Page 57 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

LUKE

I dimly know a few things about the day.

Thursday. A day away from Christmas Eve. Got things to do, places to be.

But it all means nothing right now.

I’m not going to think about any of it until after I’m done having Maggie again.

Her moan is rough from recent sleep as I cradle her back against me and make unrushed love to her in the morning light filling my bedroom. It’s intoxicating, like every other sound of pleasure she’s ever given me. My groan is rough, too, along the shoulder of her shirt—I can’t fucking believe how good she feels, don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. The tight fit of us together is as perfect now as it was last night. Her body is as irresistible to my hands as then, as ever. The way she moves with me is as natural as the working of her lungs I can feel against my chest.

All of this added to how much I love her makes for the most breathtaking sense of being whole.

I skim my lips from her clothed shoulder to the exposed skin of her neck. I lay an open-mouthed kiss there that makes her shiver in my embrace, like we aren’t under the blanket and still wearing these t-shirts and sweatpants because we wanted each other as soon as we were awake, didn’t care to do anything with the clothes but tug our pants down out of our way.

Intoxicating as well, that shiver through her heated body, that hazy need that got us here.

I move my lips an inch and kiss her neck like that again. I feel the sheet under us shift just slightly, like she’s fisted it with the fingers she can’t really touch me with. She cranes her head around towards me, wanting my kiss on her mouth now; I give it to her and she takes it with sweet greed that I welcome.

Her other hand fumbles under her shirt to where mine has been lavishing attention on her breasts. Her gentle bite of my bottom lip is soothed by the touch of her tongue—I don’t know which makes me feel hotter.

Whichever it is, I’m made hotter yet by her hand pulling mine down, down, down until she’s set my fingertips above where we’re connected. Our moans collide like our breaths do. I rest my lips just against hers, not kissing again quite yet, and answer her silent plea by giving her this new thing she wants. Slip my touch over her as slowly as we’re sharing ourselves with each other.

It gets the softest of gasps out of her.

“Like this?”

I murmur coarsely.

She nods. “I…”

she brushes her mouth over mine, not fully kissing me again either.

“…I need it right now, but I don’t always…like last night. I didn’t…but it still….”

I hum my understanding, remembering the burn of then, enjoying the burn of now.

“God, the way it feels for you to do it, Luke….”

“God, the way you feel.”

I wrap my mouth around hers again now, treasure the soft whimper-like sound she makes and the slight cant of her hips against my fingertips. After a few moments.

“I’ve got you, beautiful. Promise. Anytime and always.”

Those last words have been living in a corner of my chest since she said them to me last night. The way she kisses me again a little more ardently tells me my echo of them might be doing the same in her.

With my steady caress matching my thrusts, it’s not long before she’s coming with her breath catching hard around my name.

With how it feels for her to come while she says my name that damn gorgeously, I’m taken by the grip of my climax too.

This is the way to start a damn day.

The way to end a day.

The way to get through a day….

Her winded laughter fills my room like the sunlight when I tell her that. She agrees. I grin and melt into resting along the length of her before we get up.

Thursday. A day away from Christmas Eve. Got things to do, places to be.

—

“I can’t wait to see what you got for her!”

my mom squeaks for the fifth time in the last hour.

“I’m so excited about Christmas Day in general!”

Chuckling, I get the cover of her smoke detector put back in place.

“I’m excited, too, and my gift for her isn’t the most luxurious thing ever, just a little something special. And there, now this thing will quit beeping at you. But cover your ears, ’cause I gotta test it.”

We manage to survive the next couple seconds of shrieking noise that means the smoke detector is working. Then I get off the stepstool while she insists that Maggie’s Christmas gift from me, whatever it is, doesn’t have to be luxurious to be wonderful. I agree, which is why I said basically the same thing just a second ago—it’s not super fancy or expensive, but it’s still special. Nevertheless, I let my mom chatter about it while I deal with the stepstool and old batteries. I love that she already loves Maggie.

Thinking of the gift has my mind going back over the hour-plus I’ve spent alone since she went to work. I took Paxton some care items for his hangover, grabbed the gift from him because I had it delivered to his place instead of mine, went home and wrapped it, stuck it under my little tree next to what I got for him and my mom. Got the oil changed in my car, came over here to my mom’s house to visit for a bit and help with the smoke detector before I have to go to work myself.

And I feel both relief and lingering shakiness at one thing we talked about: how Maggie and I started out all that time ago.

I don’t know when I decided I wanted to tell her, and I didn’t really plan to do it today, but it happened. After we caught up for a minute, I found that I wanted to finally open up about just how big Maggie is—and always has been—to me.

Before now, I’d been nervous about what she’d think of what I did. I didn’t want her to feel the same disappointment I’d felt in myself for so long. Yeah, though, it’s something I recently realized I wanted to share with her. Maybe it was because Maggie and I overcame it and found truly steady joy with each other. Maybe it was because my ongoing upset with my dad has been in my face more than usual, which has had me even more thankful than usual that my mom and I are close.

So I told her about high school. Linked it to what my adult relationship with Maggie was like before we started faking dating, then to how that turned real, then to our fight, then to the fucking awesome place we’re solidly in now. I mean, I didn’t tell her everything about everything—not the more personal and intimate details of us or the fight, or the deep stuff about my dad, but…I said enough. I painted enough of a picture that she could see her son, and the girl who has his heart, more clearly.

“Oh, honey,”

she’d said softly.

“Oh, my boy.”

I didn’t know if her glistening-eyed expression weighed heavier towards compassion about what happened or delight about how it has turned out.

What I did know was there was only a little bit of disappointment, and it didn’t hang around. It was gone by the time we were done hugging. There wasn’t even a shadow left when she told me how very, very happy she is that I’m happy.

As grateful as I was for that, I also felt a pull of gratitude for Maggie. Because of her, I’ve gotten brave enough to face truths about myself, my choices, my feelings; it’s because of her that I’ve been finding freedom.

Thank you, God, for her.

I hear a thud and.

“Aw, hell!”

My mom’s exclamation is what I think, too, as I notice how lost in thought I’ve gotten.

“You okay?”

I call because I see she has gone out of my sight. I hurry to locate her.

What’s wrong? Has she gotten hurt because I wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing?

But I find her in the laundry room, cussing to herself while simply kneeling and scrambling to use two socks to clean up the liquid soap pooling widely on the floor from a dropped jug.

I snort into laughing into an.

“Oh no, Mom! Hold on, I’ll help!”

“This is gonna be a pain to clean up,”

she groans as I start off to get towels or something.

“The floor is gonna be soapy forever, Luke! I’m gonna have a damn Slip ‘N Slide in my damn laundry room!”

I crack up even more.

I really crack up when I get back and see how pissed she looks with soap still on the floor and the socks hanging goop-heavy in her hands.

Only now does she give in to a smile, though she shakes her head too. “Hell!”

“Mom,”

I barely get out.

“why did you grab socks for this?”

“They were close by and I was panicking!”

I drop into a kneel, not quite steady because of my laughter.

“The—the soap wouldn’t have gotten far if—if you’d taken…a second to….”

I judderingly hold out one of the towels I brought, unable to finish talking through laughing.

As she takes the towel, she finally starts laughing too.

“Well, I guess that’s true!”

I start cleaning. The stretch feels good on my already-aching muscles and helps me calm enough to breathe properly. I blink a few times.

“Shit, that watered my eyes. Socks.”

My cracking up is dwindling, but hers is heightening.

“You love me!”

she declares with cute cheekiness.

I grin over to her goofy self. “Yep.”

And I wonder why she hasn’t been doing much dating of her own over the years. I can only think of two guys she briefly talked about. Is she scared to look for love because of what my dad did to her? Or has she been happy as she is?

The latter would be great, but I have to say I do kind of wish she had her person. The one who would treat her right and make her smile the way only they could. She deserves that. Plus, it would be special for another human being to have her warmth in their life.

I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t had it in mine.

—

As I walk from the employee lot to Lucent’s entrance, I look forward to seeing Maggie and do not look forward to seeing Ronald.

In truth, I’m not sure if he’s here or not; she hasn’t had her break yet, so I haven’t gotten any texts about him or anything else. Still, better to prepare for having to be around him than to get my hopes up for his absence.

Such a jackass. Such a poor choice for a management position.

I try to calm the aggravation that comes up every time I think about him. He was never a great assistant manager and lately he’s been actual garbage, plus it pisses me off that Maggie in particular is who he’s had it out for—but I’d much rather have more of her in my head than him.

I get through the door just as she’s returning to her hostess stand from the dining room. She notices me and her already-warm expression lights up. I know I light up, too, because laying eyes on her is exactly what I want right now.

Well, I’d like to lay other things on her as well—my hands, my mouth, my body.

A fact not helped by my recent discovery of the small love mark she left on my collarbone last night. I’ve been a little bit wild about it and a little bit wild with desire to give one back to her.

Alas, this is not the time or place for those kinds of thoughts.

So I call, “Hey,”

at what even she would deem an acceptable volume. I simply can’t wait until I’ve gotten five seconds closer before I talk to her.

“How’s it going?”

“Hi,”

is all she says until I’m at the stand. I lean forwards and rest my elbows on the wide surface, clasping my hands, and she copies me.

“Things are busy, but they’re so good.”

Her tone and the sparkle in her eyes back up the words. They bring my mood up to the level of hers.

“Yeah?”

I ask. Then I joke.

“Ronald must not be here, then.”

“No, he’s not.”

Her voice drops to a whisper.

“Luke, he got fired.”

My eyebrows shoot up and my jaw falls open.

Leaning in the last bit possible, I lower my voice too.

“What? Are you fucking serious?”

Her excitement doesn’t waver, but she still chides me.

“Don’t cuss around—”

“Baby, if a guest in another area of the restaurant can hear me say ‘fuck’ this quietly, we’ve got a superhero with hearing powers on our hands, which makes things even more awesome than they already were.”

She tries to give me a look like that’s some nonsense, but she can’t fight a grin.

I wink at her, then say.

“Tell me what happened with Ronald!”

She takes a moment to glance around us and make sure nothing needs attending to. I check the time on my phone to make sure I’m not late. All is well, so she starts explaining.

“Well, before I clocked in earlier, I decided I’d mention to Mr. Polk how Ronald has been acting towards me. I was tense about it continuing today and I realized it didn’t make sense not to go ahead and tell the boss that his second-in-command is picking on me because I made him mad.”

I nod.

“Agreed. Good job.”

She nods too.

“I thought you’d think so. So I went to talk to him. I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’d like to voice another concern about Ronald,’ and he told me I was welcome to do it but that Ronald had been let go and wouldn’t be a problem anymore. I wasn’t expecting that at all, obviously, and before I could figure out if I should ask why, he told me.”

Her eyes seem to brighten even more.

“He said he should’ve done it the other day when everything with Marcus got sorted out, and he didn’t because he wanted time to find someone to take Ronald’s place first. But then as the days passed, he started feeling more and more uncomfortable with keeping an employee like him. An employee who is fine to break important rules and who isn’t fair to or supportive of his own staff. And Mr. Polk said he thought to himself, ‘I’d rather be without an assistant manager for a little while than keep a terrible one.’”

My jaw has gone slack once again.

“Oh, hell yeah. That’s the play right there.”

“I know!”

She unclasps her hands and puts them around mine. “Luke.”

“Yeah?”

The second after it leaves my mouth, I register that there was something different in the way she said my name—she was still excited and happy, but there was an undercurrent of something else. I play it back but can’t discern what it was, though I know it wasn’t bad.

Then….

Actually, why is she buzzing with this much excitement and happiness? Ronald being fired is great news and a relief, but her mood speaks to something even greater, something deeper. It wasn’t on this level even when everything with Kyle got resolved, and that was way more important.

I absorb anew the shine of her expression…and how it kind of looks like she’s waiting for me to say something else, even though I’ve been waiting for her to say something else.

“What is it?” I ask.

Her eyes soften and move over my face like an affectionate caress of her fingertips.

“You should go for that job.”

Surprise spikes through me, jerks my head back an inch. I stare at her to see if she’s kidding at all, but I find no hint of that.

Whispering interest comes up in me now, even as I let out a huff of a laugh and ask.

“You—you’re serious?”

“Of course I am. If you think you’d like to, that is.”

The interest grows, feeding on what I remember saying the other day about how I could do Ronald’s job better than he could.

I know she remembers, too, as she starts saying.

“In the breakroom the other day, you—”

“Yeah, but that was…. I mean, I meant the stuff I said, but I….”

She nods.

“I could tell you meant it.”

After a beat.

“I guess I could’ve read you wrong beyond that, but I really didn’t think so. Even though you were ranting about Ronald, you felt genuine about how much better you’d be than he was. It felt like you wished you could have a go at it. And you said some time ago that you don’t know what you’d be good at besides bartending, but this? It felt like you do believe in yourself for this.”

Tilting her head, she looks at me with sincere curiosity now.

“Are you interested in it at all? Or did I really get the wrong idea?”

I’m saying.

“No, you didn’t,”

before I can stop myself or think it through.

Right away, I feel stupid. About blurting that out, about how true it apparently is—I hadn’t been sitting around wanting Ronald’s job, but now that it’s open and Maggie thinks I should try, it’s suddenly, firmly in my head.

My fascination with it takes off running, and briefly, I can imagine that work clearly. Make more money, probably have good benefits, treat the position right, do something a little bigger than tending bar. Because she’s right, I actually do believe….

The fascination starts going limp.

Reality bleeds through possibility.

I turn my hands over beneath Maggie’s so I can hold on to her right back.

“I’m interested,”

I admit lowly.

“but for all I said I could handle, there’s still stuff I wouldn’t know how to do. Dealing with people isn’t the only thing he had to do. And I am just a bartender—that’s all I’ve been for a long time. Why would I think I could really be good at a management position? Those things aren’t alike.”

And even before she replies, I feel the nearly overwhelming urge to kiss the hell out of her, purely because of the gentle yet firm look of love she gives me.

“You are not ‘just’ anything,”

she tells me.

“There’s nothing less-than about being a bartender. You know I think it’s a cool job, and since you like it, that makes it even cooler. But if you wanna look into something else, you can do it. You can trust yourself. You are smart and capable, not to mention kind and trustworthy and charming.”

She shakes her head.

“With an assistant manager job, there probably are things you wouldn’t know how to do, but when people get a promotion, they don’t always know everything about the job they’re gonna be doing. Sometimes they just go for it. They want it and they go for it and they learn things along the way. You can do that too.”

The undeniable sense of her words burrows into me, lightening the glumness that had snuck in.

She goes on.

“I don’t know if being assistant manager would be as fun as bartending, but maybe it would be cool in a different way. Or maybe you could do both somehow if that’s what you’d want. Or maybe you’d try it and realize you don’t like it after all and you could tend bar again.”

I don’t know what to say yet, so I just nod along.

“Anyway, I’m not trying to pressure you. Mr. Polk’s news was just such a surprise to me, and I thought of you immediately. I asked if he has anyone lined up in any way and he said no. So I wanted to mention it to you in case you wanna throw your hat in the ring.”

I do.

I don’t feel pressured.

And I do know what to say now.

“I love you,”

I tell her.

Oh, the sparkle, the shine, the softness, the surety in those green eyes.

“I love you, too, Luke,”

she murmurs.

With a slant of a smile, I murmur back.

“What if I throw my hat in the ring and Mr. Polk throws it back at me?”

Her smile is fuller.

“Then whatever. It won’t be proof that you can’t do the job. It certainly won’t be proof that you shouldn’t try any other thing that appeals to you in life.”

That, too, makes sense to me.

At last, the excitement she was radiating before spreads to me.

Obviously, Mr. Polk probably will turn me down. Qualifications and experience do matter—that’s just the truth. But Maggie has made such good points, and I have the interest, so why not try? There’s nothing to lose because if Mr. Polk tells me no, I’ll happily continue bartending.

“I’ll go for it,” I say.

She looks at me with pride, and I can’t question why. I’m proud of me too.

Another instance of Maggie Makes Luke’s World Better.

Laughter from somewhere behind me has us straightening out of our leans over the hostess stand. Maggie glances that way and her professionalism slips back into place, confirming that people have just walked into the restaurant. I’m surprised work stuff didn’t interrupt us before now, honestly.

“Duty calls,”

she acknowledges.

“Yep,”

I say.

“I’m probably late now. Worth it, though.”

She winces but then giggles.

As I leave her stand, I check the time again—and find I actually have one minute to spare.

I pick up my pace. This is a laughably late start at caring about punctuality, but…well, better late than never, right?

Right.

I turn a peek back at Maggie, knowing that was absolutely true for us in our own way.

—

During my break, I push past the pulse-quickening nerves that have built up. I stand in Mr. Polk’s office and tell him I heard about the open assistant manager position and would like to be considered for it.

He sits back in his desk chair, lifts his chin slightly, blinks at me.

And smiles.

“Well, what a pleasant surprise, Luke,” he says.

I hold my breath and wait for him to reject me with kindness.

He takes his glasses off and gestures at the empty chair on my side of his desk.

“You’re on your break, so why don’t you stay a few minutes? I can’t promise you anything about the job right this moment, but let’s talk.”

That held breath wants to leave me in a rush of pleasant surprise of my own.

With my heart thumping in a different way from before, I exhale measuredly instead. Then I smile, too, as I sit.

“Yes, sir,”

I say.

“I’d like that.”