Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel

Okay, Annie. You can do it. You can get your booty off the floor and get to your doctor’s appointment.

This is what I get for needing water. I thought by now I had trained my body to not need it anymore—to live on a strict coffee-only diet—but no. The little weasel decided to defy me and demand rehydration.

After drinking my obligatory sip of water, I thought I just needed a little rest, so I sat down on the floor in the kitchen, and then that turned into lying on the floor of the kitchen, and now here I am…thirty minutes later, still lying here, head pounding, ears feeling like someone took a baseball bat to them, and nose so stuffy it’s possible I’ll never breathe through my nostrils again.

My sisters left for their Mexico trip yesterday, and now I’m wondering if this is where I’ll die and how my sisters will find me when they come home glowing and suntanned from the beach. They’ll hover over my body and laugh that I died wearing banana-print underwear and matching tank top. But it’s not my fault that I can’t sleep in PJ bottoms, and it was too hard to bend over and pull them on before walking into the kitchen because my body has no energy left from expending it all trying to breathe.

But I have to get up. Must get up. I have a date tomorrow with Brandon—the guy from the flower shop. I vetted him on Instagram, and then we texted a few times and set up a date for Saturday, which is tomorrow. So far, I don’t feel exuberant sparks when we talk, but I’m sure that’ll come later. No need to worry, Annie. Earlier, I managed to call Dr. Mackey and get an appointment for this afternoon, so maybe she could prescribe something to get me better before the date—but how in the chicken potpie am I going to get there?

At this moment, there’s a knock on my door. I don’t answer it because I’m only 50 percent conscious. I think it might actually be a burglar because I heard the doorknob jiggle, followed by its opening. Good. I’ll ask him for a ride to the doctor.

“Annie?” A voice hovers over me, and I cringe because I know that voice, and I also know that I’m pantsless. I hear a thunk as he drops to his knees. “Shit, Annie. Talk to me—are you okay?”

“Will? Are you kidding me?” I crack my eyes open to find the world’s most attractive man kneeling down beside me, looking relieved that I’m not dead. That’s sweet.

I know I should feel upset to see him without my pants (especially because I know he’s been avoiding me since that misinterpreted kiss at Hank’s the other night), but instead, I feel a deep sense of peace. “I wasn’t trying to make him jealous, you know,” I say, because I’ve been dying to tell him the truth for days. But I didn’t want to do it over the phone.

“Shh—it’s fine, Annie.”

He pushes my hair back and I catch his wrist. “It’s not fine. It’s important to me that you know it wasn’t a game.”

Will takes in a soft deep breath and then nods. “Okay.”

I smile—feeling a hundred pounds lighter now that that’s off my chest and close my eyes again. “Okay, now leave. You’re not supposed to see me like this.”

“Like what? Pantsless? Wearing underwear printed with little yellow banana characters on them?” he asks with a crooked grin. “Cute. They match your PJs.”

I groan and toss my arm over my eyes. “Leave me to die.”

“That’s one option. But then who would service everyone’s flower needs in town?”

“The keys are in my purse. The shop is yours now. Please don’t give anyone ugly carnation bouquets.”

A low rumbly laugh sounds from his chest, and all I want is to press my face to it and feel the vibrations against my cheek. “I don’t love flowers as much as you.”

“Says the man who has them tattooed on his skin for eternity.”

“Good to know you still have your sense of humor.” I feel his hand rest over my forehead and he hisses. “Geez, you’re burning up. Have you taken anything lately?”

“No. I can’t move. My body doesn’t work anymore.”

Will’s hand brushes affectionately over my hairline, pushing my sweaty hair away from my face. “Why didn’t you call me to come take care of you? Or Noah?”

I grimace. “And risk getting any of you sick? No way. I’ll be fine. I have a doctor’s appointment in an hour.”

“Good. But how do you plan on getting there?”

“I’ll hitch a ride on the back of a turtle.”

“Very practical,” he says with the backs of his fingers lingering against my neck. “Let’s get you off the floor, sunshine.”

Sunshine. Am I hallucinating or did Will just call me by the sweetest name my ears have ever heard?

Will’s strong arms scoop under my bare thighs and back, lifting me off the floor and carrying me to my room, where I’m deposited gently on the bed. I’m immensely grateful for the gently part because my head feels like it’s going to explode. I would be able to appreciate all of this tenderness so much more if I wasn’t near death. Unfortunately.

I hear Will shuffle around through my closet for a minute and then return to my feet. “Annie, I’m going to slide these pants on you so I can take you to the doctor, okay? Can you give me a sign of life that it’s all right for me to help like this?”

I grunt an affirmative, and then Will gently tugs my feet and legs into my PJ bottoms. He slides them all the way up my body until they’re sitting below my hips. I use the last of my strength to lift my butt so he can slide them the rest of the way. The strange thing is, I’m the most modest person you’ll ever meet, but I don’t feel the least embarrassed that he’s seeing me half naked. I trust him in a way I shouldn’t. In a way that I know is just going to hurt me later when he reminds me he’s not the relationship type. That he hates marriage. That he’s absolutely not returning the feelings I’ve caught.

—

The sun is down and I’m feeling more like myself and a little less like a walking corpse. Will took me to the doctor, where I was diagnosed with a sinus and double ear infection. After bringing me back home and tucking me into bed, he went to the pharmacy and picked up my antibiotics. I took them and then slept for the entire day, thinking I’d wake up to a lonely house again, but instead, I leave my room to find Will in my kitchen…cooking.

“What are you doing?” I croak out—immediately reprimanded by my seriously dry sore throat.

He frowns lightly and comes around the kitchen island to put his hand on my forehead again. “Seems like your fever broke. That’s good. Medicine must be working.”

I lightly push his hand away because all I want to do is lean into it. “Will, what are you still doing here?”

“Making dinner.” He turns back to the pot he was stirring. It smells good enough to rival one of Maddie’s soups. “You should go sit down. I’ll bring you a bowl in a few minutes.”

I want to cry. My usually well-guarded feelings are sitting on the top of my skin, exposed and raw. “No. I mean what are you still doing here? As in…you shouldn’t still be here.”

“Why not?”

“Because…because!”

“You don’t say?”

I slump and wrap my arms around myself for extra comfort and stability, because, yes, the medicine is working, but I still feel like a bus ran over me. I can’t tell Will that he shouldn’t be here because we’ve kissed three times and they were all so good that I really think I’m going to need a fourth. Or even worse, that I want him to stay and talk and snuggle and laugh with me all night.

After Hank’s, I told myself I was going to take a step back from Will because if we continued on that trajectory we were on, it would spell disaster and heartache for me. So no texting. No potential run-ins. No practice anythings until I could wipe the feel of his lips from my brain and his smile from my heart because I’m starting to severely doubt my ability to keep Will in the casual category, where he wants to belong. And now here he is, making everything more complicated with soup.

“You’ll catch my cold. You need to go.”

He narrows his eyes while looking around the countertops. “Do you have any pepper around here?” His butterfly flutters all around the kitchen.

“You should be at work.”

“I looked in the spice cabinet, but it’s not there.”

“I found antennae growing out of my head.”

“And the salt for that matter. They’re both gone.”

I sigh and open the cabinet above the stove and pull out the salt and pepper shakers. “Maddie says they’re a married couple and deserve the privacy of their own house. And you’re not listening to me.”

Will smirks, gently taking the spices from my hands. “I have a very strong immune system. Amelia gave me the day off. And you’ll look very cute with antennae.”

“Willington…”

“Annie.” His happy-go-lucky demeanor melts into something serious. Unguarded. He puts his hands on the sides of my arms and then slides them down to my fingers. “Please. Just let me be here. I don’t know why, but I can’t be anywhere else. I tried but my feet keep bringing me back here to your door.” He pauses, looks to the soup and then to me. “This…isn’t something I would normally do, but I just need to take care of you. Please let me.”

Well. With a response like that, how can I say no? What’s another little fracture to my heart? I’ll go back to building boundaries tomorrow by going on my date with my potential perfect soulmate, and everything will be fine. “The bowls are in the cupboard to the right. And you better put that paring knife back in the same place you found it, or Maddie will have your neck when she gets home.”

He releases a breath, lets go of my hands, and smiles. “Got it. Completely rearrange the kitchen drawers before Maddie gets back. Now go sit down before you decide to camp out on the floor again.”

I do as I’m told, taking a big fuzzy blanket from an oversize basket beside the couch and wrapping it around my shoulders. I sit down, laying my legs out across the cushions, resting my face against the back so I can peer at Will over the top. His shoulders work as he ladles out the soup, and I wonder if I can blame it on my sickness if I ask him to remove his shirt while cooking.

I lose the nerve, and Will brings a steaming bowl over to me on the couch. He sets it on the coffee table and then takes the seat at my feet, lifting them up and pulling them into his lap. I blink, stunned at his easygoing physical touch. Tactile. He’s just tactile.

“Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you this affectionate with everyone?” I ask, nodding to where his hands are now resting over my shins.

“Pretty much,” he says, hesitating before bringing his blue-gray eyes up to meet mine.

I’m instantly both disappointed and jealous. There’s no reason I should have hoped he was only like this with me—and yet here I am. A little sad. I blame the cold and the fact that I’m only like this with him.

Will frowns. “That’s not what you wanted to hear?”

I nuzzle the side of my face against the overstuffed pillow we keep on the couch. “I don’t know what I want to hear. I’m sick. It’s messing with my head. And you’re nurturing me, which is catnip for softies like me.”

The right side of his mouth rises in a grin. “You’re not normally affectionate, are you?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m not affectionate. I’ve just never really had anyone to be affectionate with. I think I must accidentally put out an invisible force field that tells people I don’t want to be touched. And it feels too awkward to all of a sudden start after all this time.”

Will looks down at my bare feet and then gently begins rubbing over my arches and up my calf. It feels so good I want to cry. All of the muscles in my body have been cramping from dehydration today. And Will’s hot hands are exactly the thing they need to relax. Unfortunately, it’s also working in the opposite way—winding my body up into a tight coil.

“You can be affectionate with me. I won’t read into it,” he says casually, like he didn’t just hand me keys to a golden palace. Because the truth is, I love physical touch. Crave it more than I want to admit. But my shyness and social anxiety often keep me from reaching out for it first. I wait for other people to initiate, and sometimes that leaves me waiting forever.

I force my tone to sound calm and not at all excited by this all-access pass to Snuggle Town. “Right. Because you’re my practice person. I can practice initiating snuggles.”

“Exactly.” He looks up at me.

“Like Fred and Audrey before the ending.”

He frowns. “Now you lost me.”

I wave him off. “Don’t worry about it.”

We sit in tense silence for several minutes before Will breaks it by leaning over and gently moving the bowl of soup from the table to my lap. “It’s cooled off by now. You need to eat a few bites if you can. The doctor said hot broth is good for your throat.”

I’m not at all surprised to find out Will is caring and attentive. But I think he is…

The first sip is salt and butter and carrots. Chicken soup—my favorite. Will came to my house, put pajamas on me, took me to the doctor, and made me chicken soup. Don’t you dare read too much into that, heart.

My heart snootily pushes a pair of glasses up the bridge of its nose. He may be affectionate by nature, but he doesn’t normally do this with other women, it reminds me unhelpfully. I kick my heart in the shins.

“It’s really good, thank you.”

“It’s Mabel’s recipe. She cornered me in the market and forced ingredients into my hands after she learned I was headed over here. She also followed me out to the car and wrote the entire recipe on the back of the grocery receipt, which was good because I’ve never made soup before and it definitely would have ended up tasting more like cat pee than anything.”

I laugh and then wince when my ears, head, and throat all scream. I set down the soup and then rub my temples to ease some of the never-ending pressure. It’s quite possible that a pathetic whine also escapes my mouth.

“Come here,” Will says, not waiting for my response before he sets my feet on the ground and starts adjusting me around. He puts a pillow in his lap and then eases my head down on it. And then he gently runs his fingers over my scalp and my neck in soft massaging strokes. His hands are warm and secure as he moves them over me—but it’s more the fact that he seems to care so much that is making my heart squirm.

“Were your parents affectionate too? Is that where you got it from?”

His fingers pause in my hair, and I think maybe I scared him off. There’s going to be a Will-shaped hole in my front door any minute now.

“Only as affectionate as wolves can be, you know?” he says, trying for levity and coming up short.

I look up at him. “No more jokes. Please tell me.”

He sighs and his hands move through my hair again. “I don’t like talking about my childhood, Annie. In fact, I’ve worked really hard to block it out.”

“I get it. And if you really don’t want to, I’ll drop it. But if there is some part of you that wants to tell me, I promise to be a good listener and not bring it up ever again if you don’t want me to.”

A soft smile touches the corner of his mouth. “No one would ever accuse you of not being a good listener. In fact, I think you’re made to listen too much.”

I reach up and pinch the fabric of his soft T-shirt near his chest and tug lightly. “Tell me. Come on, I have a sick card. Let me use it.”

Will opens his palm faceup. “Let me see it.”

I sigh dramatically and pretend to pull it out of my pajama bottoms. I slap it against his palm. Will holds it up to the light for inspection and then takes an imaginary hole punch and makes a clamping sound with his mouth. He hands the card back. “Yours is only a day pass. Expires at midnight.”

“Deal.”

He casts his eyes to the ceiling like he’s looking for inspiration on where to begin. “Uh—okay, well. In a nutshell, I grew up in a dysfunctional home. There was a lot of fighting and cheating happening between my parents. My dad slept on my floor a lot and openly spilled their baggage when he really should have shut the hell up about it.” Will’s tone is hard as granite on that last sentence, and before I realize what I’m doing, I roll over to face his abdomen. Maybe it’s because he gave me permission, maybe it’s because something about me feels free with Will—I don’t know—but I don’t hesitate before looping my arms around him.

He doesn’t stop brushing his fingers through my hair and across my neck. Doesn’t make me feel like this is anything out of the ordinary. My arms around him feel as natural as breathing.

“Go on,” I urge.

“If you saw me back then—in high school and before—you wouldn’t recognize me,” he says with a sad sort of smile. “I wore polo shirts, Annie. And glasses. And I never socialized, ever.”

“Wait…” I squint up at him. “Do you ever wear glasses now?”

“Only at night after I take my contacts out.”

My ovaries quake at this news. It’s too much to handle, so I swallow, make a noncommittal hmm sound, and then wait for him to continue.

“I busted my ass all through school because I thought”—he adds one short laugh—“I thought it would help. I hoped that if I could be the perfect son for them, if I could help take care of my brother and make sure that we never added additional stress, then…”

“Then they’d be happy.”

“Exactly.”

Our eyes connect and his words resonate somewhere deep inside me. “I relate. Although in a slightly different way. Because for me, it was that I was trying to keep life stress-free for my grieving siblings.” My gaze moves to Will’s shirt as I feel painful tugs of my past against my heart. I’m not sure I’ve ever said that out loud before—or even realized that it was true. But now I feel almost outside of myself, as I watch a younger Annie try to pick up the pieces for her siblings. Cutting her hands in the process and never telling anyone she’s bleeding.

I don’t realize I’m frowning until I feel Will’s thumb brush against my brows, relaxing them.

“It sounds like we both put our needs in the back seat during critical times in our lives.”

And yet we’re both seeking different paths to soothe ourselves. He doesn’t want anything to do with relationships, and I want the ultimate one.

I blink back up at him. “So did it work? Did your perfection pay off?”

His jaw flexes against memories. “No,” he says quietly. “I graduated as valedictorian and got into MIT, but Dale and Nina were still toxic, surprise, surprise. They couldn’t do anything right in each other’s eyes, and as a result, Ethan and I couldn’t do anything right either. I think they deeply resented their lives. So to answer your question, no, they were not affectionate.”

“I’m sorry, Will. You didn’t deserve that from them.”

“Yeah…well, it all worked out, so it’s fine. After my graduation ceremony, I came home, and my mom was crying because my dad found out she’d cheated again, and then”—he frowns at the wall—“she screamed at me for not taking out the damn trash that morning. So I snapped. I packed a bag and I left. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Instead, I stayed in a hotel for a week and then joined the military. I felt awful for leaving my brother behind like that, but I needed to get out, and the Air Force was giving away free T-shirts outside the grocery store.” He smiles self-deprecatingly.

“Wow.” I try to process everything he just said, not fully being able to imagine that kind of life. And to be honest, if I were in Will’s shoes, I can’t say I would feel differently about relationships either. It would be difficult to jump into one when he’s seen so much pain around the one relationship that was supposed to be stable for him.

“The really sad part is, my parents are doing better now, because after my brother and I were out of the house, they finally got a divorce. They said they had always stayed together for us—and we should be grateful they gave us that time as a complete family unit. How messed up is that?”

“That’s rough. Do you ever see them now?”

“Occasionally, but not often. I don’t have any desire to hang out with them for a full weekend and pretend that my childhood didn’t nearly destroy me. And I’m not brave enough to actually fight with them over it either. So I just avoid them.”

“I don’t blame you, Will. I wouldn’t want to either.” My eyes trace the lines of his face, and I feel a protective anger rise up toward anyone who would ever dare treat him like he wasn’t the most wonderful person in the world. Like he wasn’t precious and valuable. “How long were you in the military?”

“Six years active duty, two in the reserves. I served as a Security Forces specialist.”

“You didn’t like it?”

He shrugs lightly. “Sort of. It was mentally and physically draining, and it left very little room for living life outside of it. I was ready for something different by the end. I have a friend who introduced me to the agency I’m with now, and I started training with them while I was in the reserves. The rest is history. I already had plenty of hand-to-hand combat training from my military career, but with the agency I was also trained in evasive driving and other various weaponry courses.”

“Does that mean you carry a gun?”

“Not to guard celebrities. Mainly when protecting politicians or people with a high-threat level. You have to have clearance for it.”

Suddenly I think of Will in one of those high-threat-level jobs and having to use a weapon or be faced with someone else using one, and my arms instinctively tighten around him. “Have you ever regretted not going to MIT and choosing a different career path?”

There’s a loaded pause that I don’t miss. “I don’t think I like the word regret. Every choice I’ve made has been valuable in some way or other. And the fact is, if I had gone to MIT back then, I probably would have kept striving for academic perfection and returning home when I shouldn’t. But the military forced me to get that space I needed—if that makes sense. It was somewhere my parents and their drama couldn’t easily reach me.”

My eyes drop to his arm. His flowers. I trace my finger over the petals. “So you were hiding in the tree from your parents.”

“Yes,” he says as his fingers trail down my neck and to the exposed skin where my pajama top has gaped open over my shoulder. His touch grazes my book tattoo and I feel the smile in his fingertip. “So does that answer all your questions, Miss Inquisitive?”

“Not yet.”

He groans.

“Tell me about your brother. What’s he like? Is he antirelationship too?”

“My brother used to feel like I do. Against the entire idea of marriage and like we’re better off without it…until recently.”

“What happened recently?”

“He met someone and just got engaged.” He pauses, and we only stare at each other for a minute—unspoken thoughts and feelings running like currents through the air. “I’ve been avoiding his calls because I can’t bring myself to tell him I’m happy for him. Does that make me the shittiest brother in the world?”

“No. I think it means you have a lot of hurt still, and I’m willing to bet he probably understands.”

Will grins and pushes a piece of my hair back from my face. “You see too much good in me, Annie. There’s a very real possibility, you know, that I am just a very selfish asshole who uses women and lives according to my own whims just because I like life better that way.”

I hum lightly and close my eyes, feeling exhaustion press over me again. “That’s what you’d like me and everyone else to think.”

Suddenly I feel Will’s thumb trace my lower lip. “It’s time to take off those rose-colored glasses, sunshine.”

I tuck my chin and snuggle in closer to his stomach because he gave me permission and also because it feels so nice to do this. To just be close to someone and gain the affection I’ve been craving for so long without any pressure or fear of him not being the right one for me. “Not a chance. I love how pretty the world looks with them. You’re a good guy, Will—I really hope you know that.”

“Harriet would disagree. She thought I was making meth with your cold medicine.”

I begin to doze in this lazy comfort. “It’s the tattoos. She’s always hated them. You should have seen how mad she got when she found out that Noah has a tattoo. Wouldn’t let him buy anything besides vegetables from the market for a week.”

“And what do you think about my tattoos now that you’ve really seen them?” he says, running the back of his knuckles against my jaw and hair. I’ve never been more comfortable with anyone in my entire life.

“I think they’re not nearly as interesting as the man they’re on. And that I’ve never felt safer with anyone than I do with you.”

I feel his breath against my face as he lets out a deep sigh. “Annie. What are we doing?” he asks more to himself than me.

I don’t answer. Instead, I slip into a deep sleep, and wake up hours later in the middle of the night, curled up next to Will’s side in my bed. He didn’t leave. And I’m terrified when I realize I hope he never does.