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And I could also remember looking up as she came down from her orgasm, seeing her face and realizing, oh fuck, this woman I was half in love with was Billie. Billie Adams.
Biggest damn shock of my life.
Pulling myself from my thoughts, I slid the key into the ignition and turned it.
The car didn’t start.
That wasn’t a good sign. In fact it was a bad sign on top of other bad signs. I got out to pop the hood, my stomach churning. Not for my car, really. I knew that whatever the problem was—a dead battery most likely thanks to her sitting here, neglected—I could fix it. If there was one thing I knew, it was cars. It was more what this indicated that made me so nervous. Morgan had let my car sit here while the battery died, something he would never do with how much he cared for cars.
Just how badly had our friendship been damaged?
4
Billie
I parked my bike in the garage and headed for the door that headed from the garage into the house—only to pause as I heard a noise.
It was like a—a clicking noise? And then a car door shutting. Huh. Curiosity getting the best of me, as it always did, I peered through the garage window out onto the backyard and saw that the tarp was off Pike’s car, the hood up.
Morgan must have been messing with it, which was odd seeing as he’d never touched it in the four years that Pike had been gone. No prizes for guessing why. Morgan and I had sort of… settled into an uneasy truce. For the first couple of months we outright hadn’t spoken to each other, ignoring each other in a fantastic example of a cold war until Mom got so upset about it that Dad pulled us each aside and told us, separately, to get our shit together and work things out because he wasn’t going to stand by while he watched his kids break his wife’s heart.
After that, Morgan and I had basically put on a show every time we were around our parents. We’d be polite, as friendly as we could, but we didn’t really speak otherwise. Morgan has his life, and I had mine, and we just stayed out of each other’s respective spheres. It was easier to do than I would’ve expected. Morgan was off being rich and successful with his mechanical engineering degree and his heartthrob status. And I was busy with school, at least up until recently. I was a college kid, he was a full ‘adult’ doing ‘adult’ things. The only time we really had to put up with each other was when Christmas came around, and it was easy enough to pretend, then.
If, sometimes, I was really sad about that—if I was hurt that the brother I’d once been close to and admired had disappointed me with his controlling and callous behavior—then I shoved those thoughts away. He had chosen to talk to me like he thought I was a slut. He had chosen to talk to me like he owned me and could control me. He had chosen to forbid me from seeing or speaking to Pike like he had any say in the matter.
He had chosen to be a selfish child throwing a tantrum.
I went into the house. “Hey, Mom, is Morgan staying for dinner?” I asked, noting that she was washing two mugs of coffee in the sink.
Mom looked confused. “I wouldn’t know, honey, I haven’t spoken to him all day.”
“Isn’t he out back fiddling with Pike’s car?” I replied, puzzled.
Mom shook her head, and my stomach immediately dropped.
Oh no. Oh fuck, oh shit, oh no.
Mom said something but I didn’t, couldn’t, even hear her as I hurried to the back door and exited out, circling around the car until I could see a very familiar and handsome ass bending over the car.
Pike Transom.
He was back.
And, yeah, I recognized that ass even after four years apart. Whether I wanted to or not, that ass, and the rest of Pike, had starred in my fantasies these four years no matter how I had tried to tell myself to let it go, to let him go.
I’d known this day would come, of course. Pike loved this car. He had spent his four high school years working on it. He wasn’t going to just abandon it. He’d come back for it eventually. I’d just kind of hoped that I wouldn’t be there when it happened. I didn’t want to see him again, only to be a stopover as he took his car and went on his way back to wherever it was he’d ended up.
If only he was coming back for me, the traitorous, romantic part of my heart whispered. Pike disappeared without a word, and if Morgan knew where he went, he kept his mouth shut about it. I had no reason to think that Pike would want anything from me. His silence spoke volumes.
