Take a Bow, page 6
“With my mom,” she said, laughing at the comical way his expression changed to one of relief. She was in big trouble if this was how their friendship was going to go—him cock-blocking her by being himself, her teasing him, a little turned on by his jealousy. She had lots of friends, and this was not how she behaved with any of them.
Chapter Eight
Friends and lovers, lovers and friends.
What’s the difference when we’re all playing games?
“Puzzle Piece,” The Nash Speedwell Experience
“Glad I got a reservation,” Mimi commented the next morning when she and Deb slid into their seats on the Harborview deck. They were shaded by a big sun umbrella, but that didn’t help with the humidity, which made the late summer air feel as thick as the Bloody Mary she ordered from their server.
Her mother ordered the same and studied the menu. “I haven’t been here in years. What made you think of it?”
Mimi avoided answering the question while she debated quiche versus omelet. She’d inherited so many things from her mom—from her hazel eyes to her no-nonsense attitude and work ethic. They’d always been close, even during Mimi’s adolescent years. Deb had been seventeen when she was born, finished high school while her mother took care of newborn Mimi during the day.
The relatively small gap in their ages had always been a plus as far as Mimi was concerned. Her mom remembered all too well what it had been like to be a hormonal teenager. And as tough as it was sometimes growing up with a single mom and bratty little brother, Deb had never taken out her stress or worry on Mimi and Jay. She’d always made them feel wanted, loved, taken care of.
With the perspective of adulthood, Mimi knew Deb had no doubt sacrificed her own well-being and sanity to give them as secure a childhood as she could. And now that they were grown and independent, Deb was still as hardworking as ever. She never asked for anything for herself, so Mimi and Jay liked to spoil her when they could.
Deb fanned herself with the menu. “It is hot today, right? I’m not just having hot flashes?”
“I don’t know about the hot flashes, but it’s definitely hot,” Mimi agreed. “Maybe we should ask if they have a table inside.”
“No, the view is so pretty,” Deb said, looking across the choppy ocean. “This is great. Thanks, sweetie.”
“You’re welcome. And to answer your earlier question, I came here for dinner the other night.”
“Oh? With the girls from the library?”
“No. Um...”
Even though they shared everything else, Mimi had never felt overly comfortable talking about men with her mother. Mostly because Deb had never been in a relationship the entire time Mimi had known her. And while Deb seemed perfectly content, Mimi felt like there was some soreness there. On the other hand, there were precious few people she could talk to about Nash. Deb had known him for fifteen years, after all.
“I had dinner with Nash.”
“Nash? Is he in town already?” Deb looked surprised, then ordered the omelet Mimi had been thinking about from the server when she came around again. Mimi decided on the quiche for a change of pace.
“He got in Thursday. Wanted to get settled before the shoot.”
“Well, that’s nice. I can’t believe all the kids will be back in town. Just like the old days.”
“Those kids are all thirty-plus, remember?” Mimi said.
Deb groaned. “Don’t remind me. Makes me feel old.”
“You’re fifty-two and look like my older sister,” Mimi said dryly. “But I know what you mean.”
“Well, tell Nash I’d like to see him. Maybe we should all have dinner when Jay and Cami get back.”
“He said something about hosting a barbecue,” she said. “He’s renting a house down on the south side.”
“Oh, it’s lovely down there.”
Mimi took a fortifying sip of her drink, the acid of the tomato juice bright on her tongue. “Are you surprised Nash and I had dinner?”
“Should I be? He’s your brother’s best friend.”
Mimi said nothing, waiting for it to sink in. Deb’s face grew thoughtful. “You and Nash?”
“No, not exactly,” Mimi said. “Well, it’s complicated. He says we’re friends, but he’s wooing me, I think.”
“And do you want to be wooed?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to be wooed before. Or to woo anyone, for that matter.”
“But this is different.” It wasn’t a question.
Mimi sighed. “I don’t know. I like him, as a person. The problem is, we’ve already slept together. Quite a few times. I’ve never had a relationship with someone I’ve slept with. It’s usually a one-and-done kind of thing.”
Deb made a face.
“Sorry. TMI? I know we don’t usually talk about this stuff.”
“It’s okay. I get it. You know, I’ve been a bit selfish over the years, quietly relieved you never seemed to want a long-term relationship. I wouldn’t have been much help to you if you had. But it’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to try something new. And Nash is a good person. He’s been a good friend to your brother.”
“You never wanted a relationship either,” Mimi said. “Did you?”
Deb’s smile held a hint of sadness. “It wasn’t part of the equation for me.”
“I know you had me and Jay to take care of, and that made things complicated, but when we grew up, you could have pursued something. You still could, for that matter.”
Deb hummed and gazed out over the water again, but Mimi didn’t know what she was thinking.
Despite her tendency to get pregnant at the drop of a hat, her mother was the least promiscuous person Mimi had ever met. In fact, Mimi had sometimes thought she was so enthusiastic about her own sexual freedom to make up for her mother’s abstinence, which was kind of twisted. Or maybe she was simply the cliché of the fatherless girl acting out by having lots of casual sex.
That idea was repulsive to her. She prided herself on never being a cliché. She was no meek, tidy, buttoned-up librarian. She was bold and a little wild. She dyed her hair and had a tattoo. Yes, it was a book tattoo, but a tattoo nonetheless. She lived alone, but she didn’t own a single cat. She didn’t sleep with strangers because she was self-loathing, with abandonment issues. She was just patently uninterested in couplehood.
Which was why her arrangement with Nash had been perfect, up until a few days ago.
Stupid, beautiful man making her question thirty-four years of singledom.
Deb broke into her ruminations. “Have you thought about what Jay’s going to think of all this?”
Mimi winced. “I’ve tried not to.”
“Well, you might want to tell him yourself before the town gossip circuit relays it first.”
“I know.” Her brother wasn’t toxically overbearing, but he did take his role as the third leg of their little family stool very seriously. He wasn’t happy if he didn’t know Deb and Mimi were thriving, and she imagined it would take an adjustment period for him to picture his sister with his oldest friend.
But that was if she and Nash were even a thing. So far they’d had one confusing dinner, a group outing, and nary a kiss between them.
So why was she more on edge than ever? She’d been jittery with anticipation before he arrived in Misty Harbor, not sure how their intermittent fling would be affected by his long-term stay. But instead of having more sex due to his proximity, they were having none because he was trying to prove a point.
She didn’t have to take this relationship solely on his terms. Why shouldn’t she march over to his place and tell him this was ridiculous? They should fuck and get it over with. She had a pretty good track record of getting men into bed when she set her mind to it.
She and Deb finished brunch by sharing ice cold lemon basil sorbet and made plans for lunch later in the week.
“And when Jay comes home, we’ll do dinner. You know, I’m impressed Cami got him to leave the county, let alone the country.”
“She’s a very persuasive woman,” Mimi remarked.
“That she is. Now, you have a nice day off.”
“You, too. Don’t work all day,” Mimi instructed.
“Same goes for you, sweetie.” Deb hugged her goodbye, and they got into their separate cars.
Mimi blasted the AC and took stock. She’d showered that morning, and yes, the humidity had dampened her a little bit, but she didn’t think Nash would mind a little sweat. Instead of heading back to her apartment, she navigated to the long cross-town boulevard that led away from downtown Misty Harbor to the big beach houses on the south side of town. She’d once been to a friend’s bachelorette party at the house Nash had rented. It was hard to find, but Mimi remembered the turn-off. She nosed her small car down the track and gunned it up the hill. She was glad it hadn’t rained in a few days, or she would have had a harder time scaling the steep dirt road in her front-wheel-drive compact.
Her stomach had been jumpy since conceiving her little plan, but calmed when she pulled in behind Nash’s silver truck parked in front of the attractive beach house. He was home. She’d been low-key horny since he’d walked into her office Thursday afternoon. Clearly, sex was the best course of action here.
Nash answered thirty seconds after her confident knock. He smiled at her lazily, his eyes creasing at the corners. “Hiya, Mimi.”
“We should have sex.”
Chapter Nine
They can try to shut us out, but we’ll never stop knocking down walls.
Every one we knock down, we’ll make a garden in the rubble.
We’ll fill it with love.
“Untitled” for Rainbow Canyon, The Nash Speedwell Experience
“You better come in,” Nash said, opening the door wide enough for Mimi to slip inside. She looked dewy and delectable in linen trousers and a white T-shirt.
“Thank God for your air conditioning. I was melting out there,” she said, which explained the dewiness.
“I know, I went for a run on the beach this morning, and it was even bad down there.”
“New England humidity,” Mimi said as she positioned herself under the ceiling fan in his living room.
“Would you like something cold to drink?” he asked.
“I think we should have sex,” she said.
“You said that.”
“And you didn’t say anything back. This is silly, Nash. We’re grown-ups. We don’t need to justify anything. And whatever imaginary relationship you think is growing between us is just that—imaginary. Why not just do what we know we’re good at?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of romance?” Nash said.
“I’ve read plenty of romance novels,” Mimi assured him. “But that’s fiction.”
“Look, I know we have great sex. Remember that time in the stockroom at the bar?”
She smirked. “I remember.”
He chose his words carefully. He didn’t want to scare her off, and he didn’t want to make any promises he couldn’t keep. “I don’t think I can just see you around town and have sex with you once in a while. I think I need more.”
“More?” She acted like he’d suddenly started speaking Swedish.
“You don’t have to want that, too. But maybe you could try it out? See how it feels?”
“How would I do that?”
“Well, let’s say we’re two people who like each other but haven’t slept together yet. We might…talk. Kiss, even. Without having sex. I think they call it making out.” His gaze snagged on Mimi’s lips, an unpainted, pale pink. The last time he’d made out with someone had been on camera for Hawk and Bone, a couple months ago now. He very much wanted to end his make-out dry spell with Mimi Orlando.
“I’ve heard of it,” she said wryly. “But isn’t that a bit juvenile?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.”
“We’ve made out before,” she argued. “The first time it happened.”
“That was eight years ago,” he reminded her.
“Which is why this is silly.”
“If you don’t want to, that’s totally fine. We can still just be friends. I’ll always be your friend, Mimi. You don’t have to worry about losing that.” He got a little anxious thinking about a world in which they weren’t in contact at all. He really wanted to keep her in his life. But not as an on-demand booty call. He was old enough to know that was no longer what he wanted from her.
But what did she want?
She looked around the room, her gaze landing on his guitar. “Okay, so let’s pretend we’re…that we like each other.” She made a face like a grossed-out middle schooler. “What would we do?”
“We could talk. How about that drink?”
She composed her features, probably reminding herself she was, technically, a mature adult. “Sure. Sparkling water?”
“You got it.”
He took his time in the kitchen. He wondered, not for the first time, if the stakes in the game they were playing were too rich for him to be bluffing like this. Of course, it didn’t help that she came into his home looking soft and oozing pheromones. He stuck his head in the fridge to cool himself off. The air conditioning helped, but it was still hot as hell outside. Mimi had brought the heat inside, and now he had no escape.
He filled two glasses with ice from the freezer, then to the brim with sparkling water. He vaguely wanted to add a slice of lemon or sprig of mint, but his homemaking skills were limited after years of living in rentals and hotels. A couple of years after Sawyer’s Cove, he’d played a chef in a TV pilot that didn’t get picked up, and the research he’d done for the role was the extent of his cooking experience. Not that Mimi cared if her water had a garnish. He just wanted to put his best foot forward. He’d never spent this much energy to make sure a girl stuck around before. It was a new and not entirely comfortable sensation.
He returned to the living room, where Mimi was paging through the biography he’d checked out of her library. He pressed the glass into her hand, let their fingers brush intentionally. She eyed him suspiciously but didn’t say anything.
“How’s the book?” she asked instead, nodding toward it as she settled onto the oversized couch.
He took the armchair kitty corner to her, both so he could see her face more easily as they talked, and to avoid any temptation to touch her prematurely.
“Good so far. I got a little distracted and haven’t read much.”
“Distracted with what? Prep for the show?”
“No, I haven’t really started prepping yet, but there’s time. I was writing a song.”
“A new song?” She leaned forward eagerly. “Are you working on a new album?”
He couldn’t help noticing the way her tits strained against the thin fabric of her shirt. He knew what they felt like in his mouth. He forced his gaze to her clear, expressive eyes.
“Not exactly. I have a bunch of partial songs but haven’t been able to finish anything lately. This song, though. It’s almost done. I think.”
“How long does it take you to write? What’s your process? Do you compose on the guitar? Can I hear the song?”
Nash laughed at her animation. She really dug everything about music. “I don’t have any set process. Every song comes to me differently. Sometimes I write the melody first on the guitar—but for this one I wrote the lyrics, then worked on the melody after.”
“God, I wish I could play an instrument.” Mimi sighed. “I’m like the world’s most un-musical music lover.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“I made it through exactly one piano lesson before my teacher told my mother her money would be put to better use literally any other way than trying to get me to make sense of reading music and notes. I think I have a blind spot in that area.”
“Lots of musicians only play by ear,” he said. “I started by imitating Jack White.”
“You must have a good ear. And a good memory.”
“Two things that make acting a job I can actually do,” Nash agreed. “But it’s never too late if you want to learn.”
She leaned forward again. “Why? You want to give me guitar lessons, Mr. Speedwell?”
He shifted in his seat, ignoring the way her sultry voice made his shorts feel tight. “That’s a possibility,” he said lightly. “Though you could probably learn more from YouTube.”
“So let’s hear it,” Mimi said, sitting back. “Your new song. I want to hear an unreleased Nash Speedwell track. You already know I’m a fan—the ship has sailed on any plausible deniability on that score.”
He looked at the messy stack of handwritten notes he’d piled on the coffee table. He didn’t need them. He’d worked on the song until he could play it by heart. But though he had no particular songwriting routine, what definitely wasn’t part of the process was playing the song for another human being until it was polished and shiny and impervious to criticism.
This song was done, maybe, but it was raw.
“Um…it’s not ready for primetime.”
“I’m not asking you to perform at the Grammys,” she said. “It’s just me.”
Mimi may not have been musical, but she had discerning taste. She listened to everything from Neil Young to Lil Nas X. And she had opinions on all of it. What if she didn’t like this song?
Some of his thoughts must have been playing on his face, because she said, “What if you play it and I don’t say anything? I’ll just listen. Pretend I’m not even here. Close your eyes if you want. Can you play the guitar with your eyes closed?”
She looked uncertain, and he laughed again. This was why he liked being around her. She was so unapologetically real. She didn’t tailor her words or actions to conform to any particular way she thought she was supposed to be. She just was. And he liked who she was. Very much.
More than he’d ever admitted to himself before.
He found himself picking up his Gibson. He wasted a minute needlessly tuning it.
