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If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was nervous.
She raised a brow.
“Babe, what are you doing here?” he asked and glanced over his shoulder. Tully’s smile drooped, but as she followed his gaze, it yielded nothing of note. She narrowed her eyes and turned back to him.
“What do you mean? You told me to meet you here.”
“I did?” His voice was a pitch higher than the normal husk that she was such a fan of. He swallowed, and she clocked the subtle movement. He was hitting all the marks of a nervous boy.
A twisting in her gut told her something wasn’t right.
“Yeah.” Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out the piece of notebook paper with his messy scrawl on it. She slid it across the table to him and he picked it up. “You left this in my locker.”
His brows furrowed as he read over the note,Meet me at Betty’s after practice. It closed with a familiar little doodled heart at the bottom. It was just like the other cutesy notes he’d left her when they had started dating six months ago.
It was a pleasant surprise to get one earlier that day since he’d stopped leaving them for her a couple of months ago.
She’d even tried to rush her beloved library volunteer hours because she was so excited that he was showing some of the same romantic gestures as before. But here, his face reddened and he worried his lip, taking way longer than necessary to read those six simple words.
“Oh right,” he swallowed. “I almost forgot.”
Tully’s stomach dropped. “You almost forgot but you’re here waiting for me?”
He turned to her, his mouth opening and closing, no answer coming out.
“You did leave this for me, right?” she asked, her heart sinking the longer he looked like a mouse caught in a trap. A part of her begged him to smile, to go back to normal, to assure her that, yeah, he did leave it for her and now they were just going to buy some milkshakes and chow down on some greasy burgers.
But he appeared incapable of coming up with anything like that. “Let’s go, okay?” He grabbed her hand and shuffled her from the booth. She ran on auto as he pulled her with him, her brow furrowing.
Unfortunately, his delayed response cost him the charade.
They turned, and all the little scattered crumbs from the last few minutes came full circle to reveal the entire picture.
He froze, and Tully paused with him when she took in the girl wearing the purple wrestling jacket with the four letters of Erik’s name embroidered over the right chest.
Joliet didn’t look ashamed, or even shocked.
In fact, a small smile graced her perfectly pink lips.
The worst part was, Tully wasn’t one bit surprised to see her younger sister standing there. She was the perpetrator of everything that went wrong in her life. If anything, Tully was more surprised that she hadn’t realized it sooner.
Her relationship with Erik had been mysteriously lackluster for some time. There were months of his increasing distance: being too busy at the same time her sister wasn’t home, his lack of affection, and probably the most obvious, Joliet’s near-constant curiosity about him.
She should have known the moment her sister found out about her first boyfriend that she would try and ruin something good and normal.
Tully pulled her hand from Erik’s grasp and took a step away from him. He spun to her, but she wasn’t focused on him.
Her intense glare remained fixed on Joliet, who bit her lip as her smirk grew and shrugged her shoulders in Erik’s oversized jacket. “Whoops.”
If Tully had her way, she would throw herself at her sister right now. Leap across the restaurant and grab her silky, teased hair, leaving bruises on that perfect face. Oh, even just thinking about doing that gave her so much satisfaction.
But in reality, that would never work in her favor.
She’d be the one to get in trouble, and Joliet would get exactly what she wanted—a reaction.
As kids, Joliet would nod and say sorry with teary blue eyes, but as soon as their mother’s back was turned, she would reach out one more time and yank on Tully’s curls as hard as she could, then run off screaming that Tully hit her. At the end of the day, Tully was always the one in timeout and Joliet was always the one rubbing it in.
God. It was so easy for Joliet to fool anyone she wanted. Those pixie-like features and perfectly teased light blonde hair had any guy at her feet. Innocent doe eyes had gotten her anything she desired because at least she could smile when she asked for something.
