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“Who are you talking to?” Dean was sitting on the couch, and I punched him on the arm as I walked past.
“Melissa,” he answered, raising his eyebrows with her name. “Meli, hold on a sec. ” Dean covered his cell phone with his hand and lowered it toward his thigh. “She wants to come with us. ” I eyed him, my face clearly confused. “To Alabama,” he added.
“Why?” I asked, not understanding why she would possibly want to take that trip.
“She said she’s bored at home without Cassie. And she wants to help. Personally, I think she just misses me. ” He laughed.
I thought for a second before realizing that the idea of Melissa coming with us didn’t annoy me. “She can come. ”
“Really?” Dean broke out in a big smile.
“Yeah, I don’t care,” I said quickly. It would be fun with her there. And she’d probably be really helpful. She was a girl, after all, and girls like to organize, clean, and take care of shit. Right?
“She did not go with you to Alabama,” Cassie said, her jaw dropping wide open.
“Yes, she did. She even met Chrystle,” I told her with a large grin before stuffing a slice in my mouth.
“What?” Her shoulders dropped. “She didn’t tell me a thing!”
I reached across the table for her, cupping her cheek in my hand. “I told her not to. I made her promise she wouldn’t tell you anything until I could come get you. ”
“But she’s my best friend,” she whined. “And she knew how much I was hurting. If she would have just told me what was going on, I wouldn’t have had to go through all of that. The waiting, the not knowing…”
“Trust me, Cass, she fought with me a lot about it. She wanted to tell you every day, and every day I had to make her promise she wouldn’t. I threatened to stop filling her in on things and she said if I did, she’d call you that second and tell you everything. ” I half smiled to hide my discomfort. “So basically, we had an understanding. As long as I kept her in the loop, she kept her mouth shut. ” It didn’t feel wrong when I asked Melissa to keep all this from Cassie at the time, but sitting here now, saying it all out loud, the fact that I had been a complete dick overwhelmed me.
“Hmph. ” Cassie crossed her arms across her chest and pouted. My eyes followed her arms but stopped abruptly on her chest. Just one look and my manhood started to wake up. I forced myself to look away and think about anything other than the woman I loved sitting across from me, her breasts heaving up and down with each disgruntled breath.
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t have her tell you what was going on until it was all over. I had asked you to understand so much already. I refused to ask you to understand that too. ”
“But I would have. I would have understood. ” She uncrossed her arms before continuing. “Or I would have at least tried to. ”
She’s right. She’s so fucking right. But it’s too late. I can’t change the past. What’s done is done.
“I know that, but it didn’t seem fair. ” I reached across the table and stroked her cheek with my thumb. “I was trying to be honorable. And I felt that coming to your door while I was still carrying Chrystle-sized baggage was not the honorable thing to do. ”
“You and all your right-thing-to-do ideas. You sorta suck at doing the right thing. ”
“I hear that a lot. ”
“Jeez Jack, this house is really nice,” Melissa said, running her hand across the granite countertop in the kitchen of my rented house.
I nodded. “The rent is really cheap here,” I paused before adding, “And I thought I was staying awhile. ”
“Well thank God you’re not! Can we go out tonight? Please? Somewhere fun?” she begged, her bottom lip jutting out.
I smirked at her suggestion before glancing at Dean. “Sure. ” I shrugged, taking a swig from my lukewarm bottle of beer. There were only two bars in this small Alabama town, and after that hellish night when I met Chrystle, I’d sworn I’d never step foot in that particular bar again. So that only left the other one, and I had no idea what it was like.
“Yes!” Melissa practically shouted before disappearing upstairs to the guest bathroom. “I get to shower first!”
I eyed my brother. “What’s the latest with you two?”
“She likes to kiss me. ” Dean smiled like a lovesick idiot. “A lot. ”
“Are you in junior high? What the fuck does that even mean?”
Dean’s face dropped, and I genuinely ached for him. My brother was pretty much the polar opposite of me. He got attached to girls willingly. Whereas I cut every cord possible that tied me down to anyone—until Cassie that is—he fastened triple knots to the people he cared about. When Dean fell for a girl, he fell hard. I half wondered if he did it just to spite me. Just to prove how unlike me he really was.
“It just means that anytime that girl will let me kiss her, I’m going to take it. I like her, alright. I just don’t think she really likes me. ”
