“This just made everything worse, didn’t it?” I asked, choking on my words.
“I don’t know. I’ve got to think, Gracie. I just can’t—” He shook his head. “I’ve got to go.”
“All right,” I murmured, grabbing my things and climbing out of his car.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes sad as he looked at me.
“Me too,” I replied, closing the door.
Mitch didn’t pull away immediately. He waited until I walked into the apartment building before he took off down the road.
And all I could do was go upstairs, lock myself away in my room, and cry for everything that almost was.
I slammed my palm against the steering wheel as hard as I could.
Fucking moron!
What in the hell had I been thinking?
Gracie was right, I was a mess! I was saying one thing and doing another! It was like I had multiple personalities.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I glanced at where it lay in the center console and thought about running far, far away.
Are you coming over? You were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago.
Sophie.
Shit.
Fuck.
God damn it!
I had kissed Gracie.
Jesus, had I kissed her.
And it had been the most incredible, mind-melting kiss.
Not only that but we had spent time together and it was fun. It was just like how we used to be. Without the watching her get drunk and go home with other guys part.
The Gracie she had been lately was the Gracie I had fallen in love with. Sarcastic. Funny. Easy to be around. I remembered how I had dismissed her in the beginning as a flaky college girl only to find out later that she was so much more.
She was smart. She didn’t advertise the fact that she had almost perfect GPA the entire time she was in school. She wrote amazing stories that she sometimes would let me read. But she was guarded about them, almost as though she were afraid for people to see that side of her.
But she let me see it.
Just me.
I loved seeing her in her element today. Interviewing Mrs. Wagner and later taking pictures of the garden. She enjoyed her job. She felt like she was doing something worthwhile. She was happy.
And again, she shared that with me.
So I had let my guard down. The guard that I had only erected after she had pushed me away. One that was meant to keep her out.
And I touched her. I held her hand. I told her I fucking missed her.
And then to complicate an already overly complicated situation, I kissed her. And she had kissed me back.
I could still feel the imprint of her fingers on my back.
Then she had gotten pissed. She had accused me of being wishy-washy. And she had gotten out of my car and walked away.
Again.
But this time, I really freaking deserved it.
Because I was a royal dickweed.
I turned down a tree-lined road and stopped in front of a small cape cod house with a white picket fence. When I parked I quickly typed out a response to Sophie and hit send and then got out of the car.
“Hey, man,” a voice called out. I found Jordan on the porch, scraping off paint from around the windows on the door. His T-shirt was splattered with paint and a bucket and brush sat at his feet.
“Look at you getting all domestic,” I joked, kicking the empty bucket with my boot.
“Who woulda thunk it, right?” Jordan shrugged, dropped the scrapper into the bucket and picking it up.
“So Maysie finally got her picket fence, huh?” I asked with a smile, following him into the house.
“As you know, what Maysie wants, Maysie gets,” Jordan replied, closing the door behind me and turning on the foyer light.
“This is a great place,” I said, looking around.