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Oh my God, I was totally overthinking it.
And yet, as I got off the bike and walked toward my house, hand-in-hand with Brax, I panicked.
All the excitement and anticipation I’d been feeling fled as we approached the front door. Once we were on the other side of the door, my back was against the wall and he was kissing me.
I had fantasized about this moment from the second we had locked eyes, but now that fantasy was becoming reality, I wasn’t so sure I was ready for this.
I would rather spend a lifetime of wondering what could have been rather than to have done it and lived to regret it.
“Stop,” I said against his lips, putting a hand on his chest.
He immediately stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think this is a good idea. I mean, Toby’s your best friend…” Oh my God, I sounded so lame.
He must have thought I was joking, because the side of his mouth lifted. Then seconds passed and the heavy-lidded look changed, and he took a step back. “I’m sorry…I mean, I thought we both wanted this.”
What the hell was I doing? I was so confused. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted. “I did. I mean, I do…but I don’t want to ruin anything between us.”
He ran both hands through his hair, and then he nodded. “It’s okay, Mandy. I understand.”
Although he said he understood, I wondered if he really did.
He smiled and lightly brushed his thumb over my lips in a gesture so unlike what I imagined a bad boy would do. “Good night, Amanda.”
The door opened and closed behind him, and I stood frozen where I was. Hearing his boots hit the porch, I wanted to call him back and tell him I didn’t mean it. But I didn’t move even as I heard the motorcycle fire up.
A thousand different emotions rushed through me, most of all regret.
“You’re a fool, Amanda,” I said to myself, sliding to the floor. “You’re a goddamn fool.”
***
Brax
I was a fucking idiot.
What the hell had I been thinking? In the past week, I’d slowly earned Amanda’s trust. We’d shared an amazing week forging a friendship that we’d never had before, and I had to go and blow it by kissing her and flirting with her?
Granted, she had kissed me first, but it had been innocent, and of course I had turned it into something different. She was incredibly vulnerable. I knew that better than anyone. What she had gone through would bring most people to their knees, and yet she had slowly picked up the pieces.
I wanted to go back to her house and tell her I was sorry, but yet I was home and pulling into my driveway. I cussed when I saw my dad’s beat-to-shit car sitting across the street.
The asshole had been an absentee father my entire life, but the second I had turned eighteen, he suddenly wanted to be a dad. Yet from the first meeting it was pretty clear to me that he didn’t know how to be one. He was trying to be a friend, doing his best to show me how cool he was.
In the past four years, I couldn’t count the number of times he had called me or dropped by for money. ‘Hey, bud,’ he’d say. ‘I just need a twenty to get through the week.’
I quit keeping track of how much money I’ve given him in the years he’d been coming around. At first I had no idea why, at the age of forty-six, he didn’t want more out of his life than working part-time dead-end jobs and dating women half his age. Now I realized he had zero aspirations. He was just existing…floating from one job to another, going from one woman to another, and thinking only of himself.
His head popped up from where he’d been lounging in his car.
“There’s my boy,” he said, stepping out of his crappy car.
The words made me cringe.
He slid his hands into his pockets. “Long day at work?”
“Yes,” I said, opening the front door. I just wanted to be by myself and not have to deal with his shit.
“I told you that you should give me a key.” He dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking and crushed it beneath his foot. “That way I can let myself in.”
“It’s my house, Carl.”
He flinched. “I told you before, I want you to call me Dad.”
