“We haven’t been yet, so we’ll see how it goes. Who knew your entire world could be turned upside down in such a short time,” he said, toeing off his shoes. “My father got a new heart. I got welcomed back into a household from which I’d been banished. Eddie decided it’s no longer in our best interest to be enemies.…”
“He told me,” I admitted, putting the cake in the fridge.
The air crackled with energy. “When?”
Ugh. Awkward. “In the hospital. We talked a little when your dad was still coming out of surgery that first night.” I didn’t want to tell him I’d hugged Eddie. Not that there was anything wrong with a hug. “Speaking of things that happened in the last couple of weeks, I think your milk has gone bad. It’s forming a curd.”
Fen wasn’t buying into my weak attempt at a distraction. “So that’s when you talked to him. Interesting…”
Uh-oh.Wasit interesting? I didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe now was a good time to discuss Eddie drinking that beer.
“Sometimes,” Fen said, “it’s hard to tell when Eddie is manipulating information to make things seems worse than they are. Take for instance, he told me something earlier today that I thought was odd.”
“Oh? What did he tell you?”
“He said… no, he implied…” Fen grunted and paused, as if he was hesitant to say.
“What?”
“Eddie said, ‘Good luck with that.’ And then some other gross stuff that basically implied that you were some prissy girlthat was saving yourself for marriage, and that’s why he wanted to move in with you, because maybe it would… hurry things along?”
“Wow, okay.” My chest tightened around a knot of resentment. “For starters, I wouldn’t say I was saving myself for marriage, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“You weren’t my first.”
“You weren’t mine? It doesn’t matter. I just assumed…?” He squinched up his eyes and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. My mistake was letting Eddie rope me into listening to him. This is not a conversation I ever thought I’d have.”
“Me neither.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said again. “I was just surprised.”
“That Eddie and I hadn’t had sex.”
He pointed at me. “Yep. That.”
“We did other things, but—”
“Don’t want to know,” he said, holding up a hand. “Just like I told him. Don’t care, don’t want details.”
I nodded. A long, awkward moment stretched between us.
“I know it doesn’t matter, but it’s driving me up a wall that he’s trying to shift the blame to me when he literally pushed me away from—”
“I’m begging you, Jane, please don’t finish that sentence.”
“I’m just saying.… He was hot and then cold. I only saw him a few times in person when he came through L.A. Once, we got touchy in his car, and the next time, he wouldn’t hug me. Hedidn’t kiss me goodbye when he left for the Philippines, and I hadn’t seen him in forever. That was when my dad started hating him.”
“I see.”
“And maybe some of it was me?” I shook my head. “Maybe he sensed that I never quite forgave him for the dam. Not that it was his fault that I fell in. I did that. But before I fell, when he was drunk and left me in the woods. I wanted him to apologize for that, or to show me that he was a better person.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Eddie is tricky. He’s so nice, and he always talks around things.… It’s hard to tell sometimes if he’s just completely clueless. So I gave him a pass. A lot of passes. But part of me held a grudge. I don’t think I realized that at the time.”
Fen snorted. “He brings out the best in people. And I believe you. I’m sorry I brought any of this up. He shook me up, and I knew better.”
