Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I’VE MISSED THAT SMILE
Connor
After texting Gretchen last week, I knew I’d put off telling Drew about my break-up with Lauren long enough.
That same night, I invited him out for a drink.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he already knew. The guy had known since the day it happened because Lauren had called Reagan in tears and he’d been waiting for me to come clean about it.
I apologized for not telling him sooner, but that didn’t stop the cross-examination. He ranted about Lauren being the best thing to ever happen to me, that I was making a mistake, how she was this saving grace that swooped in and turned my life around.
There’s so much he doesn’t know about those few months before Lauren and I began dating.
The tongue lashing lasted for an hour before the tension in my bones reached critical mass. If I didn’t get out of there, every secret about my harbored affections for his little sister was going to pour out of me or I was going to punch him .
Rising from my seat, I interrupted his interrogation with the parting words: “I know you think I’m a dick and you’re not wrong. But breaking up with her is not the worst thing I’ve done. What’s worse is that I didn’t do it sooner because she deserves someone who loves her the way you love Reagan.”
I didn’t give Drew a chance to respond as I slapped a twenty on the bar and walked out the door.
Despite my dramatic exit—or, maybe, thanks to it—Drew hasn’t pushed the subject since, so I’ll take that as a win. I need every win I can get with my best friend because all other areas of my life seem to be in limbo, at best, and pure hellfire, at worst.
It’s now Friday afternoon. Ten business days that I’ve spent trying to schedule a meeting with my boss. There’s no big work emergency or design project to discuss, but now that the dust has settled a bit, I figured a meeting—man to man—to apologize and affirm my commitment to my job is in order.
I broke up with his daughter a month ago. The same daughter who sits in a cubicle a mere twenty feet beyond my office door.
“Mr. Driskill is booked solid through the end of the month,” his assistant, Bethany, regretfully informs me.
“Bethany, it’s me. Is that the truth or is he avoiding me?”
The pause on the other end of the line is confirmation enough. My head sinks to my chest.
“I’m sorry, Connor.”
“Let me know if anything opens up in his schedule.”
“Will do, dear,” she says kindly before disconnecting the call.
I hang up my desk phone and run a hand down my face. For the first time, genuine concern over the security of my job drops anchor in my mind. Lauren is his only child and I broke her heart. If he doesn’t want to keep me around then who am I to blame him?
Over the past month, Lauren has reached out several times, but I haven’t responded.
She could easily storm into my office and corner me into a conversation, but she hasn’t.
Maybe she’s at a loss for words the same way I am.
I don’t know what else I can do other than hope, sooner rather than later, she understands for herself that ending things was the right thing to do. For both of us.
I didn’t sleep last night. Whether it’s panic, excitement or sheer adrenaline that propels my steps from my building to Drew’s, I’m unable to harness the nerves coursing through my veins into anything other than something akin to a teenager who drank four too many Red Bulls.
I still haven’t heard whether or not Gretchen is coming to the game today. Every time I thought to text her, I couldn’t follow through.
As much as I want to be her person again, I can’t text her like nothing has changed, like it wasn’t me who ghosted her for three years.
Apologies and explanations have to come first. If she can forgive me, maybe we can forge a new friendship.
And this time, God willing , maybe that friendship can exist out in the open.
I won’t hold my breath for more because, frankly, I don’t even deserve that much.
By the time I turn down the hallway to Drew and Reagan’s apartment, I’ve accepted that I’ll probably be third wheeling it today.
When she sat across the table from me at that dinner nearly six weeks ago, it was painfully obvious how uncomfortable I made her.
Why would I expect her to want to spend all afternoon at a baseball game with me?
I rap my knuckles on Drew’s door.
A few seconds later the door swings open and my face splits into a stupid big grin. She came.
“Hi,” Gretchen says, beaming a smile that’s as beautiful as it is haunting.
God, I’ve missed that smile. I don’t deserve that smile.
Maybe it’s only there because it’s disorienting to come face to face with a person you haven’t seen in so long, but hell if it doesn’t ignite a flicker of hope in my chest that wasn’t there before.
I step inside. “Hi.”
Drew and Reagan move about their bedroom around the corner and I steal these few beats of privacy to take her in.
Gretchen has an effortlessness about her. It’s something I recognized from our first FaceTime. The call connected and a radiant smile and big, beautiful eyes filled my screen. A simple NYU hoodie and hair pulled into a knot on top of her head and the breath caught in my lungs.
Even now, in her cut-off denim shorts, vintage Cubs t-shirt and her dark hair swept up in a ponytail that she’s threaded through her baseball hat, she’s perfect. She’s all any guy would see when they enter a room— a goddess , you might say.
“You came,” I say.
“I came. I don’t know if you remember, but our hometown is boring as hell.”
A husky laugh tumbles out of me. She smiles again and… damn . I want to be more than just her friend.
Come to find out, the four tickets we have aren’t together. It’s two seats on one row and then two more seats directly behind them. Before anybody can suggest otherwise, Reagan announces she and Gretchen will sit together while Drew and I take the upper row.
If the Uber ride was any indication, it’s best I’m not seated next to her.
In a dramatic display of chivalry, Drew declared that the front seat was Reagan’s, which left the three of us to squeeze into the back of the small sedan.
Gretchen slid into the middle seat while Drew and I took the window seats.
Her entire right side, from shoulder to knee, aligned with mine— pressed into mine—and it was the most alive I’ve felt in years.
Definitely a feeling I should avoid with her brother right there.
By the top of the third, I couldn’t tell you what teams are playing because I’m too busy scowling at the two drunk guys seated next to the girls. Reagan has the aisle seat, but Gretchen is stuck right next to an obnoxious asshole who doesn’t even attempt discretion every time he checks her out.
The girls seem unfazed, if not unaware, but every time he checks out Gretchen’s legs and then leans into his buddy’s ear to whisper some off-color joke, my hands squeeze into fists.
Drew leans in, voice quiet. “Can you believe these guys? ”
“Dude, I know!” I whisper back. “I wanna punch that one in the throat.”
Gretchen and Reagan share a laugh over…something—I don’t know what because all I see is red—and then she’s on her feet, squeezing past Reagan to go to the restroom. She makes it three steps up the path before Tweedle Dumb Drunk is out of his seat, trailing after her.
“Oh, hell no,” I mutter. Drew jerks his head for me to follow after his sister as if I wasn’t already on the move to do so. I step over him into the aisle. He hikes a leg over the empty seats below and drops into the seat next to his wife while I rush up the stairs to the concourse area.
It only takes a second to spot him up ahead, hot on Gretchen’s heels. I break into a jog and breeze past him, but I don’t slow down until I reach Gretchen. As I come up beside her, I take her by the hand, matching her stride.
Gretchen’s head whirls to me. Shock morphs into confusion as she takes in my face. Her gaze lowers to where I’ve intertwined our fingers. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“That drunk guy followed you up here,” I answer, tone flat as I push down thoughts of how simply holding her hand sends an exhilarating rush of energy on a one-way course straight to my heart. Does she feel that too?
Gretchen draws us to a stop. Together, we look over our shoulders to find Tweedle Dumb Drunk has reversed course and is headed in the opposite direction.
“So, what?” She turns back on me. “You thought I was gonna be assaulted? Here? There’s hundreds of people around!”
My jaw slackens before I clamp it shut a second later.
I survey the busy concourse area bustling all around us.
She’s absolutely right; there are people everywhere.
Only an idiot would try something with this many witnesses around.
Then again, I wouldn’t put it past the guy; he seems like idiot material.
“Or you thought he’d stand in that line with me”—she points to the mass of women forming a line outside the entrance to the bathroom—“and then feel me up in one of the stalls? ”
The onslaught of mental images of my own hands on her, my palm gliding over smooth skin, her body pressed against that balcony wall, invade my mind. I blink them away.
Anger flashes in her eyes as she waits for me to respond, but I’ve forgotten how to speak. “I don’t need you to rescue me, Connor. You can’t just show up and act like things are norm—” She stops herself, the words stuck in her throat.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just…” The anger in her gaze a moment ago is gone.
In its place is something even worse: indifference.
I swallow thickly. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. But you’re right.
I’m sorry.” Her mouth twitches. “I’m sorry,” I say again, quieter this time, pleading. For everything.
One…two…three breaths. The thoughts moving through that beautiful, perfect, overanalyzing brain of hers paint themselves over her features. The dart of her eyes across my face, the crease pushing and pulling between her brows, the lips that can’t decide if they want to scowl or frown.
Unbidden, our eyes simultaneously drift down to where our fingers remain woven together. My thumb moves in slow circles over her knuckles. Her hand squeezes mine so tight I can feel the pulse thundering through her palm.
Her grip loosens, throat bobbing before she whispers, “You can let go of my hand now.”