We stared at each other in tense silence.
That’s when I came to the hardest decision of my life.
I felt like someone had stuck burning needles into every muscle in my body, and all I could feel was torturous pain, and I didn’t know why it was necessary. What point it had? Why it had to be that way? I started to imagine that perhaps those needles were my family, and horribly in that moment I resented the hell out of them. “We’re done for good. We can’t be friends and we can’t be this. Lose my number, Jake.”
He looked grief-stricken. “You can’t be serious?”
The tears slipped down my cheeks now and I brushed them hastily away. “Deadly. I won’t answer if you call.”
“Why?” he shook his head, his own resentment building his gorgeous eyes. “Just tell me why. A real answer this time.”
“I told you why. You didn’t listen.”
And just like that, I turned and walked out.
It was hard to make sense of something to someone else when you had a hard time figuring out if it really made sense to yourself. But I wasn’t crazy.
The truth was I’d made a promise. This was me keeping it.
Chapter Eight
I left Dad at his hotel talking to Mom on the phone, reassuring her that he was all right, I was all right, and that we were… talking things out. Although I still didn’t feel one hundred percent certain that we’d reached an understanding, I hoped we would by the time he left.
For now, I headed to my boyfriend’s apartment.
Something had shifted inside me when Jake sprung to my defense. It didn’t seem like much, but in reality, knowing he had my back was a huge step toward me trusting him. The old Jake was too determined to keep on my dad’s good side to ever interfere in any small parental disputes I might have had. He’d once sat quietly in the corner of the living room while my mom and dad refused to listen to me about being a cop.
He’d changed.
Anxious to see him, I hurried up to his apartment.
“Jake’s not here,” Beck said as I followed him into the kitchen.
Sitting at the kitchen table were Claudia and Lowe. I smiled at my girl. “Have you seen him?”
Claud shook her head. “Nope. But—”
“She’s been too busy planning our summer tour,” Beck interrupted, offering me a can of soda.
“No, thanks.” I raised an eyebrow at Claudia. “Summer tour?”
Lowe grinned. “It’s what we were talking about at Teviot. Claudia is amazing. She’s already helped us book eight gigs for the summer, and she thinks we can turn it into a state tour. It could get us noticed.”
“Isn’t that expensive?”
Lowe shrugged. “We’re pooling our resources. And these are paying gigs.” He nudged Claudia. “Now I just have to convince Claud to be our manager and come on tour with us.”
“If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to,” Beck said, trying—and failing—to sound casual.
I studied them carefully, wondering what I was missing. “Well… that sounds great. And you should think about it, Claudia. It might be a lot of fun to tour with them.”
Claudia shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Jake is—”
“A sappy, overachieving, broody little son of a bitch and you could do much better.” Beck grinned up at me.
I made a face at him and had just turned back to Claudia when I got a text.
You should know I’m in the kitchen of this blond chick I’m kind of in love with. If you see her, tell her I miss her and to get her ass back here.
“Jake is waiting for you—”
“In our apartment,” I finished for Claud, waving my phone at her.
I wondered why Jake had gone back to my place when he knew I was hanging out with my dad. It occurred to me that perhaps he was concerned my dad might’ve said something to change my mind about our relationship. I longed for the days when we could stop reassuring each other about our mutual commitment.
When I got to the apartment, Jake was in the kitchen with Maggie. I tried to be polite to her, but I was in a hurry to talk to my boyfriend so I offered a quick hello and goodbye as I dragged Jake into my room.
“Eager, are we?”
“I just wanted you to know that we’re okay. Despite my dad and everything.”
Instantly, Jake’s eyebrows puckered. “Speaking of your father… I really want to hear how things went with your dad tonight, but I have to know something that’s been bugging me since he mentioned it… Alex?”
I’d actually forgotten my dad had mentioned Alex’s name. Shit.
Now for the truth. I had no idea how Jake would react to it.
Alex Roster was one of my best friends. But for a while… he was more than that.
I took a deep breath. “The guy, the one I dated for ten months freshman year of college… it was Alex.”
Jake tensed and then he gently pushed me away. “Alex was the guy?”
Sensing this was going somewhere bad, I hurried to explain. “After you left, everything was different. We’d both changed and we grew close. We’re really good friends. At college we decided to give it another go. It worked for a while but I couldn’t give him what he wanted and he couldn’t give me what I needed.” I shrugged. “We broke up, but we’ve stayed friends. He’s been seeing his girlfriend Sharon for ages. They’re happy together and—”
“Ten months?” Jake interrupted. He’d paled. “You f**ked him?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Jake…” I felt betrayed by the question. “That’s not even fair. You probably f**ked an entire sorority house while we were broken up.”
“They weren’t goddamn Alex Roster!” he yelled, brushing past me.
I watched on as he wore out my carpet, pacing back and forth.
“All that time we were dating, you said you had no feelings for him and you were lying to me?”
I’d expected him to not like the news, but I hadn’t expected him to be so angry and hurt. “No, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t have feelings for him then,” I promised. “Like I said, Brett’s death changed us. You breaking my heart changed me. You left, Jake. Alex stayed.”
Jake jerked to a stop, like I’d hit him. “Is that how it’s going to be forever? You winning an argument for the rest of our lives by throwing that in my face?”
“I threw it in your face for this particular argument because it has relevance. You wanted to know how I ended up dating Alex.”