I no longer care if he’s watching or if he sees. I grab her hand and usher her down the hallway, relieved when she lets me guide her, and pull us through the first open door I can find. I fumble around for a light switch, only for Gen to yank on the pull chain. A row of mops and buckets come into view, the strong astringent smell making more sense.
Under the single light fixture, the exhaustion in her smile is more pronounced, but so is the relief I find there, and the anxiety that took hold of my heart the moment Jean insinuated she needed me starts to wane.
“My dad was a night janitor—before he got sick. To subsidize his daytime, musician escapades.” A small glimmer of her usual self starts shining through when she mentions him, just like it did at the beach.
“What did he play?”
“Piano. He accompanied people, sometimes gave lessons.” Her arms remain tightly around her, and I realize I can do what I’ve wanted to do all day. Stepping toward her, I brush my hands across those shoulders and down herarms, noting the way she relaxes into my touch, sways on her feet from whatever she was drinking, and I pull her into me. I feel her breathe me in, and we stand there not saying anything for a minute.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” I finally ask, my tone hushed, and I realize I’m afraid of what she’ll say. It isn’t like Will hasn’t hurt her before, like he hasn’t hurt her everyday he’s been with Olivia. What else could he do to show her he doesn’t deserve her?
“He’s just…destroying himself,” she starts, her breath pulling through the sentence like it’ll steady her. “And I can’t help him the way he wants me to.”
I nod, remembering the state he was in earlier tonight, quiet fury rising up my throat as I imagine what he could’ve said to her.
“Fuck him. I need to know ifyou’reokay.” I search her gaze, desperate for confirmation that he hasn’t broken her irreparably.
She looks back at me, her eyes seeming to trace my face.
“I think I will be,” she says on a breath. “I don’t know what it is about you.”
“Me?” She’s stolen my breath, and not for the first time.
“You make me feel like everything will be okay.” Her lips curve, and it’s the first real smile I’ve seen from her tonight, despite the sad laugh that accompanies it. “How do you do that?”
“Maybe it’s a team effort. It feels like things can’t be anything but okay, when I’m with you,” I tell her, brushing her hair out of her face when she tips it up to look at me.
She cocks her head to the side, regarding me with this thoughtful gaze, before gracefully plopping onto the ground, pulling me down with her so we’re leaning against the back wall.
“Remember when I thought you didn’t like me?” she sort of drawls, a blush blooming on her face.
“Not you. Never you.” I hate that I let him color that way I ever looked at her.
“I know that now.” She pulls her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her head against her knees to look at me, her eyes less red then they were when I got to her despite the buzz still lingering there. “Thank you. For proving me wrong. For being…notmy friend.”
“It’s not a favor,” I say defensively around the twitch of my lips. “I care about you, Gen.” My throat bobs when I say it, feeling overexposed despite the extent to which “I care about you” is an understatement.
“I know,” she whispers. “I think I care about you, too.”
“You think?” I say in a low tone, smirking, adrenaline coursing through me at her admission.
Her eyes squeeze shut, her nose wrinkling as she presses her hand over them. “No—not think. I just do. I know I do.” She peeks around her hand, revealing the beautiful swirl of hazel hues I see when I close my own. “Remind me to never approach an open bar again.”
“Does seem like you might have a hangover,” I tell her, her adorable, alcohol fueled embarrassment pulling a slight smile on my lips. I take her hands in mine and pull her to me. “But there isn’t a thing you could tell me I wouldn’t want to hear.”
She regards me seriously, like she’s calculating the risk of what she’s going to say next, and I don’t know how to convince her I want every thought she’ll ever have.
“It feels unconscious, at this point,” she whispers. “I find myself wanting to be things for you, like available. Or reliable. Or vulnerable. And I care about how youfeel, what you need, what you’re not saying because you don’t want to be a burden.” Something squeezes tight in my chest. “I care so much that I’ve convinced myself this is normal. That I would probably feel this way for anyone.” Fear glistens in her gaze when she says this, and I realize that if I never saw this coming, she saw it even less. That for her, this a freight train, roaring in from the west with no warning; this is a rain storm she couldn’t predict.
“And?” I ask her, unable to look away as her words intimately trace a trail of affection down my spine. She’s drunk; she’s still upset about Will; she might not mean any of this tomorrow. And yet, I’m committing each word to memory like it’ll always be true.
She shakes her head. “It’s not. And I wouldn’t. It’s… you.”
Relief loosens the tenseness twined in my shoulder, in my neck, the tenseness I didn’t realize was there, and I brush my thumb across her jaw in complete reverence.
“Kiss me, Grant,” she says, peering up at me through her lashes.
I dip my head, brushing my lips against hers in a chaste kiss, satisfaction coursing through me when she flicks her tongue out to taste me, claiming my mouth with hers. It’s the hints of liquor that have me pulling away, have me remembering that as much as I want to brand every inch of her with my touch, this isn’t the time or the place. A disappointed scowl spreads across her face, the delicate crinkle of her brow making me chuckle as I cup her face.
