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He wasn’t just hot—he was a black hole, absorbing the light around him until he was all I could see. The mere sight of him was enough to wipe my mind blank.
What would have happened if Caleb hadn’t called my name at that exact moment? What if I’d crossed the street to Beck and said,“Let’s just go?”
Occasionally, when things were bad with Caleb, and sometimes even when they were good, I wished I had.
Beck walks ahead of me and I follow. Inside, the opening act is just clearing the stage. We fight the crowd to reach the bar in the back, where I get a soda and he gets a beer.
“This is where I was sitting when we first met.” I toy with my straw. “God, you hated me.”
I loathed the visits here when Caleb and I began dating. It was Beck who noticed how bored I was,Beckwho seemed to know exactly how dark I was on the inside and who’d frown at my jiggling knee like a parent giving his child a silent warning.
His mouth pulls down at the corner. “I didn’t hate you.” He sounds angry.
“Yeah, you did. You never thought I deserved Caleb. You had a sneer on your face from the instant you saw me, like you’d already decided I wasn’t good enough.”
“That’s not what happened at all,” he says. “And it was the first time we wereintroduced, but it wasn’t the first time I saw you.”
I frown. He’s messing with our official history, the one we’ve always stood by. It’s dangerous to start bringing up the truth now.
“It doesn’t matter where we first saw each other,” I tell him. “My point stands.”
The lights dim, and Beck wraps his hand around my forearm, pulling me toward the floor. “And what point is that?” he asks over his shoulder, still keeping me close.
“That you were never nice to me once until I came back here, married. I guess you’d just given up hoping Caleb would change his mind.”
“Yeah,” he says, ushering me in front of him and wrapping himself around me as the crowd surges forward. “I guess I did. Except I wasn’t waiting for him to change his mind. I was waiting for you to change yours.”
My breath stops. The noise in the room is deafening, but I can’t hear anything at all.
I was waiting for you to change yours.
I’m glad he can’t see my face. I’m glad the room is dark and people are squeezing in around us, like water flowing between rocks, so he can’t see how absolutely thrown I am by what he just said.
He was waiting for me to change my mind.
And I did. So did Caleb. We were ninety percent over when I found out I was pregnant. I’d rewrite that part of my story, later. Now I’m wondering how different my story could have been if it had taken place with Beck instead.
He pulls me tight to his chest as the crowd continues to push, closing in around me like a brick wall with his hands resting on my hips and the steady, patient beating of his heart just under the back of my head.
He’s so big. So certain of himself. No one could feel endangered with Beck standing guard behind them, the way he is with me. You could drop me in the middle of a battlefield and I’d shrug as long as Beck was at my back, as illogical as that is.
The lights stay low as the band begins to play. The room is so dark and the music so loud that it makes my mind go to places I don’t normally allow it to go—not with him so close anyway.
It’s as if Beck and I temporarily exist in a space where there are no consequences. Where we could do anything we wanted and it wouldn’t hurt our friendship or ruin my chances of getting back with Caleb.
We sway with the crowd. I’m held tight against him, and every single thing I’ve ever imagined doing to him pulses inside me, expanding until I contain nothing else.
If there were really no consequences, I’d want his hands to move from my hips. I’d want them to span my rib cage before trailing under my shirt. I’d reach behind me, my hand sliding into his waistband, and it would remain there until he shuddered against my palm, his groan hot against my ear.
I think of it throughout the entire goddamn show, and even as we ride home, I can’t shake that want of mine. My arms are around his waist, and it’s a struggle not to slide them lower, not to dig into his thighs, climb up, ask him if just once we could forget who we are entirely. By the time we pull to a stop in front of the house, I’m strung so tight my skin can’t even contain me.
We walk inside, and each of us heads to our respective doors. God, just once I want to see that intense focus of his as he hovers above me, taking me in just the way he is now, his eyes burning a path, catching on my mouth.
If I crossed the distance between us, if neither of us spoke . . . could we wake and pretend it hadn’t happened? I want it almost too badly to listen to any voices that argue against it. It’s a siren singing in my ear, promising that one time never hurt anyone.
Beck might be the most tempting, dangerous drug I’ve ever considered trying.
My hands go to my neck the way they always do when I’m upset or anxious, as if that empty space is a cross, or a rabbit’s foot. “Thanks for tonight.”
