CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Gianna just asked me to sit with her at the game on Friday,” Elan tells me at lunch.
I smile wide. I really am happy for him. “That’s good, right?”
He isn’t smiling. Uh oh. “Is it?”
“Well, yeah. You’ve liked her forever, right?”
He nods. “But…”
“Oh-ho, no way, pal. Don’t even think about me in this equation. This is what you wanted, right?” I question, because if he changed his mind, shit.
“It is, yes. I just don’t know how it will affect us,” he tells me.
I shrug. “It’ll suck some for me. I won’t lie. There’ll be some distance that maybe we’ve been needing for a while, if you know what I’m saying.”
He nods and winks.
“Not that I won’t miss those lips or hands, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship by things getting out of hand.”
“Yeah. I was ready to do all kinds of things I shouldn’t have thought about doing. But we always stopped and just kept it from rounding all the bases,” he tells me.
“Right?” I sigh. “There were times…”
“Oh, I know about the times,” he admits. “Those were some really… wow times.”
“Seriously, wow. I think if we’d have wow-wowed, we would have become something else. We were already across that line as it was,” I admit.
“I’ll tell you, Jillie. I wouldn’t have minded. You’re an amazing person and I care a lot for you.”
I feel tears burning the back of my nose. I nod. “I care a lot for you, too, Elan. Which is why you can’t settle for me when you’ve felt something for Gianna for so long. You need to know one way or the other if it’s real or if it’s just a fleeting thing.”
He stares. It’s minutes before he speaks. “Thank you, Jillian.”
“For what?”
“Being you. I’ll admit it. I’m a little bit in love with you now. You just showed me you’re even more incredible than I thought,” he confesses.
“I’m a little bit in love with you, too, Elan. It’s why this happened at the right time. Now you won’t ever wonder ‘what if’.”
“What about you? What about your ‘what if’?”
I shrug. “My ‘what if’, it seems, isn’t meant to be, and I’m okay with that—or, I’m learning how to be. I can’t and won’t be just another in his long line of waiting and willing females. That’s not who I am. I deserve better. I deserve more.”
“You deserve it all,” Elan adds.
“So do you. I’m so happy you get this chance.” He gives me a look. “Truly, Elan. Truly.”
He nods and rests his forehead against mine.
“You’ll always be my Foxy J.”
“Well, duh. You’ll always be my Hottie E. None of that’s going to change and Miss Gianna is going to have to accept that,” I inform him as I bite back the tears and hurt flowing inside me. I look down at his lunch tray. “Are those nachos?”
He laughs. “Yes, and I got extra because I knew I’d have to share with you.”
“You know me so well.”
