Chapter 7
SEVEN
TESSA
Ace and I were sitting among a plethora of half-empty Chinese food containers, and it was the happiest I’d felt in days. There was something about being here with him, doing something so normal, that allowed some peace to settle inside me.
Just as he’d promised, Ace arrived right around six with dinner, a game, and a handsome smile.
It had been hours since I last ate, so I didn’t waste any time the moment he spread everything out on the table.
Fortunately, Ace appeared to be just as famished, so he dove right in, and the two of us ate in comfortable silence for a while.
After some time had passed and those hunger pangs had eased, Ace asked about how the rest of my day had gone.
“Great,” I said. “No unwanted visitors, and I had a couple of walk-ins who were interested in scheduling nail appointments. I was able to get one scheduled for next Monday morning, and the other for Wednesday afternoon. They were both new clients.”
“That’s great,” he replied. “Keeping busy while growing your business is never a bad thing.”
“Agreed. Especially given the current state of my personal life. I’ll take all the work and distractions I can get. What about you? I assume you have enough work to occupy your time, right?” I asked him.
He laughed. “Yes. Plenty. But I should probably allow it to distract me more. Because even though we have more than enough work to occupy our time, it doesn’t stop Phoenix and me from getting on each other’s cases.”
I shook my head as a smile played on my lips. “I don’t know why you guys do that to one another. Lark and I would never.”
Ace shot me a look of indifference. “It’s all in good fun. Today, I gave him a hard time about Faye.”
“Faye? The woman who works in the front office?”
“He’s got it bad for her,” Ace shared with a grin.
My eyes rounded. “Really? And is she not interested?”
He shrugged. “I can’t say. He insists that she is, so I can only assume things aren’t terrible there, but maybe she’s playing hard to get.
I don’t know. Either way, I probably shouldn’t have said anything to him, because he decided to give me a difficult time when I tried to get back to work after lunch.
He wanted to know why I was in such a hurry to get my work done. ”
My stomach dropped. As much as I might’ve wanted to focus on my brother finding a woman he was interested in pursuing, I couldn’t overlook the bigger problem. “Did you tell him you had plans to come here?”
Shaking his head, he explained, “I told him I had dinner plans tonight, but I didn’t tell him I was going to be here with you. I knew you didn’t tell him about what happened on Saturday evening, and I didn’t want him finding out from me.”
Relief swept through me. “Thank you. For that and for being here.”
“Don’t mention it. But I have to ask one question.”
“Sure.”
“Do you plan on sharing the news with your family and the rest of our friends?”
I inhaled deeply as a wave of embarrassment and shame washed over me. “It’s not that I intend to keep it from everyone. But I think before I share it with the whole group, I need to have some answers of my own. It’s not like everyone won’t have questions for me anyway.”
He jerked his chin down in understanding. “That makes sense.”
“Yeah. So, tell me more about your day. Did you work on anything cool?”
Ace went on to tell me a bit more about what he’d been working on at the body shop while we finished eating.
Now that we had, and I was so content, I felt compelled to mention my appreciation. “Thank you for bringing dinner tonight. It was delicious, and the company was even better.”
He smiled at me. “You’re welcome. And I’m not leaving yet, so you’ve got the company for a little while longer.”
“Right. Well, I do still need to try to redeem myself with that Game of Life rematch.”
“We shouldn’t delay, then.”
The two of us cleaned up the containers and popped them in the refrigerator before settling ourselves on the floor in the living room, the coffee table between us.
As I lifted the lid off the box so we could set up the game, I said, “So, if you were concerned about needing to use any muscle tonight, you can probably relax.”
“Muscle?”
“To save me from any bad guys.” My lips twitched. “I think I figured out how to be sure that Ryan won’t try contacting me again.”
Surprise washed over Ace’s expression. “Oh?”
I nodded. “When I got home from work tonight, I sent him a text and told him that I wasn’t ready to see him. That I knew he’d been reaching out, showing up at the salon, and making the effort to see me, but that I needed a few days. I told him I’d contact him sometime this weekend.”
“How did he take that?”
Shrugging before I pulled out the game board, I shared, “It’s always difficult to know for sure through text messaging, but I get the feeling that even though he was slightly relieved to hear anything from me at all, he’s less than thrilled that I’m not begging him to see me immediately.”
Ace’s features twisted with some emotion I couldn’t quite place. There was no denying that whatever it was wasn’t pleasant. “Do you want to see him?”
“Life would be so much easier if I didn’t,” I murmured.
“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”
I held the pile of plastic cars in my hand. “Which color do you want to be?”
“Pick whatever you want, and I’ll take anything else.”
I selected the pink car—he had to know that’s what I was going to choose, considering his sister and I were two peas in a pod and the girly girls of the bunch—and gave him the green one before shifting my attention to the money.
While I got that squared away, Ace worked on affixing the mountains, buildings, and spinner to the board.
“I wish I could just walk away from him, Ace,” I revealed. “I wish I could act like I never met him, never knew a thing about him. But I don’t have a genie ready to grant any wishes for me. So, I’ve got to face this.”
I was busy shuffling the cards and realized Ace hadn’t responded. I stopped shuffling and lifted my gaze to find him staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you considering reconciliation?”
Sadness consumed me. “Lark asked me the same thing yesterday.”
“And?” I could’ve sworn he’d stopped breathing while he waited for my response.
I licked my lips. “Everything’s so complicated.
I wish this wasn’t a question I had to answer at all.
But I’m here, and I have no choice. Being honest, I can’t pretend I didn’t feel anything for him.
No matter how much I wish it wasn’t true, he meant something to me.
But on the flip side, despite what I feel for him, I don’t think I could ever get past this betrayal. ”
“You shouldn’t have to.” Ace affixed the final building to the board. “So, are you planning to see him this weekend?”
“As of right now, I think so. It’s not so much that I’m eager to see him. I just really want some answers. Some explanation. I have so many unanswered questions.”
Ace’s expression turned tentative. Like he had dozens of thoughts swirling in his mind that he refused to share.
But just because I could see that clear as day didn’t mean he held back from me entirely.
“No matter when it happens, Tessa, if you need someone to talk to afterward, I want you to call me. I’ll be here in a heartbeat. ”
“That means the world to me, Ace.” Warmth moved through me, and I smiled at him. “Do you think it’s weird?”
“Do I think what’s weird?”
“That I didn’t lose my mind, drive to his place, and demand answers the minute I heard that woman’s voice on the phone? I mean, it’s been days, and I’m still not completely ready to see him, even though I have so much I want to say.”
For a long time, Ace didn’t respond. His silence made me think that he was attempting to come up with a way to share that he believed it was strange I’d handled things this way. Finally, he surprised me and said, “I think it’s smart.”
“Smart?”
His fingers curled around my forearm, warm and comforting.
After giving me a squeeze and keeping his fingers there, he said, “You’re taking time to get your mind right.
If you’d gone there that night, which nobody would’ve blamed you for, you would’ve been responding to everything with all that hurt and anger coursing through your body.
That’s not to say that I don’t believe you’ll still feel a lot of that this weekend.
But you’ve had time to sit with it, to come to terms with what you deserve, and to decide what you truly want.
Any decision you might’ve made that night wouldn’t have been a rational one.
At least now you’ll be able to go into it with a clear head. ”
I covered his hand with mine and smiled. “Were you always this smart?”
Ace grinned at me. “Always.”
Glancing at the board game, I asked, “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
With that, the two of us played, and the conversation shifted away from Ryan.
I was glad for it, delighted to simply be spending time with someone I knew truly cared about me.
Deep down, I’d always known Ace was a man I could count on.
No matter what was happening in my life, if I needed him, I knew he’d be there.
It was just the kind of man he was. But I wondered why I hadn’t ever thought about him as anything more.
We were friends. We got along great. And there was no question that Ace was handsome.
He looked like a younger version of his dad, with his height and strong, solid body, but he had his mom’s jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes.
Why hadn’t I ever looked at him as anything more than just my brother’s best friend? As my friend?
Of course, it wasn’t as though Ace had given me any indication he’d seen me as anything more than just his sister’s best friend. I wasn’t unattractive. I knew that. But having confidence in the way I looked didn’t necessarily mean that I was someone else’s type.
Why was I even thinking about any of this? It hadn’t even been a week since I’d had my heart broken by Ryan. Clearly, the thoughts I was having about Ace had to be about the appreciation I felt for all that he’d done for me over the last few days.
I shook the thoughts from my head and focused all my attention on the game. Thirty minutes and lots of laughs later, I let out a groan of frustration and fell onto my back on the floor. “I can’t believe this.”
Ace shifted his body so it was positioned over the coffee table, his forearms resting on it, peering down at me with a sympathetic look on his face. “This probably wouldn’t be a good time to tell you that I was trying to lose.”
Narrowing my eyes on him, I asked, “Why would you do that?”
“Tell you or try to lose?”
“Try to lose.”
His shoulders lifted slightly toward his ears. “I didn’t want you to get back on your bad luck kick.”
My lips curved into a smile. “I know I’m not suffering from bad luck.”
Surprise littered his features. “You do?”
I nodded.
“How so?”
I nibbled on the corner of my lip. “I’ve got someone as wonderful as you in my life. That tells me everything I need to know.”
Ace’s expression softened. “And I’ll always be here.”
He barely got the words out, and he was gone.
But that was only because he moved out to the dining room, where I heard the familiar crinkle of a plastic wrapper.
My smile returned as he made his way back to me and held out his hand to help me off the floor.
I placed my hand in his and when we were standing face-to-face, he held out two fortune cookies and said, “Pick whichever feels luckiest to you.”
I studied both cookies, and it was the one in the center of his palm that called to me. So, I took that. “Should I open it?”
“Yes.”
Ripping open the plastic, I plucked the cookie out. I broke it in half, pulled out the slip of paper, and read it. My heart exploded in my chest as I looked up at Ace.
“What does it say?” he asked.
I licked my lips and smiled. “A faithful friend is a strong defense.”
His features warmed. “That’s a good one.”
“Thank you, Ace. Thank you for being a faithful friend.”
He reached for my arm, tugged me toward him, and held me tightly in a comforting embrace. I felt so lucky to have him in my life.
Tipping my chin up, I said, “We should see what your fortune says.”
Ace released me, opened the package, and broke the cookie. Reading the fortune to himself, he laughed. “This one seems fitting.”
“Read it to me.”
“If life is a game, you’re winning by a landslide.”
My jaw fell open. Obviously, I thought Ace was doing well in his life as it was, but the fact that we’d just played the Game of Life made that fortune so much more special. “Are you making that up?”
He flipped the little slip of paper over and showed it to me.
“Wow,” I murmured. “These were good ones.”
“Agreed. So, do you want to try your luck with another rematch?”
I considered it, but I had no desire. Shaking my head, I asked, “Would you mind if we just sat and talked for a while?”
Ace studied me, his eyes roaming over every inch of my face. “Yeah, we can do that. I’d love to just sit and talk to you.”
I grinned at him before we made our way to the couch. And for the next hour and a half, Ace and I talked. There wasn’t any groundbreaking conversation. It was mostly the two of us reminiscing about the days when we were younger and life was simpler.
I loved it. And it was much more fun than I figured losing at a board game for the third time would be.