Wrapped in a cozy robe, aromatic pillow warming her aching shoulders. Gentle music filling any silent space between the chatter of her lifelong best friends. Crackling fire in the marble fireplace. Hair-of-the-dog cocktail in hand.
Gillian heaved a huge sigh. She did not have time for all this.
“I know, right?” said Serena, a.k.a. the reason they were all trapped in a spa for the next several hours. “I’m in heaven.”
Gill did not say a single sarcastic thing. It was a challenge to her stressed, overhung brain, but she met it. Instead, she settled deeper into her cushy lounger and took another sip of her peach Bellini, listening as Natalie read more service options off the spa’s menu. Like they hadn’t been over and over them, hadn’t booked their whole day back before Gill’s Thanksgiving break. She pasted a contented smile on her face and closed her eyes. Let everyone assume she was blissed out while they debated lunch. Her racing mind went straight back to grappling with the feedback to her teaching review.
“Everyone say hot stone massage.” Natalie’s bossiest voice indicated it was selfie time. Gill kept her eyes serenely closed, hoisting her glass while showing her teeth.
“Best bachelorette ever,” Serena said, entirely against Nat’s orders. But she was the bride; she could do as she liked.
Gill held her pose.
“Beautiful, great,” someone said. Not Serena, not Natalie, not Rachel. A male someone. “How about now everyone stands in close to your pregnant friend?”
She dropped down her drink and opened her eyes. She was looking directly into a lens. Big, professional camera lens. Strong, firm fingers adjusting it, somehow both restless and sure of their movements. Behind the lens, a shaved head.
The others were laughing now, talking about the expression on her face—how it was priceless, how they hoped the photographer captured it. Personally, she didn’t care one way or another if he had, so long as he wasn’t ….
He was. “Hey, Gillian. Long time.”
Amid her friends gasps of mirth, they peppered her with more questions. You know him? Wait, you didn’t tell me. And how precisely are you two acquainted?
Bunch of nonsense, and she opted not to answer.
“Vic. Hi.”
He wasn’t quite bald, now she was examining him while trying to avoid meeting his eyes. A furze of grey-brown hair sprouted over his shapely head. Barely there, but still one of the significant ways his appearance had changed the past decade. Same intent, wiry frame. Same wide, lush lips. Same open, guileless gaze.
Not the same sex appeal. No. He’d managed to up that by a factor of a thousand or so. And from the glint as he took in how speechless he’d rendered her, he damn well knew it. The jerk.
“So, everyone, this is Victor Anthony. He’s a friend of our pal Jorge, who used to work with me and Dillon? Took the photos at Jorge and Bubba’s wedding, which is like the best rec possible, so of course I booked him for us. He’s going to get a few shots of us this afternoon.” Serena looked positively smug as she introduced Vic to Natalie and Rachel.
He shook their hands before turning to her. “And I’ve met Gilly-Bean.”
Met. Tormented. She was a linguist, she ought to be able to come up with something more original than ‘tomato ta-mah-toe’ to express her ire. But that was Vic all over—such a persistent pest she couldn’t come up with a coherent put-down.
Maybe it was the hangover. Or she was hyper-focused on her tenure committee deadline. Or all the lavender and eucalyptus in the neck pillow tricked her into relaxing the sarcastic part of her thought processes. “He’s a friend of Anton’s.” Vic Anthony and Anton Bellamy—they’d been dubbed the Tony Twins back in elementary school, and never bothered to stop being best pals despite how growing up turned them into such different people. Her baby brother the mechanical engineer who spent half his time in Houston on lucrative contract jobs, the other half globe-trotting doing all that good works stuff that meant every twelfth journalist in the Northern Hemisphere had his contact info. And Victor, who starred in most of the school plays and took all the cast photos, who was always joining then quitting clubs and bouncing between social groups. Everyone loved Vic, but Anton was his only evergreen friend. The one at his side whether they were surrounded by the recycling committee or the improv players or the track team.
Three years, three months, three days. That’s how much older she was than Vic. Anton had calculated that back when he and Vic were almost nine, and she’d told him that since she was three and a half years older than them, they had to stop whining that it was unfair if she got to stay up later than them. God, all those sleepovers, all those times he tagged along on camping trips or when they schlepped to the pool, all the CDs he snuck out of her room trying to convince Anton to care one whit about music, all the nights she had to sit in the carpool line outside the school waiting for them to be released from rehearsal. Starting in middle school, Anton did tech for every play Vic was in, and their parents volunteered her to do pickup as soon as she got her license. Back then, those years and months—but, okay, not the days—added up to a pretty big gulf between them. She spent way too much of her senior year dealing with her little freshman brother and his overactive freshman best friend, but then she was off to college while they, she assumed, found other people to pester. She managed to not see much of Vic when she made it home, other than being dragged to a couple of his plays because Anton just assumed she’d be up for it.
But then, Vic and Anton grew up. Mostly Vic. Anton never changed, studious and clever and inward-facing kid to studious and clever and inward-facing college student. And all these years later, studious and clever and inward-facing man, though she’d admit her brother looked like an actual adult now and not like a perpetually gawky boy.
Vic stopped looking like a kid when he shaved his prematurely grey hair as he emerged from high school. Or maybe it wasn’t the lack of a boyish fringe flopping over his eyes. Maybe it was the way he settled into a stillness he’d never achieved around their dinner table all those years. Or how he stepped extra inches into her personal space over their chitchat during that first college spring break of his.
Whatever it was, those three years and three months and three days hadn’t been much of a divide. Neither had his being her brother’s best friend. Or their clothes. Their clothes hadn’t proved to be any kind of barrier at all, in the end.
They’d run across each other in the decade since their one hot naked night. Of course they had; the Tony Twins were ride or die for each other. They’d never talked about it, though. Never repeated it.
Never been together in a room without Anton.
“Gilly-Bean?” Rachel giggled, which annoyed her. Rachel never used to giggle, not even back when they were all in college. Only around her daughter, but that was inevitable. Little Hannah could make anyone with half a heart giggle. Gillian decided to be dignified and blame this giggle on the pregnancy. After all, the new baby would probably make them all giggle, too, once they got to meet her.
“It’s one of Anton’s annoying names for me. Though come to think of it, he never had annoying names for me before he met Vic.” She glanced back at the man in question, and he was biting his lip like the most guilty of perpetrators.
He shrugged. “So how about that shot? Everyone around Rachel?”
The others just hopped to it, not in the least bothered by Vic’s bossing them around or his clear glee at her discomfiture or his way of looking at her robe-clad self like he was aware of all her nakedness under the terrycloth.
She smoothed down the satin lapels as she rose from her lounge chair, making sure nothing he’d seen before would slip out. He crouched in front of them, acting all oblivious. Like he couldn’t sense her rapid heart rate, the moisture flooding her mouth, the tingling heat at her core.
Well, he’d been a pretty slick actor back in school. No reason to think he’d lost the skill.
No reason to wonder which of his skills might, in the years since that one hot night, have gotten even better.
* * *
He'd drawn up short, seeing her. Had to mess around with his equipment to cover for shaky hands. He wouldn't say trembling. That would be a shudder too far—it was more of a mild spasm, easily controlled as he followed the familiar routine of switching out lenses.
Besides, she didn't notice, blissed out sprawl of stillness that she was. Lost in thought again, for all that she was chipping in to the chatter of her girlfriends. Like that was a surprise. Gillian's brain could multitask like no other.
Not like his. He ripped his eyes off her to pay attention to the bride-to-be, Jorge’s friend. Serena.
Focus, Vic.
His muscle memory kicked in, giving him a chance to catch up with himself. He worked the job. By the time Gillian's eyes snapped open to register his presence—damn straight he captured her fleeting look of outrage and self-consciousness, not that he'd be so rude as to include it in the portfolio—he had every system under control. As long as ‘under control’ could also be defined as ‘reverting to the snarky brattiness of youth.’
Gillian could correct him. She had all the definitions packed into that big brain of hers.
And all the curves tucked into that robe. He didn’t need her help defining those. He could recall them perfectly well. That night, back in college, that was the only time he’d had his hands on her. His mouth. His everything. But it hadn’t been even close to the first time he’d studied her body. Damn, no wonder he’d just reverted to the teen brat, calling her nicknames. Ever since he first noticed girls, and sex, and hormones—a whole world of wide-awake skin and the joyous shock of orgasm—he’d noticed Gillian.
Not like he was unaware of her existence before his puberty turned her into a paragon. Ton’s sister, just another resident of the Bellamy house when he threw himself into it any time he could. Like Mr. and Mrs. B, Gillian was a quick ‘hi’ on their way to Anton’s room, or someone to set a place for at dinnertime, or another person in the world who’d probably notice if a vortex opened up and sucked him into another dimension.
And then she passed him the bread basket one normal Wednesday night, and his skinny boy fingers brushed her purple-nailed hand, and … things happened inside him. Things that made him glad for the neatly-ironed tablecloth and Mr. B’s rambling story about some work crisis saving him from having to speak or meet anyone’s gaze for a good while.
So, yeah, he knew Gill’s curves, no matter how many robes she hid within.
Focus, Vic.
He dug deep to lasso the professional patter, kept his attention on the bride-to-be, ran through the groupings as they moved past the spa pools to their lunch table. It was almost like he was capable of fulfilling his contractural obligations even while he burned to corner Gillian and figure out what kind of chemistry they had when Anton wasn’t on the scene.
Gillian heaved a huge sigh. She did not have time for all this.
“I know, right?” said Serena, a.k.a. the reason they were all trapped in a spa for the next several hours. “I’m in heaven.”
Gill did not say a single sarcastic thing. It was a challenge to her stressed, overhung brain, but she met it. Instead, she settled deeper into her cushy lounger and took another sip of her peach Bellini, listening as Natalie read more service options off the spa’s menu. Like they hadn’t been over and over them, hadn’t booked their whole day back before Gill’s Thanksgiving break. She pasted a contented smile on her face and closed her eyes. Let everyone assume she was blissed out while they debated lunch. Her racing mind went straight back to grappling with the feedback to her teaching review.
“Everyone say hot stone massage.” Natalie’s bossiest voice indicated it was selfie time. Gill kept her eyes serenely closed, hoisting her glass while showing her teeth.
“Best bachelorette ever,” Serena said, entirely against Nat’s orders. But she was the bride; she could do as she liked.
Gill held her pose.
“Beautiful, great,” someone said. Not Serena, not Natalie, not Rachel. A male someone. “How about now everyone stands in close to your pregnant friend?”
She dropped down her drink and opened her eyes. She was looking directly into a lens. Big, professional camera lens. Strong, firm fingers adjusting it, somehow both restless and sure of their movements. Behind the lens, a shaved head.
The others were laughing now, talking about the expression on her face—how it was priceless, how they hoped the photographer captured it. Personally, she didn’t care one way or another if he had, so long as he wasn’t ….
He was. “Hey, Gillian. Long time.”
Amid her friends gasps of mirth, they peppered her with more questions. You know him? Wait, you didn’t tell me. And how precisely are you two acquainted?
Bunch of nonsense, and she opted not to answer.
“Vic. Hi.”
He wasn’t quite bald, now she was examining him while trying to avoid meeting his eyes. A furze of grey-brown hair sprouted over his shapely head. Barely there, but still one of the significant ways his appearance had changed the past decade. Same intent, wiry frame. Same wide, lush lips. Same open, guileless gaze.
Not the same sex appeal. No. He’d managed to up that by a factor of a thousand or so. And from the glint as he took in how speechless he’d rendered her, he damn well knew it. The jerk.
“So, everyone, this is Victor Anthony. He’s a friend of our pal Jorge, who used to work with me and Dillon? Took the photos at Jorge and Bubba’s wedding, which is like the best rec possible, so of course I booked him for us. He’s going to get a few shots of us this afternoon.” Serena looked positively smug as she introduced Vic to Natalie and Rachel.
He shook their hands before turning to her. “And I’ve met Gilly-Bean.”
Met. Tormented. She was a linguist, she ought to be able to come up with something more original than ‘tomato ta-mah-toe’ to express her ire. But that was Vic all over—such a persistent pest she couldn’t come up with a coherent put-down.
Maybe it was the hangover. Or she was hyper-focused on her tenure committee deadline. Or all the lavender and eucalyptus in the neck pillow tricked her into relaxing the sarcastic part of her thought processes. “He’s a friend of Anton’s.” Vic Anthony and Anton Bellamy—they’d been dubbed the Tony Twins back in elementary school, and never bothered to stop being best pals despite how growing up turned them into such different people. Her baby brother the mechanical engineer who spent half his time in Houston on lucrative contract jobs, the other half globe-trotting doing all that good works stuff that meant every twelfth journalist in the Northern Hemisphere had his contact info. And Victor, who starred in most of the school plays and took all the cast photos, who was always joining then quitting clubs and bouncing between social groups. Everyone loved Vic, but Anton was his only evergreen friend. The one at his side whether they were surrounded by the recycling committee or the improv players or the track team.
Three years, three months, three days. That’s how much older she was than Vic. Anton had calculated that back when he and Vic were almost nine, and she’d told him that since she was three and a half years older than them, they had to stop whining that it was unfair if she got to stay up later than them. God, all those sleepovers, all those times he tagged along on camping trips or when they schlepped to the pool, all the CDs he snuck out of her room trying to convince Anton to care one whit about music, all the nights she had to sit in the carpool line outside the school waiting for them to be released from rehearsal. Starting in middle school, Anton did tech for every play Vic was in, and their parents volunteered her to do pickup as soon as she got her license. Back then, those years and months—but, okay, not the days—added up to a pretty big gulf between them. She spent way too much of her senior year dealing with her little freshman brother and his overactive freshman best friend, but then she was off to college while they, she assumed, found other people to pester. She managed to not see much of Vic when she made it home, other than being dragged to a couple of his plays because Anton just assumed she’d be up for it.
But then, Vic and Anton grew up. Mostly Vic. Anton never changed, studious and clever and inward-facing kid to studious and clever and inward-facing college student. And all these years later, studious and clever and inward-facing man, though she’d admit her brother looked like an actual adult now and not like a perpetually gawky boy.
Vic stopped looking like a kid when he shaved his prematurely grey hair as he emerged from high school. Or maybe it wasn’t the lack of a boyish fringe flopping over his eyes. Maybe it was the way he settled into a stillness he’d never achieved around their dinner table all those years. Or how he stepped extra inches into her personal space over their chitchat during that first college spring break of his.
Whatever it was, those three years and three months and three days hadn’t been much of a divide. Neither had his being her brother’s best friend. Or their clothes. Their clothes hadn’t proved to be any kind of barrier at all, in the end.
They’d run across each other in the decade since their one hot naked night. Of course they had; the Tony Twins were ride or die for each other. They’d never talked about it, though. Never repeated it.
Never been together in a room without Anton.
“Gilly-Bean?” Rachel giggled, which annoyed her. Rachel never used to giggle, not even back when they were all in college. Only around her daughter, but that was inevitable. Little Hannah could make anyone with half a heart giggle. Gillian decided to be dignified and blame this giggle on the pregnancy. After all, the new baby would probably make them all giggle, too, once they got to meet her.
“It’s one of Anton’s annoying names for me. Though come to think of it, he never had annoying names for me before he met Vic.” She glanced back at the man in question, and he was biting his lip like the most guilty of perpetrators.
He shrugged. “So how about that shot? Everyone around Rachel?”
The others just hopped to it, not in the least bothered by Vic’s bossing them around or his clear glee at her discomfiture or his way of looking at her robe-clad self like he was aware of all her nakedness under the terrycloth.
She smoothed down the satin lapels as she rose from her lounge chair, making sure nothing he’d seen before would slip out. He crouched in front of them, acting all oblivious. Like he couldn’t sense her rapid heart rate, the moisture flooding her mouth, the tingling heat at her core.
Well, he’d been a pretty slick actor back in school. No reason to think he’d lost the skill.
No reason to wonder which of his skills might, in the years since that one hot night, have gotten even better.
* * *
He'd drawn up short, seeing her. Had to mess around with his equipment to cover for shaky hands. He wouldn't say trembling. That would be a shudder too far—it was more of a mild spasm, easily controlled as he followed the familiar routine of switching out lenses.
Besides, she didn't notice, blissed out sprawl of stillness that she was. Lost in thought again, for all that she was chipping in to the chatter of her girlfriends. Like that was a surprise. Gillian's brain could multitask like no other.
Not like his. He ripped his eyes off her to pay attention to the bride-to-be, Jorge’s friend. Serena.
Focus, Vic.
His muscle memory kicked in, giving him a chance to catch up with himself. He worked the job. By the time Gillian's eyes snapped open to register his presence—damn straight he captured her fleeting look of outrage and self-consciousness, not that he'd be so rude as to include it in the portfolio—he had every system under control. As long as ‘under control’ could also be defined as ‘reverting to the snarky brattiness of youth.’
Gillian could correct him. She had all the definitions packed into that big brain of hers.
And all the curves tucked into that robe. He didn’t need her help defining those. He could recall them perfectly well. That night, back in college, that was the only time he’d had his hands on her. His mouth. His everything. But it hadn’t been even close to the first time he’d studied her body. Damn, no wonder he’d just reverted to the teen brat, calling her nicknames. Ever since he first noticed girls, and sex, and hormones—a whole world of wide-awake skin and the joyous shock of orgasm—he’d noticed Gillian.
Not like he was unaware of her existence before his puberty turned her into a paragon. Ton’s sister, just another resident of the Bellamy house when he threw himself into it any time he could. Like Mr. and Mrs. B, Gillian was a quick ‘hi’ on their way to Anton’s room, or someone to set a place for at dinnertime, or another person in the world who’d probably notice if a vortex opened up and sucked him into another dimension.
And then she passed him the bread basket one normal Wednesday night, and his skinny boy fingers brushed her purple-nailed hand, and … things happened inside him. Things that made him glad for the neatly-ironed tablecloth and Mr. B’s rambling story about some work crisis saving him from having to speak or meet anyone’s gaze for a good while.
So, yeah, he knew Gill’s curves, no matter how many robes she hid within.
Focus, Vic.
He dug deep to lasso the professional patter, kept his attention on the bride-to-be, ran through the groupings as they moved past the spa pools to their lunch table. It was almost like he was capable of fulfilling his contractural obligations even while he burned to corner Gillian and figure out what kind of chemistry they had when Anton wasn’t on the scene.