I sat in my car for a few minutes as I watched Beau drive away. Today, I was Beau’s girlfriend. Real Estate Agent. Upstanding Halstead citizen. Before that I was the dedicated college girl who’d battled depression, and an almost unwed mother. And, before that, Reid’s girlfriend. I was starting to see that the many hats I’d worn over the years were piling up and giving me a headache. Perhaps it was time to actually think about who I really wanted to be.
The sun broke through the clouds and reflected off of something stuck under my windshield wiper. A CD case with the words PLAY ME and a smiling face written on it stared back at me. A smiling face that had witnessed the deluge of roles I’d been playing. I retrieved the CD and popped it into my player, hoping that whatever was about to come through my speakers was a voice of reason with answers to all of my life questions. Instead, it was the voice of one John Bon Jovi telling me that he’d be there for me. The same voice that had serenaded me in my Jeep years ago. It might not have been the voice of reason, but I knew the person responsible for the impromptu promise session and contrary to what I’d thought before, I wanted to believe the sentiment of the song.
He hadn’t been joking when he said he was going to fight for me.
“We have to have the track done by Saturday,” I blurted out before I started to explain the situation I’d accidentally forced myself into. “We’re having people over to ride.”
“Ha!” Brett laughed from the cab of the skid steer he was currently sitting in. I’d waved him and my brother over from the track the second I jumped out of my truck. “I’m good on this thing, but I’m not a miracle worker, RT.”
“Well you’re going to have to be. We’re having a party and I might have invited Beau and Nora. So it has to be done.”
“How do you might have invited someone to a party?” Hoyt asked, as he continued to rake over the whoop section, which appeared to be the only part of the track that was actually able to be ridden on. We had managed to get the majority of it tilled up that morning so we had at least one thing going for us.
“Don’t worry about it.” I shook off his question. “Just worry about raking the dirt and getting this thing somewhat in riding condition in the next four days.”
“Dude,” Brett said. “Why in the world would you invite them here? I get wanting to win her back, but inviting her boyfriend out with her seems like a bad idea.”
“Well, yeah, it’s less than fucking ideal,” I bit out, hearing the levels of my frustration rise. I took a deep breath to try to stay calm. I needed to play this whole thing in a calmly manner. I couldn’t be second-guessing every move I made. Every single move I made from here on out had to be perfectly calculated. “I don’t think she would have taken me up on the option to come alone. I’ve got to work with what I’m dealt.”
Would I have rather had time alone with Nora? Absolutely. We had a lot to discuss and I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the way she’d been checking me out. The way she was looking at me today when we were standing outside the diner was not the way friends look at each other. It was probably unfair of me to flaunt what the good Lord, and hours of time on the track and in the gym, gave me in front of her the way I did, but seeing her reaction was enough to make me not care. She might have thought she was covering up her desires, but she was a terrible liar. I saw the way she held her breath and her muscles tensed when I stepped toward her. She was still attracted to me. And I was damn sure still attracted to her.
I’d spent the past few days replaying everything that had happened since I’d returned to Halstead and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how she ended up with Beau Gregurich. Then it hit me, she wasn’t dating him because she was head over heels in love. She was dating him because when you live in a town the size of Halstead, your options are limited. Beau was the means to an end. He had to be.