Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (2 page)

Poor Britt looked like she was ready to burst into tears at Meagan’s little lash out.

“We’re not hashing,” Allie said, knowing good and well who Meagan dated before Joey. “You haven’t talked about Kale much lately, where’s your head at?”

Britt’s eyes widened as realization struck and she mouthed the word
sorry
to Meagan.

Kale was admirable and honest. He was an amazing man and an even more amazing soldier, and he had become a good friend of Meagan’s. No one seemed to understand their relationship, though. She cared about him, yes. But with Kale, it was just sex. He wasn’t interested in diving into anything more than that, and he was honest about it. He didn’t lead her on and he treated her better than most guys she actually had relationships with. But when he found a woman who made him want more, she couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit jealous. She wasn’t going to play the typical why-wasn’t-it-me card, but she’d be lying if she said the thought never crossed her mind. “My head is nowhere. We were just friends who liked to sleep together every now and again,” she said, heat reaching the surface of her cheeks as the memory of nights tangled in his arms came into view. Ugh, his arms. And that damn dimple in his cheek when he smiled. . . .

“I miss him, though,” she admitted, her voice going a little soft as a proverbial knife plunged into her stomach.

Shortly after he had come home from his last deployment and climbed back into the bed of the first woman he ever fell in love with, he had come down on orders to Fort Hood. She hadn’t talked to him in a while, and she missed him.

Meagan scrunched her nose and shook her head, trying to shake off the damn chest pang that seemed to creep in every time she thought of Kale. “But seriously, thank you girls for reminding me of all the great sex I
was
having,” she whined, putting an end to the Kale conversation.

Allie swatted her hand in the air. “Oh, quit your damn whining.” Her brows tilted upward, causing tiny little wrinkles to appear across her forehead. “When you have a human being growing in your stomach, kicking you in the ribs, and using your bladder as a trampoline, then you can whine,” she said as she looked down at her huge pregnant belly. “Do you know how badly I would kill for a margarita right now? And sex, oh my god. Mike won’t even consider it. I’m telling you, this kid better come out soon or I’m likely to go all
Desperate Housewives
and screw the pool boy.”

“You don’t have a pool or a pool boy.” Meagan laughed.

“I’ll find one.”

Meagan swiped her tongue across the rim of the glass then took a long drink. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yeah, let’s put a pin in it and visit this topic of conversation when you can no longer see your vagina and can map out the entire state of New York on the stretch marks covering your ass.”

“Please, someone change the conversation,” Britt said, laughing, her words slightly slurred. Allie rolled her eyes and laughed.

“I’ll change it,” Eva volunteered. “I have something to tell you anyway. But where’s Carmen? I wanted to tell you all together.”

Britt set down her near-empty glass. “The hoochie has a date with that Special Forces guy that she met last weekend.”

“Well at least one of us will be getting some tonight,” Allie whined in mock annoyance.

Britt picked up her glass and raised it out in front of her. “Amen to that.”

“That’s the truth.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Meagan said, putting her glass to the other two hovering above the middle of the table. Yeah, Meagan would drink to that, maybe it would bring her some luck.

They all clanked their glasses together then Meagan took a long sip before she turned in her seat to face Eva. “All right, spill it,” she said, instantly holding her breath for the inevitable.

Eva sighed, and Meagan knew exactly where this was going. Eva was a medic in the army and had been stationed at Fort Drum for four years now. It was about time for her to come down on orders to another duty station. Meagan had been waiting for the bomb to drop for a while now. One thing she’d learned quickly growing up as an army brat was that in the army, you changed states—and friends—almost as often as you did panties.

They had been best friends since Eva first got stationed there and started working with Meagan in the medical clinic on post. Meagan was one of the civilian nurses who worked at the clinic, and Eva was one of the enlisted medics who she ended up working almost every shift with. The thought of not having her badass wingman at her side every day was enough to make her consider kidnapping, or she supposed it would be friendnapping. Either way, she was willing to do it.

Eva glanced around the table before landing her eyes on Meagan. Dammit, she was right; she knew what Eva was going to say even before the words left her lips. “I got orders to Fort Benning, Georgia. I’m leaving in three weeks.”

Meagan’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Okay, so she hadn’t been completely on target. “Three weeks? How is that enough time for you to clear Fort Drum?” she asked, panic working its way into her voice. She’d figured she would have at least a few months before her best friend had to up and leave. But three weeks?

Eva picked up her glass and took another drink, acting as if she hadn’t just dropped a world of shit on Meagan’s lap. Three weeks? Seriously?

“I’ve been going through out-processing already. I got my orders a few months ago,” she finally said, the hiccup in her voice spilling over with guilt. Yeah, she knew she should have said something sooner. This was bullshit.

Britt’s eyes shifted between her and Eva, probably because Meagan had a look of death on her face. “I have a few friends whose husbands are stationed at Fort Benning. You will love Geor—”

“A few months? Why didn’t you tell me, Eva?” Meagan said, interrupting Britt’s attempt at lightening the pissy mood that suddenly infected the space around Meagan. She sat forward on the edge of her chair, her back rigid and her body stiff as she ignored everyone at the table and kept her eyes focused on her best friend.

“Because I knew you would be upset. And I came down on orders right when you found out that Kale and Ronnie—” She halted her words, biting her lower lip. “I didn’t want to burst your fragile bubble.”

“My bubble isn’t fragile,” she said, the volume of her words making a couple of people around them look their way. She took a deep breath. She had an array of emotions swelling up inside her, the tequila bringing them nice and cozy to the surface, heating her blood at the same time. Was she really mad at Eva, or was she just mad at the whole damn situation? She rolled back her head onto her shoulders and released her breath. “I just would have liked to have had a little more of a heads-up that my best friend was moving.”

Yes, she’d known Eva was going to come down on orders sooner or later, but she also thought that she would have had a little more time to get used to the idea. Almost thirty—with no husband, no kids, and no best friend. That crazy cat lady scenario seemed more and more like a very real possibility.

“What the hell am I going to do without you?” She felt a prickling sensation at the back of her eyes, the tequila bringing out her emotional side. Damn margaritas, they were a doubled-edged sword.

“You still have us,” Britt said with a full tipsy smile planted on her ivory cheeks.

Meagan couldn’t help but smile back. “I know.” She stood up. “Look, girls, I’m gonna head home.”

“Really, Meagan?” Eva was pissed. Meagan could tell by the way her nostrils were flaring and how her neck was starting to match the red color of her hair.

“Yes, really. My best friend just dropped a load of shit my way.” The alcohol in her veins was starting to block the path from her brain to her mouth. “I’m sorry, but Britt has her three boys, Allie has Mike and will soon have her new baby. It was you and me, Eva. You’re my wingman, my best friend, and now you’ll be gone. Sorry if I’m not in the mood to sit around and play nice. I’m going home.”

Meagan headed toward the back of the bar, where Trevor was leaning in dangerously close to a blonde with boobs that could put Dolly Parton’s to shame and an ass that was in the running with Kim Kardashian’s. Meagan’s sour face instantly smoothed out. Trevor genuinely loved all women, big, small, blue, or purple. She stopped and started to turn around—she wasn’t going to break up what looked like a possible hookup—when he spotted her. His face dropped when he locked eyes with her and he gave her that goofy-ass wink of his before he whispered something in Dolly Kardashian’s ear and then started walking her way.

“You okay?” he asked, swinging an arm around her shoulder when he reached her.

“Not overly.”

Trevor placed his hand palm up in front of Meagan. She loved that he knew her just as much as she knew him. She dropped her car keys in his hand. “Come on, honey. Let’s get your drunk ass home.”

The drive home was quiet, and that was one thing she loved about having Trevor. Men didn’t pry. Trev was there for her—always—and he dished out the advice when she needed it, even if it was unwanted, but he never pried. He knew she would talk if she wanted to—but she didn’t. He wouldn’t get it.

“You sure you don’t want me to come up and spend the night? I’ll even do that spooning thing you love,” he said, pulling up to her apartment building.

“I love you for offering, but no. You go back to the bar and take that blonde you were talking to home—do more than just spoon,” she said before she leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “Thanks for driving me.”

His smile wavered and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it again. She knew he was struggling with leaving her.

Meagan got out of her car and shut the door, peeking through the window at him. “Go.”

He sighed and lifted his lips back up, but it wasn’t sincere. “All right. Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll bring your car to you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you look pretty sexy driving around in my Bug.” She laughed.

“Honey, I make anything look sexy.” He winked at her again and then pulled away.

Ten minutes later Meagan was in her ratty sweats, sitting on her plush couch in her two-bedroom apartment, her two furry cats on either side of her, and a bottle of merlot in her hand. Yes, a bottle. She had given up on the glass a couple of self-pity sips ago. This better not be what her future had in store for her. Lonely nights curled up on the couch with nothing to warm her body but two cats. Seriously, thirty had a way of creeping up on you and then when you least expect it—BAM, you were no longer in your twenties and you were staring at the only men in your life and they happened to have four legs, a tail, and they peed in a litter box.

Meagan’s phone took that moment to ring, making her jump and breaking through her mental pity party. She looked at the incoming number and groaned. She was really not in the mood to hash this out with her right now. . . .

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. What are you doing?”

“Not a whole lot, it’s almost midnight.” Meagan knew better than to tell her mom she was sitting on her couch drinking a bottle of wine by herself. No, not by herself, with her cats. “What are you doing up so late?”

“Your dad and I just got home from the Legion.” Her dad was a retired army major and commander of one of the American Legions in Fort Pierce, Florida—their new snowbird home they had made permanent.

“Sounds fun. How’s Dad?”

“He’s good, sweetie. We want to know how you are. . . .”

Oh great, here it comes, the never-ending conversation about her nonexistent love life. She was really not in the mood for this tonight.

“I’m good, Mom,” she said, slouching down in the corner of the couch, snuggling in, and taking another sip of her wine.

“No date tonight?”

Ah, so that’s why she’d called. Knowing her mom, she was calling hoping to catch her in the middle of a date. She was so nosey.

“Nope.”

Her mom paused and there was an awkward moment of silence that stretched between them. It was only maybe four seconds, but in those four seconds Meagan knew her mom was trying hard to hold back the lecture that was at the tip of her tongue, begging to be let out.

“Mom?” Meagan asked, rolling her eyes as she imagined the scowl that was on her sweet old mother’s face.

“Sweetie, I know that you don’t like it when I talk to you about your—”

“Then don’t, Mom,” she interrupted.

“Okay, okay. So what do you have planned for your birthday this year?” Subtlety was not her mother’s strong suit.

“I think I would rather go back to talking about my miserable, nonexistent love life.”

“What about that nice boy, Kale?” Obviously the nonexistent part didn’t register with her mother. “Maybe you two should do something special for your birthday since it’s such a big one?” Unfortunately, the excitement in her mom’s voice wasn’t forced—and the single mention of Kale’s name sent that pesky knife in a little more.

“Mom, I thought I told you already, but I will let you off the hook considering you are ancient—Kale moved. The last time I talked to him was when he called to tell me that he and Ronnie got engaged.” Knife . . . twisting . . . deeper.

“Ronnie? Now what kind of name is that? What in the world was that poor girl’s mother thinking naming her a boy’s name?”

Meagan giggled. Her mom was a pretty “hip” seventy-year-old, but she let her true age shine through every now and again.

“Sweetie?” The low, hushed sincerity in her mother’s voice sliced through Meagan’s laughter, stopping her cold. “I’m sorry. I know you really cared about that man.”

Meagan pulled in a deep breath through her nose—it didn’t seem to help, that damn chest pang still came back. “It’s fine, Mom.”

“It’s just, you’re almost thirty, sweetie.”

“Yes, I’m completely aware of the sand in my hourglass.”

“Oh now, Meagan. I just want you to have someone—to have a family. I want you to find a good man, not those usual men you seem to get wrapped up in.”

Meagan giggled again—she wasn’t normally a giggler, but apparently the wine was starting to kick in. “Okay, so what type of man do you suggest I get wrapped up in then?” Meagan pressed the bottle of wine to her lips and took a long sip—all right, more like a couple un-ladylike swallows.