“And we just wondered, since all of you have so much experience with ladies, where should they go?”
“Oooooh, our little Sophie has a date.” It was Jordan that started talking again, while my face went up in flames. I was going to kill her.
No, I was going to buy her a coffee with regular milk, just so that I could watch her lactose intolerant ass run to the toilet.
Motherfucker.
I refused to look anywhere else but at Bianca, who was still grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“You’re what?” It was Noah this time, yet I still hadn’t moved my eyes from B. “Sophie?”
“She’s going on a date, dum-dum.” Bianca answered instead, and I prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. “But he’s in Boston. She’ll be visiting her brother soon, so they figured that it’s much easier to just meet there.”
“Sophie?”
I could feel him even though I couldn’t see him. He radiated heat, and I hated my traitorous heart for beating faster as he came closer.
“Look at me.”
If I looked at him, I would either punch him in the face or start crying. It felt like forever passed since we last stood this close, and the last time, he broke my heart in a thousand pieces, shattering all those good things we built together.
I understood then what Bianca was doing, even without her throwing daggers at me with her eyes, urging me to play along. Noah always had a problem with every single guy I would start liking, or every single guy that would ask me out.
That whole protective brother bullshit escalated that night when I was talking to one of the guys visiting our town, and Noah went ahead and ruined my night.
I pulled myself together and turned toward him, taking a step backward when I noticed how close we stood to each other. “Yes, Noah?” I thanked whatever was out there for how steady my voice sounded, curling my fingers into a fist.
“You’re going on a date? In Boston?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“The hell it’s not!”
“Lower your fucking voice,” I seethed. “It stopped being your business the moment you decided that you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”
“Sophie—”
“And yes, I am going on a date. And yes, it is in Boston, far away from here, far away from you and all your goons that would no doubt show up and ruin my night. Because that’s what you do best, Noah, isn’t it? Ruin my nights.” I looked at Bianca and took another step away from him. “Let’s go. I still need to catch Ms. Fiore to ask about that new assignment.”
My hands shook as we walked away from them. I felt hopeful that maybe, just maybe, that silly crush I had on him was finally going away. We didn’t manage to go too far, when he wrapped his hand around my upper arm and turned me toward him.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
“You walked away from me first.” I shook him off and moved farther, seething. How dare he. How dare he come back like this, to start talking to me when he did nothing but hurt me. “What do you want, Noah? It’s Monday. It’s too early and I still haven’t had my morning coffee. Standing here, talking to you, is doing nothing but increasing this already annoying headache.”
“You have a headache?” I hated, fucking hated, the concerned look on his face.
“Cut the crap, buddy. What. Do. You. Want?”
He moved his weight from one leg to the other, looking at me as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. And maybe he couldn’t. The Sophie he knew was the Sophie that was never coming back.
“We need to talk,” he almost whispered. “Please.”
I scoffed and wrapped my arms around myself. “Wasn’t that the same sentence I said to you almost three months ago?”
“Sophie—”
“Yet, you completely ignored me, deciding that I wasn’t good enough to hang out with you.”
