Regardless, she’s right in that I should have talked to her before. I should have said during our first conversation what happened between he and I in the basement. This is my fault, and I don’t know how to make things right. But I have to try.
“Let me take you to lunch,” I say. “Let’s talk more. I want to hear your side of things and listen. Please. We can sort this out, but we have to talk.” I don’t want things to go back to how they were, the years of silence, awkward family gatherings, the vast gulf between us. I missed her so badly, and now I’m afraid I’ve lost her again.
“I…I can’t look at you right now,” Christina says flatly, shaking her head. “I need some space to think.” She turns and walks out my front door.
God, that went so terribly bad. So, so bad. I drop to the couch and rest my head in my hands, hurting so much that I’m almost numb to it now, like my body is going into shock. I screwed this up. Because I was too scared to own up to Christina from the very start that something happened with me and Cole.
Shit.
Cole.
He heard the whole exchange from upstairs, where he remained quiet without intruding. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking or feeling right now. Is he upset with me too? I sniffle and wipe my face. Plod back up the steps with leaden feet to find a shirtless Cole sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his pants.
I settle beside him, leaving a gap between our sides. Inches that feel like miles.
Cole doesn’t look over at me. He finishes dressing in silence, slipping on his shirt, his socks. Methodical with his movements, not rushed.
The stiffness between us is thick enough to cut with a saw. Hard to believe that a half-hour ago, I was asleep and curled around him. Now it’s like we’re strangers. What is he thinking right now? Feeling?
“I…” I clear my throat and turn to face him, make myself look him in the eye. After all of this, he deserves me trying to be brave. “I’m sorry, Cole.”
He exhales hard and looks at me. “You could have told me.” The brief words are clipped as he speaks, and my heart falls. He’s upset with me too. I’ve royally screwed up on this one.
“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” I say. “Christina likes you, and she admitted it to me, and I was between a rock and a hard place.”
Cole eyes me for a long moment. Breathes in slowly, exhales through his nose. He rises. “I should go.”
I don’t want him to go. The urge to cry hits me so hard I can’t breathe. I fight the instinct to reach out and cling to his arm, to beg him to stay with me and hold me. I don’t want to be alone right now, but I can’t ask him to be there for me when I know he’s upset with me. It’s not fair to use him in that manner.
Cole deserves better than that. Better than a friend like me, who’s so damn scared she leaves a trail of pain behind her wherever she goes.
So I sit on the side of the bed, and I give a bobblehead nod.
And I watch my best friend—and the man I suspect I’m starting to fall for—walk down the stairs away from me.
Cole
My dad’s house is painfully quiet.
I can hear the soft, hushed cadence of my breathing as I stare at the TV, which I haven’t turned on yet. Hell, I can almost hear the thudding of my heart. It’s been a long fucking day, one I spent most of driving around in my truck.
Thinking.
I stopped to eat a late lunch at a dumpy diner out in a small suburb I’d never been to before. The Reuben was good, the fries generic. I picked at my food, not really hungry. After that, I continued to drive and drive. Aimless, meandering, not wanting to go home, not wanting to see anyone.
I couldn’t get that fight I overheard out of my head.
I still can’t.
Funny how much stuff you learn when you’re listening to a private conversation, stuck, unable to do much more than sit there. Christina was lobbing so many accusations at Lauren…and holy shit, first off, I had no idea her sister had a crush on me. Still reeling from that one. She and I barely spoke to each other in person over the years, mostly at family functions, and our emails were polite and nice but not exactly groundbreaking personal revelations.
But the hardest part of that fight was realizing Lauren apparently views me as a dirty little secret. Something she has to keep quiet from everyone. Something that “just happened” out of nowhere and needed to be downplayed, kept quiet, to spare her sister’s feelings. She flat-out told her we weren’t seeing each other. That was a kick in the nuts.
Logically, I get it. I really do. Family is important, and Lauren loves her sister and would say whatever it took to get her to stop being mad. But the whole thing left me feeling shitty and dumb, because here I was, thinking last night that there was something real between us, something almost tangible and worth diving off the cliff’s edge for.
Fucking stupid fool I am.