Don't Deny Me: Part One Read online

  “I’ve missed you,” Alice said.

  He’d missed her, too. For years, Mick had thought about Alice, wondering what she was doing. Who she was seeing. He’d seen her face on random women and in his dreams, always wishful thinking and never her, save that one lucky time a few years ago when he’d spotted her dancing with her friends. He’d been stupid, maybe, not to say something to her that night. He’d be stupid not to say something now.

  But though his mouth worked, his tongue trying without success to push the words free of his lips and teeth, the only thing that came out of Mick’s throat was a soft, hissing sigh.

  “Well, I guess that’s my answer,” Alice said, and went inside the house.

  He almost went after her, but as with so many other mistakes Mick had made, he waited too long. By the time he was able to get himself moving, Alice had gone inside her bedroom. Knocking would wake everyone up, if she deigned to answer. He almost did that, too, raising a hand to let his knuckles rest against the wood. Then his forehead. Straining for the sound of her inside, all he heard was the sound of his own breathing and the pound of his heart in his ears. His stomach, gone sour, sent a surge of bile into his throat.

  “Alice,” Mick whispered, knowing there was no way she could hear him.

  There was no light beneath the door, nothing to indicate she was awake, though he had to imagine she hadn’t simply tossed herself into bed and slept. What if, he thought suddenly, she wasn’t in there at all, but in his room? She’d done that more than once. Left him upstairs only to be waiting for him in his bed, usually naked. It was too much to hope for, but Mick let himself hope for it.

  Disappointment slapped him in the face when he found only the tangle of his sheets, his own drool-spotted pillow. He had missed her, that wasn’t the problem. Admitting it, saying it aloud, that had been too hard. Why? Because he was stupid. There was no other real explanation, other than faced with the reality of seeing her, all he could think about was how much he didn’t want to lose the fantasy. But faced with his empty bed, the empty room … empty fucking life, Mick thought as he sank onto the bed. Without Alice, everything was empty.

  And later, he would tell her.

  He woke to a roaring hunger and sprang out of bed to yank back the curtains. Daylight, bright enough to blind him for a minute. He’d slept in the clothes he’d put on early this morning after his shower. He didn’t bother combing his hair or washing his face, though he did brush his teeth. That was just courtesy, he thought with a grin, already imagining Alice’s kiss.

  In the empty kitchen, he snagged a doughnut from among the detritus of breakfast and went out onto the deck to look for everyone else. He found only Cookie, her huge, flopping sunhat shading her eyes as she sat in the same lounger Alice had been using this morning. The fleece blanket, not needed in the afternoon heat, had been folded neatly across the end of the chair. She looked up from her book, her finger holding her place.

  “Hi, sleepyhead.”

  “Morning.” Mick, nearly dancing with excitement, bent to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “You missed brunch.” She laughed and brushed away the sugar granules his kiss had left on her skin. “But I see you found something. There’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge, if you want.”

  “I’m good.” He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Where’s everyone else? Lake?”

  “Bernie and Jay went into town to get some propane for the grill, since my ridiculously prepared husband for once forgot something important. Paul and Dayna went to the lake. Everyone else should start getting here around three.”

  Mick turned. “And Alice, too?”

  Cookie paused, then gave him a look of such sympathy that instantly, his stomach sank. “Oh, honey, Alice left early this morning. She said something came up at home, so she couldn’t stay for the picnic.”

  “Did she … say what it was?”

  “No.” Cookie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mick. We were all as surprised as you that she left.”

  But that was the problem, Mick thought. He wasn’t surprised at all.

  * * *

  When I found out you were going to be there, my hands started to shake. The world spun, and I had to breathe deep. Deep. Deep. Everything shifted and changed, and I was sure, for a moment, I was going to pass out.

  You were going to be there.

  After all that time, the things we’d said and done and what had passed between us, and it was such a simple, casual comment. “He’ll be there. You’re okay with that, right?” I had to say yes, of course. Couldn’t make it into anything important, make a big deal, cause a fuss.

  Was it okay? It was more than okay. After all this time, I was going to see you again.

  I had done my time waiting on you. Done my share of crying. And yes, I knew a part of me would always ache at the loss of you in my life, part would forever find a way to weep for missing you, some part of me would infinitely yearn for you the way a flower desires the kiss of a bee to help it to bloom … but it was no longer the biggest part of me. I closed the door to that room in my house of many. Ended that chapter in the novel of my life. I had said good-bye to you and meant it.

  Yet there you were again.

  And everything I thought I had known crumbled, shattered, scattered, splintered, broke.

  —Alice to Mick

  * * *

  Fool her once, shame on him. Fool her twice, shame on her. It was an old saying that made total sense.

  Open doors should be closed, Alice told herself as she pulled her clean laundry from the dryer and piled it into the basket. The faint smell of sunscreen lingered on everything, normally a good smell but one that made her melancholy now. Her bathing suit tumbled out, tangled in a T-shirt. She pressed it to her face, breathing in the clean laundry smell, nothing of Mick left there at all.

  Then she was crying. Sitting back on her heels in front of the laundry basket, gathering handfuls of her clothes, digging through the pile of everything she’d worn this weekend that had touched him. Smelling all of it. Holding everything to her face in a futile attempt at breathing in any small molecule of his scent, but she’d done too good a job. All she had was a basket full of clean clothes.

  “Enough,” Alice said loud enough to make her cat meow at her. “Enough, Alice. This is enough. No more of this. No more of him. Ten fucking years,” she gasped out on a sob, the tears coming hot and fierce and fast enough to drown her. “You’re over him.”

  That was the problem though, wasn’t it? She’d never been over him. Not a day after they’d broken up. Not a week. A month, a year, five years, ten. Alice had never completely let him go, and she’d been an idiot to think seeing him again would’ve brought anything but grief.

  She shouldn’t have let him kiss her, touch her, make whatever love they’d made. She should have kept her distance and been pleasant and polite. Like Dayna had said about Paul, seeing him would surely have broken her heart, but at least it would’ve broken quietly, with only her to know about it.

  “I missed you,” she’d said, and he had said nothing.

  Nothing!

  Not one fucking word. The thought of it, that he could put his hands all over her, his tongue down her throat, his fingers inside her … God, it was too much. With a strangled, growling sob that scared the cat into running away, Alice got to her feet with the laundry basket and took it upstairs to her bed, where she tossed out the contents and began folding. Snap, snap, making creases in the fabric. She folded the fuck out of that laundry because to do anything less would be giving in again to the rising urge to fall onto her knees again and weep into her hands.

  “Fuck him,” she said aloud, lower this time. The words, bitter as bile, burned her tongue.

  In her bathroom, Alice got out the bleach and scrub brush to attack her grout. The toilet and sink got their share of attention. Then the shower, where she used an old toothbrush to clean out the tracks in the shower door and around the drain, and where at last she turned on the ho