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“I know.” Politeness wasn’t my companion at the moment, so I decided to be blunt. “I’ve been running away from you. All night, in fact.”
He pointed at me, his grin widening. “You know, Layla is hotter than you. Hope has this way about her that attracts attention, but you are the funny one. Smart, I hear, but who cares about that in a woman? You don’t need to be smart. You’re Bridget Radford.”
“Oh, I’m a big idiot, Jim. You have no idea.”
Michael put his arm around me, trying to extract me from Jim gracefully. “I was talking to her. Go away, kid. You’re embarrassing yourself and making her uncomfortable. Come on, Bridget. Let’s go dance.”
Dance?Michael took my arm in a gentle yet firm way and led me toward the dance floor. A slow dance song filled the room, and I followed him mostly out of curiosity. The event planner—not Hope, since she was at a spa—booked a crooner for the night and he sang like he was born to do it. I recognized the song by Frank Sinatra as it wove across the dance floor.
It turned out, in addition to everything else he knew how to do, Michael could dance. He led me through the crowd, my body pressed against his as we swayed to the music. He smelled like soap, clean like he always did, and all thoughts of Jim fled my mind. He stared into my eyes, and I let myself fantasize again about being in his arms for real. Maybe he pretended,too, because although he normally scanned the room for threats, his steady gaze didn’t waver in the slightest from mine. Intense wasn’t a good enough word for how it felt to be so thoroughly captured by a man’s attention.
“You know the shit that asshole just spewed at you isn’t true, right?”
Oh, it suddenly made sense. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t about to lose it because Jim pointed out I was less pretty than my sisters. I almost laughed, surprised he’d think I didn’t notice. “It doesn’t matter. It never has. Maybe if I cared more about my outward appearance than…you know what? Itreallydoesn’t matter, so I’ll just reiterate that. There are so many more important things to think about than whether I’m the girl next door and Layla is the hot one. I think it messes with her head, and maybe the comparisons get to Hope. I have enough other things messing with mine to bother caring about whether or not people find me as hot as my sisters.”
He dropped his hand a bit from my waist to my hip bone and awareness shivered through me. I caught my breath.Wow. It still took so little with him. In other circumstances, and with a person who might actually desire me, it would be hot. If he were my guy, I could push against him and know that he’d be hot, hard, and wanting me.
I stayed right where I was, not bothering to get closer to him. There were enough disappointments in life without adding him not being hard for me onto the list.
“You don’t understand that phrase—the girl next door. Don’t you know what it means?”
I stared at him, wondering why it mattered. “Maybe I don’t. I figured it meant I was plain in comparison to their sparkle.”
He shook his head. “Yousparkle. You practically light up the entire night sky with your sparkle. No, I think they mean they saw you as pure and charming. Usually, people want to marrythe girl next door. She’s who you want to spend your life with, the right kind of girl. But even that? The description of you, it doesn’t fit, Bridget, because not one person who looked at you and saw that version of you really understood you. I don’t think I did, not for a long time, but I see you now. You’re brilliant, cunning, interesting, and brave.”
“Michael, I…”
Whatever I would have said was cut off. It was almost midnight. The stupid countdown had started. People around us started to shout in one voice,10…9….8….
Everyone in the room would start kissing and hugging soon. Usually, I’d sneak out the back door before it happened. For the last two years, I rang in the new year while walking down Fifth Avenue looking at the stars.
His mouth came down on mine when the clock counted down to three. It didn’t matter that he didn’t wait until the ball dropped because I couldn’t think of anything beyond his mouth on mine. His lips were gentle but firm, and for the first couple seconds, I think I was too startled to even respond. He didn’t push and right as I felt like I was catching on, he pulled back. Balloons fell from the ceiling around me. Confetti filled the air alongside cries of Happy New Year. We both looked up and then he stared at me with maybe the most serious expression on his face I’d ever seen. My hands shook, my heart raced, and I stared back at him in shock.
“Happy New Year, Bridget Radford.”
“Happy New Year, Michael Li.”
I swallowed.This year, I’ll take my father out of the game.He made me a terrorist, so in return, I’d make him nothing.
But that would mean no more Michael. Running into him would end because he wouldn’t work for us anymore. Actually, I’d never encounter him again, or if I did, it would be so fleeting, we’d barely speak.
If I could bottle the stolen seconds in his arms and hold onto them forever, I would. Only that wasn’t how memories worked, so even as I stood in his arms while people sang and confetti rained down on us, with his hand still firm on my hip and my lips still swollen from his kiss, I could feel the moment fleeing.
Just like all good things did from me.
Present
I stared at him as he digested my words. I told him I was a really bad person. I admitted I destroyed people’s lives, yet he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he considered me carefully with those eternally steady eyes of his.Why is he doing that?I swallowed, nerves making me antsy.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you to explain with a bit more detail. Okay? I would like you to tell me what criteria you’re using to consider yourself a bad person, can you do that for me?”
I’d opened this door, so it seemed fair that I should have to be the one to walk through it. Maybe it had always just been a matter of time before I would be forced to tell Michael the truth. He once told me he loved me, and I lied and told him I didn’t feel the same. Then I ran as far as I could to get away from the pain—as if I could escape it. Instead, it followed me and always would. Maybe I just wasn’t born for happiness?
“I can, but you have to stop touching me. It’s not that I don’t like it. I do. It’s just you won’t want to, not when I’m done with this story. Okay? And I think if I have to feel you let go then, it might just kill me. I might die right here.”
He breathed heavily for a second. “No one is dying.” Michael took his hands off me but didn’t move. Instead, he practicallytrapped me against the wall, backing me up until he loomed above me. If I wanted to get away, I’d have to duck under his arm to do so. I guessed that meant technically I wasn’t trapped, but the feeling was very similar, and actually, I didn’t mind it. This would probably be the last time I ever got to be so close to him, so I breathed him in, hoping to memorize his scent.
“Doesn’t that hurt your shoulder?”
