Skating was her life… had been her life.
"I don't skate anymore," she said, keeping her voice even. "Not since my retirement. I’ve had some health issues that have kept me from continuing with it."
"I'm sorry," Ben said, his voice softening. "I heard a little about what happened from Annie and Lexi.”
She supposed she should have been mad that they had discussed her health with him, but they didn’t have a lot of information. The only people who knew the details of what she was dealing with were her parents and Layla. But even they didn’t know everything.
And it was going to stay that way.
“Hey, would you be interested in going out for coffee?”
Amelia looked up at Ben in shock. “Go for coffee?” She asked the question without thinking, so surprised that he would even suggest that. “Why?”
Ben shrugged. “Because it’s what friends do, and I’d like to catch up with you.”
“Friends?” she asked. “You consider us friends?”
“Well sure. I mean, I understand we haven’t talked much over the past ten years—”
“We haven’t talked at all.”
“Okay. So we haven’t talked at all in the last ten years, but we were friends before that.”
She couldn’t deny that. Theyhadbeen good friends. Next to Layla, he had been her best friend. But that friendship had evaporated when she’d broken up with him.
It wasn’t that she blamed him for walking away. She hadn’t been able to express how she really felt when she’d told him they needed to break up. Which was that she had still wanted him in her life.
But all of that aside, she still found it a bit surprising that Ben seemed to want to just… pick up their friendship, while she wasn’t sure there was a friendship to pick up.
He wasn’t the same person he’d been ten years ago, and she certainly wasn’t either. They couldn’t just pick up where they’d left off. As different people, there might not even be the possibility of a friendship between them, and she just wasn’t sure that she could open herself up to him again.
Plus, she was still trying to figure out her new life. A friendship with the man who’d held her heart for so long was not what she needed right then.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ben wasn’t sure what had possessed him to ask Amelia out for coffee. It wasn’t until she’d turned him down that he realized that perhaps they had very different views on what had transpired following their breakup.
He’d assumed that when she said that he—that their relationship—was a distraction, that she’d meant she wanted him out of her life. He’d assumed that keeping in contact with her would still be a distraction.
And he hadn’t wanted to be the reason she might not be able to devote the time and energy necessary for reaching her goals. So, he’d walked away.
Physically, it had been easy enough. His life had already shifted to New York. When he’d first left for college, he’d assumed his departure would be a temporary one. But once Amelia had broken up with him, he’d found it easy to stay away from the estate and from Serenity.
Emotionally, it had been harder. However, not seeing her on a regular basis had helped him to eventually put their breakup behind him.
They’d once been friends, and now that they were years past the breakup, he had thought they could perhaps rekindle that friendship.
Clearly, he’d been wrong.
"Amelia," he said, keeping his voice gentle. "I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable. That wasn't my intention."
She fidgeted with the few remaining snack packs on the table, her fingers smoothing over the wrappers. "It's fine. I just… I have a lot going on right now."
Ben nodded, trying to read her expression. The wariness in her eyes made his chest tighten. He'd clearly misread the situation, thinking they could slip back into some version of their old rapport. But the Amelia standing before him wasn't the same Amelia he’d befriended, then fallen in love with.
"I understand," Ben said, trying to keep his voice casual. "It was just a thought."
A whistle pierced the air, and they both looked toward the gym. The teens who had remained in the hallway tossed their garbage, then made their way back into the gym.
