Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel

Sunlight hits the back of my eyelids, and I drag in a quick inhale. I’ve been sleeping like a rock. Like the dead. Like…I’m not alone.

Shit, shit, shit.

I open my eyes to the sight of bananas and blonde hair. Annie is tucked up close to me, leg draped over mine, head in the crook of my bare shoulder and hand splayed out on my chest. She’s breathing deeply—sound asleep. We must have fallen asleep together after…Damn, I don’t even know what to call last night. It definitely wasn’t just a kiss. It was devastating.

This is not good.

And by not good, I mean the Entire Situation is not good. I’m overwhelmed. There’s a lot happening inside me that I don’t know what to do with. I’m feeling things for Annie that I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. Normally, by now, I’m bored in a relationship. This isn’t even a relationship with Annie, and I’m clawing out of my skin with a need to be more for her. To always be around when she needs me. To be the kind of man I never saw modeled growing up.

And yet—can I trust it? Can I trust myself with her? Would she even want a man like me with so much baggage and heartbreak to share a life inside her white picket fence? I feel like the biggest hypocrite alive to be desiring more with Annie when I just told my brother to pump the breaks with the woman he loves. But I didn’t realize…

Maybe there is hope for us.

Or maybe I should take a step back and think about it without this lushly curved woman pressed up beside me.

It was a bad idea to ever come back to Rome. To let Annie touch me. Kiss me. Turn me inside out. It was so much easier when I thought I wouldn’t like a relationship and that I didn’t want to run the risk of ending up in a position similar to my parents’. Because what other option is there for someone who endured eighteen years of a hate-filled marriage between his parents? When infidelity and emotional abuse were all I saw? There was no tenderness. No patience. There were insults and harsh reprimands and me wondering if that night was going to be the one when all their yelling was going to end with my dad hitting my mom or her leaving us for good to sleep with some other guy.

But neither of those things happened. Ethan and I were always just waiting on the precipice of something terrible—wondering when it would break. It never did—and I guess I’m thankful for that. Instead, their marriage fizzled out in an anticlimactic way that led me to believe that maybe what they had was just normal. They divorced after Ethan and I left home and then acted as if all the hell they put us through never happened. Like I never became a man who avoids real relationships at all costs because all I’ve ever known are painful ones. A man who in no way trusts himself with a woman as good and hopeful and lovely as Annie.

Until I met her and held her in my arms, I never knew I could be capable of so much tenderness. And I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about tender conversations. Tender words. Tender understanding. Even the way she breathes against my neck while she sleeps is tender—and I want it. All of it. I’m just not sure it’s sustainable or that I want to find out if it’s not. Ever since I realized I could climb that magnolia tree in my backyard, I’ve been very good at protecting myself and avoiding anything that could cause me more pain.

The woman I’m holding has the potential to cause me more pain than anyone else ever has. And I sure as hell can do the same to her. I have no idea where to go from here.

For now, I need to get moving. The sun is still soft and warm, just beginning to rise, which means it’s around my usual early morning wake-up time. If I hurry, I can still get out of here without anyone noticing. Maybe even before Annie notices.

But when I look down, trying to assess the best way to extricate myself, instead of moving away, I watch my fingers curl tighter around her side. I notice everything about Annie that I shouldn’t. Like how her eyelashes curl on the ends and are blonde at the base. How she has lots of small freckles across the bridge of her nose. And I notice the way she curves into me perfectly. I honestly didn’t take Annie for a snuggler. “I always keep my hands to myself…. But with you…” Those words echo loudly in my head.

She’s draped fully over me, weighing me down in the most incredibly affectionate way. I keep my fingers light against her side even though I want to curl them into the adorable banana-printed fabric of her PJs and then proceed to peel them off one by one. I want to roll her over and wake her up with kisses down her neck and over her stomach. I want to kiss her and not stop.

Time to get up, Will. Get out! And get far away until I can think clearly again. And I absolutely cannot be the one to take her virginity. Not only because it would complicate things with Amelia and my job with her, but I’ll for sure be out of here by the end of the month (as soon as I get Amelia to agree) and then I’ll be off to Washington, D.C. It’s going to be high-stress, high-stakes, and fast-paced work. My favorite. No time for roots or relationships.

Carefully, I slide out from under Annie and simultaneously pull the pillow into the place where my shoulder was holding her head up. She doesn’t move or stir. As much as she’d hate to hear it, she looks like a sleeping angel with her soft pink lips relaxed into a pout and her eyelashes curling against her cheekbone. Her hair is half in, half out of the bun she was wearing last night, and somehow it makes the whole sight look even more attractive.

I stand up from the bed, slowly working my shoulders in a few circles to ease some of the tightness. The sun is higher now, and it spurs me to get out the window and back to my SUV down the street before anyone notices it. When I make it to the window, I lift the pane as quietly as possible, happy it doesn’t squeak or scrape. I drop my leg over the side just like the way I entered and pause only long enough to look at Annie one more time.

My breath catches when I realize she’s facing me now, eyes open, smiling softly. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. Her blue eyes sparkle in the morning sun, and the most domestic images rush through my head: of her pouring a bowl of cereal, me topping it off with milk, and then her sitting in my lap while we eat together at the table—because I’m a clingy son of a bitch like that. That is all wrong. That’s not the sort of fantasy I should be having about her. It should be all sexual. All primal and fleeting. Instead, I’m rubbing my chest and telling myself to get the hell out of here before I accidentally ask her to have coffee with me on the porch while the sun comes up.

I give Annie one last smile and then duck out through her window and close it behind me.

—

I can’t go back to my room yet until I’m certain Mabel is gone. She’ll be hovering around the front desk this morning waiting to catch Terry lazily throwing the newspaper on the lawn instead of onto the front stoop. So I make a detour to the diner for some coffee before I go back, biding my time until Mabel leaves for her nine o’clock exercise walk around the town.

When I get near the diner, I park in the communal lot and then start my trek through the town toward it. My eyes are peeled, and I’m ready for someone to pop out and spring a sale on me I have no interest in, but, thankfully, it’s quiet. There are no noses pressed to windows, no eyes peeking from corners, no one really in sight.

The diner is empty except for Noah, who’s sitting at the bar. He comes in here almost every morning for coffee before going over to The Pie Shop and making even more coffee. I take the barstool two down from him just as Jeanine bursts through the door, rushes back behind the bar, then throws her apron over her head with a megawatt smile. “Morning, darlin’s!”

We both nod at Jeanine, and mirroring Noah’s mannerisms feels weird.

“Having a good morning?” asks Jeanine.

We both grunt a response.

Jeanine retrieves her notepad and pen and tucks them into her pocket. “Riiight. Okay, so the usual for Noah: coffee, black as tar. And what about you, Will?” She raises her brows at me and flips her long auburn hair over her shoulder, waiting for my answer.

I glance at Noah and back at Jeanine, wishing I didn’t have to put my order in with him listening. “Uh, coffee too.”

“Black?”

“Yep.” I lean forward slightly. “Plus cream and sugar.”

I catch Noah’s grin.

“Shut up,” I tell him and he raises his hands.

“I didn’t say a thing.”

“Your smirk did. It’s sexist of you to think I can’t be manly and also enjoy cream and sugar.”

Noah cuts his eyes to me, still holding a look of complete disinterest. “I can’t work in a pie shop, wear an apron every damn day of my life, and also be sexist.”

“I’m starting to think it’s all a front. You and your black-as-tar coffee are sexist as shit.”

Jeanine chuckles and turns toward the coffeepot to pour our drinks. “Aren’t you two just bursts of sunshine this morning?” Jeanine slides Noah’s black coffee to him first and then mine to me. “Noah’s always grumpy, so that’s nothing new,” she says, leaning over the counter to be face-to-face with me. “But you’ve always got a smile for me. Where’s my smile, Will?”

She’s not coming on to me—I don’t think. It’s just Jeanine. She’s naturally flirtatious, and naturally flirtatious people are usually drawn to me. Probably because I’m one of them. I learned it from an early age: flirtatious people are widely loved, and I’ve been in the business of getting love from anyone and everyone I can since the day I went to school and told Teressa Howard she looked pretty in her Lisa Frank shirt, and she hugged me. It had been weeks since I’d had a hug, and I still remember it feeling so damn good.

I sip my coffee, and grin around the rim—not quite feeling it today. “Sorry, Jeanine. Long night.”

Her eyes twinkle, and she lifts a brow before standing up straight and giving a soft whistle. “And who’s the lucky lady you ditched for a solo breakfast? Anyone I know?” I don’t miss the calculated easy grin. She’s fishing to see if it’s Annie because we had lunch together here at the diner.

“I didn’t—” I catch myself, remembering that the brother of the lady in question is sitting only a barstool away from me—and he also happens to be my boss’s fiancé. I need to watch myself. “It wasn’t that kind of a long night.”

Jeanine laughs harder this time. “I see. Now the grumpy mood makes more sense.” Annoying that she’s implying I’m in a bad mood from not having sex with Annie. I could care less about that, and I’m glad Annie was honest and said she wanted to stop. I’m grumpy because my night with her was better than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I don’t know what to do about it. “All right, well, I’ll leave you two alone to your man time. Holler if you need me, honeys.” Jeanine disappears into the kitchen.

Noah and I sit in silence for several minutes, and I’m thankful for it. It gives me time to consider what I’m going to do about Annie and the magnetic hold she seems to have over me. Part of me insists I need to bow out of offering to help her. After last night—and then falling asleep next to her—it’s clear that I need to clamp down on my boundaries if I’m going to stay on the path I’ve made for myself.

“So…” Noah’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “You spent the night with Annie, huh?”

I choke on my coffee. A full-on coughing, eye-watering, gasping-for-air choke.

Noah—the asshole—laughs. “Calm down. I didn’t mean it to come out like a threat.” He’s maybe the only person in the world who could make me feel threatened. I’ve stared down some pretty terrifying people, but Noah has this quiet confidence about him that tells me he could make my life hell if he wanted to.

I take another drink of coffee to try to ease my coughing and press the back of my hand to my mouth. After my life has stopped flashing before my eyes, I look at Noah. “How else am I supposed to take that question?”

He doesn’t say anything, just smirks into his coffee. Not a threat, my ass. He knew what he was doing when he said it, and I won’t dare lie to him or try to convince him I didn’t spend the night with Annie. But I at least can be honestly innocent in front of him. A first for me.

“I didn’t sleep with her, just so you know.” I pause. “Well…we did fall asleep together, but I didn’t—”

Noah holds up his hand, cutting me off. “I don’t need to know details. It’s none of my business.”

I eye him skeptically. “It isn’t?”

From what I’ve seen, it seems like everything in this town is everyone’s business.

Noah smiles from under his beard—and I would damn well trade all of my tattoos for the ability to grow a beard like that man’s. It isn’t fair. I’m the former military man turned bodyguard—I should have the manly beard. The only facial hair I can grow excellently are eyelashes. They’re long and thick, and women always note them. A damn shame. Note my muscles, note my square jaw, note my ass for goodness’ sake—but please, for the love of God, do not comment on the length and volume of my lashes.

“Annie is a grown woman. I don’t need to keep tabs on her or monitor who she does or doesn’t date.” Noah turns his casual gaze to me and tips a shoulder. He takes a drink of his coffee, and then sets the mug down and stares into it. I’ve seen him and Amelia together and it’s hard not to root for them. To be wildly jealous of them. They’re good for each other.

Would I be good for Annie?

Instinctively, I know she would be good for me. But I worry that I would drag her down. I wouldn’t know how to communicate well, or I’d feel an itch to leave when things got tough—because I’m self-aware enough to know that I avoid all confrontation and discomfort like they’re diseases. It’s why I haven’t called my brother back. It’s why I haven’t been home to visit either of my parents in years. It’s why I chose a career that allows me to be a happy-go-lucky nomad, where I can float from woman to woman and place to place, and never get attached enough to have to deal with real life.

Jeanine glides through the swinging kitchen door and sets my eggs in front of me with a smile and a wink. Only after she crosses the diner to take another table’s order do I ask Noah, “How did you know? That I spent the night with Annie, I mean.”

“Saw your truck.”

“You live on the opposite side of town.”

“Didn’t say I saw your truck.” He looks at me and grins—reminding me that this town’s meddling goes deeper than I can even imagine. “James saw it on his way out for deliveries this morning. Considering the gossip around the town that y’all have started dating and then seeing your truck down the road from my sisters’ house…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.”

I’m not sure whether this is good or bad. Annie confirmed she’s a virgin last night—and I’m not sure how many other people in her life know that or if it even matters to her at the end of the day. But I’m not the kind of guy you hear has been sleeping in a woman’s room and assume nothing happened. Then again, she did want to change her reputation around this town.

“Do you think James told anyone else?”

Noah stifles a laugh and gives me a face that says, you poor dipshit. “Don’t let the farmer look fool you. James is every bit the gossip that Mabel is.” He pauses and tips his head sideways and then back like he’s remembering something. “Plus there’s the fact that Tony—our sheriff—saw you climbing out of Annie’s bedroom window this morning.”

“Shit.”

“Yep.”

Speaking of James, a minute later he walks into the diner, whistling. James has the most open smile I’ve ever seen on anyone. There’s no ulterior motive to it—it’s like he’s just genuinely happy all the time. Strange.

“Morning, Jeanine!” he calls from the door. I notice he’s carrying a clipboard in his hand, but he goes to the far end of the bar and drops it off by the register before coming to take the stool next to Noah. He slaps Noah on the back. “Good morning, sunshine. Dream about me last night?”

“Uh-huh,” Noah says and then takes another sip of his coffee. “Dreamed I ran you over with my truck.”

“Well, this is a treat, James,” says Jeanine, coming over to take his order. “I never see you here in the mornings.”

“I had some business in town to tend to.”

Noah looks at him with a frown. “What business? You don’t deliver to my shop until tomorrow.”

“You’ll see,” he says with an unnerving grin. Maybe I’m thinking too much about it, but paired with the town’s unnaturally quiet disposition this morning, I feel a prickle of unease. “I’ll take the morning sampler, Jeanine, thank you.” James leans around Noah to look at me. “You two been having a stimulating conversation?”

“If you count Noah subtly threatening me, then, yeah, it’s been great.”

James laughs. Noah shakes his head, gazes forward. “It wasn’t a threat.”

“I bet it was,” says James. “If it was concerning Annie and your slumber party last night, it absolutely was a threat. And just wait until the sisters get wind of it.”

“Nothing happened!” I say, suddenly feeling like I need a lawyer present.

“Quit shaking.” Noah tips his mug up high, gulping down the last bit of coffee and then turning toward me on his stool. “I like you, Will. I always have. I know I’m supposed to be the protective older brother who warns the guy with the reputation to stay the hell away from his baby sister, but that’s just not how I work. I swear I’m not trying to threaten you—because like James said, my sisters will do that just fine without my interference. But more than that, I trust my sisters to know what they need better than I do. And the fact is, whatever is going on with you and Annie, I support it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” Noah stands and faces me. “To be honest, I’m more worried about you than about Annie.”

“Why’s that?” I say, even though I agree wholeheartedly with him.

“Because I can guarantee you’ve never met anyone like her,” Noah says ominously and then turns to leave, pauses, and then goes to the side of the bar to look at whatever James dropped off. I hear his grunt of a laugh before he flashes me a look, shakes his head, and leaves without exchanging any other words.

“For what it’s worth,” James says around a bite of eggs, “I do plan on threatening you.” He aims his smile at me, and suddenly it doesn’t look quite so sunny anymore. It has the same glint a sword has. “Hurt her, and I’ll kill you and bury your body as fertilizer for my plants.”

I nod once, slowly. “Noted.”

I toss a ten-dollar bill onto the counter and finally go over to see what’s on that clipboard. I curse under my breath. “Did you make this?”

He laughs, not even looking at me as he continues to dig into his eggs. “Nope. That would be Harriet’s doing.”

“When did they all have time to do this?”

“About thirty minutes ago at their impromptu town business owners’ meeting. There’s one in each establishment.”

“Of course there is.” And this would explain why it was a ghost town out there today. They had all gathered to make a petition to keep me and Annie apart. Across the top in bold letters it reads:

We, the town’s people, demand that Annie Walker and Will Griffin hereby forfeit their new relationship on the grounds of Annie Walker being a sweet darling and Will Griffin being…not a sweet darling.

Below that, there’s a pretty nice little slander campaign that lists all the reasons I’m not to be trusted (see the grainy copy and pasted BuzzFeed article) followed by all of Annie’s superlatives. I’m impressed that she led the children’s literacy fundraising campaign at the library. But not surprised. And getting Harriet’s market to switch from plastic to bring-your-own reusable bags is cool too. At the bottom there’s a plug for Davie’s Print Shop.

Nice.

“Is this even legal?” I ask James.

“Doubt it. But never underestimate the power of the town of Rome to meddle just enough to get shit done. Plus Harriet bought fifteen boxes of Girl Scout cookies from the sheriff’s daughter, so I imagine he’s willing to look the other way on this petition.” He eyes me closely. “So if you want to marry Annie, you better put your best foot forward and show us you’re worth it.”

I groan. “I don’t want to marry Annie! This is one big misunderstanding.” A ridiculous one that’s quickly getting out of hand.

He looks back down at his eggs with a smile. “Sure you don’t.”