17. Jared
JARED
Her whisper in the darkness tied me up in knots. “So how’d she take it? Was Tia upset that you agreed to come here with me?”
I pictured her lying on her side with her fists tucked under her chin. And I fidgeted, my body both tired and restless at once.
I wasn’t sure how much to say. I’d kept Tia’s dislike of my relationship with Lacie to myself as much as possible, but Lacie and I had agreed this would be our last friend-fling together.
After this, if I decided to keep dating Tia, I’d have to let Lacie go. Wouldn’t it be fair if she understood why?
“I never told her,” I said.
“Uh-oh. Why not?”
Again, another pause.
“She’s never said it outright, but I think she’s jealous of you,” I said.
She ruffled the blankets. “Jealous of me? Why?”
“I mean, she’s been jealous of you…with me.” I cringed. That didn’t sound right at all.
The pictures that were blasted all over my social media feed flashed through my mind. A wedding between Lacie and me. Kissing Lacie. Holding her, losing myself in her eyes.
“She’s never much liked the fact that my best friend is a female.”
The blankets rustled again. I closed my eyes and went on.
“Yeah, I told her you’re like one of the guys, but that only made things worse. She doesn’t like how comfortable I am with you, how we’re always together, how we always talk on the phone when we’ve finished dates with other people.”
“Wyatt didn’t like that, either,” Lacie said. “Then again, he didn’t know about all of that. Are you telling her all this?”
“Not intentionally,” I said. “But you do come up in conversation.”
“How much?”
Was it just me, or did the question sound eager? Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what the answer was. I never catalogued the things I talked about with Tia. I just said whatever was on my mind.
It wasn’t until Tia mentioned something each time that I became aware I’d been talking about Lacie again.
“Enough,” I hedged.
“Like what?” She rolled in the bed, arm tucked beneath her head and facing me where I sat. By now, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out the outlines of furniture and things situated around the room.
The outline of her.
“It’s mostly when we’re with the guys. Tim and Miguel have all these memories of me with you. Like the time you strapped plastic wrap beneath the toilet seat?—”
Lacie laughed. In the darkness, it pealed in a familiar yet forgotten way, as though I’d always loved the sound but had never realized how much.
“I forgot about that,” she said. “Tim wasn’t used to our little jokes.”
She’d snuck in, and Tim, who was my roommate, had been the unfortunate one to discover just what happened when plastic wrap was secured and hidden beneath the toilet seat.
“Or the time I kissed you backstage during drama class, and they flicked the lights on so the whole class caught us.”
We shared more spurting laughter, basking in the memory and the embarrassment that had ensued from it.
“Oh, man, we had so many rumors swirl about us after that,” she said. “They told Tia about that?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my neck, not wanting the additional memory pushing its way into the conversation, not since I was thinking of kissing her again far too often as it was.
That had been a great day. We were supposed to have been practicing lines for an upcoming class presentation. Of course, of all the Shakespearean skits our partnership could have drawn, we’d gotten Romeo and Juliet . Our turn had been coming up and had been a large part of our grade.
While waiting in costume in the wings off from where class had been backstage, I had mentioned how much kissing there was in the Leonardo DiCaprio version of the movie and how we’d never do the scene justice if we didn’t have a kiss on the balcony.
So of course, we’d wanted to practice beforehand.
That one little practice kiss had turned into a kind of make-out session in the middle of class that made it look like something else entirely. Heat flooded through me as I remembered how holding her had felt, how she hadn’t pulled away, how easy it had been to press my mouth to hers, and the sudden, urgent desire that kept me from pulling away when I should have.
I cleared my throat. “Even without talking to the guys, you always seem to come up, and Tia doesn’t like the frequency.”
Tia had pestered me about Lacie after she and I had first started dating, and it’d been one of the biggest arguments we’d ever had. That was when I’d convinced the guys to chime in and tell Tia what a big deal having Lacie around wasn’t . Except the whole kissing story kind of backfired.
The guys had talked it up way too much.
Once I had gotten Tia to talk to me again, I’d then had my mom step in. Mom and Anya—Lacie’s mom—had been bridesmaids at one another’s weddings.
They’d kept in touch while their husbands pursued school, and then after my dad left my mom, she’d moved to Fort Worth, Texas, the same town the Sorensens had moved to a few months before.
Lacie and I were born in the same year—Lacie a few months before me, a fact that she’d never let me live down. We’d traveled together, played at splash parks as kids. Family trips were rarely parents-only—everything always included the Sorensens and vice versa.
Disneyland? Share an Airbnb with the Sorensens. Road trip to Mount Rushmore? Hotels with the Sorensens. Swimming. Yellowstone. Walks around town. Sea World. Museum trips. Hiking in the mountains. They’d all included her.
Lacie had always been a given in my life.
I’d had Mom share photo books in hopes of easing some of Tia’s disgruntlement because little Lacie and little Jared taking swimming lessons together or eating popsicles or covered in mud were on every page.
“So,” Lacie began, cutting into my thoughts, “when are we going to talk about that kiss?”
My blood raced. I tried to play it off. “What’s there to talk about?”
She sat up, slapping her hand against the blanket. “Are you kidding me? You give me the most incredible kiss of my life and want to know what there is to talk about?”
Something hot and burning slid into the lowest part of my stomach. “The most incredible kiss of your life?”
She sank back to her pillows. “I mean, I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty amazing. Rocked my world. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.”
A smile spread on my lips, and satisfaction joined it, expanding in my chest. I sank against the chair and rested my arms behind my head.
“I’m glad you think so. I kind of thought the same thing.”
Quiet hovered in the air, draping between us, tempting me to part its curtain and make straight for her to repeat the occurrence. I cleared my throat and pulled my blanket to my chest, digging my toes into the floor.
“I don’t want our friendship to end,” Lacie said softly.
“Me neither,” I admitted.
Although, I did want to add to the relationship we already had.
I didn’t say as much—I was hung up on what she meant by her statement. Did not wanting our friendship to end mean she didn’t want the shift I was hoping for?
“Does that mean you don’t want anything between us to change?” I asked.
Silence. Tense, uncomfortable silence.
“I feel like that’s a loaded question,” she said.
“I know. And I’m not trying to complicate anything, but after that kiss today, I can’t go back to being friends. I’ve had the best life with you, but it’s time we grew up. No more sleepovers. No more summertime. We’re adults, we’ve got to start our own families, we’ve got to move on, and we can’t?—”
“We, or you?”
I didn’t like the barbs in her tone. “Okay, me. I can’t move on and be with someone else if you’re always part of the picture.”
Ouch. They’d been Tia’s words, not mine, but they came out sounding like mine.
I was trying to say we needed to either be more or let each other go—and that after our kiss earlier, I knew which option I wanted.
Except it had come out completely wrong. How could I get her to make that kind of commitment right now? I shouldn’t expect it of her. Which was why I should never have done what I had.
Lacie threw back the covers. I’d said too much, and I knew it.
Foot in mouth. Foot way in mouth.
I reached toward her. “Don’t do that. Lie down.”
“I can’t sleep in here. You didn’t want the couch, but I think I’ll try it out.”
I pushed to my feet, the blanket sagging to the ground. “Lace. Lace, wait.” I hurried to block her exit and made it to the door first. Thanks to my longer legs, I succeeded.
“You stay here; I’ll go.”
In the darkness, she lifted her eyes to mine. And I was dismayed to find tears welling in them. She was crying again? Lacie never usually cried, another reason I’d given in to her request to come with her to Harper’s Inn.
She elbowed me, reminding me of all the times I’d practiced jiu jitsu holds on her and how she’d learned self-defense from me to free herself from potential attackers. Normally, I refused to budge aside easily, but this time, I did. Wordlessly, she opened the door and stepped out, leaving me alone in the room.
I felt like a total dolt. What was I doing? She’d just been dumped by the man she was trying to move on from. Wyatt had been a jerk. Cursing myself for the double scoop of heartache I’d just dished, I opened the door to follow her out.
I had to make things right, though I wasn’t sure how.