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My heart flutters, rising into my throat. I set my fork down. I had expected—or hoped, I should say—to see him at some point during Christmas. But I didn’t think I’d be invited to the entire family Christmas. It wouldn’t be my first time, obviously, having gone to visit them on Christmas Day while we were in high school. But since everything changed, when we lost contact, I purposely cut off contact with every other member. It would have been too hard to have watched the relationship fade out. And that’s what would have happened, no matter how anyone argued with me. You can only be friends with the family of the man you loved and lost for so long.
I’ve seen Savannah briefly during child pick up and drop-offs; she certainly didn’t seem to hold any grudges against me when I saw her in the hospital, but that could have been the pain meds speaking, too.
But his mom—I thought about his mom almost as much as I thought about Emmett, and it broke my heart in a different way. She meant so much to me; always offering advice or a listening ear, and at one point, she was my closest friend besides Emmett. It wasn’t until I couldn’t call her or taste her cooking or have her help me solve my latest life problem that I realized how much I missed her.
“Do your parents want to see me?” I finally ask, half expecting him to tell me they’re mad, that he’s the one wanting us all together even if it means an awkward holiday dinner. “Your mom?”
He comes around the island; hand grazing my knees and spins me around the bar stool. He leans down to my level, eyes sparkling in the dim evening light. “Jenna, my mom loves you as if you were one of her own kids. She always has. She’s asked me every single day since we’ve been together, ‘When are you going to let me see my Jenna?’” He mimics his mom in a higher-pitched voice.
“I guess,” he says, his eyes lowered to where our hands are clasped in my lap, “I’ve been selfish, wanting to keep you all to myself.”
It might be selfish, but I feel the same way. I haven’t hung out with Meg as often as we used to, and I know she’s pissed about it. I don’t want to be the girl that ditches her friends for her man, but it never feels like I’ve had my fill of him. I want more. More nights together, more mornings waking up with his arms wrapped around me, more breakfasts with him and Allie, movie nights. I want it all.
The vibration of my phone on the island pulls my attention. I reach a hand over and double tap the screen to read the message that came through.
Meg: SOS
“Oh shit,” I murmur.
“Everything okay?”
“Probably not.”
SOS is our code for ‘I need you; shit is going down.’
I punch out a text back to Meg, finding out where she is and telling her I’ll be there as soon as I can.
“I think I’m going to meet Meg for a drink. Just one, something quick. I’ll come over afterwards, if you’ll be awake?” I almost add “if that’s okay.” As if I need his permission to go out.
“Let me make one thing clear.” His eyes dart back and forth between mine for a moment before he continues. “You can go out with your friends as much as you want, whenever you want. Take your time and have fun. I’d never stop you from seeing them.”
I reach my hands up to his chest, sliding them over all that strong muscle before clasping the sides of his neck. “I think I’ve been trying to soak up every bit of time with you and Allie that I can before . . .”
“Before what?” he prompts.
I sigh. “I know we have a good thing going here, but there’s still this little, paranoid part of me that worries something will take you away from me again. I didn’t expect to lose you last time. It’s hard not to expect it now.”
The look on his face nearly cracks my chest in half. He stands tall, raking his fingers through the sides of his hair with both hands, and I can practically see the wheels spinning as he forms his next sentence.
“I’ve told you once already, Jenna. I’m not going anywhere this time, no matter what. I’d have to be dead before I’d ever leave you again.”
Knuckles graze the side of my cheek. “Go out, go meet Meg, she needs you. Have a few drinks, dance, do whatever, be safe and know you’re coming home to me tonight. That’s the only selfish thing I will demand of you.”
“If it’s selfish, call me selfish, too.” I rise from my chair and slowly walk him back against the counter until he stops abruptly. I press my body against his. His arms wrap around me running up and down my back in smooth circles.
“It’s your fault. You’re making me crazy about you, you know that?”
He kisses me, holding his lips against mine as opposed to moving them. “Maybe I like you a little crazy.”
~
If the SOS text didn’t let me know that Meg needed help, it was solidified when I told her I wasn’t changing out of leggings and a sweatshirt to meet her out, and she said she would wear the same.
Walking into Lasso’s, our tried-and-true country dive bar, I almost didn’t recognize my bombshell best friend. The Meg I know treats going out to the bars as a show—full makeup, hair curled, wearing an outfit that accents every curve. She slips on the trail of drool men leave once they see her, and she eats it up.
But the Meg sitting at the bar tonight is not that Meg. She’s wearing leggings and an oversized sweatshirt like she said, and her silky red hair is piled high on the top of her head. Face free of makeup—not that she needs it, but she is insecure about the number of freckles she has so never goes in public without at least mascara and some minimal contouring. She’s sipping cheap beer from a brown bottle. Meg never drinks cheap beer.
I pull out the stool next to her and plop down, keeping my body facing hers as I wait for the news. Meg stares ahead, slowly sipping her beer. I take in her profile, noting the mascara she wore earlier is now cried off. Eyes still puffy from the aftermath.
