Even though I knew there was a thousand and a half things he wasn’t willing to share with me.
But that thought only lasted until I reminded myself that I was dumb and had no business having feelings for anyone, especially him. I’d already spent more than half my life pining away for someone who didn’t see me as anything more than his best friend’s little sister even after we’d… done something. I’d learned my lesson. At least you’d figure I would have learned my lesson. I wasn’t about to go down that road of unrequited love again. I was fully aware of the castle I’d built and what it was made of, and it was friendship.
Case closed. The door was locked and deadbolted. I wasn’t going there, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. No, thank you. My castle lived in Denial’s city limits, and it was and would have to be perfectly fine there.
“What are you going to do if he messages you again?” Tali asked as the server approached our table. Neither one of us said anything as he dropped off three plates of food with a sleek smile aimed at my sister that went unnoticed because he wasn’t a woman with at least a D-cup breast size.
I dragged my Reuben and fries toward me as I smiled at the server still looking at Tali’s pale skin, dark red hair, and blue eyes, with so much hope. Poor guy had no idea he never could or would stand a chance with my sister. Been there, done that. I knew what that was like. I told her, “Either pretend like nothing happened, or say I’m sorry and that I don’t know why I wrote that and I regret it big time.”
My sister snickered as she picked up her own Reuben with both hands, oblivious to the server still hanging around, arranging the silverware around the plate he’d set next to mine. “You want to keep being friends with him, don’t you?” she asked.
It wasn’t like I didn’t talk about Aaron. I did. My whole family knew about him. There wasn’t a whole lot I kept from them, except this whole giant-crush-on-a-practical-stranger thing. All I’d told them was that we were friendly. “Yeah…,” I said, watching the neglected server shoot Tali one last look before finally huffing and walking off.
“Then just say ‘my bad’ and hopefully he’ll understand you were joking around.” There was a pause and a second later, her lips pinched together. Her chin wobbled.
I knew what she was going to do before she did it, but I still made a face when she started laughing her butt off all over again, loud, loud, loud.
“Why would you do that, Squirt?”
“I don’t know!” I hissed back at her, trying not to laugh and feel mortified at the same time and failing. Like usual. “It just happened. It was like I was talking to you or something.”
“You’ve never written that to me!”
I groaned and felt my entire body flame up all over again in shame. “I know! I’ve never sent that to anyone.” Because I hadn’t. Not even at my most desperate with Hunter did I ever write him that.
“What haven’t you sent to anyone?” came the other female voice a split second before Jasmine slid into the spot on the bench seat beside me, her hands already dragging the Cuban sandwich with sweet potato fries she would never eat on a regular basis closer to her.
Dragging my hand across my throat, I shook my head at Tali, trying to tell her not to say anything.
She either didn’t see me or didn’t care, because the next thing I knew, she blurted out, “Squirt wrote XOXO on an IM to her army friend.”
Jasmine snorted a second before she bit into her sandwich. With a mouthful of pork, she said something that sounded like, “The one you like?”
“I don’t like him like that,” I tried to lie.
The eighteen-year-old who treated me like the younger one, snickered in what I knew was disbelief.
I rolled my eyes and sighed, training my gaze on the wall behind Tali’s chair, ignoring the way my little sister was brushing this all off and how my older one was pretty much dying of embarrassment for me. “Shut up.”
“Before you were a dumbass, did he tell you if he was going to keep in touch?” Tali asked as she tried to reach toward Jasmine’s plate to snag a fry. It was either my imagination or our little sister growled loud enough for Tali to snatch her hand back on her own.
“He said he would, but…” I shrugged and cleared my throat. “We’ll see.” Things would be different once he got back to the States and his life didn’t revolve around the same old people and the same old base. I understood.
“You haven’t kept in touch with any of the rest of the soldiers you’ve written before, have you?” Jasmine asked between bites, making it really apparent that she was usually so focused on her own life that she didn’t pay that much attention to anyone else’s.
“No.” Then again, most of my conversations with my other Help a Soldier pairings had consisted of the weather, their kids, and if they liked this-or-that more. I’d never told anyone else things about my family or my lack of relationships or… anything really that personal. I was a moron. A giant moron who knew better. Another sigh that probably gave too much away slipped right out of me. “Who knows, maybe he won’t write me again. He doesn’t have to.”
Because he didn’t. He didn’t owe me anything.
I didn’t miss the look my sisters gave each other. Neither one of them thought he’d write me. Or maybe they both saw through my fa?ade. Honestly, I would rather not know.
If there was one thing I’d learned over the last few years, it was that just because you cared about someone, and just because they made it seem like they cared about you too, didn’t really mean a single thing at the end of the day.
I’d take what I’d been given and be happy with it.
Chapter 13
June
I was in the middle of cutting fabric when my phone beeped. I’d been tracing the pattern for the reversible style of bandanas I was working on for the last hour, and wanted to start on the other fabric I was planning on using for the other side. I never got used to how excited the little things in life made me, but knowing I’d see a finish product soon… it made me smile, even if it was dog bandanas I was making, because they were my dog bandanas. Not anyone else’s.
I didn’t even bother rushing to look at my cell phone screen. Anyone texting me knew that after six o’clock, I was usually in work mode. If it was something important, they could call. It wasn’t for another half hour, until I was done cutting out giant triangle-like shapes on the second fabric I was using, that I dragged my cell over the worktable toward me.
And then I saw it.
AHALL80 SENT YOU A MESSAGE
My heart leapt.
And as quickly as it leapt, it seemed to seize up in a way it hadn’t in years.
It had been two weeks since the Skype app had been opened on my phone, much less on my computer. Two weeks in which I’d tried to stop thinking about this man I’d been forced into a friendship with through a foundation. Fourteen nights where every time I lay in bed—and every time I had a spare moment to think—I thought about those damn Xs and Os. Mostly though, I thought about the man I’d gotten to know, and I wondered if he had gotten home okay and tried not to miss his messages and e-mails.
I’d put my foot in my mouth plenty of times in my life, but what I’d done in our last conversation was at the top. So far at the top, I didn’t know how something else would ever beat it.
Knowing my luck, I’d jinxed myself by just thinking about it, but I shoved that possibility to the back of my mind for later.