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I stare out the window as we haven’t moved yet with all the midday LAX traffic and note a man and woman seemingly reunite for the first time. She drops her luggage and launches herself into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and I notice her shoulders move up and down and I wonder if she’s crying. She pulls away and then their lips connect and my heart begins to pound in my chest at the thought of having a similar reunion with Whitney.
She’s fucking engaged.I ball my hands into fists.How did this happen? What the fuck do Kev and Miche think?I think to myself.
“So, we’re just ignoring the elephant in the room?” I don’t respond because frankly I’m tired from traveling and don’t feel like dealing with Trey’s relentless line of questioning. “That the only reason you’re even home is because you got your panties in a twist about Whitney getting married? You’re not going to do anything stupid, right? I called Chloe and she says Whitney is excited.”
I raise an eyebrow, knowing that this is a sure way to get the heat off me for now. “I didn’t know you were still talking to Chloe.” Chloe Monroe, Whitney’s older cousin, and my brother, had a relationship as complicated as mine and Whitney’s. Of course, it wasn’t a huge deal to anyone with there being only a nine-year age difference between them versus mine and Whitney’s over twenty year difference.Not to mention, no one was anyone’s parental figure so that fucking helps.They’d met at one of Michelle and Kevin’s holiday parties and proceeded to spend the next year and a half fucking without any kind of label which led to the age-old question from Chloe of “what are we?” to which my fuckboy of a brother at the time could not provide an answer.
So, in typical fashion, she’d moved on and now it seems he’s still pining over her although claims he’s over it.Tale as old as time.
“We talk from time to time but I called her yesterday when you got all territorial and possessive on the phone about Whitney to figure out if you guys were still talking and you just hadn’t told me.”
“You fucking told her you talked to me?” I groan, knowing that it’s definitely gotten back to Whitney by now that I was asking about her.
“No, dick,” he says as he merges onto the freeway after getting through the last of the airport traffic. “I kept it nonchalant. I said the same thing I said to you. I didn’t realize it was that serious. Apparently, no one did and the guy proposing was kind of a shock to everyone, including Whitney.” I feel his gaze trying to read my expression, but I try my best to appear unfazed by the news. “I can hear your thoughts bro, she’shappy.It took her a year to get over you.”
“And then somehow met someone and is engaged two years later?” My anger rises again at the thought of anyone touching her. Kissing her.Fuck.I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing the headache away that I feel coming on and wishing I hadn’t had two Scotch on the rocks on the plane. “I need to see formyselfthat she’s happy.”
I stare out the window as my thoughts drift back to the last time I returned home after being gone for a little over a year. The first time I saw Whitney since she turned eighteen and the first time, I saw her as a woman.
Five Years Ago:
After stopping by to see my mother, I went straight to Kevin and Michelle’s for dinner. Michelle was easily the best cook I knew and she always prepared one of my favorite meals whenever I returned. I walk into the house without so much as a knock and I’m hit with the smell of lasagna. Fuck. Yes.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Michelle comes bounding down the stairs and tackles me and wraps her arms around me tightly. “We missed you so much! How are you? You’ve lost weight.” She pinches my arm. “Were you not eating enough? I’ll send more food next time. You look good though! Except this hair. You need a haircut.” She pulls at my hair as she’s firing off her questions and comments a mile a minute in true Michelle Monroe fashion. “KEVIN!” she screeches before pushing her glasses up into her blonde hair. “Mason and Whitney aren’t here yet but they should be home shortly,” she informs me.
“Mason is coming home?” Their oldest child, Mason was in his final semester at UCLA and from what I’ve seen from social media and more than a few panicked texts regarding a flavor of the week’s missed period, I know that he’s had more than his share of fun so I am surprised that he’d miss out on one of his last weekends at college just to come home to see me.
“Of course. Well, I think just for tonight and he’s driving back in the morning. Whitney is at graduation practice but she should be home soon.” That was one of the reasons I’d opted to come home now, because both of my godchildren were graduating from college and high school and I wouldn’t have missed either for the world.
“You left your mom’s house like an hour ago. What, did you walk here?” Kevin says as he moves up the stairs from his mancave in the basement. It’s crazy that it looks as if Michelle hasn’t aged and yet Kevin looks older every time I see him. “You can thank Whitney Monroe for that.” I remember him saying when I’d made a joke about starting to dye his hair. “Every single one of my gray hairs comes from having a daughter.”
“I stopped at home first, give me a break.” I chuckle as he pulls me in for a hug.
“After all this time, he’s still clingier with you than he is with me.” Michelle rolls her eyes and walks toward the kitchen leaving me with my best friend.
About an hour after I’d arrived, I hear the front door open and the sound of heels against the hardwood floors of the foyer. I smile, preparing for Whitney to make her entrance and I stand to give her a hug.
“I would know that car in the driveway anywhere,” I hear her familiar voice and then she enters the room.
I mean, I think it’s Whitney.
My eyes widen and for a second, I wonder if this is a friend of Whitney’s because unlike the voice, this face and body arenotfamiliar. “JP!!” she squeals, and it takes less than a second until she’s in my arms. “I can’t believe you’re here! I’ve missed you so much!”
I am glad that Kevin and Michelle aren’t in the room at the moment because I’m unable to hide my absolute shock that this woman currently pressed up against me is my goddaughter. I pull back and I am at a loss for words. Her braces are gone, leaving perfect blindingly white teeth. Her strawberry blonde hair that she used to keep pin straight was full of volume that fell around her shoulders in dark mahogany luscious waves. Her waist was slim but her hips were full and just below her shoulders sat the perkiest, full breasts I’d ever seen on a woman. I take a step back, dropping my hands from her shoulder as if I’ve been burned. I mean, maybe I had; I have to be in hell for looking at Whitney this way. For even noticing her breasts or the slope of her hips or picturing what she’d look like from behind.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her head tilts to the side and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she knew exactly what I was thinking at this very moment and why I was looking at her with a look of complete and utter shock and maybe… intrigue.
“You… you just look so grown up.” I try my best to come up with something more eloquent but the words get caught in my throat. I’m struggling to find words other than: “Where did those come from?” as I point at her chest.
She bites her bottom lip and scrunches her nose in a way I’m sure I’ve seen her do a thousand times and yet this time makes my blood begin to heat in my veins. Heat… and rush south. FUCK. “A lot can happen in a year.” She lets out a sigh before tucking a hair behind her ear. “I mean, I am eighteen now.” She winks, actually fucking winks at me before turning around and calling for her mother leaving me with a scent that I could only equate with pure sex.
I shift in my seat, trying my best to keep my cock from rising as I remember sitting through the most painfully awkward dinner with Kevin, Michelle, Mason and the innocent girl who used to be my goddaughter. I was hyper aware of every move she made, every time she spoke, every time those bright brown eyes found mine across the dinner table.
“This is going to be a fucking shitshow,” Trey mumbles under his breath breaking my thoughts of that night I decided to blow up my entire life. “Am I taking you home first? Or we going to Mom’s?”
Istare down at the text message from my older brother, Mason wishing that the words would morph into something else. Literally anything else. Once upon a time they were my favorite words and ones I looked forward to hearing but now it just gave me a feeling that a tornado was about to rip apart my life.
Mason: Mom just called, Jacob just showed up at the house. They want us to come over tonight for a small get together.
