The Ghost of A Good Thing

Chapter 4

The meeting place Lucas had suggested, Hennessey's, turned out to be an old Irish pub that had seen better days. The place could be described as seedy, at best. She'd met him out front. His demeanor was more relaxed than when she'd seen him earlier, and it wasn't until she smelled the scotch on his breath that she realized why that was.

He led her into the dark bar, past the tables filled with people she wouldn't want to meet alone in a dark alley. Everyone seemed to know Lucas, including the woman behind the bar who called him by name. He acknowledged her with a small wave and settled into a table near the back.

A bar maid wandered over to their table and took their drink orders, they both ordered stiff drinks. An awkward silence lingered over the table after the waitress had gone, but the arrival of their drinks minutes later seemed to chip away at some of the ice.

"How's the construction business treating you?" Lucas looked up at her, surprised that she knew. "When I ran into you at the apartments, your clothes were a dead giveaway."

"My job is fine, I'm fine. Can we just skip this small talk Peyton? You've been gone for six years, never once calling me in all that time to let me know where you were and if you were okay. And now suddenly, here you are wanting to meet with me. Tell me why you're really here." His voice was calm as he swallowed the last of his drink, signaling to the waitress that he needed another.

She studied him for a moment, wondering how to answer the question he had just thrown at her. Peyton followed his direction, swallowing the rest of her drink and ordering another.

"I told you why I was back. I'm here to spend Thanksgiving with my dad."

"Yeah well, I don't buy it. So what it is it really Peyt, you still have feelings for me? You want us to try to work it out?" It was during this exchange that she began to see a different side to Lucas, the more he drank the more arrogant he became.

"I didn't come back here to be with you Lucas. I'm with someone now; I have been for over a year. The only reason I'm here is to get closure on this part of my life."

Peyton thought she saw a trace of hurt flash across his face hidden behind the cocky smile he had plastered across his face.

The waitress dropped off their second round of drinks and Lucas quickly finished the small glass in front of him.

"Didn't you get all the closure you needed when you signed the divorce papers and sent them to me without any sort of warning."

"I'm sorry for the way I did it and for the way I left town without any word, but I was young and scared. We were just kids Lucas."

"Yep, I guess we were." He remained casual. Peyton wasn't sure if he was just putting up a front, but the one-sided conversation was frustrating her.

She wanted to yell at him, to scream at him to show some sort of emotion. Anger, hurt, anything to show he was alive. But a busty blonde woman approaching their table interrupted her.

Peyton watched as the woman leaned down towards Lucas, draping a lanky arm across his shoulders and whispering something in his ear. She could tell by the way the woman touched him that they were more than friends. Her touch was familiar and intimate. Peyton felt herself growing increasingly uncomfortable as the woman continued to whisper in his ear, ignoring the fact that Peyton was sitting two feet away. It didn't help that Lucas had noticed her discomfort but did nothing to dismiss the still unnamed woman. Peyton sensed that Lucas enjoyed the fact that she was so obviously uncomfortable.

The woman said something that made Peyton laugh, loudly, before she turned and left. A heavy silence fell over their table, Lucas glanced quickly at Peyton before signaling for another drink.

"For someone who came here for closure, you seemed awfully jealous when I was talking to that girl." He smiled smugly at her.

Peyton scoffed at his remark. "I wasn't jealous of her, I don't even know her." He was baiting her, and she didn't want to bite but she couldn't resist. "Who is she, a friend of yours?"

"You could say that. We see each other from time to time. It's nothing serious like you apparently have, but we have fun."

Lucas' third round made it's way to the table and he swallowed the contents, wincing slightly as the vodka burned its way down his throat.

"Just for the sake of curiosity Peyton, if you had come back to Tree Hill without some boyfriend back home, would you want there to something between us again?"

"I don't know." It was the truth. Things between them were more complicated than her having a boyfriend.

"No offense to your boyfriend, but I'm pretty sure that there's still something between us, even now with him in the picture." He leaned back in his chair, balancing carefully on its back legs with his hands clasped behind his head.

Part of her wanted to give his chair a hard push to send him tumbling to the floor for being an arrogant asshole, and the other part wanted to kiss him as hard as she could because she knew he was right. But instead of admitting the truth, she grabbed her purse and left the table muttering that it had been a mistake seeing him.

He didn't call after her and she made it halfway across the bar before she felt his hand on her arm forcing her to stop. And when she turned to face him, his lips crashed down onto hers. And for a moment she forgot they were standing in the middle of a seedy, old bar, and that she had a boyfriend back home.

The kiss was aggressive and things quickly escalated. Her brain screamed at her to pull away, but she pushed the thought from her mind and her mouth opened to allow him entrance.

"Let's get out of here." He whispered, his voice husky against her skin. He tossed a couple of folded bills onto their table and practically dragged her out of the bar.

Outside the bar, the chilled night air felt even colder against their flushed skin. They stared at each other in silence before he came towards her and backed her up against the outside wall of the bar, his thigh wedged between her legs, and kissed her hard. His mouth moved from her lips to the spot on the side of her neck that he remembered would set her off. He heard her breath hitch in her throat and her hands grasped tightly around the front of his shirt.

It was only a five minute drive to his house but while seated in the passenger seat, she touched the inside of his thigh and he ran a red light to get there faster.

They barely made it to his apartment with all the stops in the stairwell, but he had her shirt off before the front door slammed shut behind them.

He had her up against a wall in the hallway, his mouth all over her. And then her legs were wrapped tightly around his waist and with expert fingers he had her bra lying in a heap on the floor as he stumbled down towards the bedroom.

It had been like they were teenagers again with their inability to keep their hands off each other, but they weren't kids anymore. They were both more experienced and no longer fumbled with belt buckles and pant zippers, and hands that knew the right places to touch replaced innocent giggles and whispered declarations of love.

She remembered the soft touch of his hands when they were younger, the way his soft fingers used to trace lightly across her ribs. The way he used to smile after he kissed her. He didn't smile anymore, and his once soft hands were replaced by rough calloused ones that drug across her bare stomach and pulled her jeans down her legs.

The sex was rougher than she had expected. All the anger and resentment he'd refused to show in the bar, came through in the way he touched her, the way his teeth nipped at her bare skin, and in the way he roughly pushed himself into her as she gasped his name.

There were no words spoken between them that night. There was no talk of broken marriages, new boyfriends or the baby they had lost. It was just them, together again, at least for one more night.