Crazy About Love: An All About Love Novel

  Alec said he was going to hold on, and he always keeps his promises. Only problem is that the momentum of my fall was too much for his reflexes, and instead of him keeping me up, I yank him down.

  “Oh shitshitshitshit. Theresa, you okay?” he says from behind me. Or more accurately, underneath me, since my butt landed right on the cushion of his crotch, and even with the fall and the cold outside, I can tell he definitely wouldn’t get the nickname “22.” And because I’m a girl who’s got an ass cheek to his joystick, it starts growing against my butt.

  Rumbles shake through my stomach, and the force is so strong that it locks up my throat; the only noise that slips out of my mouth is a tiny squeak. Alec’s body tightens—all of it this time, not just the happy guy downstairs—and he starts checking me.

  “You hurt? Are you okay? Sorry, I didn’t expect you to—Are you laughing?”

  I manage to look at him through my laugh-tears, nodding, unable to get up because my abs are getting a major workout. His panicked face relaxes, and he pushes me slightly.

  “Damn it, don’t do that shit. Thought I hurt you.”

  We get another few rounds of laughter in, followed by poor attempts to get up. I finally use the wall to pull myself up, then exert all my strength to get him standing as well—he’s still laughing too hard to get up by himself.

  “If I make it one time around before this place closes, it’ll be a miracle.”

  He straightens up. “If you make it one time around, I’ll let you keep that scarf.”

  “For real?”

  “Sure.”

  I stick my hands out to him. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Now he’s the one staring at my hands like they’re bombs about to go off. His hair is all disheveled and I feel like running my fingers through it to get all the bits of ice out, but I don’t trust myself to move without his help.

  He lets out an exaggerated sigh, unable to keep the smile off his face. He glides up in front of me and guides my hands up on his shoulders, latching my fingers behind his neck. Tingles travel up and down my coat-covered arms as he settles his hands on my hips as if we’re dancing. I can’t stop looking into his eyes. He can’t seem to stop looking into mine. There’s this crazy energy I haven’t felt in years—so many years that I start to question if I’ve ever felt it at all.

  “Don’t move,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “Relax and trust me, ’kay?”

  “Trust you?” I tease.

  “Work on the relaxing part, then.” His dimple creases in, and he bends a little at his waist and shoves off the ice.

  My arms immediately lock around his neck. “Don’t take me backward!”

  He laughs. On the turn, he turns us, and I scream, but it’s a happy scream. One that comes from deep inside my heart and makes me smile when it comes out. He’s now pulling me down the ice, not pushing me, and I swear my ankles are going to give way and we’ll be another pile of limbs on the rink, but I look at his steady feet and almost subconsciously my body relaxes into his.

  It’s been too long since I’ve trusted a guy like this. Even though it’s just ice-skating, I feel like I’m trusting him with so much more. Trusting him not to judge me, trusting him to catch me, trusting him even after we fell. It’s all metaphorical and literal, and I can’t wrap my head around it just yet. All I know is that I’m genuinely happy in this moment.

  “That’s twice, by the way.”

  “Hmm?”

  His hands feather up my sides to my elbows, and he gently coaxes me to loosen my grip. “We made it two times around.”

  I glance around the huge rink, noticing the stiffness in my arms and legs for the first time. Alec’s eyes capture my attention again, and I slowly—very slowly—raise my arm into the air and give God a fist bump.

  “I did it!”

  “Think you can do it on your own?”

  “Don’t you dare let me go.” I slam my hand back down on his shoulder and hold him tight. He grapples at my fingers, trying to pry them from his coat, but I’ve got a hell of a grip. So instead he tickles my sides.

  “Don’t, Alec, don’t, don’t!” I squeal, refusing to recoil and lose my hold on him. But he laughs because he thinks this is hilarious, which it so isn’t, and the next thing I know his face goes from humorous to scared shitless as he loses his footing. He catches himself (using me!) and then lets out a sigh of relief.

  But that relief only lasts half a second, because he’s destined to fall. And as he slips, I let go, determined not to go down with him.

  He slams on the ice hard, and a couple of bozos say some stupid-ass remark not worth repeating. My arms are straight out to my sides like I’m about to take flight when really I’m just hoping for balance, which is twice as difficult since I’m laughing hard enough that my donkey snorts are coming out every other second.

  “Are you okay?” I ask through my amusement. He looks up at me, nose wrinkled, and a low groan issues from his throat.

  “I’m not going to feel too bad,” I tell him. “This was your genius ide-e-e-e-e-a—” As I say that last word, a passing skater knocks into my arm, making me wobble on my unsteady feet and windmill my arms in an effort to keep myself upright.

  “Well, at least when you went down, I gave you a soft landing.” He smirks.

  “Soft?” I pointedly look at his crotch. “That’s debatable.”

  A burning red douses his ears and speckles his cheeks as he tries to laugh it off, and I feel all wobbly for an entirely different reason. He sticks his hands out to me so I can help him up, but I shake my head furiously at him.

  “Use the wall, friend. I’m not moving a muscle.”

  “You’re not going to help me up?” He drops his jaw in shock and indignation.

  “You’d help me down before I got you a centimeter off the ground.”

  “Dig in your brakes.”

  “There are brakes on these things?”

  He hits the toe of my skate. “Use the toe on one foot and those core muscles I know you’ve got somewhere.”

  “I can do planks.”

  “See? This’ll be easy.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Use the wall.”

  “Come on.” And there’s the dimpled green-eyed puppy face, damn him.

  “Which foot do I brake?”

  “Use the right.” He takes my hands as soon as I’ve got the guts to lower them. “Ready?”

  “No.”

  “One, two, three—”

  And bye-bye balance.

  After I hit Alec and somehow end up right on top of him, I let out a giant huff in his face.

  “You owe me two scarves now.”

  About an hour and many, many more falls later, we both walk our sore butts to the train station. I’m bundled up tight in my coat, but it’s still not enough. I’ve been whining at Alec to give me back the scarf that he totally swiped from me when we were returning our skates.

  “I have a very delicate neck,” I tell him as we wait for the train. “It’s holding up such valuable stock.” I gesture animatedly at my brain.

  He rolls his eyes at me. “You can have it when it’s more than sixty degrees out.”

  “That was not our deal.”

  “It’s going to be.”

  “I made it twice around that rink.”

  “I think I want to argue that. I made it twice with you in tow.”

  I playfully grimace at him, then wildly try to rip the scarf from his neck. “Give it!”

  He dodges me easily. “Nope,” he says, clapping the p of the word with his lips. His grin is so victorious that I find myself reaching out and poking that smug little dimple.

  “Gimme.”

  He shakes his head, ducking away from another poke to his face. When I finally get him, he pokes me back in the middle of my forehead. I jab him in the belly. He pokes me in the hip. I poke him in his pec, which is harder than I expected and hurts my finger a little, and he goes for my stomach, which I suck in, making him miss. M
y mouth forms a playful O, and before I can poke him again he snatches my wrist. I try with the other hand. He catches that one too. We’re both smiling and grinning like fools, and I suddenly don’t give a crap about the scarf or about how cold I am or about anything, really. Electric wires light up under my skin, like they’d been there since I was born but the only conductor is Alec and his green eyes and his blond hair and his one-dimpled smile and his kindness and friendship and fun.

  This can’t be the fun Eli was talking about, though. Eli was talking about fun with no strings. With Alec, I feel like if I had a heart that was ready for the taking, the strings would reach out right now and grab hold, and I’d be forever tied to him.

  His deep green and very sexy eyes hold mine, and I let them. I always do because I believe in being real with the people I love. And Alec, I realize, is one of those people. He’s quickly heading to the very top of that list of people. And his lips are coming closer, so slowly that I know I can back out if I want to. But I’m pretty sure my lips are getting closer to his too. I know I should be thinking about how this will affect our friendship, and where is this going, and what it will mean for my “fun” for the next few years, and am I still taken or am I available to kiss someone like this? But honestly, I’m not thinking about any of that. I’m thinking that this feels way too good to stop.

  His warm, minty breath hits my bottom lip, and damn…damn…I am never going to be the same if this happens. I just know it. And right as I’m about to take that leap of faith, a lovely, drunk stranger runs into the both of us, knocking us off balance and out of kissing distance.

  “Duyunoowtagettadowntowwwwn?” he slurs at Alec with a toothless grin and a hiccup. Alec looks up at me, shaking his head and laughing at the absurdity of it all, and—timing of all timing—that’s when our train pulls in.

  We don’t attempt another kiss. That moment is past and gone, and whatever was going through my head—or not going through my head—has also disappeared. I breathe a sigh of relief because I really need his friendship right now, and I’m not ready to change that. So when we sit down on the train, I grab his arm, toss it around me, and promptly pretend to fall asleep. I’m not sure if he notices me slip Eli’s promise ring off my finger and push it into my coat pocket, but even if he does, he wouldn’t know what it meant.

  Chapter 15

  PRESENT DAY

  It smells like sex in here.

  “Twenty-five hundred!”

  Alec slides across the stage, pulling a maneuver I never expected from him. I’m so turned on and surprised and turned on and shocked and turned on that all I can do is stand here with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, only slightly aware that the bidding has gone up and up and up and I haven’t even shouted out my highest number.

  Liz told me this would work. That no one pays over three grand for bachelors at a bar auction. But she isn’t here. She’s not here to see the panty-dripping, sweaty, oh my holy hell sweet abs carved by angels and unicorns, and he’s dancing in front of not just me but a roomful of hormone-crazed women ready to jump on that stage and lick his…well, lick his anything.

  And then, right there in the middle of his magic thrusting, he looks at me dead on. He looks at me and dances for me. He grins teasingly, like it’s some kind of joke, like we’re having a laugh at his expense, that I’m somehow going to be punished later for making him do this. But I’m not laughing. All I can feel is the moisture building along my hairline, neckline, and panty line.

  Three thousand. It’s there on the tip of my very salty tongue in this sweat-filled room while he basically has air sex with me. It’s all the money I have; the money I saved for this moment. This is my grand gesture, the big sign that says I’M READY FOR YOU, ALEC TUCKER!

  “Four thousand!”

  The voice comes from the way back, and both Alec and I rip our gazes from each other to figure out who it belongs to. I see her right away. Purple hair, tattoos up and down her arms and across her neck, short—a punk pixie.

  The dreaded four-letter word echoes through the room through the microphone.

  “Sold!”

  He’s sold.

  My entire vision for the evening—professing my love for my best friend, redoing all the things I did wrong the first time around—shatters in front of me.

  People clap for the winner. I don’t.

  Hell no I don’t. That bitch with the perfect smile and hipster style stole my grand gesture. The anticlimactic end to a week’s worth of preparation slams down on me, and I have to find the strength to pluck up my feet and let them carry me out of here.

  I get through the crowd in a haze, telling Katrina I need air and asking if she can finish up the auction without me. She nods, gesturing toward an employee exit door that I can use.

  The air outside isn’t any better. I feel like I’m suffocating on the visual of him kissing another girl at the end of the night. Or even before the end of the night. Oh God, what if they do way more by the end of the night and they get a morning after? We didn’t even get a morning after, and I never got to ask him why.

  I yank my phone out and mad-text Liz. Got outbid! Tell me how to fix it!

  Then I pace the sidewalk, pulling at my earrings and checking my phone, but there’s no answer from her. Maybe I go tell him right now. Barge into the backstage dressing room and say, Damn it, Alec, I love you and I’m ready. Then what? Go on your date, because it’s for charity, but don’t you dare touch her.

  That’s reasonable, isn’t it?

  The alleyway stinks like hangover and weed, and I trip in my hurry to get out into more breathable air. I feel my thoughts tangling with each other, desperate to find a solution to my conundrum. I seriously question my intellect in this moment, because I should’ve prepared for this. Alec’s a delectable specimen that even a blind woman could appreciate. Top dollar in my head was severely under what people were evidently willing to pay. Spirit-crushing replays of what just happened play on a loop in my head, and I mad-call my best friend.

  “Pick up, pick up, pick—Liz, what do I do?”

  “Hang on a second,” she says, and I hear the distinct noise of a toilet flushing in the background. You know someone’s a good friend when they take your call no matter where they are. “ ’Kay, sorry. How much did he go for?”

  “Four grand, Liz. Four grand. I don’t have that kind of money!”

  “Try to find the winner and talk her into giving him up. Offer her forty-five hundred; see if she takes it. I’ll be down there as soon as I can.”

  “You can’t give me fifteen hundred dollars.” I shake my head. Even if I take the money, asking someone to give up her bid on the man capable of Magic Mike dancing would be spitting into the wind.

  “I can too. I’m sure you’ve given me that much money over the course of our friendship in the form of laundry quarters, rent coverage, and groceries, and that doesn’t even count the time we lived together.”

  I push my hair back and turn toward the loud cheers that just sounded through the bar behind me. Seems the last bachelor has sold, and Katrina is telling all the winners to pay. If I’m going to do this, it’s got to be now.

  “Get down here, quick.”

  “Already heading over to you.”

  We click off, and I run back inside. I’m sure I’ll come up with a way to pay Liz back for this, if it works.

  The winner’s not as easy to spot as I would’ve thought, given her eccentric appearance. I swim through the sea of sweaty bodies, the music in the room back to thumping through the floor. My boss waves at me from the middle of the stage, purple lights hitting her wide smile. I have one of the world’s coolest bosses, and when she does a happy dance I almost do one too. Tonight was supposed to be a night for celebration.

  Damn it, it still can be. Just have to find that bidder.

  The crowded place elevates my panic, and every second I spend on the floor feels like it’s ticking down to an eternal state of singlehood. Shoving through a group of women
who weren’t so lucky in the bidding and are drinking themselves into a blissful stupor, I just start screaming at random.

  “Winners!” I shout, making the girl on my right jump so high she spills her pink drink. “Where are you?”

  A few laughs erupt from the bar right in front of my face, and girls who heard me hold up their bachelor name cards. I smooth down my dress and laugh off my complete blindness, following the line of women down until I find the one who isn’t deep in conversation with the winner next to her. Her purple bangs dangle in front of her face as she takes a long sip of Sam Adams. A beer girl; I’m already in trouble.

  I’m in such a rush that I don’t even take a breath to calm myself or talk through what I plan to say before I step over and set my hand on the bar next to her.

  “Hiya!”

  “Taken,” she mutters, holding up the card for bachelor nineteen—the card that should’ve been mine. I nearly grab it and run off in a minuscule moment of insanity. She looks up from her drink to give me a once-over. “I’m sure you’ll find someone, though.”

  I blink. “Oh, I’m not hitting on you. I, uh…I help run the auction.”

  “Check or cash?”

  “Huh?”

  She raises a thin eyebrow, taking another swig of her beer. For someone who just won the highlight bachelor of the night, she could be a little more enthusiastic.

  “I take it you want to collect my bid.”

  “No.” She’s quite the assumer. “I actually want to take your bachelor.”

  “Get in line.” She laughs, shaking her head at the other women at the bar. “Like I told the girls who wanted a trade, piss off.”

  Whoa, okay. If that’s how she wants to play it…She has no idea what I’ve done to get to tonight, how much restraint I’ve had to use. It’s been a very long three weeks since I was in Alec’s bed, and every day from then till now I’ve been biting my tongue and orchestrating this night so that there will be absolutely no question in his mind that I have fallen madly in love. No smart-mouthed, beer-drinking assumer is going to take him from me now.

  My spine straightens, and I cross my arms. “I’ll give you five hundred bucks.”