Heartsick, she closed up for the day and then dropped her forehead to the door. Damn it. “I’m not going to cry.”
“Okay, but just in case, we have reinforcements.”
Aubrey whirled around and faced Ali and Leah, who’d come in the back. Ali held a bottle of Scotch and three big red plastic cups. Leah was holding a tray of goodies. “Leftovers from today’s baking,” she said. “And trust me when I say you don’t need anything else when you have this stuff—not even a man.”
“That’s good,” Aubrey said, and swiped at her cheeks. “Because I don’t need a man.”
Ali set down the cups and poured them each a very liberal dose of Scotch. “A toast,” she said, waiting for Aubrey and Leah to pick up their cups. “To us,” she said. “And to Aubrey.” She toasted Aubrey. “Because you look damn hot in those pictures.”
“Yeah,” Leah said. “There’s going to come a day when you yearn to look like that again.” She paused. “And for the record, I’ve never looked that way. Bitch.”
Aubrey felt herself laugh for the first time in two days.
They all drank, and Ali refilled their glasses. Leah ordered a pizza. They inhaled it and then raided Leah’s bakery for dessert.
“I hate men,” Aubrey said much later, out of the blue, and they drank to that, too.
“I can’t exactly say I hate men,” Ali said. “’Cause I sleep with one of the finest men out there. But I recognize your right to hate men.” She hiccupped and then paused. “Wait. Why do you hate men again?”
“Because Ben broke up with her,” Leah reminded her.
Aubrey nodded. The room was getting a little wobbly. They’d had three double shots each, and the booze had gone straight to her head with exponential power. “He had good reason,” she said. “I wronged him.”
“That’s a chickenshit reason,” Leah said. “I love him, I really do, but he’s a pu**y chickenshit.”
Ali snorted Scotch out her nose. “Damn it!”
Aubrey looked at Leah. “You think so?”
“I know so,” Leah said, maybe slurring her words a bit. “He’s made mistakes, too, you know. Lots of them. He should forgive yours.”
“Yes, but it was a doozy of a mistake,” Aubrey admitted. “And when it comes right down to it, I did it on purpose, so actually, technically, I don’t think that even qualifies as a mistake.”
“Hey, love transcends all.”
It was Aubrey’s turn to inhale the Scotch and snort it out her nose. “Gah,” she managed, her throat burning.
Ali was pounding her on the back. She got her breath back, but Ali continued to pound her until, with a weak laugh, Aubrey held up her hands. “I’m okay. But it wasn’t love.”
Ali and Leah looked at her, then at each other, and then burst out laughing.
“Okay,” Aubrey admitted. “So I love him. Damn it. But he doesn’t love me.”
“Does so,” Leah said, refilling her drink. “You just need to fight for him.”
Aubrey stared at her. “What?”
“You’re a fighter, Aubrey. And I don’t mean like this…” Leah put up her own fists and nearly punched herself. “I mean you’re not someone who gives up. You go after what you want. Yeah, you screwed up, but you know what? He did, too. He didn’t let you talk about it or try to work through it. He just closed himself off.”
“Hence the pu**y chickenshit moniker,” Ali said, and hiccupped again.
“Yes,” Leah said. “Because he used what happened as an excuse to run away from what you two had.”
Aubrey stared at her. This was true. So true…why hadn’t he wanted to hear everything? Why hadn’t he wanted to understand? And most important, why had he been so willing to walk away from her? Thinking about that last question made her stomach hurt, but more than that, it made her really mad.
“Yeah,” Leah said, seeing the look on Aubrey’s face. “That’s what I’m talking about. Hang on, I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh, boy,” Ali said. “Those usually involve the police.”
“Hush, you,” Leah said. She pulled out her phone, hit a number, and put it on speaker.
“Hey, babe,” Jack said, a smile in his voice as it filled the room. “More phone sex already? ’Cause I think you wore me out at your last break—”
“No,” Leah said quickly, her face red, as she scooped the phone up close to her mouth. “And I’m not alone. Sheesh, I’ve got Ali and Aubrey here.”
“Hey, ladies,” he said smoothly. “What’re you all doing?”
“Drinking,” Ali said cheerfully. “We’re commiserating about the penis-carrying race being too slow on the uptake. Present company and your BFF excepted, of course.”
“Of course,” Jack said. “And Ben, too, right?”
Aubrey growled, and Jack laughed softly. “Yeah, you’re right. Our Ben is a little slow on the uptake, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, very slow,” Leah said before Aubrey could speak for herself. “And about that—”
“Wait!” Ali interrupted. “I want to hear more about this phone sex during business hours. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
Leah waved a “Shh!” hand at her. “Honey,” she said to Jack. “We need a little favor.”
“Anything,” he said.
“We need a ride. Can you come get us?”
The back door opened, and he strolled in, phone still to his ear. He grinned as he walked up behind Leah, sank his fingers into her hair, and bent over her for a hot kiss.
Ali sighed at the sight. “We’ll never get you to Ben’s now,” she said to Aubrey. “They can go on like this forever. They never run out of air.”
It was true, apparently, because they kept kissing.
“See?” Ali said, and then shoved her way in between the smooching couple.
Jack lifted his head and smiled into Leah’s dazed eyes. “Your wish is my command, babe.”
Leah smiled up at him dopily. “Wow.”
Ali sighed. “Damn it, now I miss Luke.”
“Didn’t you just see him at lunch?” Aubrey asked her.
“That was hours ago.”
Jack grinned. “You ladies are all looking a little schnockered. Where do you need to go?”
“Ben’s.” Leah pointed to Aubrey. “She needs to tell him something muy importante.”
Aubrey nodded grimly. “Muy importante.”
Jack’s grin widened. “This is going to be fun.”
Aubrey understood the sentiment from his point of view. After all, it hadn’t been all that long ago that Ben and Aubrey had delivered an inebriated Leah to Jack. That the situation was now reversed clearly pleased Jack to no end.
Of course that had turned out great, and this didn’t have a chance in hell of ending anywhere close to great.
Still grinning, Jack offered Aubrey his arm. She took it because she was more than a little off her axis, and not just from the alcohol. Jack loaded her into his car, and Ali and Leah piled in behind her.
“We’re your courage,” Leah said.
“She doesn’t need courage,” Ali said. “She’s kick-ass. She’s made of courage.”
Aubrey felt her heart swell. “Don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t make me cry. I’m mad, and I need to stay mad.”
“This’ll help,” Jack said, and powered all the windows down.
“Hey!” they all protested immediately as freezing air hit them in the face.
“Fresh air will keep you ladies from tossing your cookies in my car,” Jack said. “I hope,” he added under his breath.
Aubrey didn’t say anything, because her buzz was starting to wear off and a case of nerves was setting in.
Leah squeezed her hand. “Screw the nerves. This situation isn’t all your fault.”
Aubrey nodded. It was all her fault, but she was going to go with pretending that it wasn’t, because Leah was right about one thing. The nerves didn’t belong here. She needed to find her mad. After all, she’d honestly been trying to do the right thing by facing her past. Maybe she failed in the delivery, but her heart had been in the right place. She’d needed to do the right thing, because the only way she could be the kind of person she wanted to be now was to acknowledge the person she’d been.
Ben didn’t have that excuse. He was using her screw-up as a reason to hide behind his fears of getting attached again. “I’m a fighter,” she said.
“That’s right,” Ali said.
“I’m going to fight for him.”
“Yeah, you are,” Leah said, and put up her fists, once again nearly hitting herself in the face.
“Careful, Tiger,” Jack said into the rearview mirror. “How much did you all drink?”
“Not enough,” Aubrey said as he parked in front of the duplex. Ben’s truck was in the driveway, and her heart kicked up a notch at the sight of it.
“No eavesdropping,” she said to her posse, and got out of the car.
There in the dark, she stood on the sidewalk a moment, gathering her scattered thoughts. In her peripheral vision, she saw Ali, Leah, and Jack tiptoe into Jack’s house, and she breathed a sigh of relief, grateful there’d be no witnesses for this.
Chin up, she strode to Ben’s front door and knocked.
No response; nothing but a gaping silence.
Aubrey knocked again, with a fist this time, matching the rhythm of her pounding heart.
More silence.
She backed up, to the grass yard. Picking up a small rock, she aimed it at Ben’s upstairs bedroom window, and then heard the little tink that told her she’d hit her mark.
The window opened, and Ben stuck his head out. “What the hell?”
“I want to talk to you,” Aubrey said.
He took this in for a beat. “There’s this newfangled thing called a phone…”
Good point. Why hadn’t she just called him? Her thoughts scattered on the wind. Damn that Scotch, slowing her thought process. “I know it’s late,” she said, craning her neck to try to see him. “But you should know something.”
“That you’ve got a good arm?”
She wished she could see his expression. “I wanted to say that the only way I can be the kind of person I want to be is to acknowledge the person I was.” Her tenuous balance gave way then, and she stumbled back a few steps, nearly toppling over. The damn boots. They didn’t go with Scotch. By the time she looked up to Ben’s window again, he was gone.
“Fine,” she said and crouched low to look for another rock. Not a large one to bean him over the head with—though that had a lot of appeal—but another small one for his window. She wanted to get his attention, not get arrested.
Then, behind her, Ben’s front door opened, and she nearly fell onto her butt. He was wearing a pair of low-slung black knit boxers and nothing else but sheer male perfection. His hair was mussed, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he had a way-past-five-o’clock shadow. Unable to stop herself, she let her gaze run south, over the ripples of his abs, the ridge of his obliques, which were bisected by a trail of dark silky hair that disappeared beneath those deliciously indecent low shorts.
In spite of the frigid air, she felt herself begin to heat from the inside out. She had to swallow hard to keep her heart from jumping right out of her throat. When she finally managed to look into his face again, he arched a dark brow.
And just like that, her temper kicked back in. “I have more to say to you,” she said.
“You’ve been drinking.”
She pointed at him. “Yes.” She paused and tried to gather more of her wayward thoughts. “But that has no bearing on this.”
He said nothing, just leaned against the doorway. He had a scar she’d never noticed before over one pec—one really great pec—and she wondered where he’d gotten it, and if it’d hurt. And if she could kiss it—
“Aubrey,” he said.
She met his gaze. Right. She had things to say. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t sleep with you to make amends. I slept with you because I wanted to.”
He still didn’t say anything, and she pointed at him again. “And you know what? It was your own damn fault. It was those jeans you wear, and the tool belt. It was the size of your hammer!”
From off to the side came a few commingled gasps of shocked laughter, and both Ben and Aubrey turned to look.
Jack’s front window was open, and three faces were pressed up to the screen.
Ali, Leah, and Jack. The Three Stooges, though only two of them were drunk as skunks.
Aubrey narrowed her eyes and shooed them, but no one shooed. “I said no eavesdropping!”
“Jack’s window just happened to be open,” Leah said. “So really, that’s not eavesdropping. At least not technically. Because technically—”
Jack put his hand over her mouth and shut the window, though none of them moved away.
Ben gave them a single hard look, and Jack grinned. But he did lower the shade on the window, leaving them alone.
Ben turned back to Aubrey. “The size of my hammer?”
Yeah…she couldn’t believe she’d said that, either. She opted to try to find the moral high ground and lifted her chin. “You’re missing my point.”
He crossed his arms over the chest that she wanted to lick from the sternum to the edge of his boxers and beyond.