Chapter 15 #2
“You drive me insane,” I told her. “Go back to your register and stop harassing me.”
“Who says I want to be by you anyway?” Madison huffed, stalking off. I barely got one thing in the cart before I tracked her down and gave her twenty bucks in apology.
“Apology accepted.” She grinned evilly and shoved the money in her pocket before leaving me alone to fret in peace.
As I gathered food items—far more than was probably necessary, let’s be real—I mulled over my feelings.
Everything I felt, anxiety over messing things up, the fear of letting someone in, the worry that I was all talk, and that my feelings—now that I’d come to terms with them—were only going to ruin the friendship I had with Joe. The fear that Joe would rely on me and I’d fail him.
Those worries settled inky cool on my body as my cart piled higher and higher and higher.
Joe’s test was harder than I’d thought it would be.
Not impossible, though.
Because all those negative feelings, all my fears, my insecurities, were eclipsed by the overwhelming urge I felt to take care of Joe.
To protect him.
To provide for him.
To keep him safe, ease his stress, and lift at least some of the burdens he carried on his big, round shoulders.
Case in point, the way I’d pulled him into me when he’d been panicking that day in this very same grocery store, and how effortless that had felt. Like it was second nature to support him. To be there when he needed me.
And secretly…I wanted to see that face again.
The face he made sometimes when I got grabby. Those dark blue eyes fuzzy, normally so wary, but at those moments so overwhelmingly full of need it took my breath away.
Until Joe had walked into my life, I hadn’t realized how devoid of purpose it truly was.
Sure, I kept busy. But at the end of the day, I’d still end up alone. Lying on my couch, wondering how my life had led to this. Empty rooms just like the empty rooms in my childhood. Only the echo of my breath for company.
Silence.
Loneliness.
The kind of loneliness I’d spent my life running from—filling every spare second I could with chatter just so I wouldn’t have to confront it.
Mom and Dad had been busy when I was a kid.
Busy being charitable.
So busy being charitable they forgot about their only son. We communicated on the phone. Often. They were really, very loving when they remembered I existed. But I’d always been second. Second to their egos and how desperate they were to feed them.
Their kindness came with a layer of selfishness attached.
Mom loved nothing more than being told how “generous” she was.
They both wanted to save the world, and I…well. All I wanted was parents who were home.
I never got that.
When Dad died my senior year, I’d been away at boarding school.
So many people came to his funeral, it was all a blur. It would’ve been anyway, the day being as traumatic as it was. Heart attack. No warning. One second, he was spreading his wealth, and the next, we were spreading his ashes.
The moment it was over I ran as far away as I could get.
Mary had been different.
I’d met her when I was eighteen. We were freshmen at the same college.
Hours away from my hometown and the baggage it carried.
Far from the empty halls of my childhood manor.
Empty still, because even after Dad’s death, Mom buried herself in projects.
Home felt even more like a tomb than ever with no one recognizable around.
Mary was brilliant. Top of her class. Beautiful. But most important, Mary was kind—not because it fed her ego but because that was simply who she was. She was so different from the type of people I’d interacted with previously. I’d instantly been fascinated.
She’d been fascinated right back.
It’d been a whirlwind romance.
Six months in, and I’d asked her to marry me over takeout and sitcom reruns.
She’d said yes.
It wasn’t until years later that I’d realized my love for Mary had always been platonic. Born from a desire to be close to someone else, at any cost. Spawned from her kindness and my fascination with it. I loved her. But not the way I was supposed to.
I was in my forties now, for God’s sake, and I still had no idea what it meant to love someone romantically.
What if I couldn’t?
What if Joe decided he wanted me back—defying all odds.
What if he kissed me and it felt like it had when Mary did?
Like there was just…nothing.
No spark.
And I ruined what was a good, solid friendship by misinterpreting my own feelings.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
I refused to hurt him.
Worries compounded one on top of the other.
Crunched together like hard-packed snow.
Building bigger and bigger the longer I was by myself.
The more stuff I bought, the more my head swam.
Item after item, purchased in a blur, with no regard for the kind of money I was spending, or the odd looks Madison gave me as I came up to the register to pay, all glassy-eyed mania.
Normally, I was more careful.
I didn’t buy more than was believable for a man who worked as a grocer at the grocery store. But…I was too lost in my head to care. At least, until I got out to my truck and realized I had an entire bed full of things to load.
“Jesus Christ,” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You’re such an idiot, Jason.”
The storm clouds had rolled in, the first snowflakes fluttering down and melting on my nose. Which meant I had very little time to get to Joe’s house before the worst of it hit. After panic-buying a cartload of food and nearly blowing my cover, one thing was for certain.
I needed some distance from Joe.
This crush I had on him was tearing me apart.
Hell. Just one look at my grocery cart was evidence of that.
I couldn’t be a rational person where he was concerned.
I couldn’t be a good friend. Couldn’t do one simple task without overthinking it—panicking over it—reading into it in a way that wasn’t healthy for either of us.
Something needed to give.
I wasn’t going to cut him off as a friend, of course not, but maybe…
maybe being this close to him was a bad idea.
Maybe I needed to take a chill pill and re-evaluate.
No more random pizza visits. I needed to start treating him like I treated the other Bellevillians.
Give him a real friendship. Nip these feelings in the bud before they could grow into something totally uncontrollable.
A landslide stopped mid-path-of-devastation.
Half destroyed was better than fully destroyed.
Yes.
That was a good plan.
The smart plan.
I’d get in, drop the food off so Joe wouldn’t starve, then I’d head home to my empty house to weather the storm. And if I were lucky? By the time we met up again, I’d have gotten over my pesky crush on him entirely.