“Garrett, you don’t feel like staying?” I asked him, taking the leap to address him directly.
“No, I think Gracie and I are going to head out,” he said giving me a hard look. “Besides, you seem to be in good hands,” he stated matter a factly before turning around and walking out the door.
Gracie looked at me and cocked her eyebrow, but only said a quick “goodbye” before following Garrett out of the bar.
I pushed my chair into the table hard enough for it to fall on the floor.
“What is going on between you two?” Damien asked.
“Me and Gracie?” I asked, purposefully obtuse. Damien frowned.
“No, you and that Garrett guy,” he clarified and I could only shake my head.
“We were a huge mistake,” I said sadly, feeling the truth of the words deep in my bones.
Damien’s jaw set as he picked up on what exactly I was telling him. “So you guys really did sleep together.” He pushed his hair off his forehead and grimaced. “I was really hoping that stuff you were yelling at each other last week was more about being angry than based on something that actually happened.”
I sighed and scrubbed my face with my hands before dropping them back to my side. “What do you want me to say, Damien? You broke up with me. I was upset. I thought you and me were forever and then suddenly we weren’t. I was in a really messed up place,” I shot out and Damien flinched.
“And Garrett was there. He and I hooked up and I thought for a stupid second it might mean something. But that was before I remembered who he was and who I’m supposed to be.”
I hated how incredibly egotistical those words sounded but it felt like honesty. Garrett and I weren’t meant to be. It didn’t matter that we had existed in a moment in time where we made perfect sense.
Each time we had been together had been abnormal circumstances. First when I was so drunk, sleeping with him hadn’t felt like a lapse in judgment. And the second time when I was so out of my mind with misery that it seemed he was the only one to hold me together.
If I had learned anything it was that I didn’t trust my heart to lead me down the right path. My emotions were too conflicted and messy where Garrett Bellows was concerned and I knew that following them would be a disaster.
I wasn’t a person to allow my head to overrule my heart. Even now, in the early stages of my grieving, I clung to my reason like a lifeline. Garrett and I were too different. Even though he had shown me a side of himself that revealed a man who at one time had wanted more for his life, it didn’t change the fact of where he was now.
And whom he was currently with.
And that who was my good friend.
“And who are you, Riley?” Damien asked with a hopeful expression on his face. He took my hand in his, cautiously at first but when I didn’t pull immediately away, he squeezed and moved closer.
I looked into the brown eyes that at one time had signified everything I wanted in my life. Damien was my ideal match in everyway. We had the same goals, the same ambitions. Damien and I were driven in similar ways, propelled by a passionate need to succeed and thrive.
And if those likenesses felt a little empty now, I was determined to overlook that and forget about the boy with the long blond hair who made me question everything I thought I had wanted in my life.
Because how could a guy like Garrett give me my happily ever after when we spent most our time cataloging the million and one ways we didn’t work? We couldn’t. End of story.
“I’m Riley Walker and I have an amazing future ahead of me. I know exactly what I want out of life and I will make my dad proud of me,” I said with desperation. I needed those words to be true. Otherwise I didn’t know what I would do.