Page 62 of Back for Seconds

Then, the one time he dared to express himself, to share his full truth, my dad just flat out rejected him.

I suddenly felt horrible for what I’d said about Vin to Joey the other day in the car. I hadn’t been fair. Vin had deserved better.

I felt my throat constricting. The fine lines around the corner of Joey’s mouth twitched with a frown. “Joey, I’m so sorry.”

He nodded tersely. “I’m trying really hard to…to stand up for myself in a more normal way. I can’t afford to just buy a cabin every time I’m fed up.”

“And yesterday you did. That’s huge.”

“She said I wasted ten years of her life. As if we never had a single good time together.”

“Give me a break.” I pushed my fork into the crumbs around my side of the tray. “She said that because she wanted to hurt you. And it worked.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Joey said eventually. He reached for my wrist. “You ok?”

In every other timeline, I would have shaken out my shoulders and smiled. Yeah, totally. Why? But very suddenly, that felt impossible. Like I might choke on my tongue if I tried gritting my teeth and lying in this moment. I never wanted to lie to Joey.

I could have spit in Brian’s Cheerios, and he wouldn’t have even flinched. That’s how indifferent he was to me. And what about Joey? Could I get under his skin? Did he even think about me?

“You still care about her enough that she can get under your skin. I don’t think Brian has ever cared what I think about anything since the day we picked out our wedding cake.” I stabbed my fork into the center of a blondie. “White cake with lemon curd. Used to be my favorite.”

“Are you…?” Joey seemed to think better of what he was about to ask and let the sentence trail away.

“Jealous? Yeah, I am,” I said with a laugh. “I’m jealous and bitter and I’m fucking pissed. I wish I could be like Amber, o-or maybe I wish you were my ex. I wish something was different. How…how could he turn off his feelings for me so fast? Did he ever care? All that shit he said to me—all the romance he piled on thick. Was it just a fucking experiment? I just don’t get it. I never will.”

Joey watched me, the hard angles of his face set sternly. I tracked my eyes over his—his inky-dark, inscrutable eyes. Eyes that held emotion right at the surface, dangling right in front of me, before snatching it away. Intimacy and recognition here in one blink, gone in another.

I looked away, focused on picking at the ends of my hair.

“And what about you? Would you be pissed if I went out tonight and fucked some random guy? Made out with the first person who looked at me in a bar? If I never texted you ever again, would you even think about me?”

“June, I would be—”

“—Finally, that goofy bitch is gone—”

“June. Stop.”

I jolted, snapping my eyes to Joey’s.

“I would be more than pissed.” He swallowed roughly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I would be heartbroken.”

A moment passed as Joey’s eyes clung to me. Finally, he said: “Come here.”

I looked up from my plate. “What? Why?”

He pivoted his body sideways, inclined his chin, and cocked his head. “Because I want you over here, JB.”

Weirdly, I obliged. I stood up and circled the island and then stood dumbly between his legs, anger and hurt and yearning coursing through me in equal measure. We were almost at eye level like this.

“Look at me,” he said in a heavy whisper.

I did as he asked, crossing my arms over my chest. His eyes were flooded with warmth, softness. He reached for my hand, pulling my defensive posture apart, taking it flat between his two palms.

“If you did any of those things, I would spend every hour from now until next Christmas racking my brain, trying to figure out what I did wrong. I would call; I would text.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “I would come to this house with an entire tray of eggplant balls, banging on the door, begging for you to talk to me.”

A laugh rippled through me, warmth blooming in my chest. “Yeah, right.”

“I mean it,” he whispered, taking my palm and placing it over his heart. There was a quick pulse between my legs; memories, longing, anticipation all gathering into a tightly wound ache inside me. “Do not underestimate how I feel about you, June.”