget that her nipples had hardened. He’d seen that and would be forgetting it entirely. And the bows. The bows he could untie with his teeth.

He would also forget that he’d had an erection from the moment he’d headed down the hallway to her room. And by the pool. In the car on the way there. At the football game... and the one he’d had there wasn’t for legitimate man reasons like his team was winning. He didn’t even know the score. Score.

Putting his forearms on the counter, he lowered his head and breathed deeply. "I’ll just stay in Gwen’s room. We’re adults. It will be fine."

He raised his head and met his own need in the mirror. He needed a priest to give him last rites because trying to sleep next to Gwen was going to kill him.





She had a cardigan over her nightgown and her back to him. Unfortunately, it was a summer cardigan, lacy, and he could still get his teeth around the bow. He got into bed and forced his head down on the pillow to avert temptation, but he instantly knew it was a mistake. Facing her, he could see the rise and fall of her body, breathing, he thought, a little rapidly. Also not good for his state of mind? The curve of her neck into the softness of her shoulder. She had a curl resting on her cheek and more fanning out across her pillow. Kill him. Kill him now.

"Why are you at Belmar?" Her voice was quiet, the gentle voice a woman might use to talk at the end of the day. Pillow talk with Gwen. He never thought that would happen again.

He cleared his throat. "Let’s see. I’ve been out of the field for about a year now. Just rethinking things. It might be time for me to do something besides travel for work, maybe not. And there’s something--"

She seemed to know he was about to say something serious and didn’t want to hear it. He watched her fake yawn. "I’m gonna go back to sleep now."

He watched her move further away from him and hoped she could. He didn’t think he could find any distance from her.