Page 116 of Flirting with 40

“What?”

“This is what he texts you?”

I jolt in awareness, and then shove the misery I’m trying to hide back down. “It’s no big deal.”

“C’mon, Blakely. I’m not going to give up until you talk to me. How long are you going to stay mad?” she says, reading his text aloud to me. “I mean, that sounds all kinds of sweet to me.”

“You call it sweet, I call it stalkerish,” I lie and give her a tight smile before taking a sip of my wine. The texts are getting harder and harder to resist, but his sweet-hearted nature only proves why I don’t deserve him. “Isn’t there some kind of rule somewhere that says don’t fall in love with your rebound?” I shrug. “And I didn’t, so sue me.”

She walks around the island and leans her butt against it as she studies me, the expression on her face one I know from years of friendship. It says she’s not buying it, and I’m not in the mood for a Kelsie lecture. Not when I’ve been miserable for the past seven days with a heartache that I keep trying to convince myself is because I’m doing the right thing for once.

And not for myself, but for him.

I can be unselfish.

That’s what I’m being.

And if I keep telling myself that, then maybe I’ll start to believe it.

Maybe.

“So sue you?” She chuckles. “What are you, ten years old?”

I lean my head on the back of the couch and look to the ceiling. It’s way easier to study the drywall than it is to meet her eyes and let her see how miserable I am.

“You don’t understand.”

“Huh.” She remains silent until I look at her. “What I don’t understand is why you won’t just save face, tell him your imagination went a little wild, that you overreacted, and apologize. You know, the truth.”

“The truth is I read too much into everything. I mistook the fun, no-strings-attached retreat, and made it more in my mind because he was the first man who made me feel good again since Paul . . . so, of course, it was easy to mistake feeling good for having feelings.”

“It is, and that was a whole mouthful of words where you mentioned the word ‘feel’ three times just to prove you don’t have feelings. If we’re going to talk like ten-year-olds, then here’s mine: ‘I spy a lie.’”

“Whatever.”

“Oh, there’s another juvenile response. We can do this all night, the back and forth, or you can tell me why you’re suddenly running away from one of the best things that’s happened to you like he has the plague.”

“I am not,” I assert.

“You are too.” She takes a sip of her wine as my phone beeps the second alert on the text. “And the only thing I can figure out is that you really, really like him and now that you realize it, you’re scared to death.”

“Aren’t you the one who was applauding me for hitting it and quitting it?”

“I was wrong.”

I do a double take, coughing on my sip of wine. “What was that?”

“I was wrong,” she says it so matter-of-factly that all I can do is laugh.

Kelsie is never wrong. Ever. Just ask her. She’ll tell you.

“Have some more wine. It’ll make you realize the error in your ways and comment.”

“No error.” She shrugs. “It’s the truth. I was wrong Blake. You really do like him, don’t you?”

Her stare is unrelenting, and tears well in my eyes under its intensity. All I can do is nod. “I just need time to think.”

“About what? About how you’re going to call him up, apologize for being irrational, and set a time to go have that date where you’re going to confess to him that the few nights in the middle of the woods wasn’t enough? That you want more? Him and his kit and caboodle?”