Chapter 16 #2
No Darling came trotting around the house to greet her. She heard no answering bark. He had to be flopped somewhere, recovering from his busy afternoon of play. Who was she kidding? Darling always wanted to be in the thick of things and never walked away from an opportunity to beg food.
“Darling!” she called again, panic taking over.
Zona hurried around the corner of the house. He had to be there, please be there.
He wasn’t. Nooo.
There were no holes, which meant he had to have taken escape to new levels and managed to scale the fence. Or . . . Who cared what the or was. He was gone.
She ran out to the front yard. “Darling!” She got to the sidewalk and stopped, looking each direction. All she saw was cars parked at curbs and a neighbor’s watering system going off and a sky giving up more of its light.
Nooo.
brEE WAS IN Santa Monica with Fen at the house of one of his college friends.
The revelers were fueling up before moving on to watch the fireworks display at nearby Corsair Field.
The beer and soft drinks were disappearing down thirsty throats and everyone had already made a huge dent in the mountain of chip bags sitting on one of the counters in the outdoor kitchen.
The aroma of grilling hot dogs and veggie burgers filled the hot summer air.
How could it not? The houses were packed in close together and probably everyone in the neighborhood was grilling something.
The house where Fen had taken Bree to party wasn’t on the beach, but it was only steps away, and it was worth a small fortune. One Bree would probably never have.
“Money isn’t everything,” Gram liked to say. No, but it sure helped when that bill for tuition came due. It paid the rent. Or the house payment . . . unless your stepfather put the family so deep in debt the house had to be sold.
She stood at a table loaded with bowls of potato salad, seven-layer dip, baked beans, and half a dozen different desserts and watched Fen pulling out two bottles of root beer from one of the coolers.
His friend, whose parents owned the house, was standing next to him and said something to Fen, making him laugh. He had such an easy laugh.
Of course he did. His whole life was easy. Always had been.
Oh, great. Now she was going to be jealous of Fen? She frowned.
“He is so hot,” said Uma, a woman Bree had only met an hour earlier.
“Jimmy?” asked Bree.
“Jimmy,” the woman scoffed. “He’s my cousin and he has the IQ of a peanut. I meant your man. Lucky you.”
“He’s not really my man. We’re friends,” Bree explained as Fen started making his way toward her, smiling.
“Yeah? Friends don’t look at friends the way he looks at you. But hey, if you don’t want him . . .”
Did she? She liked Fen. A lot. She could easily love him, but then what would happen? Great as Fen was, was he worth taking a chance on?
“Go for it,” she said.
“I think I will. He seems nice.”
“He is,” Bree confirmed.
“That should be a change. I just broke up with the world’s biggest loser.”
No, Bree’s stepdad was the world’s biggest loser. Nobody could be bigger than him.
Fen reached the table as they finished loading their plates. Bree made the introductions. “Fen, this is Uma.” She’s looking.
Uma cocked her head, letting her sheet of straight blond hair drop to the side, and smiled at Fen. “Hi.”
Bree frowned.
“Hi,” he said. “Great party, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” she agreed. “Jimmy has some awesome friends.”
Fen didn’t appear to have picked up on the fact that she was flirting with him. “Yeah, he does.” He turned his attention to Bree. “Where do you want to sit?”
Uma frowned. “Told you,” she said to Bree.
“Told you what?” Fen asked as they settled at one end of the outdoor table.
A couple of little boys raced past, shooting each other with squirt guns. “Nothing,” Bree said, watching them. “You know she’s into you, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Not looking.” He smiled at Bree, and it made her heart turn over. “There’s only one person I’m really interested in.”
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your time,” she said.
“Since when is hanging out with you a waste of time,” he countered.
“Since never,” she joked.
“Exactly.” He wasn’t joking.
She decided she needed a cookie.
By the time she’d gotten one for both her and Fen, two of his friends had joined him. Good. That spared them from getting into dangerous conversational territory and the time passed comfortably.
“We should get going,” someone said eventually, and the party moved on to its next destination, leaving behind nothing but crumbs and a recycle can filled with cans and bottles.
Fen drove and conversation on the way stayed light.
He ignored a text coming in from his uncle, who owned the nursery where Fen worked.
His job mainly consisted of lugging around large bags of soil and fertilizer, which anyone with eyes could see wasn’t hurting his pecs or biceps.
But he also had to ring up sales, and sometimes deal with irritable people.
“He probably wants me to work tomorrow even though I’m not scheduled,” said Fen.
“You should. I bet Orange Tree Lady has told all her friends about you. They’ll be coming in wanting you to come over and prune their roses.”
Fen made a face. Orange Tree Lady had come in earlier in the week, sure she’d been sold a defective tree and had lugged the poor dying thing back to the nursery as evidence.
She’d not only wanted a refund. She’d also wanted Fen to come back to her house and give her advice on where to plant its replacement.
“She’d had it for three months,” he said. “If it was so defective, why didn’t she bring it back right away? And how am I supposed to know where to plant a tree?”
“You are working at a nursery,” Bree said. “Anyway, she probably wanted more from you than to plant a tree.”
He made a face. “Gross.”
She laughed. “Well, you are a pretty hot gardener.”
“I’m not a gardener,” he said with a frown. The frown grew into a smile. “I’m hot, huh?”
“You know you’ve got aura,” she retorted.
His smile got bigger.
“Don’t be reading anything into that,” she said tersely, and the smile shrank. “Moving on,” she said, and switched them to talking about the cool house his friend had.
“I wouldn’t mind having a place like that,” he said.
“You’ll be able to afford it once you’re a superstar financial planner.”
“Being with a finance expert sounds like a safe bet to me,” he said.
“There’s no such thing as a safe bet,” she muttered.
He pretended not to hear.
Later, as they sat on camp chairs, watching the fireworks burst and rain down colors from an inky sky, he scooted his closer to her and said, “Remember the fireworks I took you to when we were going together?”
She did. A big pop produced a fountain of gold that lit the sky. Her heart mimicked it as she remembered a steamy collection of kisses they’d shared later that night. Clothes had almost been shed. Almost.
She forced herself not to look at him. If she did, they’d be right back reenacting that other night on the Fourth of July and her willpower would be in the toilet.
“I love you, Bree,” he said. “I never stopped thinking about you after we broke up. I know you’re going to pull away again, I can feel it coming. And the crappy thing is, I still won’t be able to stop thinking about you.” He tried to take her hand. She pulled it away.
“Can’t we just be friends?” she protested. Now she had to look at him, but she wished she hadn’t. She hated seeing the disappointment in his eyes.
“Can’t we think about being more than that someday? I’ll wait for you forever is there’s any chance we can.”
“You know what my life’s been like. You know about my dad and my stepdad. I don’t want to turn into my mom.”
“Your mom’s pretty nice. I can think of worse things to turn into,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Other people’s mistakes don’t have to be yours. And I’m not a mistake.”
She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and say, “No, you’re not, and I love you.” But she forced herself to sit there like a boulder. She did love him. Sadly, she didn’t love him enough to trust him with her future. She bit her lip and trained her gaze on the fireworks above them.
He didn’t say anything more after that. In fact, he didn’t talk at all as he drove her back to her apartment. She looked at his stony expression and felt sick.
Finally, when they were a block away, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “I wish you’d say something.”
“What’s left to say?”
“That you want to be my friend.”
He sighed. “I do, but I want more, Bree. I mean, yeah, it’s better than nothing, but sometimes better than nothing isn’t enough.”
The sick feeling grew worse. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . .” He bit down on his lip, shook his head.
“I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I need to accept that we can’t go any further.
I’ll have to get used to the idea of not being with you, not being able to touch you, make plans for a future with you, talk about where we’d like to live and how many kids we want, ’cause none of that’s going to happen.
There’s no future for us, Bree. You won’t let there be. ”
He pulled his Jeep into the guest parking space nearest her upstairs shared apartment and turned to look at her. “I’m sorry. I hate this, but we’re done. I thought I could, but I can’t keep doing this. It’s killing me.”
She felt the same misery she saw on his face. This was all wrong.
He got out, walked around the Jeep, and opened the passenger door.
“This is crazy,” she protested.
“No. Come on. You know the definition of crazy. It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That’s all I’d be doing. I can’t do that, Bree. I wish I could, but what’s the point of it?”
“The point is, we care about each other.”
He shook his head again. “You don’t care enough. I wish you did, but you don’t.”
He was right, of course. She cared more about protecting her heart than she did wounding his.
His words poured sorrow and shame over her.
She didn’t want to hurt him. But she also didn’t want to wind up hurt herself.
She stood there, her brain on fire, trying to think of something to say that would keep him bound to her but getting nothing in return.
She couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to him.
He walked back around the Jeep and got behind the wheel. She stepped away and watched with tears filling her eyes as he drove off.