I can’t breathe or swallow or think. I know the ache he’s talking about, how the way we ended eclipsed everything good that we once had. For ages, I couldn’t even let myself remember the good things fondly, only the pain of how much I ached to have a taste of that again.
The words come out of me quietly. “How do you want to remember us?”
His hand on my leg tightens as he holds my gaze, and for the briefest of flickers, his eyes dip to my mouth. It feels like permission to shift towards him, to nose my way into his space and graze my lips to his.
I want to. I will. I’ll let myself have this.
But his hand catches hold of the side of my face, keeping me in place. He doesn’t pull back, but keeps our foreheads pressed together, our noses just a hair apart.
Even though his grip is strong it feels shaky, like he’s holding himself back. He takes in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I let myself sink into that moment with him, the memory of what it meant to be held like this, to feel utterly safe and protected from whatever else the world could bring.
For several moments, all I can hear is my heart in my ears when he breaks the quiet. “Like this.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead, and for a second, I feel whole. In a matter of seconds it’s over, the moment is gone as soon as it happened. He opens the driver’s side door and the cool rush of air from outside brings me back to the present.
I push back into the passenger seat, and as I’m figuring out how to bend my knees the right way to get my legs over the center console, I’m wondering how he was able to get my legs over there so easily. I’m not thinking about that kiss. I swear to god this better not have gotten me wet. I try not to wonder, would Shawn...no. I shouldn’t even consider it, really.
Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t desecrate Laura’s car. But also maybe she deserves it for enabling this.
That wasn’t really a kiss, that was barely anything, and yet, it was like plunging into an intimacy so deep I couldn’t see the end of it. It doesn’t make sense that it could just vanish into thin air again so quickly.
Shawn gets out of the car and stretches, and maybe I enjoy watching a little too much. God, he always had amazing arms. And he’s got this litheness to him, like all his joints are just a little bit detached.
He looks like every guy that was just out of reach, that was just a little too good to spare a glance at me. But he was mine, for a little while.
Or at least I thought he was, before I realized he never really would be.
I stare a little too long, and he’s rounded to my side of Laura’s car. He opens the door and offers me a hand to help me stand up. The way he leans against the open door makes it seem like such a simple, casual gesture. I blink a couple times and take it. Not that I need it, but maybe there’s closure in feeling his hand envelope mine.
And if I hold on a few seconds longer than I should, it’s still definitely for closure.
We walk inside the Hayes House, and I can see his brothers in the dining room already, dividing up the pizza. Laura’s commandeered half a white-sauce pie, Logan and Aiden have already taken all the pepperoni slices.
I can hear Deanna just inside the dining room, “Laura, will you tell Aunt Jenny she still has yet to send me her RSVP card. She hasn’t answered any of my texts.”
“We can’t just assume she’ll be there? Mom’s not going to miss her godson’s wedding.”
“Oh, I suppose,” Deanna sighs, and when her attention turns to us it stops us in our tracks.
“I was wondering where you disappeared to,” she says, her eyes flicking between Shawn and me. The suspicion in her eyes is a little jarring. She’s always been warm towards me, more than business partners needed to be.
But the way she’s looking at us makes me feel like we’re teenagers caught out after curfew.
Even though she’s talking to her son, I feel the need to explain that Laura insisted we take her car, that’s all that happened.
It’s the first real reminder from her that she never approved of us together, for whatever reason. I’d never had to deal with it in person, but I wonder if even after her knowing me and being so friendly, she still would have disapproved of us?
It’s a strange line to draw, mentally.
I don’t know that I like what it says that they all just assume I’m clearly an ex-hookup of his. Or what it says about him. It fallsin line with my worst perceptions of him and reaffirms all those old hurts.
“I didn’t think we were that far behind,” I say, putting a few steps of space between me and Shawn, hurrying ahead to the dining room. In my hope to not be alone, I think I’ve just invited myself into a den of wolves. They’re going to keep staring at me and Shawn, watching our every interaction, just like at the bar, but now with Deanna.
Dinner is painfully quiet. We sit around the long dining room table, too much space between each of us.
“I hear you five went to the Thirsty Turtle,” Deanna offers after several minutes of the only sound being chewing.
“Logan’s bachelor party,” Laura explains.
