Part V
By Cin
Cady leaned her head back against the edge of her old claw-footed tub with a sigh of satisfaction. This was how she liked to relax in the evenings: soaking in her tub with candles flickering around her and soft jazz music playing on the hi-fi in her bedroom. As always her mind drifted to Micky, and she thought over their afternoon together. Already his endurance was improving—they’d been able to run about a mile before he’d been unable to go on, and she’d worked with him on the small hand weights, increasing the strength he already had in his upper arms.
She flashed back to the massage she’d given him afterwards—she wasn’t quite sure what had possessed her to suggest such an idea, but once he had acquiesced, she’d had to follow through with it. The memory of his warm, bare skin beneath her fingertips still made her shiver even in the hot bathwater. The latent strength that she had felt in his back had made her knees go weak, and the low moan that he’d given when she’d loosened the muscles at his neck brought all sorts of improper thoughts to her whirling brain. She’d almost been relieved when he’d fallen asleep because she’d been on the verge of making a complete fool out of herself, blurting out her true feelings then and there…
Suddenly there was a frantic pounding noise coming from her front door. Alarmed because she wasn’t expecting anyone, she climbed out of the tub and slid into her robe, tying the belt into a secure knot. She padded silently down the hall and into her living room, pausing for a moment to retrieve her baseball bat from the closet, before unlocking her door and flinging it open, her bat ready in her hand.
Her eyes widened when she saw Micky standing there, still wearing his t-shirt and cutoffs from their jog, panting as he tried to catch his breath. His curls were dampened with sweat from the warm evening, and he looked wild-eyed as he leaned against the doorjamb.
“Mick, what in the world--?”
“Hang…on….just a minute….ran….all the way….here.” He bent and rested his hands on his knees, his back heaving as he gulped for air.
“Come in and rest,” she said, putting one arm around his shoulders and pulling him into her apartment.
Micky wrapped an arm around her waist and staggered with her help over to her sofa, where he collapsed, leaning his head back, and stretching his legs out. She went into the kitchen and came back out with a glass of ice water, which she handed to him as she sat at his side.
“Are you okay?” Cady worriedly asked, her hand resting lightly on his knee.
He drank the entire glass of water in one long pull and set the empty glass down on her coffee table, glancing over at her. For the first time he realized that she was wearing nothing but a robe, her dark hair a tangled mass over her shoulders. <Oh, God, she was in the bath!> he thought, his mind conjuring up all sorts of images. Water droplets slid along her jaw, down her neck to her collarbone and the valley of her breasts, and the overwhelming urge to trace the droplets’ path with his fingers nearly overcame him.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment, summoning up all of his self-control.
“What’s so important that you had to run all the way over here at—“ She checked her wall clock. “Eight-thirty at night? When I left the Pad, you were sound asleep.”
“I wasn’t really asleep,” he admitted.
“You weren’t,” she repeated, confused.
He shook his head. “I was just pretending to be because I needed to think.”
“About what?” She shifted slightly, and her robe gaped open a bit further, revealing even more of her lightly-tanned flesh.
Micky swallowed hard. “About Brenda…and you.”
“Me?” Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at him. His damp, sweaty shirt clung to him like a second skin, outlining his chest and upper arms, and she tried to think about anything except how delicious he looked sprawled out on her sofa.
“I realized something today, and I wanted to tell you about it as soon as possible.”
“Okay…”
“I’m not in love with Brenda anymore. In fact, I don’t think I ever really was.”
The breath escaped her lungs in a soft ‘whoosh’ of relief. “You don’t? But Mick, you were so crazy about her…”
“Crazy about her looks,” Micky corrected her. “You were right, Cady, there’s nothing more to Brenda than good looks, and I was treating her more like a trophy than the woman I loved.” He shrugged. “I wanted to look more like Bulk so I could win her over, but then it hit me—I need to be with someone who loves me for me, not for what I might be able to turn myself into.”
Cady fought to find her voice. “That’s what I was trying to tell you all along.”
“And all I could think about was how you were willing to help me win Brenda, even though you didn’t think she was right for me…and I suddenly started seeing things in a different light.”
Her heart pounded faster as she gazed into his almond-shaped eyes. There was a new emotion in them that she’d seen before, but always directed at other girls, never her.
Love.
“You…have?” It was all she could do to keep her voice from squeaking on the last word.
“I’m really going out on a limb by saying this…I don’t want to screw up our friendship, but I can’t keep it inside anymore…” He trailed off, taking a deep breath. “I love you, Cady.”
It was what she’d wanted to hear him say for so long, and now that the words had actually left his lips, she couldn’t believe them. “You what?”
He repeated himself, a wide grin spreading across his face. “I love you. I don’t know, maybe I’ve always loved you; maybe I’ve just been too damn stubborn to see it. But I saw it today, and I had to tell you, which is why I nearly killed myself running over here…” His grin faded at the sober expression on her face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“How do I know that this isn’t just a passing thing, that you won’t change your feelings about me the way you did Brenda?”
His heart leaped with hope. Surely she wouldn’t be asking such a question if she didn’t feel the same way about him as he did her. “Maybe this will help convince you.” He reached out, caressing her face, memorizing her features with his fingers, and she closed her eyes, leaning into his touch as if she’d hungered for it. He moved closer, gazing at her face for a moment before brushing his lips against hers in a gentle, loving kiss.
Her eyes fluttered open, and to his surprise, he could see tears shining in them, making the green color almost luminescent and heartbreakingly beautiful. She blinked, and the tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them.
“You’re crying,” he stated, puzzled by her reaction, as he brushed the tears away with his thumbs.
“I know…it’s just because I’m so happy,” she admitted. “Right when I finally figured out that I was in love with you, you met Brenda…”
“And then I went and told you I thought I was in love with Brenda, that she was the one,” Micky said with dawning understanding, and Cady nodded.
“That was part of the reason I acted the way I did on the beach—but even if I wasn’t in love with you, Mick, I would have told you she wasn’t right for you.”
“No,” he agreed, “the right girl was in front of me all along.” He trailed his finger along her jaw line. “Say it to me, Cady.”
“Say what?” Her eyebrows drew together in bewilderment.
“That you love me. I want to hear it from you.”
She smiled as her hand closed over his. “I love you, Micky Dolenz, as infuriatingly blind and stubborn as you can be at times.”
He laughed. “I think we’ve wasted enough time, don’t you?”
Before she could answer, his lips claimed hers again, but this time the kiss was more intense, more passionate than the first. Her mouth opened willingly beneath his, and their tongues entwined as Micky’s arms slid around her waist, pulling her closer to him. A small sigh escaped her throat when Micky briefly broke lip contact, sliding his hands up to cradle the back of her head, tangling his fingers in her dark hair. He gazed deeply into her eyes before brushing his lips against hers in a series of small kisses that nearly drove her crazy.
“Cady,” he hoarsely said, drawing back, “if you don’t want this to go any further, we’d better stop here.”
Her eyes were slightly unfocused from his kisses, but it only took her a minute to catch on to what he was alluding to and even less time than that to formulate a response.
“Why should we waste any more time?”
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