Uh…hell no! What the hell was she thinking? Instead, my feet shuffled over to the help desk and I collapsed on the metal barstool. All I had to do was turn my head sideways and I could’ve seen them, but I didn’t dare.
Nope.
I didn’t see that.
My best friend and my former dream lover were not just sitting together at that table. They’d never even said hello to one another before.
So it was not possible.
I could see her image approaching through the corner of my eye, her winter wool coat a vivid blob of turquoise, and my head was shaking with disbelief long before she stood before me. “Sophie?” I asked, drawing out her name so she understood what I was really implying was what the hell were you just doing with Evan?
“Oh, come on, Jenna. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice him the moment I scanned the store? If you recall, I said he was a hottie the first time I saw him.” She placed her elbows on the ledge of my help desk and leaned towards me, filling the air around me with the sweet scent of rose petals. Her smooth, pink lips twisted and her blue eyes narrowed, and she secretly whispered, “You didn’t tell me Evan followed you all the way back to Rutland.”
“Who says he did?”
“Duh, Jenna! Whatever the reasons for him being here are, you’re one of them.” She glanced back toward Evan, flashing him a cool, innocent smile, which he returned before finishing off the rest of his coffee. She chuckled wickedly as Evan stood and tossed his cup away, shrugged on his heavy jacket, collected his book and headed in our direction. Keeping her lips slightly apart in a wicked smile, she mumbled, “Oh, Jenna. You’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
I would have denied, denied, denied, but he was too close to even squeeze in a whisper without him overhearing. He was looking at me while he approached but his gaze quickly shifted to Sophie.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Yep.” Sophie hitched her Gucci purse strap over her shoulder and threw me a tantalizing smile. Dumbfounded, all I could do was mutter a few incoherent syllables, totally lost for words. All smiles, she added, “Evan and I are gonna go down the street to that deli bistro and grab a soup for dinner and hang out until you get off. Want me to bring you back something?”
“Uh, yeah. My best friend’s sanity would be nice,” I snapped a little too hotly.
I wasn’t sure if he was amused or embarrassed, but Evan silently took his leave and motioned to Sophie that he’d be waiting outside. Then he waved me a friendly goodbye, draping his scarf around his neck. I knew he had gone once I heard the familiar squeak of the door.
“Sophie,” I practically berated. “What are you doing?”
“What you haven’t. You’ve got another hour to work so I’m gonna go to dinner and pick his brain for you. Anything in particular you want answered?”
I huffed, still a little flustered that my best friend was gonna go to dinner with the guy that used to play the lead role for all my dreamy romantic rendezvous.
“Don’t worry, Jenna. You close up shop and I’ll get the skinny on your coma boy lover.” Before she stepped out of earshot, she added, “Oh, and by ‘close up shop’, I literally mean the shop and not your girly parts, okay?”
Heat rushed my cheeks, panicking over whether or not anyone heard that. I quickly threw one of the small white rectangular notepads we kept stocked at the desk. It hit her on the back of the shoulder and a few of the pages fluttered as it plummeted to the ground. I twisted on the barstool so my glare could follow her all the way out, and of course she winked as she joined Evan out front. My heart sank a little as they passed the four floor-to-ceiling windows and disappeared out of sight. I knew nothing romantic was intended, it was just weird not being the one walking alongside him.
That last hour couldn’t have gone any slower. I swear the clock on the wall had to have dying batteries. Not to mention a straggler that took her sweet time making her way to the front after closing. Seeing as how her books were aimed for the sexually curious, I went out on a limb and figured she was too embarrassed to let anyone but me see her buy them. I kept my eyes down and the conversation minimal, as she pretended to read something on her phone anyway. Joe left after her and I locked the door behind them, then proceeded to count the money from the register.
Sophie scared the crap out of me ten minutes later, knocking loudly on the glass window nearest me. Letting her in, I quickly said, “Dish,” and headed back to the counter to finish closing.
She chuckled sweetly, enjoying my angst and agony. “He’s sweet. Had you never dated Robert, I would’ve told you to snatch him up faster than a pair of Jimmy Choo’s fifty percent off.”
“What do you mean, he’s a keeper?”
“He’s nice. Easy to talk to. Gorgeous to look at. Quite honestly, I’m a little surprised he’s even single.”
“Easy to talk to, huh?” I put the cash and receipts into the money bag and zipped it closed. I waved for Sophie to follow me to the back office to put the money in the safe.
“Doesn’t seem to have a problem talking with me, but let’s face it, my bubbly personality makes it easy for all to love.” She said it with an air of pretentiousness, but I knew Sophie well enough to know her words were just a tease.
“So do I wanna know what the two of you talked about?”
“Hmm…I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a lot of useful information. He has a gift of getting the conversation off himself. And once I took off my gloves and he asked about the engagement ring, I went all crazy wedding lady on him and couldn’t shut up about Jhett, the wedding, and yada yada yada.” I shook my head as the smile grew across my face. “Don’t you shake your head at me. You know I’m a fool in that department.”
I grabbed my bag out of my employee locker and guided her back to the front. “Not a fool, Soph. Just happy in love. I wish we all were.”
Sophie checked us into the same hotel Robert took me to for his birthday weekend getaway in high school. My insides soured and groaned, especially when memories involving the tub and bed started circling my head, but I didn’t have the heart to say anything. She was trying so hard to give me a cheerful visit, so I forced a smile and let her treat me to a spa day. The massage was awesome, and so were the hot stones they laid across my backside, but I just didn’t dig the mud baths, seaweed wraps, what-zits and who-zits and such. But it made Sophie incredibly happy, and I was hoping her aura would stretch its veil a little and cover me as well.
“Have you talked to your cousin yet about helping with all these maid of honor responsibilities?” I asked, breaking the silence in the steam room we were sharing.
“Yeah, she’s totally in. She did it for her best friend already so she knows exactly what to do.”
“She doesn’t mind taking on the work without the title?”
Sophie waved me off. “Pftt! Dana doesn’t care. She’s one of those overeager, the bride-better-watch-out-’cause-she’ll-totally-take-over kind of girls.”
“You do realize you’re the bride in that scenario, right?”
She giggled and replied, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep her in line. Nothing will happen at this wedding without my say-so, and I’ll make sure whatever she does for you is good too.”
Feeling a little better about bailing on those lovely responsibilities, I lay down completely on the bench and took in a deep, steamy breath. I would’ve thought the air in here would choke me, but it was surprisingly soothing as it passed through my lungs, like honey on a sore throat. I could just feel the tension melting away and leaking through my pores. “Sorry about that, Soph. I honestly have no idea what to do. I’ve never even been to a wedding, so having me do all those things…I’m freakin’ clueless and I don’t wanna mess up your wedding.”
“That’s alright. You can make it up to me by not going out with Evan.”
My head jerked upright, barely seeing her shaded form through the steam. “What?”
Her head turned in my direction, but her features remained a blur. “He’s in to you, Jenna. Big time. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice whenever you were the topic of conversation. And I know he’s here to get you back, but you can’t let him in. If there’s even a chance Robert will take you back, and you’ve been with Evan…”
I sat all the way up and took a moment to myself. I had already been debating that before Sophie even arrived. Slowly, but surely, Evan had been breaking down my defenses, but a part of me still feared opening that door beyond that crack.
“Trust me, it’s occurred to me already. He asked me out and I said no, but he’s been hanging around ever since. I feel like he’s waiting me out or something.”
“Probably is. And the way he asked me about you and Robert…he’s definitely interested.”
“What did you say?”
“The truth. That you guys were apart, but that you still wanna make it work, and you’re giving him the time and space he needs to figure out if he’s willing too.”
I nodded my head, but an increase in moisture clouded the space between us, so I doubted she saw it. As I lay back down on the bench, she added, “But for the record, I do like him.”
11
“It seems so…final,” I said dismally, staring down at the three medium-sized boxes before me on the end of my twin bed. Sophie squeezed in behind me and stroked my back. She had waited until now, Monday morning, to give me the boxes Robert had packed and asked her to pass along to me. I shook my head, this queasy feeling traveling north of my stomach and up my throat. “I just…I mean, I’m the one that royally f**ked up. Shouldn’t I be banging on his door, begging him to take me back or something?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had this problem, but I’d wait it out. Let him live life a bit without you and have the chance to really miss you. Besides, you need your clothes.” I did, actually, but him removing them from the apartment told me my desire of getting back together wasn’t exactly going my way.
Why did she continue to stroke my back? Did she take this as a bad sign too? My head started to shake slowly. “Soph…”
“Look, you’ve stunned him, okay? He brushed off a lot of girls in the past ‘cause he expected they would cheat. You blindsided him.”
“I didn’t cheat!” I yelled and jerked my body upright.
Her hand retreated. “Yeah, I know,” she claimed defensively. Soothingly, she added, “And maybe that’s why he can’t decide whether or not to come back. You did but you didn’t.
“I tried talking to him for you,” she added a moment later, and my body was quick to sweep around.
Panic bursted within like firecrackers. “What’d he say?”
She looked to the bed to watch her hand de-pill the blanket. “I tried to tell him what you’d been trying to tell him yourself. That you loved him. That you never meant to kiss Evan. That you’re sorry beyond words, and that you really need him to talk to you. But…” My insides swirled, and my breakfast was in danger of resurfacing. “…intentional or not, Jenna, you never fought the kiss. And that’s what’s killing him, ‘cause he truly believes you wanted Evan to do that.”
My jaw dropped and I tried to argue it, I really did. A few syllables here and there babbled out of my mouth, but nothing I was thinking was gonna defend against that.
“And I sorta agree with him on that,” she added.
I gasped, a sharp pain piercing my chest. “Sophie!”
She was quick to defend, “I know you love Robert, I really do. But of all people, I know what you felt for Evan in the past. I saw you, Jenna. I saw how you broke down when he woke up and you thought you lost him forever. It crippled you. So yeah, I think part of you really did wanna kiss Evan that night, and that’s why you didn’t fight him when he did it.”
My elbows dug hard into my thighs and my hands thoroughly buried my face. What the hell was I thinking? To just stand there and let him kiss me? I was happy with Robert, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I let Evan do it. Why I let him jeopardize the best thing that ever graced my life.
I stared at the boxes long after Sophie left me, wondering whether to take this as a sign we were truly over, or just a consideration on his part to keep me clothed. Either way, it tore me apart to go through them. It wasn’t that he’d packed up what pathetic amount of clothes I had left in our apartment, it was that I think he literally gave me all the photos and mementos we’d collected over the past two years too. Silly carnival pics we made in those booths, a shot glass we stole from the bar where I faked my way into for his twenty-first birthday, that awful t-shirt we picked up when we stopped at a roadside restaurant called Harry’s Crabs, which neither of us would even wear around the house. It’s like every little thing that had a memory attached to it, he just wanted to throw away and forget about. He kept nothing.
So not a good sign…
Not really sure what to do with them, I stuffed all the mementos and pics into two boxes, stacked them into the corner, threw my chenille throw over them and tossed a few books on top.
Voila. Coffee table.
Work was a relief ‘cause it was busy enough to keep my mind distracted. Thoughts of Robert and Evan were a rare event until Evan physically stepped through the front door around six. He didn’t hesitate to approach me and follow alongside as I collected books left behind at random locations throughout the store.
“Hey,” he said.