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I nod. “You figured them out pretty quickly. I’m surprised it’s taking you so long to give me a name.”
“I just want to get yours right.” She narrows her eyes at me, and for a moment, I think she’s about to blurt something out. But she just shakes her head, looking disappointed. “Nope. Still not coming to me.”
“What is it you’re going to do with these nicknames, exactly?”
“It’s just for fun. Maybe I’ll write them on your Christmas gifts. Or, I’ll use them if you guys are being naughty. Goalie Gourmet, put down that expensive cheese!”
I grin. “Nolan can afford the expensive cheese. Trust me. It tastes terrible.”
She laughs. Then she tilts her head as she seems to see me in a different light.
“What?”
“Captain Jesse.”
I shake my head. “That’s not even a nickname. It’s a title, and it’s a title I don’t deserve.”
“Well that’s not how this works. You don’t get to change it. If I let people change their nicknames, we’d have to call Carter Throbbing Heartbulge or whatever it was he suggested.”
“Heartstopper,” I say.
Andi shivers and we both laugh.
“You get to be Captain, because I can see how the guys all respect you and look up to you. I mean, just look at the fact they’re all here in Frosty Harbor with you for the holidays even if it means extra travel to keep up with practices and meetings.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I can see she’s completely right. Something in my chest catches, so I just nod my head. “They’re good guys.”
“Yeah. I think all of you are,” she says. Our eyes meet, and I feel a sudden jolt of something that feels a hell of a lot like danger. Warning bells go off in my brain. “Why don’t we save the job hunting for when Jake gets here? He can join us.”
“Do we have to?”
“What? Are you worried about when he comes back?”
“I mean…” Andi shifts in her chair, then tucks her legs under her butt and folds her arms like she’s suddenly trying to contain her huge personality in as small a space as possible. “I did just kind of drag my whole family along for months of wedding planning, a rehearsal, and Jake probably had to rent a tux to go to the ceremony. He had to ask for time off from the team. All that and I got out of there so fast I couldn’t even keep my shoes on? Yeah,” she says, lowering her eyes. “I’m not exactly thrilled to have to face him when he gets here.”
I sit down across from her on the couch. “You’re sure you don’t regret it?”
“Pulling the old, ‘actually, I don’t’ maneuver?”
“Yeah.”
Andi bites her lip, forehead scrunching up as she stares at something on the floor. “No,” she says after a few quiet moments. “I mean, I feel bad that I don’t feel bad. But I keep thinking about it and waiting for the real guilt or regret to hit me. Instead, all I’ve been feeling is this sense of freedom and relief, like a huge weight rolled off my shoulders.”
“How did you guys meet, anyway?”
“At a fundraiser event Jake invited me to. We went on a couple dates and they were… also fine. He was pretty easy to talk to, even if it was always a little boring and impersonal. He had this huge family fortune and a lot of job responsibilities. Everybody I knew was over the moon for me, like I’d won some kind of lottery. Before him, my last few relationships were kind of disasters of epic proportions, so I think a normal, stable guy seemed like such an obvious ‘right’ answer I even had myself convinced it all made sense.”
I try to imagine myself in her shoes and nod. “That had to be hard.”
She tilts her head. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. I mean, yeah. Who is going to feel bad for the girl who starts dating some mega millionaire rich guy that doesn’t treat her badly, right?”
“I mean feeling trapped. That’s how you felt, right?”
She lets out a sudden breath like my words hit her in the chest.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean to assume. I just–”
“No,” she says, smiling now. “It’s just that nobody ever got it. In all the time I was with Landon, I’d try to bring up how I was really feeling and they’d get it wrong. They’d think I meant something else or refuse to really hear me. Everybody just gushed about how lucky I was and how excited I must be. At some point, I think I started to believe them. After all, all these people were telling me how I should feel. What did my own feelings matter at that point, right?”
