Don't Deny Me: Part One Read online

  “You look,” he said, “fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “Better,” Alice told him. “Much better.”

  Silence, a beat of it, then another. But not awkward. They’d had their share of those uncomfortable silences toward the end, struggling to find words that weren’t angry or frustrated or disappointed. It wasn’t like that now. More like they didn’t have to say a word, she thought, and forced herself not to look away from him.

  He’d hardly changed.

  “You too,” she added.

  “Flowers?”

  Alice gestured. “Yeah. Cookie asked me to get some. I can’t decide between the red and the pink.”

  “Red.”

  She gave him a half smile. “You think so?”

  “You think pink roses are a waste.”

  There it was, then. Proof he hadn’t forgotten her. Hadn’t unknown her. For a stupid second tears threatened, burning, and Alice blinked them away.

  “These are pretty, though,” she said.

  Mick shook his head, moving closer to push aside the pink flowers and reveal the red bush planted next to it. “You’re a red-rose kind of girl, Alice. Always were. Ouch, shit.”

  The thorns had pricked him, bringing blood. Mick stuck his thumb in his mouth with a wince. Alice couldn’t hold back a laugh at his expression.

  “That’s why you should always wear gloves when you handle roses. They bite.” She held up the shears. “Let me.”

  Two, three snips and she’d added a half dozen long stems of crimson-topped green to her basket. He’d been right, of course. The red ones blended perfectly with the other flowers, and though she might have grown less vehement about her feelings over the years about the usefulness of pale pink roses, she would never like them as much as red.

  “Alice! Mick!” The shout turned both of them toward the house, where Dayna was waving at them from the deck. Mick raised a hand. Alice, after a moment, did, too. Dayna cupped her hands around her mouth to shout again. “Dinner’s almost ready! And I can’t wait to see both of you! Get your asses up here!”

  Alice gave him a look. “We’d better do what she says. You know she’ll come down and drag us up by our ears if we don’t.”

  “Can I get that for you?” Mick reached for the basket.

  He didn’t need to carry it for her, but she let him take it if only to feel the brush of his fingertips on her arm. She was still a little tipsy, though now it was hard to tell if it were still from the wine or Mick’s proximity. He took her elbow when her toe caught on a tuft of tough grass that threatened to trip her.

  “Careful,” Mick murmured, and held onto her for a few seconds longer than was necessary to help keep her from falling.

  When had she ever been careful when it came to him? There was no such thing, Alice thought, and that was what finally pushed her to put some distance between them. She had to get her head on straight. Just because they weren’t at each other’s throats didn’t mean he was anything more than a stranger to her, really, after all this time. No matter what they’d been to each other before, before was not now.

  Dayna had come down the stairs from the deck to greet them, and they were all caught up in the frenzy of greeting. Hugging, kissing, squealing, and in the midst of it, Mick slipped away to take the flowers inside.

  “So,” Dayna said, linking her arm through Alice’s as they both went up the stairs, Alice pausing to snag her glass from the railing. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen you. You look great. Your hair’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s been like, six months,” Alice said. “I saw you at Jay’s just after Christmas.”

  Dayna laughed. “Feels like forever. C’mon. Bernie’s got something cooking that smells so good I want to die for it. And I think I heard Jay pulling in just before I came out to get you guys. Paul will be late. He always is.”

  “The old gang, back together,” Bernie said a few minutes later as Alice and Dayna returned to the now-crowded kitchen. He held a bottle of wine aloft. “Get pouring, everyone!”

  Things got down to business. The party had started. Glasses were filled. Hors d’oeuvres consumed.

  And through all of it, the noise and clamor and hilarity, Alice felt the weight of Mick’s gaze on her, heavy as stone and hot as lava. She didn’t allow herself more than a glance or two at him, though. More than that and she’d have been the one staring, and how hungry would her gaze have been?

  He circled her, though. Oh, sure, he talked to Paul and Dayna and Jay, to Bernie and Cookie. But he circled back to Alice, standing close enough that his shoulder brushed hers just often enough not to be coincidence. And finally, at last, she couldn’t feign any longer that she didn’t know he wanted to talk to her and only her. She closed her eyes for a moment, battling with herself. She could walk away. She should.

  “Hi,” she said, turning toward him.

  He had a beer in one hand. She a glass of wine. They stood in the same room they’d been in together many times, surrounded by the friends they’d both known forever. If she closed her eyes for a second, she might’ve been able to convince herself nothing at all had ever changed.

  Other than everything.

  There were conversations you could fall into naturally after having not seen someone for years. Job, kids, spouse? Alice didn’t ask any of those questions. Neither did Mick.

  He asked her if she’d read that book. Seen that movie. Had she tried that restaurant?

  Yes, no, yes.

  “And you,” she said, when they’d all moved to the table and she had a plate of Bernie’s amazing pasta in front of her. “Have you been watching that show about zombie housewives?”

  He had.

  She smiled at him. He smiled, too. But then, even if it might’ve seemed for a moment or two that they were the only ones in the room, the truth was they were not alone. Bernie came to the table bearing a platter of grilled vegetables, and everyone oohed and ahhed, and Dayna raised her glass in a toast.

  “To Bernie and Cookie, two people who really got it right.”

  They had. Alice watched them kiss, the light of love in their eyes undimmed even after twenty years. She wasn’t the only one moved; Dayna had spoken with tears in her eyes and Jay snuffled audibly. She was glad she’d come, Alice thought without looking at Mick. Because this wasn’t about her and Mick and the mess they’d made of things in the past. This weekend was about her friends.

  Dinner, as always at Bernie’s house, was delicious and decadent. Sitting across from Mick, Alice did her best to keep her attention on the conversations going on all around her, but it kept getting snagged by him. A word here or there. The way he shifted in his seat to reach for more salad, and she couldn’t stop herself from admiring how broad his shoulders were in the blue button-down shirt.

  She excused herself from the table. Thoroughly buzzed from a fourth glass of wine and the way Mick’s foot had nudged her ankle too many times to be an accident, Alice shook her head in silent laughter as she made her way down the long corridor to the powder room. Light from the kitchen filtered in, but the hall itself was mostly dark. She put out a hand to guide her. Her fingertips skipped along the rough textured paint and brushed the rows of framed pictures on the wall.

  Years of parties had been captured, imprisoned in cages of glass and wood. Captioned with the dates and Cookie’s wry humor—“St. Pat’s, 1997, the year we got more snow than a leprechaun has gold!” Alice was in many of these photos, her hair and clothes changing over the years more than she hoped her face had.

  He was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom. She knew the shape of him immediately, although the way the shadows fell, he might’ve been anyone. He didn’t move when she took a step toward him, but he spoke.

  “Hi,” Mick said.

  “Hi.”

  Did he reach for her, or did she take that last step to put herself up close, pressed along his body? It didn’t matter. In the time it took for her heart to beat once, twice, three times, Alice was in Mick’s