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“Um, no.” She glances at me over the menu but it’s so brief our eyes barely make contact before she’s looking down again.
“You do realize you’re a horrible liar, right? You can’t make eye contact with me, and the pitch of your voice just went up a few notches. So, I’ll ask you again. Anything you want to share with me?”
Letting out a sigh, Mia finally raises her eyes to look at me, only instead of meeting mine, she looks over my left shoulder. I’m about to follow her line of sight when her face lights up again, her mega-watt smile showcasing her perfectly straight, white teeth.
Spencer’s here. Great. It’s wonderful that she still looks at him like that after all this time. They’ve been together since I met them my junior year. I’m actually surprised they’re not married yet.
“You’re here!” Mia screams, bouncing out of her seat.
Turning my entire body expecting to watch Mia jump into Spencer’s arms, my jaw drops open when a familiar pair of hazel eyes meet mine at the same moment Mia wraps herself around him. My inhale of breath is barely audible over the beating of my heart. It’s the only thing I can hear as I continue to stare at the man who owns my heart.
The same man who was off limits.
Forbidden.
The one man I couldn’t have, and the only one I wanted. So I tried to avoid him. When that didn’t work, I acted like I could barely stand him. He made that practically impossible. There’s no way you couldn’t be drawn to him. His personality was magnetic.
I settled for being his friend, which was harder than I anticipated. I didn’t trust myself alone with him. Hell, I didn’t trust myself to stand next to him in a crowd. I was afraid my true feelings would show. That I’d do something like reach out and take his hand when it wasn’t mine to hold.
Basically, I lived on edge whenever he was around for almost two years. Because I couldn’t admit to my best friend that I was in love with her boyfriend. Because I didn’t want to lose her even though I wanted him.
My eyes are still locked on Jay’s as Mia takes him by the elbow and drags him over to the booth. He silently slides in across from me as Mia continues to chatter on in the background.
“You look good, Drea,” he finally says, cutting Mia off.
Drea.
He’s the only person I’ve ever let call me that aside from my grandmother.
“Thanks, Jay. You look …” My voice trails off as my brain refuses to feed me a word appropriate enough to describe how delicious he looks.
Time has been good to him. He’s always been attractive, but in college his body was still filling out. He spent a lot of time at the gym but he had a runner’s body. Strong legs, toned muscles, impressive abs. Fit and trim.
Now he has the body of a god.
His plain black T-shirt is stretched tight across his chest, covering his broad shoulders and defined chest muscles. The corded muscles of his left arm are covered in an intricate tribal tattoo from where his sleeve ends down to his wrist. The black ink against his bronzed skin draws my attention and captures it, making me wonder if he has more artwork hidden beneath his clothes.
Jay lifts his ink-covered arm, brushing his unruly, dark brown hair away from his face, breaking the spell he has on me.
“You were saying?” Mia interjects, a devious smile on her face that clearly says I was caught checking Jay out, as Spencer squeezes my shoulder.
I forgot Mia was even here.And where did Spencer come from? Did he arrive with Jay? And when did he sit down?He’s next to me, his arm slung over the back of the booth seat.
“You look different,” I finally say, clearing my throat as I attempt to find somewhere to stare except across the table at the gorgeous man who’s found a way to render me practically speechless after all this time.
It’s not the first time he’s managed to do it. It won’t be the last. With him this close after all these years, I better get used to communicating without words. Maybe I’ll start carrying a dry erase board and markers. Then I’ll never have to speak again in his presence. I doubt it would save me from making a fool of myself, though.
Thankfully, the waitress comes over to get our drink order, saving me from having to explain my lame answer.
After ordering, Mia interrogates Jay about what he’s been up to since they saw him last, which was only a few months ago. I’m not surprised they’ve stayed in contact now that I know he went to the academy with Spence.
If I wasn’t privy to that information I would have been shocked to know they still talk. He handled Sam’s death about as well as I did. He was depressed and blamed himself for not being there. For not protecting her. For not making sure she had a car to drive home that night.
Then he was brought in as a suspect in her death even though he was two hundred miles away when it happened. I remember them interrogating him for hours, trying to get him to confess to something he didn’t do. They talked to his boss at Apollo Hardware, co-workers, and friends, trying to find a flaw in his story. His father eventually came to his rescue with a lawyer.
His alibi was solid but the police wanted someone to blame so they could close the case. When they couldn’t pin it on Jay, the boyfriend, they started pointing their fingers in other directions. Practically everyone in town was interviewed in the first few weeks. When they ran out of leads, I remember it feeling like they’d given up.
After reading some of the articles this afternoon, I now know why.
