Into the Deep 01 (16 page)

If I were anyone else, I would’ve missed that little flare of anger in the back of his eyes. He hid it well and he hid it quickly. “Of course. I’m just trying to wrap my head around all of this. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday we were lying in the back of my truck, you know.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

Jake studied me a moment and I tried my best not to squirm. Finally, he nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just came here to see if I hadn’t fucked everything up again.”

I wanted to scream at him—demand to know why he’d fucked everything up in the first place, and then stuck the knife in deeper by bringing another girl to the place we’d planned to come together. Instead, I nodded tightly. “We’re good.”

He appeared to relax a little and he gave me a small smile. “We’ll go to the gym together next time, yeah?”

My answering smile was equally small. “Sure.”

“So your mom says Jacob Caplin’s there and that you’re spending time with him.”

Silently, I cursed my mother. I should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to keep this from Dad. Thankfully, Dad and I were talking on the phone and not on Skype so he couldn’t see my murderous expression. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Don’t ‘mmm-hmm’ me. Were you ever going to tell me?”

“There’s not much to tell, Dad.”

“That boy broke your heart. I don’t want him near enough to do it again.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“Dad, I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

Dad sighed, causing the line to crackle. “You were just a kid, Charlotte, and he changed you. One minute you were happier than I’d ever seen you, and the next you were closed off. I didn’t like having to watch that.”

I bowed my head, feeling at once loved and sorry that I’d done that to my family. “I’m not anymore,” I promised him softly.

“You sure about that, sweetheart? Because I don’t see any other boy hanging around. Let’s not even get started on Alex.”

“I don’t want to talk about Alex, either, Dad. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Maybe you should come home.”

I laughed and then immediately sighed. “I’m okay. I won’t do anything stupid. Lesson learned.”

“You know you can still trust people, Charley, without it turning into another lesson. I think Jake is just this reminder that you can’t depend on people, and I don’t want my daughter feeling that way.”

“I don’t feel that way about people … I feel that way about Jake. There’s a difference.”

“Then why are you hanging around the boy?”

“Because he’s friends with my friends,” I lied.

Before my dad could say anything else, I heard Mom calling him to get his breakfast. It was Saturday, early there, and Dad had called before he had to head to work. It would’ve been nice to talk to him about something other than Jake.

“Got to go, sweetheart. You take care, all right? We’ll speak soon. Love you.”

“Me too. Bye, Dad.”

I hung up and growled at my cell. I was going to kill my mother.

Hearing masculine laughter from the kitchen, I wondered if it was Beck and decided to go in and keep him and Claud company. The two of them were very busy pretending everything was cool between them. However, Claudia confided it helped when they weren’t alone.

And yet they still spent time alone together. That completely made sense. Not.

Strolling into the kitchen, I discovered it wasn’t just Beck and Claud in there. Lowe, Jake, Gemma, and Matt were sitting around chatting.

“Hey,” I greeted as I came to a stop near Jake. We’d been to the gym together since our little chat outside at the gates. We’d also grabbed coffee and taken a stroll through Regent Gardens and into Leith, wandering around the cold city and talking about everything. Everything except us. We’d distracted ourselves from that by joking around in tourist shops trying on tartan hats with ginger hair glued inside them, and drinking Starbucks while we nibbled on sugary Scottish tablet that made our teeth ache. I’d also attempted to take a photograph of Jake standing next to a bagpiper dressed in full tartan regalia. The piper— not the same guy every time— stood on the corner of Princes Street and Waverly Station. He wasn’t there every day but he was there a lot, and I got used to his pipes playing the soundtrack to my life in Scotland. Some people didn’t like the pipes, but for me they were like this sentient being that totally got me. As soon as I neared New Town it was like those pipes sensed me and whatever mood I was in its tune would change, as if it was saying, ‘Me too’. Some days it was lively, its high pitched song in harmony with me as it said, ‘I’m feeling good today too. The air is crisp, I’m in a land full of mystery, and I feel up for an adventure’. Other days, more often of late since Jake came so thoroughly back into my life, the pipe’s song swung from reflective to almost mournful. Sometimes I’d stand on the opposite side of the street, the pedestrians and traffic quieting to a hum beneath the pipe’s story. Like Scotland itself, the melancholy tune was quiet, dignified, braving life and keeping the secret of its pain buried. Its haunting wail never failed to cause the hair on the back of my neck to rise. Twice now Jake had come upon me just standing there listening to it. Twice now he’d just looked at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking but was afraid to bring it up—an action (or inaction rather) that was becoming common between us.

After the guys greeted me, Jake suddenly reached up, grabbed my hand, and jerked me down onto the arm of his chair in an unconsciously familiar move. When I looked at him, he just gave me a small smile and turned back to listen to what Beck was saying.

I, on the other hand, searched the room to see if anyone’s expression resembled mine. My eyes immediately locked on Lowe, his eyebrow raised in my direction.

Shrugging at his silent question, I watched on bemused as he smiled and took a sip of his soda. While I stewed over Jake’s behavior, Lowe returned his focus to Beck and Claudia.

Glancing down at Jake, I tried to ignore the squeeze in my belly as I watched him smile at whatever Beck was saying. He had enviously thick eyelashes and a beautiful mouth. A perfect mouth. I’d spent hours when we were together nibbling on his lower lip, which was classically fuller than his top.

Sensing my study, Jake looked up at me and I covered my longing with feigned casualness. “Where are Melissa, Den, and Row?”

“Mel’s with some friends and Den and Row are still sleeping.”

I nodded, relaxing more now that I realized Melissa wasn’t going to be appearing out of the bathroom and asking me why on earth I was perched on the arm of her boyfriend’s chair. “What have you all been talking about?”

Claudia whirled around, her long hair whipping Beck in the chest. He barely flinched, silently telling us he was used to it. I knew I was. She once almost took out my eye with her hair whip.

“We’re talking about Thanksgiving. Since none of us are going home for it, I thought we could bring it to us. I’ve offered to do the cooking.”

I didn’t argue with that. Although Claudia only cooked when she could be bothered, she was actually pretty good at it. “Sounds great.”

“Why am I turned on at the thought of Claud and Char cooking for us?” Matt asked, seeming genuinely bemused by his predicament.

“Because you’re a horny dick and you need to get laid,” Lowe grunted at him.

“You can remove Charley from that fantasy,” Jake added, laughter in his words. “She can’t cook for shit.”

His behavior minutes ago, plus the conversation I’d just had with my dad, made me suddenly irritated by Jake’s overfamiliarity. “Maybe I can cook now,” I scowled down at him.

He raised both eyebrows. “Can you?”

“No,” I huffed, “but it’s been almost four years, Jake.”

He was scowling back at me now. “Point being?”

“Stop acting like you know me.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked. “A little hard to do … because I
do
know you.”

Thus commenced a death stare match.

We glared into one another’s eyes, neither refusing to give in, and then suddenly, memories of arguments ending in kisses flared behind my eyes.

I knew the moment Jake remembered too because the air between us wasn’t angry anymore … it was sexual.

My skin flushed and I flexed my hands, trying to ignore the pulsing throb in my neck and the blood whooshing in my ears. It was hard to do when I recognized all too well the look in Jake’s eyes.

“I can cook it on my own,” Claudia announced loudly, shattering the moment. I jerked my head around to see her giving me a look that screamed, “What the hell are you doing?” before turning back to Beck. “It’s cool. We’ll get a bird and everything. I can handle it.”

At least one of us could handle something.

For once the kitchen didn’t seem so cold with eight of us crammed around the table. True to her word, Claudia had cooked Thanksgiving dinner and to our surprise, Lowe had helped. Maggie, Gemma, and Laura had left us to our traditions, as had Rowena. That meant Jake, Claudia, Beck, Lowe, Melissa, Matt, Denver, and I were cozied together at the table.

We were tucking in, lots of “mmms” and “Claud, I love you” being thrown around the table. It was easy to forget everything else, to forget the very real awkwardness between Melissa and me for instance, when we were all just happy to have something to remind us of home.

Edinburgh was great, but I think we were all missing the States just a little bit.

“This is so much better than home,” Claudia announced, taking a sip of her wine as she proved me wrong.

“It is?” Melissa frowned.

Claudia nodded, her eyes wide as she replied, “God, yes. Well, it was.” She threw me a grin. “I spend it with Charley’s crazy family now, but pre-Charley … right about now, I’d be curled up on the couch by myself in a house that’s way too big for three people while my parents either fuck other people in Cabo or each other in Switzerland. No phone calls home to wish me Happy Thanksgiving, nothing, nada. They pay their cook Consuela to make and serve me Thanksgiving dinner every year, and every year I give her a couple of days off without telling them. That would kill them,” Claudia smirked. “My parents hate paying for anything when they don’t have to. I’m saving it up for the right moment. Who knows … it might piss my mother off so much, she may actually manage to make an expression through the Botox.”

Beck, Lowe, and I laughed, which relaxed everyone else who, by the uncomfortable expressions on their faces, clearly felt weird by Claudia’s oversharing.

Lowe shrugged. “I don’t mind Thanksgiving. Mom passed a while ago, so it’s just me, my older brother, and my dad. My dad is a litigator and always working. So Josh and I just get takeout and sit back, have a beer, and watch the game.”

I hadn’t known that about Lowe. Although he’d spoken casually about his mom, there was a definite tightness in his tone. Since he was sitting beside me, I felt the tension in his body. So no one would notice, I put down my cutlery, lifted my wine glass with one hand, and gently squeezed Lowe’s knee under the table with the other.

Two seconds later I felt his warm hand cover mine and he gave me a squeeze back. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and saw he was giving me a small, grateful smile. His muscles relaxed and I let go of him as Beck started sharing.

“My mom and stepdad always go on vacation at Thanksgiving because Mom hates the cold. That leaves me either stuck in the house by myself, much like Claud, or if my dad’s coherent, I’ll drop by his place with some food.”

I wondered what the comment about his dad meant and as I looked around the room, I knew only two other people understood exactly what it meant—Jake and Claudia had hard looks in their eyes, the kind of look a person gets when someone they care about is mistreated.

Shit. Beck didn’t have it great at home. It didn’t surprise me that Jake knew … but Claudia? I was beginning to think she and Beck were a lot closer than any of us realized.

“Well,” Matt smiled, breaking the tension, “Thanksgiving at home is awesome for me. I live with my aunt and uncle because my parents died when I was little, which isn’t awesome obviously, but my aunt and uncle are cool and my aunt can cook the shit out of anything. Seriously, our table is, like, immense. We’ve got three different types of bird, three different types of potato, gravy that I think I’d kill for, chocolate pie, and pumpkin pie. Neighbors try to get an invite every year, it’s that good. There’s always so much food, my aunt invites a different couple of people every year. I swear it’s like they’ve won the lottery when she chooses one of them. And she’s got to be careful she doesn’t show someone too much favor because that drama lasts a whole fucking year.”