Naked

It also lasted only seconds before he was laughing, too, ignoring me and my plight, but instead of being grateful for his compassion, I wanted to poke him with a fork. Alex Kennedy, the man who’d had a diva breakup anthem tossed in his face at a holiday party, then let the singer blow him on a back porch, didn’t have the right to judge me.

“So, Liv,” Sean said when he turned back to me. “What’ve you been up to lately?”

“Yes, Liv. Tell everyone what you’ve been doing.”

Suddenly the focus of the entire table, I found my mouth inconveniently empty of food, which meant I had to fill it with words. “Oh…I’ve opened my own studio.”

“Recording?” Jayden, who’d been kicking everyone’s butt on a popular guitar-playing game, asked.

“No, photography. It’s more of an advertising business. Graphic design for local places. Brochures, Web sites, that sort of thing. I take pictures for the work, rather than using stock photos.”

“But some of your pictures have been used on those sites, right?” Patrick sounded proud, and I didn’t really mind the nudging.

“Pretty much anyone can upload pictures to a stock photo place, but yeah. Some of mine have been very successful.” I’d made more money on selling the rights to some of my images than I could using them exclusively. It wasn’t art. It was business.

“Don’t listen to her. She’s a great photographer. I have some of her landscapes hanging in the living room,” Patrick said.

“You took those?” Sean looked impressed. He leaned a little closer. “Wow.”

I tried to think why this should be such a surprise—I had almost married his brother, after all. It wasn’t like Sean had never met me before. But back then my camera had been a hobby. Now it was a job. Or, I thought as I caught a whiff of his cologne, he was paying more attention to me than he had back then. I sniffed surreptitiously. He smelled nothing like Patrick, but spicy and masculine just the same. Beneath the table, his knee nudged mine again. This time, I thought it was on purpose.

This close to him, I could see the white flecks in his blue eyes, identical to Patrick’s. Like his brother, Sean had thick blond hair and a mouth that curved just so, and also like his brother he had broad shoulders, a lean waist and a flat, flat belly that begged any straight woman with half a libido to lick it.

Unlike his brother, though, Sean Michael McDonald wasn’t gay.

“Yes. I took those.”

The conversation moved on after that, but I’m not sure what we talked about. I didn’t look at Sean again. I didn’t have to. I knew all too well that he was right there.

After dinner came the opening of the gifts and more wine. I kept my glass full by mostly pretending to sip. Alcohol’s never good mixed with self-pity, especially on New Year’s Eve at an ex-lover’s house to which you have not brought a date.

The rule of the gifts was that they had to be small. Handmade, or inexpensive. Nothing too fancy, and everyone was to bring an extra to pass out in a grab bag exchange. I got a great new pair of soft driving gloves, a more-than-fair exchange for the gas station gift card I’d tucked into the basket of goodies to be passed around. There were personal gifts, too, obviously, and I made out well there, as well, but better for me was watching the faces of Teddy and Patrick as they opened the gift I’d brought for them both.

“Liv, this is…amazing.” Teddy stroked the sleek mahogany frame. “Beautiful. Really.”

“When did you take this?” Patrick asked softly.

“Over the summer.” We’d gone to a local park to have a picnic dinner and listen to a band play on the riverfront. I’d captured the two of them sitting with the river behind them, their gazes locked and mouths almost touching. Getting ready to kiss.

They hadn’t noticed me in that moment, and behind the shield of my camera I’d convinced myself I hadn’t felt like a third wheel. Now I couldn’t help remembering that I had. Beside me, Sean shifted until his thigh nudged mine again. Behind me, I felt the warmth of his arm snake along the back of the couch. The hairs on my neck stood up.

Alex was watching me.

I forced myself to focus on Patrick. “I hope you like it.”

“Love it,” he said. “Look, Teddy, it will go right there.”

As they talked about the perfect place to hang the picture, Sean’s fingertip whispered along the back of my neck. I shivered. He leaned close to whisper in my ear. “Cold?”

I turned, just slightly, away. “A little.”

“Maybe you need a sweater or something.”

As other gifts were opened, the room rang with laughter. Patrick certainly wasn’t looking at us. In the past there had been many times when everything around me disappeared but the sound of Patrick’s voice, or the sight of his face. Almost the same voice murmured next to me, now. Almost the same eyes looked at me.

There was still a moment when it could have gone a different way. If Sean hadn’t shifted again to press his thigh to mine in a move more blatantly sexual than Patrick had ever made on me, or if I’d come with a date the way I’d planned…or if it hadn’t been New Year’s Eve and I hadn’t still been in love with the one man I would never have.

“Actually, I’m going to grab something to drink.”

“Want me to come with you?” Sean smiled an easy, quirking smile that would’ve charmed me senseless if it hadn’t been almost identical to his brother’s.

“No. I’ll be right back.” My own hard-edged smile must’ve put him off, finally, because I escaped to the kitchen without a tagalong.

I didn’t want a drink, really. I needed some fresh air to clear my head. I was absolutely not going to give in to the glums, not tonight, not ever. Not again. I was fine.

I was fine until I shrugged into my coat and found the small, wrapped package in my pocket. I’d meant to give it to Patrick some time when we were alone, not in front of the group. I’d bought him a button featuring the stabbity knife from his favorite cartoon, Kawaii Not. He’d gotten me hooked on the quirky, sick-sense-of-humor artwork, and it was one thing we still shared that he didn’t with anyone else. I’d wrapped the button in nondenominational paper and scribbled his name across it. I’d wanted to make sure, so fucking sure, he knew how casual and careless a present it had been. An afterthought. Not important.

But feeling it there, the button’s round edge through the cheap paper, I knew I was the only one who’d have ever thought it was important, or meaningful.

By the time I got out the back door and down the porch steps, I was crying. My vision blurred. Tears froze on my cheeks. They burned, and I stumbled. I drew in a hitching, labored breath that seared my lungs. I made it all the way down the path and past the detached garage before I burst into raw, hateful sobs. I stopped, a hand on the bare wood, to swipe at my eyes.

“Fuck!” I cried when I saw I was not alone. “Where’d you come from?”

Alex, bundled against the weather, stood beneath the eves. He’d been leaning, but straightened now. In one hand he held a cigarette that wasn’t lit.

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