The Cornerstone (9 page)

She tilted her head and offered a smile intended to eat my soul. “Hate to break it to you, but I’ve seen bigger blueberries than the set you’re rocking.”

“I meant you,” I said, pulling her against my chest. “Have you ever met anyone with bigger balls than
you
?”

She requested that I fuck off, and slammed the door behind me.

I stood and stretched out my hamstrings. “Where’d you find yourself last night? You weren’t with the little sister long.”

Wes laughed and leaned back in the sand on his elbows. “That crew knows how to have a good time. They give each other a ton of shit, and they could drink with any Team guy,” he said. “It pains me to say this, but I like them.”

With that thought, I dove into the waves and swam to the sandbar and back. I didn’t want to think about the Walshes, and I really didn’t want to think about my burning abs and quads either. I didn’t want to think about
Shannon
anymore. I lost my fucking mind with her, and the problem was, I wanted to lose it again.

When I emerged from the water and plunked my ass on the sand, Wes threw a peculiar look at me. “Did you take some shrapnel?”

“What? No,” I said. He nodded at my back, and I glanced over my shoulder to find half-moon punctures and long, shallow abrasions. “It’s nothing. Just a few scratches.”

Shortcake. Another reason to keep her tied up next time.

Yeah.
Next time.
She might have kicked me out of her bed before sunrise, but that didn’t mean this was over. It was fucked up beyond belief considering we got off on taunting each other, but it wasn’t over.

He eyed me while a slow smile twisted across his lips. “That’s one way to taste the local flavor,” he said, laughing.

I tried telling myself this was a one-time thing—sure, technically it was more like multiple times but all in the course of one weekend—and she annoyed the shit out of me. But there was no reason to pretend I wasn’t coming back for more of Shannon Walsh.

I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t nearly finished with that peanut.

SHANNON

Fifteen months ago

I
didn’t know
whether I should be proud or embarrassed that I didn’t learn to drink tequila until I was in my thirties and met Lauren. I’d always thought it involved worms and the most heinous hangovers in life, and I stuck with my beer, wine, and whiskey.

“To the last weekend of the summer,” Lauren said, lifting her margarita glass in salute.

“I’ll drink to that,” I said. I leaned back in the massaging seat and sipped my beverage while the technician scrubbed last month’s dark plum paint from my toes.

Lauren knew how to find all the hidden gems, and this cozy spa with its happy hour pedicures was the best of them. Neither of us was particularly good about taking time for ourselves. We gave everything to our careers and our people, but we were good about forcing each other to breathe once in a while.

Our version of breathing involved liquor, cupcakes, swearing, and shopping.

“You should come to dinner tomorrow night,” she said while flipping through an old copy of
Glamour
.

“What are we having?” I asked.

Lauren studied an article about sex positions to drive her man wild. She chuckled and shook her head before turning back to me. “I don’t know yet. Might just order paella.”

“Ohhhh, paella,” I said. “I’d be down for that.”

“Everyone loves paella,” she said. “It’s like spicy rice crispy treats for adults. With chorizo.”

We clinked our glasses together again, and I went back to debating between polish shades. I was a creature of habit, and if I was painfully honest with myself, I didn’t love change. I preferred consistency, knowing what to expect, knowing what was around each corner.

I stuck with dark plum.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the Cape with us this weekend?” Lauren asked.

She and Matt were spending the long Labor Day weekend on Cape Cod, at the same inn where they were married three months ago. I kept telling them I didn’t want to crash their second honeymoon, but I was nowhere near ready to return to the scene of my wedding weekend crimes.

“Do you not find it strange that you’re trying to bring me along for a romantic getaway?” I glanced around and lowered my voice. “Tell me: what’s wrong? Are you bored with each other? Is the spark already dying? Is married sex that bad?”

Lauren swatted me as she doubled over laughing, and my drink splashed down the front of my dress. “No!” she said. “On all counts.”

“Then why would you want me hanging out with you? Do you really want me barging in, in the middle of your sexytimes, asking if you want to go biking or paddle boarding or some outdoorsy shit like that? Or snuggling up between the two of you to watch movies and hog the popcorn?”

Lauren sipped her drink and tucked her hair behind her ears, nodding to herself. “Honest?”

I gulped. Nothing preceded by an offer of honesty was ever good. “Always.”

“It seems like I haven’t seen you all summer,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve talked, just you and me since…since the wedding. You only dodge people when you’re trying to figure something out by yourself. But I miss you. I’m worried about you.”

I waved her off. I hadn’t been avoiding her. Not completely. “There’s no need to worry about me—”

“Don’t even start,” Lauren said, laughing. “But you spend enough time taking care of everyone else that you spend no time taking care of yourself.”

“I just…” My voice trailed off while I skimmed through my appointments for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow was packed but Friday was wide open after visiting some properties in the morning.
Good.
I needed that time to catch up on budgeting for Walsh Associates’ next round of investment purchases, and I owed wedding gifts to a handful of business acquaintances and once-upon-a-time friends. Everyone had some of those: people you used to be tight with, but now only saw via social media and the occasional get-together.

“I’m not going to force you to talk to me,” Lauren said. “But I know you have your hands full at the office. I also know that sorting through your mom’s things is emotionally exhausting and super stressful—”

Yesyesyes. I can feel the weight of it on my shoulders and in my heart, and I am doing everything in my power to keep it together.

“—and you insist on doing it by yourself.”

Because I can’t let anyone else do it. I have to own this and I have to do it my way.

“And I know Sam has been a whiny bitch for months.”

That whiny bitch is headed for an epic breakdown if he doesn’t start taking care of himself.

“You know I think taking a break from online dating is really positive, because hello—weirdos—but the dry spell must be rough. So I worry about you.”

It was a miracle that I didn’t choke on my margarita. When it came to Lauren, I rarely censored the details of my love life but I’d been selective recently. I didn’t want the “Hey, I fucked your brother” bomb slipping out between stories about the guy who kept at least eighty Glo-Worm dolls in his bedroom or the guy who insisted on wearing a wool beanie cap during sex. In the summer.

I continued scrolling through my emails, hoping this line of questioning would be replaced by anything else. I hated being the object of concern. I was the one who did the worrying and checking on people. If someone noticed that I was off, even my best friend, I wasn’t doing enough to keep it together. I didn’t know how to be the person others worried about, and I rarely knew what to do with their concern.

“What are we celebrating? Tomorrow night?” I asked, changing the subject while shooting a quick response to Tom’s messages.

“Lots of things,” Lauren said. She shook her head at me, annoyed that I was dodging her questions. No, she never forced anyone to talk to her, but she had that severe teacher stare down hard. She could force a mime to break character with that stare. “We’re celebrating eating outside on warm summer evenings, and sangria, and long weekends.” She paused while the server refilled her glass. “Oh, and Will’s in town.”

This time, I did choke.

I blamed it on the stiff tequila and slapped away Lauren’s hands when she rubbed my back like a colicky infant. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said and knocked back the rest of my drink. “Didn’t you say he was deployed?”

I was going for vague curiosity. I didn’t want to know what was happening in Will’s life; I was only asking because she brought it up and I was polite like that.

Even though he was an arrogant asshole.

She hummed and held up a finger for me to wait while she sent a text to Matt. “Yeah, a three-month tour.
Most
SEAL Team guys go through cycles of deployment, training ops, and leave. Will isn’t most team guys. There’s always another mission, another training op, another promotion. He can’t get enough of it. Just like my dad.”

Since I was working damn hard at my vague curiosity, I paged through Instagram for a minute. It was the only thing I could do to keep from firing off fifteen questions about Will.

“You must be excited to see him. Will, that is.” I glanced over at Lauren. “How long is he in town?”

“Um, I think he’s planning to head out on Friday. He said something about surfing somewhere.”

“Surfing is good,” I murmured. “How long is he on leave?”

She was too busy texting Matt—the two of them were ridiculous with the texts—to care that I was looking for a detailed accounting of her brother’s whereabouts. And it wasn’t like I was going to do anything with that information.

We had our fling, it was over, and there was nothing more to it.

And side note: I didn’t even like the guy.

“Not long. The weekend, maybe a bit longer,” she said, smiling at her screen. Seriously, I’ve seen the mobile phone bills. Those two could clear five hundred texts per day without breaking a sweat. “But he’s running training missions with new SEALs for the next six months. A lot safer than the missions he was leading overseas. My mother’s happy about that.”

“I can imagine,” I said. My knowledge of all things military was limited to the stray details Lauren shared about her wildly overprotective father and her life growing up near the naval base in Coronado. “So where do these training missions take place? Is that in California?”

Maybe my curiosity was more than vague.

“No, he went through BUD/S—it’s like SEAL 101—in Coronado, but he’s based out of Little Creek, Virginia. He’s never there anymore. He’s been overseas for the past few years, and I don’t even remember the last time he was stateside, aside from the wedding.”

“Huh,” I said. For someone accustomed to direct questioning, this vague curiosity bullshit was strenuous. “Must be tough, you know…not getting home often. Probably hard on his friends…or girlfriend.”

She frowned at the creamy orange shade on her big toe. “Do you have anything a little brighter? More a tangerine?” The technician fetched every polish between yellow and red, and Lauren studied each while my question lingered between us. After much consideration, she selected a new color and sent another text.

Chuckling, she typed out a few more messages and I was convinced she was ignoring my original comment. It was probably the best avenue for everyone involved; I didn’t need to fall down the Will Halsted rabbit hole again.

As I said, I didn’t even like the guy. Total douche waffle.

“He doesn’t have a girlfriend,” she murmured. “Hasn’t since he finished the second leg of SEAL training and shipped out to Afghanistan.”

I hid my smile behind the margarita glass.

The discussion turned to Lauren’s school and the last-minute preparations necessary to start the year. Her teachers were busy setting up their classrooms and getting familiar with the warehouse-turned-schoolhouse, and she was eager to finally open the doors to new students.

We loitered on the sidewalk when the toenail polish was dry, debating whether we’d survive another round of drinks. Considering we both had early morning meetings and we’d already put away several margaritas, we decided it was time to call it a night.

“Come over around seven tomorrow night. We’ll make sangria and sit on the terrace and soak up the last seconds of summer,” Lauren said as she started walking backward toward her place. “Oh, and you might like to know Will has been asking about you, too.”

*

I was aiming
for casually late. I landed closer to offensively late.

When the office started clearing out around five, I dug into some property value research in preparation for my Friday morning appointments. The title history was more complicated than I expected, and when I looked up from my work, it was almost eight thirty.

“This wasn’t the plan,” I yelled to my empty office. I gathered my things and headed for the garage, aggravated that I didn’t have time to stop at my favorite wine shop to grab a few bottles.

Traffic was heavy and street parking was a nightmare, and it was after nine o’clock when I reached Matt and Lauren’s loft. I let myself in and dropped my things in the entryway, and heard laughter coming from the terrace.