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Grace
Your brother is coming this weekend
I looked from the phone turned at me up to the person holding the device.
Anything I said would likely be thrown back in my face, so I merely lifted a brow.
Sydney smiled wide, her uniquely yellow eyes dancing under the twinkle lights the coffee shop had hanging. “You know you want to see him.”
Another text came through.
No matchmaking chief. Let them figure it out.
I slouched in the well-worn couch at our favorite coffee shop, my face heating, and shrugged a shoulder. I lifted my mug to my mouth to try and distract myself. Sydney and I had been at Bean There for the last two hours and my macchiato had grown cold, but I needed to do something with my hands.
There was nothing quite like your best friend, and her husband, meddling in your love life…
I met Sawyer Meadows a few years back when Sydney and Caleb had an engagement party. From the moment I met the third Meadows child, I was completely struck by him. His hair was a brassy auburn, brown in some lights but a deep copper in the sun. His eyes, like Sydney’s, were so light a brown, they looked yellow. He was slightly taller than average for a guy, with a body you couldn’t help but want to wrap your arms around.
But more than the physical, Sawyer was a good guy.
He was always cracking jokes, always had a quick smile. He was a good friend to those he cared about, a great brother to Sydney, and an awesome uncle to those chicklets I had the pleasure of referring to as my own nephews and niece, even though I really wasn’t their aunt.
He didn’t visit very much anymore, not since promoting to detective for Salt Lake City’s special crimes task force a few years back, but when he did make his way to San Diego, I could definitely see the changes in him. He tried to hide it, tried to be his jovial self, but I could tell what he did hurt his soul.
He was such a happy, open person; I couldn’t imagine staying that way was an easy feat with the amount of bad he saw day in and out.
He and Sydney had very similar features, so it was easy to miss him every day I didn’t see him or talk to him. Never mind the fact he called her every day and there had been numerous times I was with Sydney when he made his daily call.
I hated that I was envious of my friend for talking to her brother. Sawyer and I used to text, email, or call one another nearly every day. But after I had him meet a guy I’d been seeing, everything just seemed to stop.
Part of me thought maybe he’d been jealous of Jeremy.
There was nothing blatantly wrong with the man, and Sawyer’s emails felt like he was grasping at straws for what he found to be negative qualities in him
If Sawyer was jealous, it certainly wasn’t warranted. Sawyer and I did the more-than-friends thing once—even if had been just a single night—and nothing came of it. We had a great night but I was here, he was there…a relationship would have never worked out. Friends worked well for us.
God, I couldn’t believe I’d been that bridesmaid—the one who slept with the bride’s brother after the wedding.
But Sydney wasn’t aware of it.
All she knew was that Sawyer and I got along incredibly well at her engagement party, and then even better at the wedding. She knew he and I forged a friendship after those months.
And she’d been trying to hook us up ever since. She cooled it down—and by that, I mean she only brought it up once a week rather than once a day—when I told her I was seeing Jeremy. I should have expected that, once I told her I broke things off with him, her efforts would go back into overdrive.
Sure, Jeremy was a decent guy—and certainly handsome with his blond hair and blue eyes, and GQ-type smile—but my relationship with him had started to feel stale. The first few weeks were fun and exciting but since then, there hadn’t been much, if any, growth. We were stagnant. So, after a few months of hoping for emotional growth, rather than stay in the relationship, I broke up with him.
It wasn’t like Jeremy had changed. He was still his touchy-feely self. He still held my hand and hugged me tight to him, but I would have expected the feelings I had for him to grow and they simply...
Hadn’t.
And I had a feeling I knew the reason why.
Sawyer Meadows.
Wasn’t that just the kicker? The guy who I slept with but became friends with. The guy whose friendship had been such a strong presence in my life for hardly a handful of years.
The guy who barely talked to me anymore.
