Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SOPHIE
Three Years Ago
“Thank fucking god,” I mutter as I swing my car into a parking spot at the curb in front of Tyler’s parents’ house.
It’s been the longest damn day of my entire life, and I hate everyone and everything.
I should probably want to go home and eat my weight in jelly beans and drink a million Dr Peppers and talk to no one.
Or gather my girls and drink my weight in margs.
But when I got in my car after work, it just kind of drove its way over here.
Apparently, I need a best friend night so desperately my subconscious arranged one for me before I even had the chance to realize.
That’s been happening a lot lately.
Tyler and I have always spent a lot of time together, especially in the last year since we both ended up back in Pittsburgh living our best post-college lives—him as the rookie starting quarterback for the Renegades and me as the newly-minted executive director of my dad’s foundation.
But lately, it’s like I don’t have any tolerance for time we don’t spend together.
It’s a weird flex I don’t entirely understand, especially considering my entire family lives here, and so do my five best girlfriends, so it’s not like I’m lacking in people to hang out with. But I don’t want any of them right now.
I want Tyler, and I’m not in the habit of denying myself things I want. Especially when those things come with a guaranteed movie night and the best grilled cheese of my life, which Tyler will make for me and serve me with an icy Dr Pepper.
I have really excellent taste in best friends.
Shutting off the car, I flip down the visor and check my reflection in the mirror.
With an irritated huff, I yank the elastic out of the bun I scraped my hair up into earlier at the height of my workday insanity and let my curls fly free the way I like.
But after being tied up for hours, my curl definition sucks and there is frizz to contend with, which is basically an insult on top of the stupidity of this day.
And why, you might ask, am I paying so much attention to how I look when all I’m doing is going to hang with someone who couldn’t care less about my curl definition?
You can ask, but I don’t have an answer for you, the same way I can’t tell you why I’ve suddenly started monopolizing absolutely all Tyler’s free time and throwing a teeny tiny fit when he deigns to have plans that are not me.
It’s weird and confusing, and I’m trying not to think about it too hard.
Grabbing my purse, my gym bag so I have something to wear in case I fall asleep watching the movie, and a bag of snacks from my passenger seat, I push open the door and get out of the car.
When I step onto the sidewalk, I pause for a minute and look up at the house Tyler grew up in.
In a lot of important ways, the house I grew up in too.
I was secretly glad when Tyler decided to live here with his parents for his first year with the Renegades instead of finding his own place.
He reasoned he had enough to deal with coming in as both a rookie and a starter and all the expectations that brings, and so he didn’t want to add a new house on top of everything else.
It made sense, and I like spending time here where we made so many of our best memories.
I don’t know why it was Tyler’s house we always gravitated to as kids.
I grew up right around the corner from here in a house that was equally chaotic, with parents that Tyler is as close to as I am to his.
But still, here was where we always landed.
We had sleepovers in his room as kids and movie nights on his couch long after it stopped being cool to have a guy best friend.
But I never cared about what was cool or not.
Tyler has always been my person.
This is the place where birthday nights were born, where we spent hours on that stretch of grass in front of his back deck talking about what it would be like when we were grown and making promises to each other that we would always come back to this place. The most sacred one we have.
And we did.
But we’re all grown up now. Tyler is playing football the way he always dreamed he would, and even though my dreams had me on a Broadway stage, there is something ridiculously satisfying about settling back down in the city where I was raised, taking over the foundation my dad built from the ground up.
My foundation now, I think with a little thrill, even though days like today have me considering throwing in the proverbial towel.
I swear to god, if one more man tries to explain my job to me, I’m going to burst into flames, and then there will be no more foundation because I’ll have set the building on fire on account of my spontaneous combustion. But I love it.
And while I sometimes still dream about seeing my name in lights, I don’t regret not following that path. Because the truth is, home for me is wherever Tyler is.
I grin when I hear his deep, rumbly laugh filtering out from the backyard.
It’s dark out, but when I see the smoke curling lazily up to the sky, I realize he and his parents and whichever of his four sisters are home now must be hanging out back there.
Eager to join them, to see Tyler, I swing my bags over my shoulders and make my way up the driveway.
But the second I reach the gate to the backyard, I freeze in place. My blood turns to ice water in my veins and my chest goes so tight that, for a second, I forget how to breathe.
Because it’s not Tyler’s sisters he’s laughing with.
It’s not his parents he shoots that wide smile. The smile he usually reserves for me.
It’s a stranger. A leggy woman wearing cutoff shorts and the tiniest tank top I’ve ever seen, perfect blonde waves cascading down her back. A woman I’ve never seen before, sitting next to Tyler right on the stretch of grass in front of the back deck.
Our stretch of grass.
Hidden by the flowering shrubs that spill over the fence, I watch as Tyler sits straight up and lays a hand on the woman’s face, sweeping his thumb over her cheek.
My stomach curls into a tight fist as he leans in and presses a kiss to one corner of her mouth, then the other.
And then it falls straight out of my ass when he cups her face and lays his lips on hers.
He kisses her, right there in our most sacred place, sitting on the old striped blanket we’ve used for fifteen birthday nights. The blanket we’ve sat on fifteen times to eat cupcakes and exchange pictures and link fingers and make a promise to each other we’ve never, ever broken.
Next year, right here.
This is our place.
And now he’s sitting here with someone else.
My breath hitches, my heartbeat thudding in my ears.
I should leave. Look away at least. Give Tyler his privacy.
I don’t own this place, and I don’t own him.
He’s kissed other people before. I’ve seen him kiss other people before.
A lot. His manwhore high school days were legendary.
But seeing him kiss someone else has never frozen me in place, closed my throat until swallowing was a chore.
It’s never had tears springing to my eyes and my stomach churning and my hands shaking so hard I have to curl them into fists to get them to stop, and it occurs to me from somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain that this is a really weird way to react to seeing a friend kiss someone.
And like a sledgehammer, it hits me. The reason I hate being apart from Tyler for any stretch of time.
Why I suddenly check my reflection before I get out of the car.
Why I’m standing hidden in the bushes, leaves in my hair and what I’m positive is a streak of dirt on my sleeve, tears I barely notice pouring down my face as Tyler drops his hands to the girl’s waist and lifts her to straddle his lap without ever breaking their kiss.
Because I don’t want Tyler to want anyone else. I don’t want him to kiss anyone else.
I want him to want…me.
I want him to kiss me.
The tears fall faster now that I understand what they are. They’re jealous tears. Longing tears. I’ve suddenly realized I might be a tiny bit in love with my lifelong best friend and I think I might be in for a world of hurt tears.
I let out a pathetic sniffle, swiping under my eyes in a futile attempt to get them to stop producing the tears that seem to never want to end.
Goddammit, I hate crying. I promised myself once, years ago, after a guy I liked in eighth grade told the entire class he would never go out with me because he preferred girls who were quieter, I would never, ever cry over a boy.
Except maybe when the boy is Tyler Hansley, who has never once in our entire lifelong friendship wished I was quieter or anything other than exactly who I am, a few tears are okay.
“Oh, honey.” The whisper and the hand on my shoulder have me stifling a gasp and whipping around, my entire body tensing when I see Julie standing behind me.
Tyler’s mom studies me with a face full of sympathy and a kind of knowing that has my eyes welling up again.
Reaching out, she takes my hand, squeezing lightly as she tugs me away from the fence and leads me back up the driveway before wrapping me in a hug.
“I didn’t…I mean I couldn’t…I don’t…” My voice breaks off as I finally give up, my brain refusing to make words to explain why I was hiding in her bushes at nine o’clock at night, watching her son make out with a stranger.
Instead, I cry on her shoulder and she lets me.
Even when I soak her perfect white silk blouse with my tears and streaks of mascara that will probably never come off, she never lets go.
“You didn’t know,” Julie says quietly, pulling away when my sobs slow but keeping her hands on my shoulders as she studies me with blue eyes so much like Tyler’s that tears clog my throat again. “I’ve always wondered.”
“Wondered what?” I ask in a shaky voice.
“Wondered whether you knew you were in love with him.”
Julie’s words are my second sledgehammer of the night because how could she possibly know something I didn’t know myself until four minutes ago?
When I gape at her she smiles, shaking her head.
“It’s a mom thing. You might belong to Molly and Gabe, but you’ve always been mine too.
If you ask your mom, she would claim Tyler and my girls the same way.
I know you, Soph, so I know you’ve had feelings for Tyler for a long time, even if you didn’t know yourself. ”
“Does he…” I trail off, not knowing exactly what I want to ask. Does he know what I didn’t know? Does he feel this way too?
Julie shakes her head. “He doesn’t know.
” She shrugs with a smile. “Men rarely do until it smacks them over the head.” Her eyes go serious then.
“But it will. I can promise you that. You are Tyler’s the same way he’s yours.
It was always going to be the two of you.
I knew it when I found you both back here pulling your little birthday all-nighter when you were eight and I know it now.
It might take him some time to get his shit together because, again, man.
” She rolls her eyes, and I let out a watery laugh.
“He’s in his first year in the league and dazzled by everything that comes with it, including women he barely knows who he kisses in my backyard but will, no doubt, forget before the sun rises.
I’m not telling you to wait for him. You are way too brilliant and incredible to wait around for any man, even one who belongs to me.
But I raised him, and I know him, and this stage will be over sooner than you think.
When it is, he’s going to be ready for you.
If you want him, he’s yours, honey. He’s always been yours,” she repeats.
He’s always been yours.
For some reason, the certainty with which Julie says those words dries my tears the rest of the way, has my shoulders squaring as I stand straight. “You think?”
Julie nods decisively. “I know. Why don’t we call your mom, Emma, Hallie, and all your friends, and have ourselves an old-fashioned girls’ night? No boys allowed.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to settle my roiling emotions.
I’ve always felt big and fast, but tonight has been whiplash, even for me.
I need to think, but even more than that, I need friends.
And food. I really, really need food. “Can there be grilled cheese? I came here to force Tyler to make me grilled cheese. He makes it the best.”
Julie scoffs. “Who do you think taught him how to make it?”
“You?” I ask, trying to remember if I’ve ever seen Julie cook.
Julie laughs. “Actually, no. I wish I could take credit for it. That’s all Asher. I’m hopeless in the kitchen. Asher can make us all grilled cheese and someone who isn’t me can make margaritas, and then we can kick him out and get a little drunk and ruminate on why men are even a thing.”
“That sounds…perfect actually. But could we maybe not tell anyone about this?” I wave my hand down the driveway towards the fence.
“Hiding in the bushes to have a life-changing epiphany and cry over the guy who is supposed to be my best friend kissing someone who isn’t me is…
well, it’s kind of embarrassing and extremely not on brand for me.
I think I’ll keep it to myself for a while. ”
And also, I don’t want this getting back to Tyler. Because he’s still my best friend, and the idea that he could find out about my little epiphany and put distance between us because he doesn’t feel the same makes my chest ache. He can’t know.
Julie nods, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “It’ll be our secret, I swear.”
I give her a grateful smile, and she leads me up to the house.
I cast a single backwards glance at the smoke still rising from the backyard fire pit, my brain serving me up one last image of Tyler with his hands on that woman’s face.
And I wonder how long it will be until he kisses me like that too.