The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren

 

“She didn’t come out and say it was all you from the start,” Kurt says, reading over my shoulder.

I close the magazine and tuck it under a stack of papers on the kitchen counter so that Melly’s photo—soft makeup, contrite smile, down-home plaid flannel—doesn’t just sit there, making me wonder how much of that was real and how much was Melly being a brilliant, calculating business-woman. My throat feels tight, like something is lodged there high up, making it hard to breathe or swallow.

I realize the situation was totally messed up, but even after everything, I didn’t think I would take Melly’s disgrace quite this hard.

“This is enough,” I tell him. Frankly, she gave me more credit than I ever let myself imagine. “This is good.”

Now I want the entire world for Carey.

Whether she means it or not, the words are there in stark black and white. The baton, being so cleanly passed, makes me feel both empowered and overwhelmed. On the one hand, I could call Ted, send him some of my sketches, and see if he knows anyone who wants to see this particular phoenix rising from these ashes. But on the other hand, although I love designing, I don’t want to be the next Melissa Tripp. Of all of us, Melly was the only one who ever wanted the world. The rest of us just want our small share of contentment.

And I’m slowly working on mine. It’s been six weeks since the fire, and my life doesn’t look anything like it did that night.

For one, I got the hell out of Wyoming for a while: the first thing I did when the police dismissed me was take my own trip to Hawaii … the following day. I left the police station, took a cab to a hotel in Laramie, booked my trip, and then slept for almost fifteen hours straight. When I woke up, I had four missed calls from James, two from Melly, and one from Rusty. I sent Melly a text letting her know I would send a formal resignation soon, and then left for the airport.

Five days and four nights in Kauai, and after arriving and sleeping for ten solid hours, I had no idea what to do with myself. I only read half a book. I took a lot of naps. I went for long walks, and then came back to the resort and was generally bored out of my mind. I realized I have no idea how to unwind because I hadn’t had two consecutive days off in a decade.

You’d think with all that time on my hands, I’d spend some of it thinking about Melly and Rusty. You’d assume I’d take some time to process everything that happened with James. But it was like a brick wall went up, and every time I tried to bring forward the chaos of the previous week, some protective instinct would kick in and I’d literally fall asleep. On the chaise by the pool. In the chair on my balcony. Once even at the table in the hotel restaurant.

When I got home, I immediately wanted to turn around and head back to the airport. I didn’t know if I was stressed about returning to Jackson, stressed because the emotional untangling was still ahead of me, or stressed about facing the blank page of my professional future, but all of those thoughts made me want to vomit. I upped my therapy schedule to twice a week.

Debbie told me to make a list of all the things I want—to focus on making plans rather than beating myself up about the past—and to start finding a way to make each of them happen. Some would be easier than others, she said. Some would take more time. The goal, of course, is to just keep working on making my life what I want it to be.

So, a week later, with a “bonus” from my work on New Spaces, I bought a house.

It’s better than anything I ever pictured myself living in, let alone owning—a beautiful wooden three-bedroom house in Alpine, just outside Jackson. It has green shutters, a sharp A-frame structure, and a long gravel driveway off a small country road. My closest neighbor is a quarter mile away. Out back there’s a wide porch, and a creek big enough to swim in is only fifty feet down a steep grade. I love it more than I think I’ve ever loved anything in my life.

Debbie did her best to congratulate my impulsive purchase and not look like she was questioning every bit of advice she’d ever given.

Contentment comes in a trickle, though. It’s like a faucet dripping; slowly, my bucket is filling. I talk about Melly and Rusty a lot in therapy. I’ve started a tradition of Sunday dinners with Kurt, Peyton, and Annabeth. Sometimes Rand comes, if he can peel his backside from the bar and come drink beer at my house instead. Sometimes Kurt’s best friend, Mike, comes, too. I’m no James in the kitchen: I make spaghetti or tacos, and no one ever complains that we eat my shitty cooking on folding chairs in an empty dining room. The irony of my life at the moment is my complete inability to decorate my own home.

I’ve met with a financial planner who told me I have enough saved for private insurance premiums and treatment and can take a year to figure things out and still be fine. I don’t want to take a year to figure things out, but I don’t know what I want to do, either. I’m slowly building those personal connections I’ve been missing—and although I don’t want to date Mike like I think Kurt hopes I will, I can actually imagine a life where dating would be possible. Meaning, I have time to myself. Turns out I like to sleep in, stay up late, exercise midday, and sketch over my morning coffee. Turns out my hands do much better on this schedule, too.

But every time I start to think about a career, I get that drowning feeling of stress rising inside my chest, so I push it aside. My first instinct is to call James to talk it out, but for obvious reasons I haven’t. Instead, I call Kurt, or Peyton, or Annabeth, and we go for a hike, or they come over and we sit on the floor in my living room and do nothing but look out at the view of the thick, craggy trees and jagged mountains.

I might not be ready to think about work, but after three weeks of doubled-up sessions with Debbie, I sure think about James all the time. I think about his voice, and the way his eyes clocked nearly every one of my movements—with interest and, later, adoration. I think about his ambition and his brain and wonder what he’s doing now that Comb+Honey has effectively dissolved. I think about how easy he was to talk to, and how I wish I had that with someone else.

Sometimes I think maybe I’ll find it if I just keep looking, but part of me knows that what we had was a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I’m lucky to have had it at all. I think about his laugh, and his sounds, and yeah, I think a lot about his body, especially at night. But I also think about what happened at the very end, what sort of bullshit nontrust we had if he could listen to all of my truths but couldn’t tell me that he’d found a stairway to the top and was happy to leave me on the ground floor.

He left the police station at some point that day, I’m sure, but I don’t know if it was before or after me, because I didn’t see him after my interview. I didn’t see any of them. No one was charged with a crime. I assume the Tripps paid for the enormous damages the fire had caused, and the whole thing was swept under the rug.

By now, my brother correctly interprets my lost-in-space expression. “Is James coming tonight?”

I stall. “What?”

Kurt looks across the dining room. Though I have them over regularly, I’m attempting an actual cocktail party and have managed quite a spread: cheese plates, veggie trays, and assorted drinks. They’re arranged on the lone piece of furniture there—an enormous handmade table delivered by Rusty himself two days ago. He brought it to the door unannounced, with two burly examples of Wyoming’s finest behind him holding the mammoth piece. There was a novel’s worth of words to share—about the fire, how were they doing, was Melly really searching for the girl she used to be, were they staying married—but our interaction was characteristically simple:

“Hey, Russ.”

“Hey, kiddo.”

They set the table by the giant window in the dining room, the one that overlooks the downslope of a hill carpeted in green conifers. With a kiss to my forehead and a simple “Been thinkin’ ’bout you,” he left, and my heart seemed too big for my body.

The walnut gleams in the late-afternoon sun; the top is the most beautiful cross-section of wood I’ve ever seen, with vibrant striations in golds, reds, and deep browns. I was with him when he found it at a lumberyard in Casper, nearly five years ago. I remember standing there with him, staring at the slab of lumber, wondering if we were trying to create the same thing in our head—a piece worthy of it.

He’s had so many chances to transform it into something breathtaking for the entire world to see on television, but that’s Rusty, I guess: waiting for the perfect reason to use it. Never rushing and never caring about impressing anyone. Because I know he used to love to hide messages, I knew to look: on the underside, the words We love you, Carey-girl are inscribed in Rusty’s unmistakable carving style.

Kurt rephrases the question to bring my attention back: “Was James invited?”

“No—what? No.” I chew my lip, ignoring my brother’s pressing gaze. I’d much rather let my mind wander than discuss the party I somehow decided I was ready to host.

I’ve planned a lot of cocktail hours. You’d think I’d have this down to a science, but my stomach is a rolling boil of nerves. I wonder if it’s a good sign that my first reaction to the thought of having James here is a pulse of relief because I know he would step up without question and help. But the truth is … “I’m not even sure he’s around here anymore.”

With these words, my relief is doused with a flush of dread. What if I’m right? After all this work I’ve done to process things in sessions with Debbie, have I missed the real window to talk to James about what happened?

I think my brother might be setting up to drop some wisdom, but he just lets out a “Huh,” scratches his belly, and heads to the kitchen.

 

Peyton and Annabeth arrive at six exactly—I get the feeling they were sitting in their car, excitedly waiting for the hour to turn over. I’m a lucky woman, I think. Then immediately: At twenty-six, that might be the first time I thought of myself as a woman.

Annabeth bursts inside, pulling me into a hug. Peyton waits a few beats for Annabeth to let go and finally just makes do with putting her arms around both of us. I notice they’ve brought gifts: flowers, a set of wineglasses, and a tablecloth—none of which they bothered to wrap. And now I feel both lucky and tragic, because my two friends just saw me two days ago and here they are, embracing me with a tight, lingering warmth that tells me they weren’t sure I’d ever be in my own place, throwing a party.

“Okay, everyone,” I say into Annabeth’s shoulder, “I’m getting the sense that you were starting to worry about me.”

With a laugh that doesn’t dispute this, they step back and look around expectantly. I’m grateful they don’t point out that I have made very little progress on the décor, even for the sake of a party.

Kurt emerges from the kitchen and hands them their preferred drinks: a gin and tonic for Peyton, and a pilsner for Annabeth. With mumbled thanks, they each take a sip and silence swallows us.

For a tiny beat, I miss Melly’s exuberant hostessing skills.

“It occurs to me that I have more liquor bottles than furniture,” I say to no one in particular.

“And you’re not even really a drinker,” Peyton says.

“You’d think for someone with a design background, decorating your own house would be the fun part.” Annabeth looks at me. “And yet.”

“And yet,” I agree.

“Why do I get the sense that you’re dreading it?”

I shrug, even though the answer isn’t really a mystery. “I only ever had a bedroom to furnish and was never there to enjoy it anyway. This feels … bigger.”

“It is big, but it’s so bright,” Peyton says. “This would be my dream home.”

Because I don’t want to start the party off with an admission that, until recently, I didn’t really have dreams of my own, I say, “I have to figure out what’s next, I guess. Design-wise. Life-wise.” I move closer to the window and feel them follow. The four of us look out over the steep grade of the mountain. I love the craggy rocks and the way the trees struggle up through the unforgiving earth. There’s something creative in there, pushing itself into formation; the rich woods and modern lines that used to inspire me no longer get my brain buzzing. But these rocks do.

“Do I want it to look the way all my stuff has looked for the past ten years?” I ask the view. “Or is there a new style waiting to come out of my brain?”

“In case anyone is wondering,” Kurt says pointedly to my friends, “James isn’t coming.”

I turn to stare at him. “Well, that was random. Thanks.”

Annabeth’s dark eyes turn to me. “You didn’t invite James?”

“I don’t even know if he’s around anymore,” I say.

“He is.” Peyton sips her drink.

I gape at her. “How do you know that?”

“Saw him,” she says. Her casual shrug is totally maddening.

“How do you even know what he looks like?”

“Adorable lanky guy wearing glasses and a tailored suit? Yeah, he’s pretty easy to spot around here.”

I wait for more, but it’s like maneuvering a boulder up a hill with these assholes. “Where did you see him?”

She swallows another sip. “Grocery store.”

Their silence is the stony judgment of Mount Rushmore, and their faces are the expression equivalent of whistling innocently. I have no trouble at all imagining James doing his grocery shopping in a suit.

My pulse picks up, heavy and annoyed in my throat. “Why would I invite him?” I ask.

Peyton and Annabeth exchange a look with Kurt, who just shrugs and tilts his beer to his lips. I want to punch him for the first time since I was thirteen.

“Seriously, tell me why I should have invited him.”

“Because you like him.” Kurt’s voice echoes inside the bottle.

“I liked him, yeah.” I look between the three of them. “But did y’all miss the part where he—”

“Where he fucked up and tried to explain to you what happened, and you wouldn’t answer his calls?” Kurt asks, meeting my eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say sharply, “is my newfound self-preservation making you uncomfortable?”

He looks immediately remorseful. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean you gave Melly a decade of bad behavior, and I hear you talking to her almost every day, but James doesn’t even get a text message?”

This feels like a shove, and I know he can tell because his face does that pinched thing he does when he’s trying to look casual, like he’s squinting out to the horizon, but the horizon here is the bare living room wall five feet away, and there’s nothing there to study.

“You think I should have invited James?” I ask quietly.

I get three Yeahs in unison.

I feel a little like the way I used to when I’d dump out a bin full of Lincoln Logs, both overwhelmed and excited—except this is my life, with all these pieces to choose from, and I’m not sure what shape I even want to build.

“Okay, well, I didn’t.” I turn back from the window and point to the spread of food on the other side of the room. “Eat something and stop judging me.”

This party already sucks and it just started. Maybe some music will help.

My stereo sits in the dining room on a low, plain coffee table I found at a yard sale. I’ve taken two steps toward it when the doorbell rings.

“Someone go let Mike in,” I say. “I’m gonna put on some music.”

“I’ll pick the music,” Annabeth says, jogging over. “You go get the door.”

I stare at her for a beat, on the verge of asking what the hell is up with all of them, but Kurt raises his beer across the room, eyebrows up like, Go.

“It’s Mike, Kurt. He can let himself in.”

He throws the next words at me with a grin. “Or, maybe it’s James.”

“Why on earth would it be—”

“Because Peyton invited him,” Annabeth says, and chases this bombshell with an evil giggle.

My stomach falls, and I look over at Peyton. “You didn’t.”

This makes my jerk friend laugh. “No, you didn’t.” She lifts her chin to the door. “But I sure as hell did.”

 

My feet are bricks. It takes me a week to get to the door, and another two days to open it.

The sun is behind him, casting his long shadow across the tiles of my entryway. Because he’s backlit, I can’t see his face. But then he shifts, blocking the sun from my face, and comes into focus. Glasses. No dress shirt here; a T-shirt stretches across his chest. Jeans hang low on his hips. My eyes sink lower. Sneakers.

“Hi,” he says, and I realize how long I just spent taking him in.

“Hi,” I say.

He blinks, looking at my mouth for only a second, but the movement is obvious enough to give me the idea, too. And then I’m staring—at that full bottom lip, the one I want to pull into my own mouth and suck on like candy.

“Your place is really nice,” the mouth says. “At least from the outside.”

I pull my attention back to his eyes. “Do you want to come in?”

He’s holding a bouquet of irises. “Sure.”

I stand back, letting him walk in ahead of me. Conveniently, everyone else has disappeared into the kitchen. I’m sure James can hear their excited whispering, too.

“Wow,” he says, taking it all in, but only for a few seconds before his eyes are back on me. “These are for you.”

He presses the flowers into my palm, and then holds on for a couple of seconds, squeezing. He’s so warm. His hand falls back to his side, and he looks around again. Good thing, too, because it means he won’t see the goose bumps all down my arms.

“You actually bought a house,” he says, eyebrows raised.

“It was a weird day,” I admit. “I jogged past it, called the Realtor, and then just made an offer on the spot.”

“Wow,” he says again, and I can’t really blame him because I’m not sure what else he can say, other than Have you completely lost your mind? My answer would be Maybe. But having him here gives me the sense of my feet gently hitting the ground.

“It’s empty,” I say self-consciously.

“Still figuring it out?”

“Yeah.” I hear how emotion pushes its way into the single word, making it wobble. His was a simple question, but filled with enormous understanding. Classic James. “Taking some time.”

He nods and sinks one of those perfect teeth into his lip, biting back a smile.

“Actually,” I say, “I made a list.”

“A list?” James leaves the rest unsaid: After working for Melly, how can you ever want to see a list again?

“I made it in therapy. It’s for me. It’s a good list.”

And his expression clears in understanding. He knows I’ve been seeing Debbie for a while now, but I wonder how the reminder feels here, knowing that I’ve been talking it all out with someone else while he’s gotten nothing but silence. “It’s a list of the things I want my life to have.”

His eyebrows remain raised in interest, so I barrel on. “A house, believe it or not, seemed the easiest to obtain.”

I can tell he doesn’t like this answer. “What else was on it?”

I dodge this one. “What are you up to?”

He shrugs, sliding a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. The waistband dips, exposing a brief flash of skin, and it makes my mouth water. “Rusty got me connected to a few guys down at city hall.”

“In Jackson?”

James nods.

“In civic engineering?”

He nods again, blinks to my mouth, and quickly looks away.

I want to feel the sweet warmth of his hands on me. I want to admit to him that at the top of my list was a relationship that felt like the perfect combination of safe haven and dirty fun.

“Do you like it?” I ask when he seems unable to produce words on his own.

“It’s okay. It’s not the most exciting job, but I guess I’m still figuring things out, too.” A beat of quiet and then, “I wasn’t ready to leave town yet.”

“Jackson is growing on you, then?” I grin.

“I guess.” He pauses, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I think it’s more that I love you, and I don’t want to be far away from where you are.”

The floor falls away. Voices in the kitchen peter out to nothing.

It takes enormous effort to swallow before asking, “What?”

James shifts on his feet, unsure. “Do you need me to say it again, or are you just surprised?”

“Both,” I croak.

This makes him smile. “Okay, well, I’ll say it again then: I wasn’t ready to give up on this. When it came to finding another job, I wanted something local. Rusty helped.” He takes a step closer. “Is that okay?”

I’m staring at his mouth again. I nod, stunned by how fast this is happening, how easy it still is.

Slowly, he bends, and his smile comes closer to mine. “You don’t mind that I’m still in Jackson?”

I shake my head. “The other thing you said, though …”

He laughs, and his warm breath touches my mouth. “Oh, the ‘I love you’ part?”

“Yeah. That part.”

“You like that part?”

A wave of longing fills me, so gigantic that I feel dizzy again. “Yes.”

The smile disappears and his lips part, mesmerizing. “Carey?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the deal I had with Ted.”

I blink back into focus, remembering that, no matter how edible his lips look, this issue is still a barricade to tasting them. It is moving too fast. “Yeah, that wasn’t great.”

Kurt was right: I did forgive Melly over and over. But I’m trying to take better care of myself now.

James straightens. “It sounds like an excuse, but I do want you to know that I’d always planned to tell you. I advocated for you with him, too.”

“But how weird is that?” I ask. “That I’m there for a decade, you’re there for two months and can put in a good word for me with Ted? It doesn’t just feel sexist and classist, it reminds me how small Melly kept me all those years. And you went and did the same thing.”

I see the impact of my words, because his shoulders pitch forward, chest shifts back, like he’s been physically pushed. “Yeah. I know.” He takes a few deep breaths to put himself together and finally takes another determined step closer. He’s only inches away from me again. Kissing distance. When he reaches down, the warmth of his hand engulfs mine.

“It’s no excuse, but I was desperate and caught off guard when he called,” he says. “You’d disappeared from my bed, then essentially told me we were over. I know we were both in self-preservation mode—the whole situation was a mess.” He absently massages my fingers when he feels them begin to cramp. “But I regret how I handled it. And, for what it’s worth, I think you’re brilliant. I don’t care if you want to stay in this town the rest of your life. I don’t care what you decide you want to do. The only thing that matters to me is that I have a chance with you.”

My stupid attention has snagged on those stupid lips again.

“Carey?” the lips say. They go still, and then they twist into a tiny, knowing smile, and James waits until I look up again. “Do I have a chance with you?”

Ideally I’d make him work a little more for it. Realistically, I give him the most unequivocal nod of my lifetime.

He lets out a relieved laugh. “Holy shit, can I kiss you now?”

I don’t answer aloud. Instead I stretch, sliding a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down to me. Beneath my palm, his skin is warm. When his smile touches mine, it’s achingly sweet, but for only a breath, because relief is a consuming thing, and mine sends me down this razor-sharp line between sobbing that I nearly lost him and crying out in joy that he’s here.

To think I forgot the precise feel of this, the perfect mechanics of his kiss. The memories I cherished were such a sad, pale rendering of the reality. He’s so assured this way, pulling me tight to him, bending to come back to me from a better angle, right here in the foyer of my new house.

My hand holding the bouquet clenches tight and, in a stiff spasm, releases. The irises tumble to the floor and for a second I dread that it’s going to break the moment—that he’ll bend to pick them up and suggest we find somewhere to put them. Then we’d be interrupted by introductions and having to carry on with this totally lame party I’ve planned. But James just smiles at me and kisses me again. We both know I’ll be dropping things for the rest of my life, and those flowers are just fine where they are.

“I love you, too,” I say.

This yanks a surprised breath from him and he pulls me into a hug, spreading a big hand across the back of my head and one across my lower back, and he just holds me there for not nearly long enough. A week like this would barely suffice.

But we only get a few more minutes because then Peyton is there picking up the bouquet, and Annabeth takes it to put the flowers in water, and Kurt is awkwardly clearing his throat because no one likes to catch their sibling in a sexy embrace.

Introductions are made, Annabeth returns, and Kurt tries to make himself taller as he inspects James. I guess he approves, because he offers to grab him a drink from the kitchen; I want to burst out laughing at Kurt’s expression when James asks for a glass of wine.

But the party isn’t so terrible, I guess. Conversation takes off. James is a goddamn charmer and apparently his sister, Jenn, is a former college softball superstar, so Peyton immediately loves him. Kurt hands him the wine and gives me a look that says, If you say so. I give him a look that says, In fact, I do say so, you cretin.

In the midst of all the softball talk and James winning over everyone but Kurt, Mike steps into the house and hands me a six-pack of Coors before groaning out loud.

“When the hell are you going to get some furniture, Carey?”

“When I fucking feel like it, Mikey.”

He grins and then looks over my shoulder. Long arms slide around my waist from behind, and James rests his chin on the crown of my head. Sweetly claiming.

“This is James,” I tell Mike.

He reaches to shake one of James’s outstretched hands. “Hey, James. Mike.” He gives me an approving little smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I scowl at him. “You have not.”

“There are volumes in silence, Carey. I could tell how much you liked him based on how quickly you’d change the subject every time you accidentally dropped his name.”

“Well, whatever,” I say. “You can be right for once. Turns out, he was higher up on the list than furniture was. So you’re all going to have to deal with sitting on the floor while I cross things off one at a time, at my own pace.”

James is the only one who gets it, but I can tell he likes that answer, because his kiss to my temple feels like a safe haven and his body pressed all along my back promises dirty, dirty fun.

“Speaking of lists,” he says quietly, “I made one of my own, and skinny-dipping is right at the top.”

I turn back to face him, grinning. “As it damn well should be.”

“I might have noticed you have a creek out back.” He jerks his chin toward the window. “All you need is some stairs down that steep hill.”

Happiness feels like a sweet, frolicking beast inside my chest. “If only I knew someone who could build such a thing,” I quietly tease.

He kisses the tip of my nose and raises a hand. “James McCann: assistant, engineer, and infatuated boyfriend, at your service.”

Before I can verbalize the incoherent giddiness these words trigger, the infatuated boyfriend bends, brushing his lips against mine. He’s careful not to deepen the kiss too much, but in his restraint, I sense how he wants to pull me right up against him and hold me tight.

“I’ll build anything you need,” he whispers, kissing my jaw. “I’d do anything for you.”

What a sweet relief, because I would do anything for him, too. So this is what it feels like to be with someone who wants to give simply for the pleasure of it.

I pull James in close, holding him as tight as I think he needs, and he nearly squeezes the air out of me, letting out the happiest little groan. It is like falling onto a soft bed, the relief of being in his arms. The house seems brighter, the air inside fresher. I look over his shoulder and out the window at the view. My view. My home. My life, finally coming together by my own hands, one piece at a time.