Page 19 of Made For You

“Calm. It was a gorgeous day.”

I don’t know what to say to her, and it looks like she’s uncomfortable also. She puts the half-drunk bottle of beer down on the table and looks down at Beatrice. “I’m going to go now, pretty girl.” She gets up, and Beatrice just looks at her. “Thank you for the beer.” She points at the bottle on the table. “I’m going to head out. Spending the day with my family is exhausting,” she says, and I wonder if I should get up and walk her to her boat, but my body feels like cement.

“They looked like they were having fun,” I say of her family. I spent way too much time googling and then trying not to think about it.

“They did.” She chuckles. “My father thought he recognized you.” The minute she says the words, my whole body goes tight. The burning sensation starts to climb up the back of my neck. My stomach contracts, and then the lump starts to form in my throat. My ears suddenly fill with the sound of my heart beating ridiculously fast. My hands start to get clammy. “Don’t worry, he thinks he knows everyone.” She gets on her boat, giving me one last smile before she walks in and shuts the door.

I bring the bottle to my mouth, taking a sip of the cold water, hoping to everything I don’t throw it up on the back deck. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I get up and grab the bottle of beer before walking back into the boat. I pour the remainder of the beer down the drain and hang my head. “Do you think they knew who I was?” I look over at Beatrice, who has come to sit in the middle of the kitchen, probably waiting for her dinner.

I fill her bowl with food and then start closing the boat up. When I’m on the water, I always open the back sliding doors so I can see out the whole way. I go upstairs to the top, zipping up the curtains in case it rains. When I come down, I close up the back of the boat, securing the doors in place. “Want to go for a walk?” I ask Beatrice, who wags her tail.

I grab the leash, heading out, and I make the mistake of looking in her boat as I walk by. I see her silhouette sitting at the table as she talks on the phone. “Can I be more creepy?” I ask Beatrice as I quickly turn around to walk ahead. “All that is missing is me pressing my face to the glass looking in.” I shake my head, walking out of the gate. I don’t talk the whole time we walk and stay out as long as I can. Only going back when my stomach starts to growl.

When I walk back to the boat, I force myself not to look around. Getting onto the boat, I take off my shoes before walking in and going to grab one of the prepared meals I have made for myself, heating it up.

When I sit down, I look at Beatrice. “Her father recognized me,” I tell Beatrice. “Do you think I should have told her who I was?”

She sniffs the table while I continue talking to her. “What do you think I should have done? Like, if I was going to tell her who I was, that was the perfect opportunity.”

I take a bite of the chicken with some couscous. “I don’t owe her anything.” I try to convince myself. “She didn’t even ask me why I wasn’t drinking,” I huff. “Not once did she pry. Even when I asked her if she was going to ask me why, she still said no.” I shrug. “It’s just as well.”

Getting up, I walk over to the kitchen, washing up and tossing out my stuff. I grab my laptop, opening it when I sit on the couch, and come face-to-face with Matthew Grant staring at me. “Okay, got to erase my history,” I say, going up and deleting all history and then shutting down the laptop. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll be cordial, and it ends there. If her father comes back and recognizes me, then so be it. I’ll confirm who I am.” I look at Beatrice who lies down in the middle of the room sideways. “You think she’d be pissed I didn’t tell her?”

I rub my hands over my face. “I don’t care. I’ve spent way too much time even thinking about her,” I gruff out, standing. “I’m going to take a shower.” I walk down to my room, undressing on the way. The shower is quick, and when I get into bed, I reach for the book but not even that settles me. When I finally turn off the lights, I lie down on my pillow. “You need to either tell her or be okay that you didn’t,” I tell myself. “Which one is it going to be?”

CHAPTER13

VIVIENNE

The soft alarmfills the room, and I groan, reaching for my phone under the pillow where I always put it, but my hand comes up empty. I peek open one eye, but it’s completely dark. My eyes try to get used to the dark, but instead, they just close again. My hand moves around the bed for the phone, but I can’t find it. I sit up in bed, listening and finally realizing I left the phone on the table in the galley. “Great,” I mumble, walking to the table and stepping on the step to get it. I turn off the alarm and look up to see Xavier walking by the boat with a cup of coffee in his hand and Beatrice next to him.

I watch him until I can’t see him anymore before turning and wondering if I should go back to bed. Instead of climbing back into bed, I walk over and start my coffee before heading to the bathroom. I slip on a pair of shorts and walk back out to the coffee machine making my coffee. “Are you going to go outside and watch the sunrise?” I ask myself when I feel a ball of nervousness hit my stomach. “Are you going to go outside and maybe see him?”

I shake my head. Last night, sitting down with him at the table while I drank a beer had been the most nervous I’d ever been around a man before in my life. The minute he sat down and I looked at him finally, which was weird since I’ve seen him before but never that close. His hair is a bit lighter than brown, maybe because of the sun and the scruff on his face is longer than it looks. His eyes look brown from afar, but when you get close, you can see they aren’t. I couldn’t even tell you what color they were. It’s so strange because they are brown in the center and blue gray around the pupil. Sometimes they looked gray, while other times, they looked brown. I tried not to stare too long, which made me even more self-conscious about not staring and that made me itch to leave. I must have sounded so rude when I just up and left in the middle of the conversation. I sit at the table, turning on the television as I enjoy my coffee.

The phone beeps, and I reach for it, seeing that it’s Franny.

Are you up?

I laugh at her message, and instead, I press the FaceTime button. I look at the clock and see it’s not even five her time. She answers right away. “Well, well,” I say, looking at her sitting on her couch with Stella in the middle of her legs. “Look who it is, Stella Bella.” She just laughs at me as she waves her hands in the air. “Thanks for calling me right back last night,” I tell Franny, who has a cup of coffee in her hand. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t in trouble.”

Franny throws her head back and laughs at the top of her lungs. “If you were in trouble, why would you call me? I live in Dallas.” I roll my eyes. “If anything, you would have called Auntie Vivi, who would have then called Stefano, who would have then bailed you out.”

“Wow, so that’s how it goes,” I say, taking a sip of my own coffee.

“We got in later than we thought,” she huffs. “Then I got home, and this girl just wanted her mama.” She kisses Stella’s head, hugging her. “I fell asleep before her in my bed. Anyway, I’m here now.” She smiles. “So what was the big question you wanted to ask me?” Franny asks, and I tap my nails on the cup in my hand. “Oh my gosh.” She sits up. “The nervous tap-tap-tap of nails.” She looks into the phone. “Should I call Wilson to take Stella?” Her eyes go big. “Is this a sex question?” She puts down her cup of coffee and claps her hands, Stella copying her.

“It’s not a sex question,” I inform her. “It’s not even that big of a deal—”

“You called me for advice,” Franny cuts me off. “If that isn’t a big deal, I don’t know what is.” She chuckles. “You never call me for advice. The only thing you call me for is to ask if you can stay with me when you come to Dallas.”

It’s my turn to laugh now. “I call you for more than that,” I protest, and she shakes her head. “Anyway, so you know my neighbor?” I start to say. The lump forms in my throat, and I push it down.

“The one Dad spent half the day saying he knew but didn’t?” Franny laughs. “Then it got Cooper saying, ‘I think I know him, too.’ You should have heard them the whole fucking flight. Mom finally snapped and shut them both up.”

“Yeah, him.” I ignore the fact they were talking about him, even when they left. “Well, he came back from wherever he went, and I helped tie his boat.”

“Oh my God, you fucked him.” She gasps and then puts her hands on Stella’s ears. “Don’t listen to this part. Your aunt Vivi is a dirty, dirty girl.”

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