“You’re making us brunch?”
“Well, I’ll order us brunch. You haven’t been gone that long,” she laughs.
I give her a thumbs up and leave. I walk through the kitchen, assiduously ignoring the Cosmo magazine, and into my room.
Reset button has been pushed. Let the chips fall.
“Where is my name tag? Have you seen it?” I rummage around on the top of my dresser and search for it. My hand knocks over a bottle of perfume but I don’t have the energy to pick it up. “Ugh. I always put it right here.”
Presley shuffles the array of items from my suitcase that are now dumped on my bed. “I haven’t. But the mess we made getting you ready for Cashmere probably knocked it around.”
“Probably.”
I crouch down and look on the floor and spy it lying behind a lamp. Retrieving it, I pin it to the front of my blue button-down Cooper and Sheldon shirt. My fingers fumble with the clasp, my coordination suffering the effects of not getting any sleep last night.
Every time I closed my eyes, a movie-like reel of images would start. Sometimes it felt like they started before I even fell asleep and that made me fearful to even try to let my lids close.
I feel like I’m walking around in a bubble. The world is speeding by, doing its thing, and I can’t keep up. I’m slogging behind, trying to keep pace, while being dragged down by the stresses of my life. Things were barely manageable before; I’d learned to put everything into a box and open each parcel as I was able. But now? There’s no hope. Fenton won’t fit into any box.
I keep telling myself he did exactly what a rebound should do: he was fun. He built me up, gave me some of my confidence back. And that has my chin lifted a little bit. Or a lot. So my plan worked. I rebounded. I think. The only problem is—now I don’t want to boomerang to the next guy. I want him and I don’t think that’s going to happen.
“I so don’t feel like going in tonight,” I groan, feeling a headache start to pulse in my temple.
“Why didn’t you just say no?”
“Because,” I sigh. “They let me switch with another girl so I could take the last couple of days off. So how can I say no now and not look like a complete jerk?”
“What’s the worst they can do?”
“Fire me!”
“Over that?”
“Yes, over that!” I laugh. “Sometimes I forget that you don’t understand basic life.”
She shrugs, examining a freshly manicured fingernail. “I understand basic life. I just happen to be born into a family with a trust fund. It’s not bad to be me.”
If anyone else would’ve said that, I would’ve rolled my eyes and called them a twat. But Presley doesn’t mean it badly. She’d do anything for me or for anyone she loves, which in honesty, is few and far between, but that’s not the point. She has a huge heart and is right—she’s lucky.
I twist my name tag until it sits only partially lopsided.
“I’d miss him, too,” Presley says.
Turning to face her, I glare.
“Don’t try to play pretend with me. I’m your best friend and I’m a female that saw him in those workout pants and you confirmed my cock theory. There’s no way in Hades you aren’t missing him.”
I slouch over to the bed and sit on the edge. I do miss him. But that’s not the problem because I’ve missed people before. I missed Grant. I still kind of miss Grant in a weird way. But this feels different. I miss Fenton, yes. I miss the sound of his voice, the way he makes my skin come alive under his touch. I miss the little idiosyncrasies that make him him. But I also miss the way he makes me feel–giggly, interesting, safe, desired. It makes how I missed Grant feel incredibly superficial. What I feel for Fenton is wrapped around some deep part of my consciousness and it doesn’t just hurt–it aches.
“He was that good, huh?”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “He was that good.”
“I figured. Rich, sexy asshole. Of course he’d be great in bed.”
“Right? But you know, Pres, it was more than that . . .” I sigh, searching for the words to sum up all that Fenton was in such a short period of time. “He’s smart. He’s kind and funny and silly. He listened when I talked. He didn’t get mad when I challenged him.”
A picture of Grant and I sits on a shelf across the room. His arm is around me and we look exactly like what our relationship was—young and immature.
I spin around to Presley again.
“When I would go somewhere with Grant, I had to fight for his attention with every pretty girl in the room. But no matter where I went with Fenton, we may as well have been alone. He never looked at anyone but me. I never felt like I bored him or that he wished he was home watching football. It was just . . .”
“Magical?”
“Kind of,” I whisper. My eyes close and I swear I can feel his breath on my neck, his voice murmuring in my ear. “He could’ve made me want to try a relationship again. I guess he was just too good to be true.”
She narrows her eyes. “You don’t think you . . .”