He looked genuinely befuddled.
So she explained everything. What she’d said, what Belle had said, how they’d left things, how she still didn’t know what exactly had prompted her best friend—herbest friend—to leave. How her guilt and worry had weighed on her so heavily that afternoon, she’d half-expected to sink directly to the bottom of the ocean each time she fell off her stupid float.
Lucas listened without interrupting until she’d finished. Then he reached for her hand, stopping only a hairsbreadth away. When she bridged the distance and intertwined their fingers, his entire body seemed to relax.
“I’m sorry.” His hand tightened on hers. “I suppose I’m so used to my friends coming and going, it didn’t even occur to me you’d find it upsetting.”
She exhaled slowly. “On the Tour, you mean?”
He nodded. “When you lose, you leave. Even when my friend Nick and I were in the same tournament, we knew one of us could be gone a day later. Or we might have an entire week together. Two, for the majors. There was no way to predict.”
Tess swallowed hard, her eyes prickling. “Until she moved to Boston, I saw Belle every weekday. Without fail. I miss her.”
He slid his thumb across the back of her hand. “No wonder you’re sad she left early.”
“She’s my best friend.” That, at least, hadn’t altered with the move. “The first person I call when I have good news, and the person I cry on when things go bad. I don’t even want to imagine what this past decade would have been like without her. I’d have been lost.”
His head tilted in curiosity.
“When I broke up with my fiancé, I was, uh…” Her eyes dropped to the veins of his forearms, blue and readily visible. She traced them with a fingertip. “I was in rough shape for a while. I held it together during the school day, but in the evenings…”
Her finger stilled. “After school, I needed company. Distraction. Belle was there every day, supporting me until the worst of the grief was past.”
“What exactly happened between you and your ex?” His voice was low. Cautious. “You told me the bare outlines during our second lesson, but I’d like to know more. If you’re willing to talk about it.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him about Jeremy—not tonight, possibly not ever—but maybe it was for the best. Lucas should know before their lives became any more intertwined how unfit she was to deal with an intimate relationship, especially one complicated by distance and age and physical limitations and…so much else.
The words spilled from her, curiously dispassionate. Flat and matter-of-fact.
“He should have broken the engagement instead of cheating on me, obviously.” The nearness of Lucas suddenly overwhelmed her. She inched away, letting go of his hand and moving until she sat propped against the headboard too, close but not touching him. “He was right about some things, though. And I should have realized he was dissatisfied earlier. The fact that I didn’t…”
She shook her head, carefully not looking at Lucas. All she could see, all she let herself see, were his fists resting on his legs, his tendons and muscles jutting out in sharp relief.
“It was just a symptom of a larger issue.” The hem of her shorts frayed under her plucking fingers. “I’m good with practicalities. If you need to call for a plumber or make sure paperwork gets to the right place or pay a bill on time, I’m your woman. When it comes to emotions, though, I’m not especially skilled. At least, not when it really matters.”
Lucas cleared his throat in a sort of weird rumble, but he didn’t interrupt. When he took another swig of the water, the plastic crackled loudly in his grip.
In a defensive rush, she swung on him. “To be fair, though, Ihadto focus on all those practicalities, because if I didn’t do it, he certainly wouldn’t. He was always busy researching or writing an article or planning his classes or meeting with grad students or—” Her laugh was sharp and bitter, and it hurt her ears. “Or doing something else with grad students, I suppose.”
She’d caught him once. But in retrospect, she knew he hadn’t strayed once, or even with one graduate student. So many things suddenly made sense, once fitted into the proper context. The way those young female doctoral candidates couldn’t quite meet her eyes at his end-of-semester dinner parties, held at the home she shared with him. The quiet phone conversations he sometimes had in his home office, quickly ended when she appeared in the doorway. The way he always stayed a night or two extra at out-of-town conferences.
All the while, she’d cooked for those parties. Hired the cleaning service that dusted his home office. Made his hotel reservations for those conferences.
“I don’t think he ever scheduled a single doctor’s appointment. I don’t think he ever bought a single pair of his own underwear, not once during the entire time we were together.” Her cheeks burned, but not with shame anymore. With sudden rage. “I had a full-time job too, you know. I taught too. I planned classes too, and I didn’t have a goddamn TA to do my grading for me. But somehow, the fact that his work was more important than mine became a given, and I don’t understand how it happened.”
Her fingernails were biting into her palms hard enough to sting. “I don’t understand how I became his mother, instead of his fiancée and lover and confidante, but I did. And at least part of that is on me. It has to be.”
“Do you feel like my mother?”
Lucas’s voice was low. Tight with some emotion she couldn’t identify, because of course she couldn’t.
She didn’t even have to think about her answer. “Absolutely not.”
Not just because she wanted his tongue, his fingers, his cock inside her, but because—and the irony would choke her if she wasn’t careful—faux-playboy, easy-come-easy-go Lucas seemed to have his shit together in a way her middle-aged fiancé hadn’t.
Since their first meeting, Lucas hadn’t asked her to do a single thing for him. Not one.
Instead, he’d supplied the food for the picnic, located fluffy booties for her cramping belly, and offered her sweet-tart desserts and chocolates shaped like mountains. He woke up early and arrived to his lessons on time, and he arrived to their dates on time too.
