Something True (8 page)

I could just kiss this man for hours and hours and never get tired of it.

There's not a sliver of confusion in his eyes when he pulls back to look at me this time, none at all. Clearly he's not experiencing a complete and utter mental breakdown like I am.

“It shouldn't have taken seeing you with my brother for me to work up the courage to do that,” he murmurs, pressing my swollen bottom lip with his thumb. “I've been such a fucking coward.”

“Whuh. . .” His kisses have successfully robbed me of my voice. Is he saying that he likes me? That he's liked me since before I dated his brother?

“If I'd known kissing you was all it took to get you to stop talking then I might've tried that the first time we met,” he teases.

But I'm in no mood for jokes. “Walt. . .”

“I want you to give me a chance.” He squeezes his eyes shut as if it's too hard to look at me as he says it. “Fuck that. I
need
you to give me a chance. I need to prove to you that I'm not the asshole you think I am.”

My heart pounds. “A chance for what?”

“For us,” he replies simply, and my mouth drops open.

“You want to. . .to be with me?”

His eyes snap open, filled with a new determination. “Not right now, okay? Not tonight. I'm gonna give you a month, Ibbie. Not because I think it'll take you that long to get over my schmuck of a bother, but because I want him so far gone outta that head of yours that you barely even remember his name. So a month.”

“And then what?” I almost hesitate to ask.

His dark eyes seem to penetrate right to my very soul. “And then I'm coming for you, Isabel Ibbot. I'm coming full force, and I'm going to win you over. Then I promise I'll never, ever lose you.”

I blink. My mouth gapes open and closed like a fish. This was
not
how I expected tonight to go. There are a thousand things I could say right now. A million. There are a thousand things I want to ask, to demand an explanation for. But once again I've been shocked into silence and the only thing that comes out of my mouth is a pitiful, “Oh.”

Walt leans closer and kisses me once more. This time it's a closed mouth kiss. It's soft, sweet, yet spine tingling. Then he rolls off the hood and lifts me down.

Neither of us speak a single word as we climb inside the car. Neither of us speak a single word as he shuts off the music and starts up. Neither of us speak a single word as he pulls out of the field and we make the drive home. And then neither of us speak a single word when he drops me off at my apartment an hour later. I guess that's just how we roll.

I TRY TO get on with my life over the next couple of days
but everything I do feels robotic, forced. My evening with Walt replays over and over in my mind to the point where concentrating on anything else proves to be impossible. The kiss, the different side to him, the dance, the kiss. Oh man, the kiss.
 

Sabrina notices – probably because I accidentally turned all of her white shirts pink when it was my turn to do the laundry.

“I love you, but if you don't get a grip on whatever's got your panties in a twist then I will have to kill you,” she informs me firmly. “God, what are the guys at work gonna say when I show up in
pink
?”

People at work notice too, because I fluffed my lines up on two consecutive nights and normally I'm one hundred percent on form.

Blair also notices, and out of everyone she's the one who'll let me get away with it the least. “You're quieter than usual,” she observes. It's one of my rare days off, and instead of sleeping in and watching TV in my sloppy jammies like I
should
be doing,
she's dragged me out to Lake George so we can hike Prospect Mountain. It's actually a lot of fun, but since I complained pretty much the entire four hour drive out here, I definitely won't be admitting that. She claimed it was because she wanted to get some photos, but though she's brought her camera, I know it's just a ruse. She just wanted to get me away so she could find out what my deal is. “It's freaking me out. Quiet Ibbie is wrong. Just wrong.”

“God, am I really that talkative that it weirds people out when I have nothing to say?” I wonder out loud. “Cringe attack.”

“So. . ?”

“Maybe I've just decided to transform into a quiet person.”

She eyes me doubtfully, then we both fall about in laughter, unable to keep straight faces. We come across a large boulder and sit down for a couple minutes of rest.

“How's the wedding planning going?” I ask to change the subject, because if you brought up an upcoming wedding to most brides then it would be a surefire way to distract them for at least, like, five hours. Unfortunately, Blair is not most women.

“Haven't even started,” she replies. “Now spill.”

I actually do want to spill and I'm not sure why I didn't the second Walt dropped me off the other night, so with a relived sigh I tell her everything. Blair is the best friend ever, because when I tell her about Alex ignoring my calls her eyes narrow angrily on my behalf, and when I tell her how nice Walt was and how he drove me out to his grandparents' house, she keeps shtum even though I know she wants to ask me a million questions, and then when I tell her about Fauna and about Aleix's reaction to seeing me, she stands up and balls her little fists and threatens to hunt him down and pulverize his nuts. I'm tempted and all, but I make the tiny spitfire sit her ass back down because I'm not finished. I tell her about Walt kissing me in his old bedroom and about the windmill and the dancing and the second kiss. And when I tell her about Walt admitting that he wants to be with me it's such a weight off my chest that I can't figure out why I didn't tell her sooner. Usually I
love
to
gossip. Walt's got me in such a frigging tizzy!
 

She takes it all in, nodding her head up and down and not being at all surprised and shocked like I expected her to be. I mean, a little awe and outrage might be nice. Jeez. “So Walt's into you?”

“I guess so.”

“Totally called that one.”

“You did not.”

“Did so. When he first started texting you.” She sticks her tongue out triumphantly when I realize she's right. “So how do you feel about him?”

“I don't know. Confused, mainly.”

“Do you think you might wanna try dating him?”

“I don't know,” I repeat, getting frustrated – mostly with myself, but I'm fully prepared to take it out on her. That's how I know Blair really is my BFF, because we can give each other a hard time and still love each other after.

“You must know,” she continues, not willing to give me a break. “Deep down. Do you want to be with him, yes or no?”

“I. Don't. Know!” I protest. We're both getting annoyed now. “It's complicated.”

“No it's not. Yes or no, Ibbie? Yes or no?”

“I don't-”

“Yes or no?”

“Blair-”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes!” I yell, and then I freeze when I realize what she was doing. She was pulling an answer from me because she knew I'd never be able to come to a decision on my own. Damn it, she's a sneaky son of a gun!

Her grin is triumphant. “Ha!”

“No,” I say. “I don't mean. . . How can I want to be with him just because he was nice to me for
one
night? It doesn't make up for an entire year of him being awful.”
 

She scoffs, arching one of those perfect eyebrows at me. Girl's got some strong eyebrow game going on. “Yeah, because you were so innocent. You remember the time you put that stuff in his drink to turn his pee blue?”

I smile at the memory of him leaving the bathroom looking seriously freaked out. “Oh yeah, that was a good one. But he totally started this whole thing. I tried to be nice to him when we first met.”

“Well I think the two of you have had sexual tension the whole time. That's all it is. Sometimes people just can't express when they like each other. I remember back when I was falling for Silver I used to make fun of him all the time. Mostly just to get his attention, I think.”

“You still do that.”

She grins. “I still want his attention.”

I pink her cheek. “You're so friggin' cute.”

Slapping my hand away, she asks, “So what are you gonna do about Walt?”

“Do?” I blink. “Nothing!”

“Don't you think you should at least talk to him?”

“Um, no. He said he was going to give me a month, therefore I have a month to hide out in my apartment and do nothing.”

“Seriously, you're just gonna wait? And stew? And get all up in your head about everything when you could just confront him?”

“You waited when Silver left
you
for three months.”
 

She rolls her eyes at my sullen pettiness. “Because I was still in high school and he was still a teacher. But you and I, Ibbs, we're not high school kids anymore. We don't have to sit around waiting for life to happen to us. We can just
live
it.”
 

I stand up, throwing my hands in the air and refusing to admit that she's making sense. Mostly
because I don't
want
to admit it. “You're so annoying! Why are you being so pushy?”
 

Her arms fold across her chest and she glares at me. “Because I know you like him. And I just want to see you happy. Because I love you to bits!”

“Yeah well. . .I love you to bits and pieces. AND PIECES!”

We continue to scowl at each other for almost a whole minute before we finally lose steam, both realizing that as far as arguments go, this one was pretty lame. Neither of us are good at fighting each other.

Blair is the first to cave and smile at how dumb we are. “That was fun.”

I sit back next to her. “Yeah, we should argue more often.”

She nudges me with her shoulder. “You need to talk to him.”

“I know.” I nod, because she's right. Even if it's just to get answers to the squillion gazillion questions zooming around in my brain, I really do have to talk to Walt. “So seriously, it's been over a month and you haven't even made one teeny, tiny little wedding plan yet?”

A long sigh escapes her as she shrugs. “It's just that. . .I want to be married to him more than anything, but I don't know if I can deal with the stress of a big wedding. I'm not that kind of girl, you know? If I could, I'd just drag him away to some hot beach and do it right there in our swimwear.”

That actually sounds like it would be perfect for Silver and Blair, but, “Felicia would kill you.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the wedding day stops being about the bride and groom and becomes more about everyone else.” Her face brightens. “Oh hey, maid of honor, right?”

That's my Blair. Even when asking something as huge as this she still manages to sound cool and casual. I squeal happily, throwing my arms around her shoulders and squeezing the eff out of her even though I'd totally known it was coming – because if she hadn't picked me I would have had to end her. “You know I will! I'm so excited!”

“Good. Hey, you wanna start heading back? I'm starving.”

“Me too. I'm so fungry I could eat a horse. If we make our way back down now we could find a diner or something in time for dunch.”

Her eyes roll skyward for a second. “Lunch dinner?” she guesses after a moment.

I wrap my arm around her shoulders as we begin the hike back down to where we left the car. “Naw, you know me so well.”

“SO WHEN DOES Jem move in?” I ask Reid as we grab a beer in McCaulley's, an old pub style bar we used to hang out a lot in before Jemma came into our lives and we all somehow migrated towards fucking
Kandy's
. Yeah, that was before Jemma brought around Ibbie and turned my whole damned world upside down.
 

Who am I kidding? I wouldn't change a thing. I'm even admittedly fond of Jem these days, and we definitely had a rocky start.

“Not 'till January,” he grumbles. “Dahlia's new room mate can't move in 'till then and Jem doesn't wanna leave her in the lurch.”

“You sure you've thought this through?” I joke, because getting Jemma to move in with him has been the only thing the guy's been able to talk about for goddamned months when she hasn't been around.

“You know it. When you get a girl like Jemma, you do everything you can to hold onto her. Trust me.” He gets a text on his phone, eyes me for a second, then speedily replies. I'm about to question him when we're interrupted.

“Hey guys,” Christen greets as he and Fábia join us in the booth. Tonight it's the original gang, just like old times. Not going to admit it to these fuckers, but I kind of miss the others.

Fábia smirks. She's always smirking about something. “Oh good, the annoying kids aren't hanging around tonight.”

“Be nice,” Christen chides playfully, because you can never take anything Fábia says seriously. That girl likes to be a bitch just for the sake of being a bitch. “Besides, you like 'em all really.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn't deny it. Aside from Blair, who seems to have had a worse upbringing than most of us, Jemma and her friends were never the kind of people we'd thought we'd end up being friends with. They're more the kind of people we'd have sat back and made fun of. Truth is, they've all grown on us.

“Anyway,” I lift an eyebrow at Fábia. “don't think we don't know what's been going on between you and Dahlia.”

Christen almost spits out his drink. “You and
Dahlia
? I didn't know you swing that way.”
 

She shrugs. “It's the twenty first century, Christen. I can swing whichever damn way I want.”

The next thirty minutes is filled with Christen trying to persuade her to share the details, and me and Reid laughing our asses off when she reaches forwards and twists his nipples so hard he screeches like a little bitch.

“HEY YOU!” We all turn in surprise at the sound of the loud, angry voice and I almost fall out of my seat when I see Ibbie storming towards us across the room. She's got just about every male eye in the bar on her, and not just because she looks so out of place here in that little floral dress. No, she's got every male eye on her because she looks fucking
glorious
when she's all furious and revved up like she is right now. Even I can appreciate that, and all that anger is focused right on me. I resist the urge to stand up and start yelling at all those sleaze bags to get their eyes off my woman.