Was JD able to move on so quickly from us when he left that he jumped immediately into the next warm bed with another woman? Did he cheat on me in high school and left because of her? He isn’t married because there wasn’t a ring on his finger. Yes, I looked. So where is the mother? Are they divorced? Separated? Never married? Which then makes her, what? A girlfriend? Baby momma? She must be out of the picture since JD kept saying how he was back for good. How he wantedmeback. He wouldn’t say that if he was still in a relationship with someone. Right?
There’s a light knocking on my hotel room door, but I ignore it. Housekeeping can come back later if they want to refresh my towels. I’m going to order some coffee and breakfast and lie in bed for a few more hours. Take a nap. Avoid the world for a little while longer. I hear the door lock click and the door open. I guess housekeeping isn’t waiting for me to check out at noon.
“You know how I can track my car’s location with my phone app,” Austin says from inside the room. “Imagine my surprise when it showed me it was parked in the lot of the Highland Hotel.”
I sit up in bed, hair a mess, still dressed in last night’s clothes, and grimace at Austin’s accusatory expression on his face.
“You look like shit,” he kindly tells me.
Now I know how he found where I was. Technology is great until it isn’t.
“How did you get a key card to my room?”
“Gave the pretty check-in girl your name and told her I was your husband.” Figures he could charm his way past reception. “Go take a shower and I’ll order us breakfast. Once you are sufficiently plied with caffeine, you and I are going to talk, then we are going to enjoy our last free day together before we have to report back to work tomorrow.”
I crawl off the bed knowing it’s futile to argue with him. “Bossy-assed man,” I grumble, and get a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie thrown at my head as I walk over to the bathroom.
“I figured if you were here then you never went home so would need some clean clothes to change into.” He thrusts a plastic bag at me. “Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant.”
“Clever man.”
“That’s what Fallon pays me the big bucks for,” he snarks.
Since Austin and I became friends during senior year of high school, he never ceases to amaze me. I used to despise him. Who knew that behind his asshole façade beat the heart of a very kind and loving man?
“Thank you, Austin.”
“That’s what friends are for,” he simply replies.
“Then I’ve been a shit friend to you, and Shelby, Renee, Prescott, and Dustin for the past five years.” I place the items he threw at me on the bathroom vanity countertop.
“Rory, that’s not true and you know it. Yes, your heart was broken, and you’ve had trouble getting over that, but you’ve never been a crappy friend. You are one of the most giving people I have ever met. Your problem is that you caretoomuch. Now, shower and get dressed so we can go enjoy this beautiful day at the lake.”
I decide not to bring up JD or his son. Hopefully, a day out on Austin’s sailboat will help clear my head. Once I clean last night off my skin and from my hair, I slip on the clothes Austin brought me which are too big, but oh well. I do a quick blow dry of my hair and throw it up into a ponytail using one of the spare bands I keep in my wristlet. The aroma of coffee and bacon lets me know room service arrived.
Austin pours me a cup and hands it to me when I walk over. “Thank you,” I gratefully tell him, blowing on the hot steam to help cool it down before taking a sip.
“Thought you might need those too,” he tells me, pointing to the cross trainers I wear when at the gym. Austin and I go to the gym together after work about three days a week, and instead of renting a locker, he keeps my gym bag in his car since I drive a motorcycle to work. I’ll need to remember to put some extra clothes and underwear in there just in case I decide to run away again and sleep in another hotel room in the future. You never know.
“You’re going to make a great husband to some lucky lady one day. Hell, I might just ask you myself,” I tease him.
“I might just say yes,” he teases back.
I snatch a piece of crispy bacon off the plate. “We should make a pact. If neither one of us are married by the time we hit thirty, we should marry each other.”
“I’d marry you today, Rory, if I thought you were serious.”
I choke a little on my bacon and wash it down with some scalding coffee.
“Thanks for checking up on me, even if your method was a bit stalkerish.”
Austin laughs. “Says the woman who took off in my car.”
“You gave me your keys!”
“Ah, potato, pa-tah-to. Have you talked to Knox yet?”
I purse my lips sideways then shove another piece of bacon into my mouth. “Sorry, can’t talk with my mouth full.”
