Chapter 10 Sebastian
He’d had every intention of being nicer today.
And you have been , Sebastian reassured himself. It’s not your fault she doesn’t know how to manage her time.
All the same, he almost felt bad as he looked at her in his rearview mirror, still silently fuming as she tried to eat. It
wasn’t going well for her, it appeared. She was grappling to hang on to all the components as they fell onto her paper towel—and
occasionally her lap, from the looks of it. Most of it had fallen apart before she even buckled her seat belt, as climbing
into the back of the Bronco required practice and precision she did not possess. Orly had tried to get her to take the front
seat, but of course there was no way on earth she was going to sit next to the man who had ruined her morning.
Sebastian watched her nibble on her southwestern breakfast, which now resembled an assembly line reject bao bun more than
a burrito, and his pity momentarily took control away from his scorn.
“Hey... Sorry I was so militant about the time.”
She looked up and met his eyes in the mirror, and Sebastian had to choke down a chuckle at the fury she communicated in her expression.
“Where are we going, anyway? What’s on your itinerary that’s so urgent?”
“I have to make a quick stop, but then I’ll take you to the coffeehouse for some long-awaited reunions.”
She rolled her eyes, and both of her fellow passengers caught it. Sebastian shook his head and pulled his eyes away from the
mirror, while Orly took a more direct approach in communicating his displeasure to her.
“That is the reason we’re here, Brynn.”
“I know! I wasn’t rolling my eyes at reunions. I was rolling my eyes at him! He was just saying that to aggravate me because
last night...” Her voice had been getting whinier and higher pitched as she went, but she seemed to suddenly decide it
wasn’t worth it. She sighed. “Never mind. Sorry. Thanks.”
“Happy to help,” Sebastian replied. He wasn’t happy to help, of course, but considering he had, in fact, set out to aggravate
her, and his success had led to that admonishment from Orly, he figured he owed her that small concession.
Sebastian risked another glance in the mirror. She was looking out the side window, chewing on her lip again. At least for
a moment. And then she was chewing on a torn strip of tortilla.
He’d been too closed off the day before to really look at her, but in the light of the morning—and maybe in light of the sympathy
Cole and Laila had made him feel for her—he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. Right then, in that moment, when
she was staring into space and not worrying about whether anyone was looking at her... he couldn’t help but want to look at her.
Lucinda Morissey honked her horn at him as she passed by in her minivan to drop her kids off at school, and he waved.
When he darted his eyes back to the mirror, Brynn had morphed into the version of herself that Sebastian wasn’t nearly as interested in staring at.
He didn’t have any trouble keeping his eyes on the road when she had that fake grin on her lips and the manufactured Sunup sparkle in her eyes.
“Who was that?” she asked. “Anyone I know?”
“Lucinda Morissey.” And how am I supposed to know who you know?
“Morissey... Morissey...” She held some bacon between her thumb and forefinger and nibbled on it. “Any relation to Peter
and... What was his wife’s name? Laney?”
“Lacey. Yeah. Lucinda’s married to their son—”
“Jake?” Her voice showed genuine interest as she turned around to look out the back, trying to catch sight of the minivan
that was surely all the way to the parent drop-off at the public school by now. “Jake Morissey is married? I babysat him when
he was barely walking.” She turned back around and that plastered-on smile momentarily fell. “Wow. That makes me feel ancient.”
There was such a fine line between making friendly conversation and torturing someone you didn’t like. It was nice when opportunities
arose to kill two birds with one stone. “Jake and Lucinda have a couple kids of their own. Twin girls. I think they’re in
first grade. Maybe second or third. Or are they in fourth?”
They were in first grade. Sebastian was certain. But it was just too fun watching her eyes grow bigger and bigger until he
couldn’t help but wonder if they were just going to pop right out of her head.
“Wow,” she repeated softly.
Her attention wandered to the passing landscape outside the window, and Sebastian’s view of her softened again.
When she didn’t know anyone was watching, she looked so .
. . human. Fragile, almost, but not in a weak way.
Quite the opposite, actually. Like the only reason she seemed fragile was because she had clearly already been broken so many times.
But how was she put back together and standing at all unless she was stronger than she appeared?
He couldn’t interpret her thoughts just then. Was that forlorn expression because she felt old? He doubted it. All he knew
for sure was that what he perceived as her introspection made him unexpectedly sad.
“Hey, Orly,” he diverted. “You have kids, right?”
Orly nodded. “Yes, sir. A son and a daughter. And three grandkids now, if you can believe that.”
Sebastian whistled through his teeth. “See, Brynn? You don’t have anything to worry about. Orly’s the old one.”
Orly laughed good-naturedly, and in response Brynn looked back up and plastered on her performance-ready grin again.
“How about you, Sebastian? Married? Kids?”
He probably would have answered with a simple and truthful “No” and been done with it, if not for the fact that Orly had adjusted
in his seat to give him his full attention. The cameraman was probably genuinely interested in the answer. He’d probably been
wondering about the current status of the man he’d once known. Sebastian knew there was a chasm between his past life and
his current one, connected by details he wasn’t willing to talk about. But he knew Orly deserved a little more than a curt
two-letter answer.
“No kids. And not married.” He glanced quickly at Orly and then shifted his attention back to his driving as he turned down
the county road toward his house. “Not anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that, man,” Orly responded.
Sebastian shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”
And truthfully, it was. He’d loved Erin—there would never be any doubt about that—and he was pretty sure that once upon a time, she’d loved him.
But he’d been a terrible husband. He’d always regret hurting her, and he’d probably always feel just a little bit like a failure for not being able to pull it all together to save it in the end, but he’d moved on.
Not to other women. Goodness, no. He hadn’t quite gotten to the point of trusting himself not to screw up again.
It wasn’t that there weren’t single women in Adelaide Springs. There were. Not many, but they were there. And a few of them
were even within an appropriate age span for him to date. There was Andi, for instance, who was one of his favorite people
on earth. She was widowed and only a year or two older, and she and Sebastian could have been great together. That is, if
either of them had had even one iota of interest in the other before they passed into that magical, distant land some people
are never fortunate enough to visit in their lifetimes—the village of Like Family to Me, just on the outskirts of The Friend
Zone.
Then there was Laila Olivet—the only woman in Adelaide Springs whom Sebastian had even briefly contemplated asking out. She
was fun and intelligent, with an artsy bohemian vibe, and had never met a stranger, and Sebastian had always admired how she
laughed and cried freely and never apologized for any of it. Laila had been a good friend to him, but they weren’t particularly
close as an entity on their own. In fact, they were rarely ever in a room together unless Cole was there too.
And there was the reason Sebastian had never seriously considered allowing his affection for Laila to progress beyond friendship. Cole
and Laila were their own thing. Longtime occupants of The Friend Zone who seemed to have taken the express train through Like
Family to Me Village before setting up permanent residence in a kingdom that heretofore Sebastian had thought was only the
stuff of legend: Soulmate City. (Where they diligently maintained the dual citizenship granted them by the Platonic Principality.)
So yes, in the end, Erin had been the one to leave. Quite possibly when he needed her most. But by that time, Sebastian had
spent years not being there for her. Not giving her a reason to stay. Without her, he’d finally been forced to do the hard
work on himself. And ultimately, he’d accepted that he’d done it for himself.
He’d always be grateful to Erin for that.
As attuned to the emotional atmosphere as ever, Brynn chose that moment to ask, with a chuckle, “Where are we? This is a sad
little property you’ve brought us to.”
He wasn’t offended, of course. Just in awe of her once again. He’d never known anyone to stick their foot in their mouth quite
as often as she did.
“This is my house. Glad you like it.”
He shifted into Park and contemplated just how nice he was willing to be. It would have been the easiest thing in the world
to tell her he’d had all those same thoughts about how sad—downright pathetic, even—the property was, every single day. But
it was one thing to show her a touch of kindness and understanding. It was another thing entirely to make it seem like she
wasn’t as rude and thoughtless as she actually was.
She bent over to get a better view through the front windshield. “It does have a lot of personality, doesn’t it?”
Sebastian unbuckled his seat belt, opened his door, and stepped out. But he just couldn’t leave well enough alone. So he leaned
back in and looked at her. “You could have just said, ‘Oh, sorry. That was rude of me.’ Why do you have to do that?”