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“Yeah. So anyway, we’ve barely spoken for literally the last decade, since we broke up. But I was with his sister-in-law at the time she heard about the crash and she freaked out, so I drove her to the hospital.”
“Where you had a bedside moment?” Hannah asked breathlessly, which made Maya snort.
“We did, actually. His brother thinks he was having flashbacks to that other accident he had before. But anyway, he asked for me, so Gabe came and got me. I couldn’t not go to him, right? Even though I knew it was a bad idea.”
“Why was it a bad idea?” Poppy asked quietly.
“Just because it would dredge up all those feelings I thought were long dead and buried.”
“Which it did,” Maya observed.
I sighed. “Which it totally did. Anyway, I said I’d do it, so in I went. He was so beaten up, all bruised with a bandage around his head. He lifted his hand, whispered my name and I…”
All their eyes were on me, big, warm pools of sympathy and understanding. I couldn’t handle it. I looked away, down at my beer bottle, picking at the label, waiting for the pain to subside.
“You…?” Emilia prompted.
“Held his hand. Told him I was there. Waited for him to go back to sleep.”
“And then?” Hannah was leaning forward in her chair, her beer forgotten.
“Then I…kissed his hand and walked out.”
Poppy let out a sigh.
“When I knew he’d gotten out of the hospital, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I worried that he wouldn’t follow doctor’s orders. Which turned out to be completely valid, by the way. He’ssofucking stubborn. So I swung by, just to give him a quick check. He looked like total shit, so I made him take his pain meds and go to sleep.” I knew I was giving too much detail, so I tried to speed it up, only briefly touching on the rest of my visits to him, and him gardening for my dad. “And then he made me come at his barbecue,” I finished. From the way they all stared at me, I realized I hadn’t connected the dots nearly enough.
“I’m sorry, what the what now?” Emilia asked, blinking at me. “You’re gonna need to back that truck up and fill in the blanks.”
“Sorry. It’s all just so confusing. I guess because we have so much history, and the sex between us was always so amazing—sorry if that’s TMI—that I couldn’t stop thinking about him, fantasizing about him. Until it got too much, and I kissed him. Which then made him get all weird, which pissed me off, so I confronted him at his place when he was hosting a barbecue. And I don’t really know how it happened, but, yeah, he gave me an orgasm, and now he’s barely looked at me since.”
“Bastard.”
“What an asshole!”
My first instinct was to leap to Jake’s defence, but when I thought about it, Maya and Hannah were right. Doing that and then ghosting me was a total dick move. “You know what? He is. And now he’s here at the bar tonight to pick up, and successfully, by the looks of it. Oh well. At least one of us is getting some action, I guess.”
“Why only one of you?” Maya asked, her brow raised.
“Huh?”
“What’s to say you can’t hook up with someone else, too?”
I instantly recoiled.
“Come on, hun. Think about it. I mean, unless you’re planning to spend the rest of your days pining for Jake Walker, you’re gonna have to get back on the horse at some point. Preferably a real stallion, you know, with a huge—”
“Yeah, I get it, Hannah,” I interrupted with a laugh. “And… I don’t know.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Maya said, slamming her bottle down on the table.
“I think I’m scared already.”
“Don’t be. It’s simple. You aren’t sure you wanna date again and that’s fair enough, so how about you just dip your toe in the water, test it out. If you don’t like it, you can go straight back to pining.”
“Test it out? How do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
“Dating apps. Just load up a profile and see who you get matched with. If anyone strikes your fancy, swipe right. If not, delete the app and that’s that. What do you think?”
