Chapter 8 Time to Talk
Time to Talk
Tasha
Hunter: I’m telling Olivia
Hunter: I saw your face. You need your friends
Olivia is one of my best friends. No one cheered louder than I did when they got back together. Hunter is one of the most loyal people I know, and I know it must have been killing him to keep my secret from his fiancé.
Me: fine do it
Seb: Please talk to me
I stare around my bungalow, trying to decide what to do. Everyone’s going to think my running way is about Connor and Finley. I don’t care about my ex. I don’t miss him, or want him, or wish him anything other than a happily ever after with the woman he loves and their baby.
My phone rings, but I send Olivia to voicemail. It rings again. Same response. Third time, I answer.
“Hunter just told me.” Olivia’s voice breaks with sobs. “I had no idea. Tasha, none of us had any idea. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” After all this time, I don’t know what else to say.
Hunter comes back onto the phone. “Please tell me that you’re not ghosting my good friend who is blowing up my phone looking for you.” When I don’t respond, he continues, “Tash, you deserve to be happy. If Seb makes you happy, dive in and don’t come up for air. Talk to him.”
“Tash?” Olivia asks when I don’t answer. I see a familiar figure jogging along the path towards my bungalow. Do I keep hiding or allow him to find me? “Tash, we can cover for you tonight, but what about the wedding tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.” I kill the call, turn off my phone, and wait.
“Tasha. Tasha. Tasha.” Seb’s voice gets closer each time he says my name. He darts up the stairs to my bungalow, and I pin myself against the balcony railing behind a potted palm.
I love Seb as a friend, and a lover. I could easily love him for the rest of my life.
But I know if we’re going to have any chance, then I need to tell him what happened two years ago.
He needs to know the reason I haven’t dated since Connor and I broke up, and it’s not because I have residual feelings for my ex.
Seb needs to understand there are two days each year I’m going to be sad: the anniversary of her due date and the anniversary of my loss. Yes, I believe she was a little girl.
Will Seb understand? Or will he put me in the too-hard basket and go back to his statuesque model hookups?
He appears at the top of the stairs, hand on the banister, breathing hard from running. His hair is dishevelled, shirt untucked, eyes searching my face. We banter, because that’s what we do. And then he goes serious.
“I don’t want you to be alone, unless you want to be alone.” A nanosecond’s pause before he softly asks, “Do you want to be alone?”
I shake my head, not trusting my voice. It’s the sweetest thing he could have said.
He steps onto the balcony but doesn’t crowd me. Just stands there, hands in his pockets, waiting.
“You can tell me anything,” he says. “Or you don’t have to tell me at all.”
“You need to know.”
“Only if it’s material to our future.”
Is it? His next words get lost while I gather my courage. Yes. I want to tell him.
“You deserve to know.” I drop to my haunches, back against the banister, and wrap my arms around myself. I’m ready to say the words.