CHAPTER 1: Ford Bradley
Pick Up a Regret
I stare at the text message that just came through as my chest tightens.
Tatum:Archer and I are over. For good this time.
I feel like I’ve heard that one before—we’re over. But it never had the finality of thefor good.
It started out innocently enough. She and my brother were in the same class in high school. She was over all the time, so we became friends, too. We’d have video game tournaments. She’d stay for dinner. We kissed once…long story.
It almost felt like she was the glue that bonded me to my brother.
He played baseball. I played football. We were both very focused on our own sport, and that left little time for brotherly bonding beyond those video game tournaments on the rare nights we were both home.
They got together in college. He drifted further from the family. She forgot about that kiss, I guess. I didn’t.
She called me the first time they broke up—a few months after they started dating. I was there for her. I was there the next time, too, and the next. She always called when they were fighting.
And then it shifted from her telling me about my brother to her telling me about her own life. She’d tell me of her dreams of creating a destination wedding brand. I’d tell her about practice. At first, it was once every couple of weeks. Then it was once a week.
Then it became daily check-ins with longer chats when we had the chance.
I was a good friend to her.
She was starting to become everything to me.
She belongs to my brother. They’ve been together for a decade—give or take, on and off—despite that one kiss that probably was never meant to happen.
She can never be mine now, even if it felt like we had a chance for her to be mine first.
I’m not sure how to reply to her text. My first instinct is to call, but logic seems to force its way through. What would I say?
I continue staring at the words as I wait for the answer to come to me, and then my phone starts to ring, the shrill tone cutting into the quiet of the locker room after practice.
It’s her.
She’s my opposite in so many ways. Where I’m strategic and pragmatic, she’s impulsive and whimsical, bordering on chaotic. And yet I find such beauty in the chaos that my chest physically aches when I see her name appear on my screen.
I drop my phone onto the bench in my locker where I’m sitting. It lands with a clatter, and Cole Andrews in the locker next to mine whips his head over to me.
“You okay, man?” he asks.
I shake my head as I lean forward, my elbows on my knees.
He glances around the wall dividing our lockers, and he peeks at my phone. “Who’s Tatum Barker?”
“My brother’s girlfriend,” I answer automatically.
The question leaves an echo in my head, though, and the answer is quite a bit more complicated.
She’s someone I’ve known since I was in high school. She and I have gotten closer in the last few years. She’s a friend.
I’m hopelessly in love with her.
And I’m forever fucked because of it.
“Why’s she calling you?” he asks.
