It made her breath hitch. He looked utterly sincere, like he was being real. Like he was genuinely concerned about her. Like he cared.
She wasn’t a very good liar, even to protect herself, so she admitted, “It’s nothing big. I guess I’m just kind of sorry that the week is almost over. I’ve had a really good time with you.”
His expression warmed as he gave her a hint of a smile. “Me too. It’s been the best week I can remember.” He leaned down to kiss her gently.
She knew better—she knew—but she was who she’d always been. So despite her inner resolve, she heard herself asking, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of... staying in touch.”
He lifted his head, studying her again. His expression and his whole demeanor had become quiet, sober. “I can’t, Ariana. Part of me wishes I could, but I... can’t.”
She nodded, pressure clamping down around her heart. She swallowed hard over an ache in her throat. She’d known what the answer would be, and she wished she wasn’t so stupid as to hope for something different. “It’s fine. It was just a random thought. I wasn’t expecting us to... I mean, I just thought... Keep in touch and see what happened.”
She was babbling, and unfortunately that wasn’t unusual for her. She made herself shut up.
His expression was still too gentle. She hated it. It made her feel like she was a silly child and he was trying to let her down easy. “I know you weren’t expecting anything, but it does seem like we have something... good. But I can’t do a real relationship right now. It just won’t fit in my life. Things are too complicated. I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” She smiled at him, making sure it went all the way to her eyes. “We’ve had a great time, and that’s all we wanted. I don’t want either of us to have regrets about this past week.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Me either.”
“Good.” He kissed her again, this time slower and deeper. “And the week isn’t over yet.”
She melted into the embrace. He’d always had the power to turn her on with no more than a look or the slightest touch. But beyond the physical pleasure, her mind was whirling.
She was disappointed. No doubt about that. But she knew it was all her own fault. She’d done as she always had. Poured herself into a man who didn’t want her all the way, who didn’t take her seriously, who didn’t want to commit.
No matter how strong she tried to be, she kept doing it.
She wasn’t going to beat herself up about it because it would taint what she was hoping would be a really good memory. But she would have to learn to do better.
She wasn’t going to keep giving herself to men who didn’t want her. She’d rather be alone than keep doing that.
And maybe one day she’d meet the man who would want her all the way, who would want to commit. Then she’d be allowed to give all of herself because he would be giving back.
one
one year later
ARIANA HELD UP A RED pageant dress for a young girl, spreading out the fluffy cupcake skirt and being careful to not dislodge any of the myriad of glitzy stones. “Here it is. It took me forever to complete. What do you think?”
She had to hide a smile when she saw the expressions on the faces of her friends, Taylor and Belinda. Both of them were fairly low maintenance in their style of dress, and neither had ever participated in the pageant circuit when they were girls and so were unfamiliar with its eccentricities.
“Some poor little kid has to wear that monstrosity?” Taylor asked in a hushed voice.
Belinda gave her a hard nudge with her elbow. “Hey, be nice. She spent a long time on that thing.”
“It is a bit much,” Ariana replied, giggling as her friends waged a mental battle between distaste and courtesy. “But this is exactly what glitz dresses are supposed to look like, and parents pay a huge amount for them. This Christmas pageant coming up next week has been a windfall for me financially. I think this month will be the best month for my shop the whole year.”
“That’s good anyway,” Taylor said, her expression relaxing into her typical dry amusement. “If people want to pay you for those eyesores, who am I to complain?”
“Don’t you remember when Amanda was in pageants when we were kids? She wore things like this.”
Taylor, Amanda, and Ariana had grown up together in a suburb of Richmond and had been friends their entire lives. When Ariana had moved to the small nearby town of Azalea last year, she’d resigned herself to not seeing as much of her friends as she used to. But Taylor was spending a lot of time in town now that she’d fallen in love with Ariana’s brother, Charles, and she’d made another good friend of Belinda, who was a local here, so she wasn’t as starved for fellowship as she’d feared.
Taylor frowned. “I must have blocked it out. I don’t remember her wearing anything quite so... loud.”
“It’s a Christmas-themed beauty pageant. It’s going to be very loud.” Ariana wasn’t the slightest bit hurt by Taylor’s bluntness. She took pride in her dress shop, specializing in bridal and formal wear. Normally she just special ordered and then altered gowns, but for the pageant, she’d branched out into some original designs since glitzing dresses up didn’t take any significant tailoring skills. She would have been hurt if Taylor had criticized a dress she really loved, but she didn’t have anything personal invested in this one in particular.
Belinda was hiding a laugh, but she managed to say, “It’s a perfect specimen of its kind, so you did a great job with it.”
“Thanks. I think it’s the last one for the pageant I’ll have to make, unless I get a last-minute order. It’s been a ton of work, but I think I did okay with them. I have more experience dealing with wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses.”
Ariana had no experience or education that could have prepared her for opening the dress shop. She’d done it on a whim, needing something to occupy her time and fill the gaps in her life that had been left by her relational failures last year. Like her older brother, she’d started working for the family business after college, but unlike Charles, she had no real skills or talents in business. So for several years, she’d had a fake position and an unearned title, and she’d done nothing but twiddle her thumbs. Since what she’d really wanted to do was get married and start a family, it hadn’t worried her too much. But when she’d broken up with Tony after investing four years of her life into him and then tried to have a fling with Bradley only to stupidly fall for him, she’d had to reassess everything in her life.
She didn’t want to just pretend to live until some man put a ring on her finger, and that’s what it felt like she’d been doing. Her life didn’t start when she found herself a husband. She could do what she wanted right now. So she’d moved to Azalea and opened this shop and tried to work on herself as she was, rather than a fantasy of who she might be in the future.
It had been a good year overall. Challenging. She’d worked harder than she’d ever worked in her life.