“Good thinking.” She slid the coffee pot into place and punched the button to start it brewing. “So my next guess would be that maybe you’re gay, but nowadays, there’s no reason to hide that, and I haven’t seen you ogling the cuties on the team. Not that you would, maybe, but still—you’ve got no vibe.”
“El, babe, you’ve got the world’s worst gaydar. And you’re embarrassing our guest here.” Corey took a handful of forks from me and deposited them into the silverware basket in the dishwasher. “Let him be.”
“No, it’s okay.” I ran water into the larger pot, added soap and found a long-handled dish brush. “I’m not gay. I’m into the ladies.”
“Ah.” Ellie stood behind us, hands on her hips. “So that’s it then.” She nodded, as if I’d actually said something aloud.
Corey cast me a sideways look and gave his head a little shake. I stayed quiet.
“You’ve had your heart broken. Someone hurt you so badly that you’re shying away from taking a chance that it might happen again.”
She’d come way too close to the truth for my comfort. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about my past love life. On the other hand, Ellie didn’t seem to have an ulterior motive. I got the sense that she was a kind person who was honestly interested in other people and what made them tick. In a way, she reminded me of Quinn.
“So who was she? And what on earth would make her give up on a terrific guy like you?”
I finished one pot and started scrubbing the second. “It’s a long story. And the truth is, the whole thing is complicated. What went down between us wasn’t her fault. Or mine. It was just something that sort of ... happened.”
Ellie hadn’t stopped staring me down, but when she spoke, her voice was soft. “What’s her name?”
“Uh, Quinn.”
“How did you meet?”
I smiled. “We didn’t. Well, at least, neither of us remember it. I’ve known Quinn her entire life, and she’s known me most of mine. Less three weeks, that is.”
“Ohhhh.” Ellie breathed out. “Childhood sweethearts.”
“Not exactly. Best friends, yes. But we weren’t sweethearts.” I ducked my head, fastening my eyes on a spot of burned potatoes at the bottom of the pot. “There were three of us: Quinn, me and our friend Nate. She was always caught between us, in one way or another. I was kind of a jerk in high school. And back then, I was a total party dude. Quinn ... she was the opposite. She was smart and serious and kind—way too good for me.”
“But you loved her, still.” Ellie sounded so certain.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I fought it for a long time, tried to avoid her, but then ... stuff happened, and we ended up together.” I thought about those golden days in our junior year, when it felt like nothing and no one would ever come between us. “We were together for about six months, and then we weren’t.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Long story.” I attacked the burnt bits on the pot with more elbow grease. “I listened to some advice I probably should’ve ignored, and I managed to talk myself into believing I wasn’t good for Quinn. So for over a year, we didn’t speak to each other. We didn’t interact at all, until Quinn’s dad was killed the day after we graduated from high school.”
“No!” Ellie looked genuinely sad, as though she’d known Bill Russell. “That’s terrible.”
“It was.” I turned on the water and rinsed the soap out of the pot. “Quinn and her mom were both devastated. I’d been down at the shore, but I went home to be with Quinn, and one thing led to another ...” I flashed back briefly to those nights when I’d held her as she cried herself to sleep. “We got back together.”
“For how long?” Ellie cocked her head. “Because if you’re not together now ...”
“The summer before our junior year in college, we were living together down at Carolina. There were a couple of stories about me that went crazy in the media, and things were tough on Quinn. The stress ... it tore us apart. What started out as a break, just some breathing room for her, ended up being a lot longer and more complicated.”
“Do you see her often?” She returned to the coffee maker, now blinking with a green light, and began pouring coffee into mugs.
“Not that much. She, ah, she married our friend Nate in May.”
Ellie’s mouth dropped open, and for a moment, I was afraid our coffee might end up on the floor. “No way. Are you serious? Why in the world would she do that?”
I turned the now-clean pot upside down on the wooden drying rack and blotted my hands on a towel. “That’s an even longer story. Maybe it would be better over pie.”
“Taylor, man.” Corey finished the last bite of his third slice of pie. “That right there is some seriously fucked-up shit. It’s like something you’d see in one of thoseLifetimemovies.” He darted a glance to his wife and then back to me. “Not that I’ve ever seen any of them. But I hear things.”
“Yeah, well, I’d trade it in for some plain old boring any time, as long as that came along with Quinn.” I forked up a bite of my first slice of pie. Talking had kept me from eating as fast as Corey had. “But it’s out of my hands.”
“For now it is.” Ellie reached over to lay her hand on my arm. “But ... have you thought about what comes next?”
