Owen said it tentatively, like he wasn’t sure if my offer was still good.
And while I was happy that he was open to my support, I suddenly felt like I needed to recalibrate exactly what was going on between us. My stomach dropped, because maybe all he wanted was for us to find our way back to a semblance of friendship? To be writing buddies?
“Yeah.” I managed to sound upbeat, like the possibility of it wasn’t incinerating me from the inside out. “Of course, anytime.”
Marti inched closer to me, dragging her belly on the stair. I scratched behind her ears absentmindedly, because all I could focus on was a single thought:
I don’t want to be your friend.
He’d said as much to me, and now I understood the sentiment. I couldn’t tamp down the feelings that had taken over me. Friendship would be too painful, too impossible after knowing whatwaspossible.
There were moments in the city when everything seemed to pause at the same time, when all the traffic and airplanes and pedestrians went silent in unison for a single millisecond, and then resumed the cacophony quickly enough to make you wonder if it actually happened. Now, waiting for Owen to keep talking, it felt like that millisecond wouldn’t end.
He leaned forward and balanced his elbows on his knees. “Do you remember what you asked me at our first lesson?”
I hunched, preemptively embarrassed. “I’m sure I asked you a lot of stupid questions, so take your pick.”
Owen cleared his throat. “You asked me if I’d ever had an immediate reaction to a person. A ‘bam’ connection, I think you called it.”
Apparently, the specter of Kai would never leave us.
“Owen, please don’t go there now,” I begged in a thin voice. “Okay? I don’t know how many ways I can tell you that—”
“Brooke...” he interrupted. “I need you to know that I had that reaction when I sawyou.”
I felt like my heart stopped beating while Owen’s eyes searched my face.
“You were playing with Meredith, Colton, and that finance douche,” he continued. “Or should I say, you wereattemptingto play. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.” He paused to glance down at his laced fingers. “You were holding the paddle like a goddamn flyswatter and doing that skip-run thing, but to me, you were... flawless.”
He breathed out the final word, sounding almost awestruck.
“Owen...”
“Hold on, let me keep going.” He shook his head, his expression pained. “When I heard that you wanted to learn to play, I figuredthatwas how I could connect with you. Give you a couple of lessons, impress you with my pickleball prowess, then cut to the good stuff. But when you told me about Kai...”
“I’m such a fuckup,” I whispered as I hugged my knees and bowed my head. “Why did you keep me on as a client?”
“How childish would I look if I voided your lesson package because you had a crush on someone else? I had a job to do; I did it.”
“But youkepthelping me.”
He let out a short bark of a laugh, like he was embarrassed.
“True. That was me basically powerless to stop hanging out with you. I talked myself into believing that training with you was professional development for me. I haven’t worked with a newbie in a long time. Turns out, I liked the challenge you presented. And...” He let out a long, pained sigh. “I likedyou.”
Hope sparked inside of me once again, wild and bright, but I forced myself to remain calm until I’d heard him out. There was a chance he’d come to his senses and was breaking it to me gently that he’d moved past whatever he’d once felt for me.
“I told you how badly the Sophie era fucked with my head. There was absolutely no way I was going to put myself in that position again. Of wanting someone who didn’t really want me.”
It took all my strength to keep from reaching for his hand so I could squeeze it tightly while I told him how wrong he was, but I still didn’t know how his side of the story was going to end.
“You know that’s not the case,” I said in a quiet voice. “Or at least I hope you do.”
Marti perked up as a guy strode past with a gray French bulldog that was stopping to pee on every vertical surface. She let out a warning rumble, then launched into a full-throated freak-out.
“Hey, hey,” Owen tutted as he picked her up. “What the hell isthat?”
Marti tried to parkour herself out of his arms after the dog.
