Regretting You (19 page)

“I didn’t think our first kiss would be like that,” he says quietly.

“Like what?”

“Sweet.”

“How did you think it would be?”

His eyes wander to the few remaining customers still lingering. “I can’t show you in here.”

When his gaze meets mine again, the satisfaction in his lazy smile fills me with confidence. “Then let’s go to your truck.”

The anticipation for our second kiss makes me even more nervous than our first. We’re holding hands when we exit Starbucks. He heads to his truck and opens the passenger door for me. I get in and he shuts it, then walks around to the driver’s side.

I don’t know why I’m so nervous now. Probably because this is actually happening. Me and Miller. Miller and me. What would our ship name be? Cliller? Millerra?

Ugh. They both sound terrible.

Miller closes his door. “What’s that look for?”

“What look?”

He points at my face. “That one.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “Nothing. I’m getting ahead of myself.”

He reaches for my hand and pulls me closer to him. We meet in the middle of his seat. That’s the thing about older trucks. The seats are long, without a console to separate the passengers. We’re even closer now than we were on the couch. Our faces are closer, our bodies are closer. Everything is so much closer. His hand is on my outer thigh, and I’m wondering what flavor of sucker he’s going to taste like.

“What do you mean you’re getting ahead of yourself? Do you regret kissing me?”

I laugh because that’s the last thing I regret. “No. I was thinking how terrible our ship names would be.”

I see relief take over his expression. But then his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Oh. Yeah. They’re terrible.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“Jeremiah. What’s yours?”

“The quintessential
Nicole
.”

“That’s a really long middle name.”

I laugh. “Smartass.”

I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. “Jerecole?”

“That’s so bad.” I’m thinking about it when it hits me how odd this is. We’ve had one small peck. We’ve only spent part of an evening
together without him being attached to someone else, yet here we are, discussing ship names. I want to believe how he makes me feel, but the truth of the matter is he hasn’t even been single long enough to decide if he even wants this to go anywhere.

“You’re making that face again,” he says.

I sigh, breaking eye contact with him. I look down and grab his hand. “Sorry. I just . . .” I pause for a moment, then look back up at him. “Are you sure about this? I mean, you just broke up with Shelby today. Or yesterday. I don’t even know when, but either way. I don’t want to start something if you’re going to back out of it in a week.”

The silence after I finish speaking lingers in the truck for a lot longer than I feel comfortable with. We’re still holding hands, and Miller is lightly stroking the outside of my thigh with his other hand. He sighs, more heavily than I want him to. That kind of sigh is usually followed up with words that aren’t good.

“You know the day in my truck when you told me to figure out my shit?”

I nod.

“That was the day I broke up with Shelby. It wasn’t today or yesterday. It was weeks ago. And to be honest, my shit was already figured out long before that day. I just didn’t want to hurt her.”

Nothing else is said with words. It’s all said with a look. His eyes pierce mine with such a concentrated honesty that I suck in a breath. He moves his hand from my leg to my elbow and then slowly drags his fingers up my arm and neck, coming to a stop at my cheek.

I’m pulling in shallow breaths, watching his eyes as they scroll over my face and pause on my lips.

“Nicomiah sounds okay,” I whisper.

The moment is interrupted by his laughter. Then his hand slides to the back of my head, and he pulls me to his mouth, still grinning. It’s a sweet kiss at first, much like the one I gave him inside. But then his tongue slips past my lips and touches mine, and the sweetness is gone.

This just got serious.

I respond with an almost embarrassing hunger, pulling him closer, wanting him and his kiss to take away the last few droplets of grief that are still swimming around inside of me. My hands are in Miller’s hair now, and one of his hands is sliding down my back.

I’ve never felt anything so good and perfect before. I can actually feel the dread building inside of me, knowing this kiss will eventually come to an end.

He grips my waist and guides me closer so that I’m straddling him. Our new position makes him groan, and his groan makes me kiss him even deeper. I can’t get enough. He tastes like coffee rather than suckers, but I don’t mind because I actually love the taste of coffee now.

His fingers graze the skin of my lower back, and I’m amazed at how such a small touch can cause such a consequential reaction. I tear my mouth from his, afraid of that feeling. That intensity. It’s new to me, and I feel somewhat jarred by it.

Miller pulls me to him, burying his face against my neck. My arms are wrapped around him, and my cheek is pressed against the top of his head. I can feel his breaths falling in heavy, heated waves against my neck.

He sighs, circling his arms more tightly around me. “That’s more along the lines of the kind of first kiss I was expecting.”

I laugh. “Oh yeah? You like that one better than the sweet one I gave you?”

He shakes his head and puts a little separation between us so that he can look at me. “No, I loved the sweet kiss too.”

I smile and press my lips gently against his so that I can give him another sweet kiss.

He sighs against my mouth and kisses me back, no tongue, just soft lips and a gentle release of air. He peeks over my shoulder, glancing at his radio, and then leans back against the seat.

“You’re late for curfew.” He says it sort of with dread, like he wishes we could stay in his truck all night.

“How late?”

“It’s fifteen after.”

“Well, crap.”

Miller slides me off of him and then exits the truck. I open my door to get out, and then Miller laces his fingers through mine as he walks me to my car. He opens the door for me, resting an arm on the top of my doorframe. We kiss one more time before I take a seat in my car.

I cannot believe how much I’m feeling right now. Before I showed up here today, I lived without Miller in my life perfectly fine. Now I feel like every minute I spend without him is going to be torture.

“Night, Clara.”

“Good night.”

He stares at me for a moment without shutting my door. Then he just groans. “Tomorrow seems so far away now.”

I love the way he put exactly how I’m feeling into the perfect string of words. He closes my door and backs away a few steps. But he doesn’t stop watching me, and he doesn’t return to his truck until I’m out of the parking lot and on my way home . . . late.

This should be fun.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MORGAN

I’ve been sitting on the back patio, contemplating. I’m not sure what I’m contemplating. My mind is like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing from thoughts about Chris, to thoughts about how I need to start applying for jobs, to thoughts about going back to college, to thoughts about Clara and how she’s way past curfew. It’s almost ten thirty now, so I text her.
Again.

She’s been staying out a lot, and I have no idea who she’s with because she barely talks to me anymore. When she
is
here, she’s in her bedroom. The app shows she’s always either at Lexie’s or Starbucks, but who in the world spends that much time at a coffee shop?

There’s a soft knock on my back patio door, and I glance up, almost having forgotten that Jonah has been here for the past twenty minutes, fixing the kitchen door. I stand up and tuck my hair behind my ears when he walks outside.

“Do you have pliers?”

“I’m pretty sure Chris does, but his toolbox has a lock on it. But I might have a pair.” I walk into the house and go to the laundry room. I keep my own toolbox for when I needed to fix stuff when Chris wasn’t around. It’s black and pink. Chris got it for me for Christmas one year.

He also got one for Jenny. The thought pierces me.

Sometimes I think it’s getting better, but then the simplest memories remind me how much it still sucks. I pull my toolbox down and hand it to Jonah.

Jonah opens it and sorts through it. He doesn’t find what he needs. “They’re old hinges,” he says. “I can’t get the last one off because it’s stripped so bad. I have something that’ll work at the house, but it’s late, so I’ll just come back tomorrow if that’s fine?”

He says it like it’s a question, so I nod. “Yeah. Sure.”

I texted him yesterday, telling him I couldn’t get the kitchen door off the hinges and asking if he could help. He said he’d be over tonight but that it would be late because he was picking his sister up at the airport. He didn’t even ask why I needed the door off the hinges. When he got here earlier, he never even asked why there was a huge hole in it. He just walked straight to the door and got to work.

I’m waiting for him to ask what happened as we walk toward the front door, but he doesn’t. I don’t like the quiet, so I throw a question in the mix that I don’t even really care to know the answer to.

“How long is your sister in town for?”

“Until Sunday. She’d love to see you. She just . . . you know. She didn’t know if you’d want company.”

I don’t, but for some reason, I smile and say, “I’d love to see her.”

Jonah laughs. “No, you wouldn’t.”

I shrug because he’s right. I barely know her. I met her once when we were teens, and I saw her for a few minutes the day after Elijah was born. And she was at both funerals. But that’s the extent of my relationship with her. “You’re right. It was the polite thing to say.”

“You don’t have to be polite,” Jonah says. “Neither do I. It’s the only positive thing to come out of this. We get at least a six-month pass to be assholes.” I smile, and he nudges his head toward his car. “Walk me out?”

I follow him to his car, but before he gets in, he rests his back against the driver’s-side door and folds his arms over his chest. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it any more than I do. But it affects our kids, so . . .”

I slide my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. I sigh and look up at the night sky. “I know. We have to discuss it. Because if it’s true . . .”

“It makes Clara and Elijah half siblings,” Jonah says.

It’s weird hearing it out loud. I blow out a slow breath, nervous about what it means. “Are you planning on telling him someday?”

Jonah nods, slowly. “Someday. If he asks. If it comes up in conversation.” He sighs. “I honestly don’t know. What do you think? Do you want Clara to know?”

I’m hugging myself now. It’s not cold out, but I have chills for some reason. “No. I never want Clara to find out. It would devastate her.”

Jonah doesn’t look angry that I’m essentially asking him not to tell Elijah the truth. He only looks sympathetic to our situation. “I hate that they left this mess for us to clean up.”

I agree with him on that. It’s a disaster of a mess. One I still haven’t even wrapped my head around fully. It’s too much to think about so soon and too much for me to want to discuss it right now. I change the subject, because either way, decisions aren’t being made tonight.

“Clara’s birthday is in two weeks. I’m thinking about keeping the tradition going with a cookout, but I’m not sure if she would want me to. It won’t be the same without them here.”

“You should ask her,” Jonah suggests.

I laugh half-heartedly. “We aren’t on the best terms right now. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around her. She’d disagree with anything I suggested.”

“She’s almost seventeen. It would be more out of the ordinary if things were perfect between the two of you.”

I appreciate him saying that, but I also know it’s not entirely true. I know a lot of mothers who get along just fine with their teenagers. I’m just not one of the lucky ones. Or maybe it isn’t about luck. Maybe I went wrong somewhere along the way.

“I can’t believe she’s about to be seventeen,” he says. “I remember the day you found out you were pregnant with her.”

I remember it too.
It was the day before he left.

I divert my gaze to the concrete beneath my feet. Looking at him brings back too many emotions, and I’m really sick of emotions at this point. I clear my throat and take a step back, just as headlights brighten the yard around us. I look up and watch as Clara finally pulls into the driveway.

Jonah takes that as his cue to leave, so he opens his car door. “Good night, Morgan.” He waves at Clara before getting into his car. I give him a silent wave and watch him drive away. He’s already at the end of our street before Clara gets out of her car.

I fold my arms over my chest again and stare at her expectantly.

She shuts her door and acknowledges me with a nod but walks toward the front door. I follow her inside the house, where she kicks her shoes off by the couch. “What was that?” she asks.

“What was what?”

She tosses a hand toward the front yard. “You and Jonah. In the dark. It was weird.”

I narrow my eyes at her, wondering if she’s just trying to deflect right now. “Why are you late for curfew?”

She looks down at her phone. “I am?”

“Yes. I texted you. Twice.”

She swipes her finger across the screen. “Oh. I didn’t hear them come through.” She slips her phone in her back pocket. “Sorry. I was studying at Starbucks . . . lost track of time. I didn’t realize it was so late.” She points over her shoulder as she backs toward the hallway. “I need to shower.”

I don’t even bother pushing for a more honest answer. She wouldn’t give me one anyway.

I walk to the kitchen and grab a Jolly Rancher. I lean against the counter and stare absentmindedly at the hole in my kitchen door, wondering why Jonah so casually brought up the day I found out I was pregnant, like it wasn’t one of the worst days of my life.

Maybe he brought it up because his leaving the next day didn’t mean as much to him as it did to the rest of us.