5. Blake
5
BLAKE
I can’t believe it.
Complete shock held me captive and I struggled to accept that my eyes weren’t lying to me.
I can’t freaking believe it.
That Zach was here, back in Vernford. At this party.
Here!
As I dabbed a wet cloth at my formerly white blouse—now tan with some of the gravy that splattered on it—I shook my head and cringed at how I’d reacted. Falling wasn’t graceful in any situation. But with a damn tray of food tossed up like unwanted confetti? Yeah, not my smoothest moment.
Embarrassment rivaled with the confusion of Zach being here. He’d made it no secret about what career he wanted, and it would always keep him far from town.
What changed?
When did that change?
How could Amanda and Jenny not tell me?
They wouldn’t have singled me out to announce that he was coming home. Why would they? They had no clue who Zachary West was to me. To my sanity.
“Who was that ?” Tiffany asked as she approached. In her hand was another wetted cloth, and she jumped right in to help me smear away the worst of the stains on the side of my blouse. Her brows spiked up high, and I didn’t need a second glance at her pretty face to know that expression of glee and curiosity meant she’d more than noticed Zach stepping into the kitchen and sharing the most awkward hello in history.
“Huh?” I was too flustered to speak like a cognitive adult yet, hung up on the shock and humiliation of my reaction.
“That tall, bearded guy.” She whistled. “Come to Mama, baby. Whew.”
“Um, just someone…” I strained to swallow past the emotions clogging my throat. “Someone my brother used to know.” That was putting it lightly. Zach and Kevin were partners in crime as kids, then best friends no matter what as they got older. “He used to play football with Kevin,” I added. Which was why Zach would’ve had any motivation to be at Coach Parker’s retirement party.
I glanced up, distracted not only by the silver and red mini jingle bell earrings she wore. They swayed and bounced as she moved to vigorously rub out the stains on my shirt. But past her, I caught a glimpse of the other members of the catering staff bringing more dishes in.
“Well, it sure is sweet of him to come back here and check that you were okay after you tripped.”
I hadn’t tripped. Not on any physical obstacle—just my gut instinct of what the hell at seeing the one man I swore I’d never face again. The one man I wasn’t sure I would know how to face again.
“Actually, he didn’t,” I argued weakly, panicking that we were slacking on the clock. Jenny wasn’t a tough boss. She wasn’t strict and didn’t micromanage. But this job was a demanding one that demanded we adhere to the schedule of the party and the food delivery and removal. Tiff and I needed to be with the others to clear out dishes so people could have ample room for their dessert plates.
Another coworker brought a tray of plates through the swinging door. With it closing, I saw through the opening.
Reagan had her hand on Zach’s shoulder. Her bright-red nails reflected the light as she rubbed her fingers lower, feeling up his biceps. A smug, sultry smile curved her lips up as she chatted to him.
“He just…” Hell, I didn’t know how to explain Zach’s presence in town. He hadn’t come back to Vernford—ever—except for Kevin’s funeral. I doubted he’d flown in from a combat zone just for his high school coach’s retirement party. But I knew Tiffany was reading into that moment all wrong. “He clearly just felt obligated to say hello to me.” I refused to look into the fact that he’d voluntarily sought me out in the kitchen. And technically, he didn’t check whether I was all right after missing my step at the sight of him.
He had only stared at me. Speechless, almost.
“Tiff?” Jenny called out from the other end of the kitchen, busy stacking dirty dishes out of the way. “Can you clear the five top in the front?”
Shit.
“And, uh,” I said, patting Tiffany’s hand to stop her from trying to clean my shirt, “it’s just as well that he’s not in the mood to do anything more than say hello.”
I grabbed a tray and handed it to her before I took one for myself.
I had no time to worry about why Zachary West was here. Nor why his eyes looked so guarded, his whole vibe so glum. I had zero opportunity to stress about his being at this party. And I most definitely didn’t have the freedom to waste my energy analyzing, debating, wondering, and second-guessing what his presence could mean. I was here to work. I had to do my job and do it well. On top of everything else I was juggling in my life, I simply didn’t have the leisure to stop and think about the man I never thought I’d run into again.
“Come on. We’re dragging our feet.”
Tiffany laughed lightly as I tugged her back out to the rest of the bar with me. “As if. You’re a workaholic, Blake. You don’t know what it means to ever drag your feet.”
No. I just know how to trip over them just because I saw a face from my past.
But Zach wasn’t just any old face. He wasn’t an ordinary blast from the past.
That rugged, tall man was the one thing I wanted to keep in my past.
For the rest of the night, though, I kept clear of him. I didn’t allow myself to slow down long enough to see whether he was still at the bar. Whether he was still here to congratulate Coach Parker or to listen to Reagan flirting with him. All I knew and could take relief in was the fact that I didn’t encounter him again.
Cleanup would take a while, but Jenny refused to let me stay. “You’ve taken the last shift the last five parties, girlie,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “It’s Tiff’s turn.”
Tiffany nodded. “Yeah. Go on. I’ll handle this one.”
“You sure?” I asked, unused to not being a go-getter and making sure everything was wrapped up and torn down.
“Yeah,” Leo said, chiming in as he came from putting another load of things in Jenny’s catering van outside. “You should take it easy after that tumble out there.”
My cheeks heated all over again at the mention of my clumsiness.
Jenny peered at me, her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
Oh, you know. Just lost my footing and my mind at the fact that your grandson is back in town. I’m peachy. “Yep. Just tripped and had a clumsy moment.” I smiled quickly. “I’m fine,” I lied.
“All right.” She didn’t relax her face yet, though, likely on edge with my forced, overly peppy tone. “Then you head home and take it easy for the rest of the night.” Now, she smiled.
“Thanks, Jenny.” I wouldn’t push the matter if it would make me have to mention that I saw Zach. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her when he’d gotten here, but that would be too weird.
Instead, I dragged myself out of the bar and headed to my van. Not my van. Jenny’s. She was such a fairy godmother like that, not only a boss but also a friend who’d let me use her oldest catering vehicle.
Once I got home, I kicked off my shoes and sighed with my back against the front door.
Finally. Home.
I could hide. I could decompress. I wondered if I’d go to sleep and wake up to learn it was all a dream, a figment of my imagination that I saw Zach again. He often starred in my dreams, sometimes the exotic ones, but more so in psychedelic, strange ones that probably indicated I had unresolved demons in my past. Like the lies I wanted to hang on to for as long as I could to protect my son. And my heart.
“Long night?” Amanda asked, hearing me come in. She smiled at me and wrapped her arms around herself in a hug as she shivered. “Cold night,” she corrected.
“Yeah,” I replied to both of her comments as I pushed off the door. George didn’t run up to greet me, and I would be surprised if he did. It was three hours after his bedtime, and he had to be fast asleep. “How’d it go getting him to and from the party?”
“Fine.” She followed me as I walked into the kitchen where I set my purse on the counter to fish out some cash to pay her. The West house was right next door, but it was more than a few yards away. Amanda began the process of layering up for the three-minute drive home. “I had just enough time while he was at the party to hurry to the airport and back. To pick up Zach,” she said matter-of-factly, like that was regular, boring news.
I jerked my head up. “Zach?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Grandma was super surprised when he called this morning and asked for a ride home from the airport.”
“Huh,” I said, my heart racing with this topic.
“Yeah. It was a last-minute thing. Or it was on our end. With how sketchy he is about calling or texting us, maybe he’d planned the trip for a while but didn’t see the need to tell us until literally the last minute. Obviously, Grandma was at the party catering, but with George going to that party, I could wing it.”
“Lucky coincidence,” I said, straining to keep all emotions out of my voice as I handed her the cash. A quick smile seemed to keep her from noticing how I was on edge with what she said.
“Uh-huh. He looked really tired, but that’s a shame. He could’ve gone to the party and said hi to his old coach.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “A shame…” I didn’t have it in me to tell her I saw Zach at the party. Revisiting the memory of that experience threw me off. I’d never felt the full meaning of someone pulling a rug out from under my feet, but that was it. Total shock. Complete bewilderment. “Because he and Kevin were on the same team back then.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” She smiled at me, pausing to study me. “You probably spent more time in Zach’s company than I did back then. Because of Kevin.”
“Oh.” I tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, nervous at the idea of how I had ever spent time with her brother. “I… I didn’t, really.”
“You weren’t friends with Zach?”
I shook my head. “He was friends with Kevin. But I’m almost thirteen years younger than Zach.” I shrugged. “I tagged along a little bit, but I wouldn’t say I, uh, knew him.”
Except to have a horrible, stupid, teenage crush on him. To fantasize about him because he was always far away and untouchable.
“I knew of him,” I amended.
“Hmm.” Amanda nodded slowly. “Well, your thirteen-year age gap isn’t as big as the twenty between us as siblings,” she said with a light laugh. “And I think I never would’ve had a chance to be any closer to my only brother, anyway. He was always so determined to follow Dad’s footsteps and be in the Army. Always far away.”
I nodded. “That’s true.” Her remarks only served to reinforce how little I could’ve mattered to him.
“And never interested in visiting home, either,” she said sadly as she walked to the screened-in front porch window to remote start her car.
As I stood at the door and watched her start it, I sighed. I hadn’t corrected her. Zach had come home for precisely one visit—for Kevin’s funeral.
The one night when I let the sorrow of losing my brother override my common sense. No. Scratch that. The single night of my life where I ignored all thoughts and fell back to the thrill of that crush I thought I’d put to rest long ago. We came together in grief, united in that loss, but I knew then just as I still understood now that we wouldn’t be together again.
“I doubt he’ll be here for long, either,” Amanda said after I opened the door for her to reenter the house and stay warm while her car heated up.
“How come?” I asked, needy for that information.
She shivered and rubbed her gloved hands up and down her arms. “You mean besides this hunch that he’d never be content to live in Vernford again when he lived out his wanderlust overseas for twenty years?”
I nodded, hating how final that sounded.
“He mentioned being here for the holidays.”
“Before another tour?” I guessed.
She shook his head. “No, he’s not going back for more.”
Whoa. I was burning with curiosity to know why. That was huge news, but still not my news to deal with. If he would take off again, that would be the end of another brief episode of his being near.
“I don’t know what he’ll do, but I can’t picture him finding what he wants here.” With a shrug and another thank-you from me for her babysitting George, she left.
I couldn’t claim that Zach would find what he was looking for either. I didn’t have an idea what he wanted if he wasn’t in the military anymore.
All I knew, without a doubt, was that I had been right not to tell anyone the truth.
Zach had been my brother’s best friend. He used to be my teenage crush.
And he was also my one-night stand and baby daddy, but he didn’t need to know that.
He’d be gone again soon enough, anyway.