Page 5 of Only and Forever
I was insecure. I was just turning the corner from a gangly teen with braces, too lanky to fit the deep voice that had taken hold of my body. I’d started to feel like I was finally a little more put together—my body filling in from playing soccer and eating my way through the pantry, my braces finally off, a flattering haircut. College was poised to be even better than high school—I wouldn’t be just an entertaining, albeit fairly intelligent, goofball; I’d be respected, admired, appreciated.
Tallulah swiftly took a crap on that.
So I shut up and kept to myself and stewed and pined and stewed some more. Days became weeks, as I wrestled with what the hell was happening to me. I’d never seen someone and felt my chest tighten, my belly do this disconcerting flip-flop, let alone someone who quickly made it clear she thought she was better than me and my countless questions in our shared lit class, the Austen novels I couldn’t stop reading and rereading, sensing something in them, searching for something more that I couldn’t put my finger on. I didn’t know what it meant, the way Tallulah made me feel. Until fall break, when my family made a long-weekend trip up to the A-frame, where I was poking around its bookshelves. I yankedout a small, worn mass-market paperback historical romance, and the back copy caught my eye.
Loathing. Lust. Unrequited, burning desire.
Burning. Desire.
Those were words I’d been struggling to find, feelings I hadn’t known how to identify. I picked up the book, turned it over, dropped to the floor, sat with my back to the bookshelves, and started reading.
That was my first romance novel. A historical romance that bore out on page what Austen often told in a few sentences or glossed over entirely. Heartrending confessions of adoration, intimate lovemaking, dramatic duels, kisses that lasted paragraphs and left my body hot all over. I devoured it, desperate to make sense of the wild power that a silent, chilly girl had over me. And I never looked back. I’ve been reading romance novels ever since.
“Viggo.” Ziggy frowns at me as I rearrange myself, trying for a nonchalant lean against the chair, which wobbles again ominously before I ease off it. “What,” she whispers out of the side of her mouth, “is wrong with you?”
I watch Mom hand my nephew Theo to Dad, then approach Tallulah as she smiles warmly, opening her arms for an embrace that Tallulah gingerly steps into.
“Wrong? With me? Nothing. Just tipped in my chair. Gave myself a little scare. Heh, I rhymed. Look at me, the poet.”
Ziggy arches an auburn eyebrow. “You’re acting so weird. And you keep staring at Tallulah.” My sister tips her head, assessing me. “You’ve never met her before, right?”
My family has no clue I had class in college with Tallulah. I wasn’t about to go waltzing to family dinner on Sunday and announce that the woman I was having nightly filthy dreams about wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence.
And then I left school after that semester, this antsy feelingthat I wasn’t where I was supposed to be tugging me toward something else, even though I didn’t know what that was. Ziggy doesn’t know about my equal parts interest in and resentment of her best friend’s big sister because I’ve kept that embarrassment to myself. No one in my family knows, either. I made sure of that.
Thank God. Because, after my track record of—with the most loving and benevolent intentions, I might add—pushing and nudging my siblings into their romantic happily ever afters, they’d be all too ready to push me right into mine.
Relief buoys me up. My family doesn’t know. I’m safe. And I have only one greater consolation than my family’s ignorance of my long-ago crush on Tallulah: Tallulah’s ignorance.
Because if she knew, this favor I’m about to do for Charlie would take it to a whole new level of humiliation.
Tallulah’s eyes meet mine as she peers over my mom’s shoulder. She frowns as she catches me staring at her again. I cover my blunder, flash her a playful, winking smile. The frown deepens.
Perfect.
I know how to keep it breezy, make things light. That’s my bread and butter—deflect with hijinks and humor, divert with glib goofiness. I’ve done it for so long, it comes as easy as breathing. Tallulah might have put me down with that arctic front, back in freshman year of college, but not now. I’ll make it playful, keep it fun. It’s a godsend in a way—with Charlie’s favor guiding me, I have a plan, a strategy to cope with being around Tallulah again.
“Viggo.” Ziggy elbows me. “Seriously, what’s going on with you?”
“Nothing!” I smile Ziggy’s way, hiding everything I’m desperate for her not to see. “I’m just being a hospitable Bergman.”
My sister’s eyes narrow suspiciously.
I’m saved from any further possible inquisition as she turns toward the table where Seb’s messing with her tiles and gives him a heated warning look.
Seb grins at Ziggy, but then his gaze slips past her as she starts arguing with Oliver about ending the Scrabble game in favor of making s’mores outside, and I’m not so sure I’m clear of further inquisitions after all.
Slowly, Seb stands and makes a pretense of leaning over the board, cleaning up tiles as Ziggy relents to Scrabble ending. “What’s that woman to you?” he asks quietly.
I bend and scoop up tiles, too, shimmying them to the crease in the middle of the board as Seb lifts the bag for me to empty them into. “Nothing.”
He snorts. “Bullshit.”
“I’m serious,” I tell him sharply.
Seb peers up at me, eyes holding mine. “Sure. But when you’re ready to walk what you so eloquently talk, you giant hypocrite, I’ll be here.”
And with that, he turns, tugs my sister his way by the waist, and strolls with her out onto the back deck, in the mass exodus of my family.