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Chapter Fifteen
Suddenly I’m propellingtoward the ground. The moment I first met Jay flashing before my eyes. The feel of his arm wrapped around me as he stopped me from falling on the sidewalk. The heat in my cheeks when I realized my underwear were scattered on the grass.
His smile.
The damn dimple.
The blue specks shining against the backdrop of his hazel eyes.
A warmth wraps around my body as I’m pulled upright and against a hard body. A body I know intimately. A chest I traced with my tongue earlier this morning before I properly thanked him for bringing me coffee.
Coffee I never drank because I was too busy thanking him.
“Gotta watch out for those pebbles,” Jay whispers in my ear, kissing the nape of my neck before releasing me and sauntering away, back to where Spencer is waiting with a smirk on his face.
“Still want to deny it?” Mia asks, nudging me in the side as we watch the guys walk into the park, Jay’s arm wrapped around Summer’s shoulder.
“Does it really matter what may or may not have happened five years ago? It’s history.”
Even I don’t believe the lies I’m trying to sell her. It may be in the past, but I still don’t think I can bring myself to confess my sins out loud.
“He scares you that much, huh?”
“I’m not scared of Jay,” I start, picking up the pace so we can finish the race sooner rather than later. “He’s a great guy, but he was Sam’s boyfriend—”
“Was.”
“And she died. They would still be together if she was alive.”
“Do you really believe that?”
No.I can’t admit that to her, though. I can’t tell her he told me he was planning on breaking up with her.
“The fact you won’t even answer tells me all I need to know,” Mia says, letting silence descend upon us.
I’m waiting for her to say something else. However, as we approach the finish line, she still hasn’t. Not a single word. For Mia, that’s a record of silence. Especially when her opinion is weighing heavy on her.
“Just say it. I know you’re thinking something,” I urge as I pull her over to a bench just outside of the park.
“I believe you two love each other. I think you always have, and that you repressed those feelings because you also loved Sam. When she died, you ran. Away from here. Away from us. You also ran away from Jay, the one person who you should have been running toward. You didn’t because you think Sam would be pissed. You feel like you betrayed her by falling in love with Jay, but what you don’t realize is that she wouldn’t have been angry with you. If she had known how you both felt, she would have stepped aside.
“Did she love him? Yes, but it wasn’t the kind of love I feel for Spence. It wasn’t the ‘I want to marry you and have ten kids and grow old with you’ kind of love. It was fun and exciting, and he made her feel special.”
Would she have understood?
Maybe in the beginning, if we’d been honest with her. That first night when she introduced us. If I’d come clean and confessed I’d met Jay before. That I found him attractive. That there was an undeniable chemistry between us. But not after two years, though. Not after all the pretending we did. All the lies of omission.
I let Mia’s words sink in as I think back over the last few weeks I spent with Sam before she was killed, searching my mind for any clues that she knew what was going on. That she saw more than I thought she did.
She talked a lot about Jay those few weeks. Asking my opinion on the situation. She always came to me for relationship advice, though. That wasn’t abnormal.
Did I give myself away with my answers?
“He’s acting strange again. I asked him if he wanted to go to the late showing at the theater last night and he never texted me back. I ended up going by myself, sitting in the back row, and crying through what was supposed to be a thriller.”
My gut is to laugh at the vivid image my mind has concocted of Sam bawling while someone on the screen is being chased with a chainsaw, but I hold it in. Tuck it down deep. Just like the rest of my feelings. Because right now she needs her best friend. She needs a shoulder to cry on.
“Why’d you go alone?” I ask, already knowing the answer. If Sam wants to do something, she doesn’t need anyone to do it with her. She’ll go alone, no matter how pathetic she might think it looks.
