Chapter 37
Brielle takes a long sip of her coffee and then sets the cup down in the only available space on the cluttered table. The array of notebooks and printed-out Pinterest photos is overwhelming, but I wisely keep my mouth shut as she continues explaining her vision for the party.
“I’m going with pink and gold, obviously.
Heavier on the gold. I’m talking splatters of it all over everything.
Kellan’s brother is dating the most sought-after wedding planner in the city, and he’s working his magic on convincing her to take the wedding on.
The colours we use for the party will be the ones in the actual wedding, too. ”
“Got it,” I say while glancing at the door for the twelfth time since we sat down together.
Beck’s still gone, and I know that if I check my phone again, I won’t see his name. My stomach is eating itself with sharp monster teeth. I obviously upset him earlier, but how? He’s never taken off like this before. I’m not used to him getting this mad at anyone, let alone me.
Did I finally push him too far?
“And for the pink, I’ve got two different shade ideas. This is my personal favourite, but I don’t know how easy it is to actually make happen with the chocolate. What do you think?”
If I call him again, maybe he’ll answer. I could just be overthinking. There’s a chance that he really did decide to take Bodi for a walk since he didn’t get one this morning. I could easily come up with a long list of reasons for why he’s been gone for the last few hours.
Fans found him and trapped him in a photo circle.
He got lost on the way back.
Bodi ran away, and he’s been trying to find him.
My gut twists tighter with every possibility. I shouldn’t even be thinking about them. He should be back already.
Actually, he shouldn’t have left at all. Bodi could have waited until we both took him out.
“Quinn? We can change the colours if you aren’t sure about them! I won’t be mad. This is super-late notice, anyway,” Brielle says, leaning over the table to touch my wrist.
I clear my throat to dislodge the ball stuck there. “The pinks are great. I’d say the right one is better, though. It’s a bit darker.”
“Perfect. And you’re sure this is alright?”
“What is?”
“You doing the desserts. Rome mentioned that I might have been a bit pushy because, well, that’s kind of my personality. I just thought you’d do a better job than anyone else I could have found.”
Her perfectly painted, slightly overlined lips droop as she stares across the table at me. Guilt immediately floods me, forcing my head to shake in refusal.
“There was no pushiness, I promise. We’re excited for this. I’ve been giving the business a lot of thought recently, and I can’t say that offering this in the future would be a bad thing.”
“You’re sure? Like one hundred percent? It’s not like the stadium dog thing, is it?” She winces.
Dread drips down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. You hated it, and I literally shoved it down your throat.”
“I mean . . . you didn’t, really.”
Her groan is loud, even when she presses her palm to her mouth to muffle it.
“I totally did. Next time, please tell me to fuck off or something. I can be a lot, and I didn’t mean to upset you.
Seriously, Aubrey tells me off all the time when I’m being too much.
You’re more than welcome to do the same. I promise I won’t get upset.”
“It’s okay. Really.” I don’t ask who told her the truth because I’m already pretty sure I know who. “It takes a lot more than a hot dog to bother me.”
She stares at me for a moment longer before her shoulders slump in her chair. “Thank fuck. I don’t want to scare you off. Beck would never find another woman like you, and we’d all be left to suffer with whoever he found after.”
“You’re flattering me.”
“Babe, that guy was such a fuckboy a couple of years ago.”
“Was he?” My tone is sharper than I meant it to be.
Her brow twitches and then pulls up as if she can’t stop the reaction. “You didn’t know that?”
“I’ve seen the articles. But I don’t necessarily think they’re true. You’re the one who’s known him for years, though.”
“The articles and the rumours are exaggerated versions of the truth,” she admits.
“His past doesn’t really matter to me. If he slept around, then good for him. I don’t necessarily think that makes him a fuckboy. Did he treat the women badly?”
“No. He’d never do that.”
I shrug my shoulder, hating how tight my muscles have become over the past few minutes. I’m not mad at her, but I’m feeling defensive. Incredibly so.
“I think being considered a fuckboy hurts his feelings, especially when it’s his closest friends calling him that.
There’s a difference between sleeping around because you like sex and doing it just to be some pompous asshole who brags about it to seem cool.
If I thought it was the latter, I wouldn’t be in l—”
My eyes bulge. There’s a near-painful sinking sensation in my stomach as pure terror turns my blood to ice. I bite down on my tongue hard enough to feel a sharp sting. I push my hair out of my face with a trembling hand.
“The darker pink will work better with the chocolate. I’ll show the references to Ruthie tomorrow morning,” I ramble, the back of my neck tacky with sweat.
Brielle’s concern is so obvious I have to look away. There’s no line at the counter, and almost the entire lunch rush is gone. I suddenly wish it weren’t so quiet.
“The darker pink it is, then. And you’re good with the gold?” she asks softly, seeming to let my sudden mood change go for now.
“It’s your wedding. We’ll do whatever you want us to do.”
Her kissy-lip-tipped pen moves quickly when she writes on a blank line of her notebook. “Okay, so flamingo pink and gold. Do you think we should do more cake pops than pretzels? Ugh, maybe we’ll just triple everything so there’s enough for the guys. They never stop eating.”
My phone is burning a hole in my apron pocket. I’m torn between calling Beck and letting him be. What would I even say if he picked up? Hey, I’m sorry that I upset you enough that you took off without saying goodbye, but I actually think I’ve fallen in love with you, so please forgive me?
Fuck, what an awful plan.
I’m not ready to tell him that at all. From the way I’m fighting back puking all over the table and Brielle’s carefully planned spreadsheets and photos, it’s clear I’m not even ready to feel these emotions in the first place.
I’m in love with him, and I’m terrified.
“Do you want to take a break and get something to eat? You look really pale,” she murmurs, looking up from her notebook.
I shake my head and scoot my chair closer to the table. Taking one of the collages she’s glued together on thick pink paper, I say, “I’m fine.”
No, I’m so not.
Callie’s folded over her desk with her face in a massive textbook when I push open the door to her dorm room.
I still don’t know how she lucked out with avoiding a roommate, but the empty single bed across the room from hers has become a second closet for her. My sister’s a total slob, and the state of her room sends chills up my spine the moment I step inside.
A Keurig machine is inside a small nook beside the closet, along with an old pair of over-ear headphones and an ice machine that we found at a garage sale two years ago.
I take a mental note of the empty bin of coffee pods and the dirty clothes piling up outside the second closet.
I already know I’ll be distracting myself tonight by spending hours at the laundromat.
“Hey. I didn’t know you were coming,” she says, twisting in her rolling chair. The messy knot of hair at the top of her head wobbles when she spins around fully and stares hard at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? So you came all the way to campus for fun? You hate it here.”
“I don’t hate it.” I tap my fingers to the outsides of my thighs. “You look busy.”
“I’m never too busy to talk to you.”
My heart pangs, and I hesitatingly sit on the edge of her bed.
Her eyes track my movements, but it doesn’t feel like too much.
If anything, just being here with her is already helping to shrink whatever it is that’s crawled into my chest and taken up all the room inside it.
I rub at the discomfort, trying to ease it completely.
“Hey, what’s going on? Talk to me,” she soothes, pushing herself closer to me.
Our knees touch, and I force myself to speak. “I didn’t . . . I should have gotten out sooner.”
“Out of what?”
“I didn’t want to fall in love. It wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t have time for it, and I don’t need the distraction.”
“You need to slow down, Quinn.”
“It’s too late to slow down. I’m already so fucked. Royally.”
She grabs both of my knees and squeezes. “Have you told Beck?”
“No. And I’m not going to,” I state firmly, needing to convince both her and myself.
“Why not? He’s in love with you, too.”
“For now. You already know how it goes. I don’t have time for heartbreak. Telling him isn’t going to do anything but make it worse when this all ends. It’s smarter to just break it off now.”
I almost puke again when I hear the words out loud.
The burn of bile crawls up my throat before I swallow it. There’s a disconnect between my head and my heart. I knew this would happen, but I’d gotten so used to being around Beck that I let it make me weak. This is exactly why I didn’t want this to get serious. That was the whole point.
It’s what I made us agree to in the first place.
“Don’t be an idiot. Not every person you let into your life is going to turn out to be like Mom.”
I flinch, then tug my legs up onto the bed, out of her reach. “I didn’t say he would.”
“So, what’s this about, then? Aren’t you happy? This should be something good, Quinn. Scary, yeah, but isn’t it supposed to be?”
“We’re still getting to know each other.”
“That’s a weak excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse. He doesn’t know everything yet.”
She nods slowly. “About Mom?”
“I don’t usually lead with her.”
“You aren’t our mother. The choices she made don’t reflect on you. Beck isn’t going to think poorly of you because of our childhood.”
“How do you know that? We’ve been judged plenty because of it.”
“Yeah, from people who don’t know how to separate us from her. And they’re losers because of that. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I let our past dictate my life. I want to be bigger than what we went through, and I know you do, too.”
I almost laugh. I’ve lost count of the number of dirty looks or sympathetic smiles we’ve gotten over the years.
It started when we were young but didn’t end until I stopped telling people altogether about why we grew up with ratty old hand-me-downs and unwashed hair.
Explaining that we spent hours walking to and from school because I couldn’t register us for a bus route without Mom’s signature and not because we just had time to spare.
That all of Callie’s science fairs that went unattended were because I couldn’t miss a shift at Lucy’s and not because I wanted to miss watching her shine where I didn’t.
I’m burning with resentment, and some days, it feels like it’s going to consume me completely.
Telling Beck these things brings the risk that he’s going to see me the way too many other people have. Like I’m broken, tainted, a charity case. If he looked at me like I was damaged, I’d fall apart. The illusion would shatter, and I couldn’t come back from that.
Callie can tell me I’m being stubborn or too guarded, but she was also too young to remember the worst of it. I shielded her as best I could, and I’m grateful that I did. But at the same time, that means she doesn’t understand. She can’t.
And right now, I’ve never felt that divide more.