“Never said she was ugly either.” I shrug, planting myself at the end of the breakfast bar. I feel like I need the barrier to keep me from marching over to the silverware drawer and switching out her spoon. I may be particular about dumb things, but I’m not a dick.
“Kind of odd you never mentioned how beautiful she is.” Casey pokes around in her carton, giving it all her attention. It’s plain chocolate ice cream. There’s nothing in there worth digging around for.
I rest my elbows on the bar top and drop my face to my palms, rubbing my eyes. “Now she’s fucking beautiful? Jesus, Casey, why don’t you just spit out whatever it is you really mean to be saying?”
“I can’t,” she huffs, setting down her carton, tossing the spoon in the sink and placing the lid back on the ice cream. “If I say what I want to say, I’ll sound like a jerk.”
I stifle a groan, shake it off, and lift my head to look at her.
“Casey, I am exhausted. Please don’t make what is already a profoundly shitty time of my life more complicated. You think Liz is beautiful? Great. Lots of people do. Myself? I’ve always been a little too hung up on her controlling, insulting, and utterly unpleasant personality to notice. And before you tell me it’s bullshit, please keep in mind, I’ve known her since she was sixteen. She still had braces, her bangs were too thick, and she lived for black lipstick. I guarantee you, we do not see the same woman when we’re looking at her.”
She bites the corner of her mouth trying to hide a smile. Which might work if she were doing it in front of someone who doesn’t live with her. Fuck me. I have a live-in girlfriend. And fuck Liz for pointing it out. And while I’m at it, fuck Trent and Lena, too.
Casey slides off the counter, abandoning her ice cream and strolling over to meet me in a cat-like fashion. One arm slinks behind my neck as her body curls against mine. Any minute now, she’ll start purring.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I got so crazy,” she murmurs, resting her face in the nook of my neck.
Her hair tickles my chin, and I try to blow it away without her noticing.
“I guess it just freaked me out, seeing you walk in with her. I realize that you’ve known her forever, but watching the way you interact with her somehow made it all more real. And suddenly, it felt like there was another woman in your life. One who might know you better than I do. Who might be closer to you than I am.” Sheuses her fingertip to start tracing circles over my chest. “And I want to be closest to you, Jovi.”
“I’m pretty sure you’ve got what you want then.” I place a kiss on top of her head. It’s probably not the closeness she’s looking for, but it’s all I have to offer anyone. And I’m giving it to her. “And for the record, the only closeness between me and Liz is a forced proximity.”
“Without Trent and Lena, I suppose you won’t have to worry about that anymore.”
My heart pauses, then returns to its rhythm. Not with a gentle beating, but a pounding I can feel vibrate through my entire body.
I should tell her how she couldn’t possibly be more wrong. But I don’t. She barely knew Trent and Lena. She has no business talking about them or what their absence will mean for me, or for Liz.
Casey interprets my silence as a positive thing. When she tilts her back to look up at me, she’s grinning again. “Bangs, huh? She so doesn’t have the face to pull those off.”
I roll my eyes and sigh while she giggles into my chest.
Liz’s face was never the issue. I hated her bangs because they covered her eyes. And her eyes were the only part of her I could ever make sense of.
CHAPTER FIVE
LIZ
“Based on the coffee she made me and the homemade granola bar I had jammed in my hand on the way out your door, I’m guessing you never got around to telling Casey about the will.”I couldn't care less one way or the other. Nor do I intend to eat the granola, though I will partake of the coffee.
We’ve been in Jovi’s truck for seven minutes and that makes me seven minutes closer to the airport. Seven minutes closer to getting on a plane. Seven minutes closer to going home and packing up my life and facing a new reality, one I’m nowhere near ready to face.
So, I’m rambling. About Jovi’s girlfriend. Because, unfortunately for her, she’s the most trivial thing I can think to talk about. And I’m desperate for trivial right now. Desperate like my life depends on it.
“You said you need a few days to sort out your life and move it here? I’ll take the same amount of time to rearrange my world too, thanks,” he remarks, lip curling into a slight sneer at the end. “And for your information, I’m well on my way to easing her into the news.”
“Oh, yeah?” That girl didn’t seem like she had a clue regarding the twist her life will have taken come this weekend. “Because that’s not how I interpreted Suzie Homemaker’s grand sendoff. It was more ‘no hard feelings but definitely don’t come back,’ from where I was sitting.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” he grumbles, eyes never leaving the road. “That’s pity granola she gave you, not a warning.” He glances at me briefly to smirk. “I told her you had bangs in high school.”
Automatically, I reach for my forehead and scowl. “I loved my bangs. They were great.”
“They sat on your face like an iron curtain separating you from the rest of the world.”
I shrug. “That’s what I liked best about them.”
“In any event, she now knows I find you utterly repulsive, have since the day we met, and thus, has no reason to feel threatened by you.”
