Two Outta Three (Two Outta Three #1) (5 page)

“Douche.”

I spun around and narrowed my eyes at Jesse. “What was that?”

“You heard me.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled. “You don’t even know him. How can you judge him?”

“Since when do you go for pretty boys like that? You never were into that type.”

Realizing my cash drawer was open, I slammed it shut and sneered. “I never had a type in high school! Besides, what would you know about me? If memory serves me correctly, which it does, you haven’t spoken to me since college. What do you even know about me anymore?”

He pointed to my chest. “I know you grew about two cup sizes since I last saw you.”

Well, that answered my old question. I blushed and crossed my arms over my chest as if it would make any difference. “Stop being such a jerk. You know what I mean!”

Instead of arguing back, Jesse hung his head forward and sighed. He gripped the edge of the counter so his arms were stretched out and rolled the back of his neck. “I know things were left a bit odd between us. I also know you won’t believe me, but I have a perfectly good excuse why.”

“Try me.”

“Jesse to the stockroom. Jesse to the stockroom.” My dad’s booming voice interrupted us and I was worried that any progress I had made with my old friend was quickly thrown out the window.

Jesse eyed the aged speaker mounted above our heads and took a deep breath. He glanced back down at me, the corners of his mouth dipping down. “I really did miss you.”

My heart pinched. If only I could believe him.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I really do want to make it up to you.

My eyes widened in surprise. Wow, guess best friends never lost that bond.

I hadn’t realized that my front teeth were digging into my bottom lip until I tasted a tint of iron on my tongue. I licked my lips and frowned. “How?”

“Do you want to get something to eat tonight? Around eight?”

Shit. It was the night I was supposed to go out with Ethan. Oh, hell, I could always reschedule with him.

“Sure,” I replied.

A look I can only describe as triumph washed over his face. With a slight nod of his head, he walked out of our little cube of a cash wrap and headed back towards The Dungeon.

Chapter 6

“You have got to be kidding me!” My voice came out in a shrill.

“What? He only lives two hours away. He’s single, and look.” Stephanie turned her laptop so I had full view of the monitor. “He’s cute!”

“What do you know about him besides the fact that you pseudo-dated him for about a month during senior year?”

Stephanie pulled the laptop back towards her line of vision and began to read his profile. “I know that he lives in Millpoint, has two dogs, and works IT.”

“As your best friend I need to tell you to stop all this foolishness. This is beyond stupid.”

“Not listening,” she replied in a sing-song tone. She tapped a few keys on her board and sat back with smile. “Phase one done.”

“Do I even want to ask what phase one is?” I muttered.

“Private messaging him. No biggie.” She shot me an innocent smile.

“Uh oh, what did you say?”

“Just the usual. Saw him online and decided to say hi.”

I snorted. “Yeah, the usual.”

Shutting her laptop, Stephanie followed me into my walk-in closet. “So, whatcha gonna wear? If we’re talking about not knowing anybody since high school, we don’t have to travel any farther than this room.”

“Need I remind you, you’re a lab tech, not a psychologist?” I huffed and turned back towards my messy hangers. “That’s the purpose of this dinner. To re-get to know our old
friend.
”

“Keep lying to yourself, honey. We both know what a
friend
Mr. Tyler is.” OCD kicking into full gear again, Stephanie began straightening my disarray of hangers. “So what are you gonna wear?” Her eyes fleeted down to my chest. “Something that shows off your C-cups?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re naïve! May I remind you that you are dating Ethan? Err…sort of?”

I chose not to answer and yanked a modest turtleneck from my closet and threw it over my thin camisole. The material was a bit itchy against my sensitive skin, but I resisted the urge to scratch.

“A turtleneck, really?” Stephanie snorted.

“It’s not a date!”

“I know! You were supposed to be going on one tonight, but ditched out on it to spend time with another man.”

“If you’re implying I’m a cheat, you are mistaken. Like I said, Ethan and I are just having fun right now.”

“Then break it off with him!”

“A bit presumptuous, no? How do you expect me to break up with someone I’m not even going out with?”

Stephanie let out an exasperated tone. “You’re playing with fire, Rossi. Hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do, because I’m not doing anything wrong.”

I turned my back towards my closet trying to maintain my facade of confidence. However, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I may in fact be doing something wrong.

***

I grabbed the sides of my red pea coat jacket, shivering all the way down to my knees. Cursing the city planners who placed Harpoon’s parking lot a block away from the bar, I sprinted as fast as I could towards the brightly flashing neon lights at the risk of busting my ass on the slick pavement.

It was quite fitting that Jesse would ask me to meet him at a pub, considering the last time we had spoken revolved around alcohol as well. I stepped into the stuffy building and was greeted by a cloud of smoke and the stench of sweat. Harpoon’s was one of the last bars in the area that still allowed smoking inside and I prayed to God I wouldn’t walk out of there with blackened lungs and asthma.

“Rocky! Over here!” Jesse waved his arms to get my attention. He too had changed since our shift and was wearing a dark blue sweater that complemented his body nicely. As I approached, I couldn’t help admire his broad shoulders and the way his sweater tapered at his waist.

Stay cool. He’s just Jesse.

“Hey!” I greeted him, peeling off my pea coat. “Interesting place you chose here.”

He grimaced slightly. “Yeah, didn’t think this through so much. Didn’t know this place still allowed smoking.”

“We can go somewhere else if you want.”

Just then, someone decided to crank up the volume of the music. It was so loud that Jesse and I had to yell in order to hear each other. Not an ideal environment for our “catching up” date. I mean meeting. I mean…oh, forget it.

Jesse frowned and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, let’s go. I’ll drive.”

The thought of being alone with him in a car woke up even more intense feelings inside of me. Trying my best to keep my expression straight, I nodded. “Sounds good.”

Jesse opened the bar’s door to a blast of the cold winter air, which hit my face, causing my eyes to water and my nose to sting. Glancing down at my chattering teeth, Jesse frowned. “I scored a spot by the curb around the corner. The walk shouldn’t be too bad.”

My teeth sounded like tiny doorknockers. I nodded my head quickly. “O-o-ok-ay. L-l-let’s go.”

A part of me secretly hoped he’d throw his arm around me to keep me warm, but even that part of me knew I was being ridiculous. We were just friends. Nothing more. That is, if we were even friends to begin with.

By the time we made it to his impressively new looking SUV, I was sure my lips were purple. I shivered in his seat as he cranked up the heater and began to defrost the windows. “Forgot how cold it gets here,” he said gruffly.

“It doesn’t get cold in Charleston?” I blew in my hands, rubbing them together and silently praying he’d take them inside his own.

Ridiculous.

“We have our winters, but we’re further south. Nothing like it is here.”

“Oh.”

Silence blanketed over us as we waited for the car to heat up. The only sound was the slight purr of the engine and the fan from the heater.

Sick of the weird elephant in the room, I shook my head and sighed. “So why cut me out of your life? Why cease all convo with me?”

“Wow! You’re going straight for the punch,” Jesse replied in awkward amusement.

My mouth curled into a slight pout. “Jesse, I’m serious. I thought we were better than that.”

Jesse shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “Fine. I guess I owe you an explanation.”

“Yeah, you do,” I agreed. I expected him to open up and was annoyed to get nothing but more silence. “Jesse, seriously?”

“I’m not ready to tell you everything, okay? Just take what I give you and roll with it.”

“It’s not like you’re giving me anything at all,” I pointed out.

“I was just getting to that part,” he snapped, but not unkindly.

“Um, okay. Well, I’m here to listen when you’re ready.”

He took another deep breath and eyed me sadly. “When I left…wait, you remember that, don’t you?”

“How could I forget?” I whispered, flinching. When did things get so weird between us? I struggled to remember the laughter we shared, the conversations we used to have and the ease we felt hanging out with one another. None of it was even close to this awkward tango we found ourselves dancing now.

Jesse nodded his head and sighed. “I had hit rock bottom then. Once my dad left us the year before, all the stupid rebellious stuff I did wasn’t just for shits and giggles anymore. I was angry. I wanted to give the world a big fuck you. At seventeen all that rebellious shit I did seemed the only possible way to do so.”

I remembered that time all too well. He missed school for a full week, depressed and furious. I made sure to visit him every single day after school, trying to cheer him up. I’m not sure if anything I did worked, but he eventually returned to class. Not long after, his childish antics turned into flat out self-destructive behavior; a little alcohol here, some weed there, and countless tardies and absences. Though I didn’t agree with the things he did I always tagged along, trying to keep things light. I probably should have tried harder to stop him because by senior year his alcohol abuse had gotten so bad that it resulted in him getting kicked out of school. Before either of us could blink, he was immediately shipped off to live with his dad.

I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. “I was mad at my father for making me go with him. I wanted nothing more than to move back here and hate him—hate everything! Then I realized something.”

“What?” I just about whispered.

He turned to me and gazed into my eyes. I stared back and noticed an intensity in them that was foreign to me. “I finally saw something that I couldn’t—didn’t want to see before. My dad left us for a reason. He didn’t abandon us just for the hell of it.”

“So why did he leave you without so much as a goodbye?” I blurted out. My eyes widened and I covered my mouth sheepishly.

Jesse rubbed his hands down his face and leaned his head back against the headrest. He reached out and gripped the steering wheel so tightly the whites of his knuckles were showing. “Dad left because Mom was bringing him down. She did nothing but smoke and drink all day, leaving my dad to do all the work to take care of us.”

My eyebrows furrowed. His mom, bless her heart, was not the best by any means. Still known around town as a freeloader, she often did as little as she could get away with to get as much as she could. It was one of the reasons why my dad never hired her even when she begged for a job. It was also a reason why I was surprised Dad hired Jesse.

“If your dad felt that way, why did he leave you with her? Surely, he wouldn’t want his son to grow up in such an environment.”

“I guess he thought leaving me would sort of give my mom the kick she needed to get her life together. I honestly think my dad always planned on coming back.”

“What changed?”

He shrugged. “Life. When he moved to Charleston everything just fell into place for him. New job, new home, new wife.”

“New wife?” I gasped.

“Like I said, life happens.”

“Wow,” I breathed. I twiddled my thumbs together and scrunched up my lips. “Is that why you never came back? Because you liked your dad’s new life better?”

“To a degree,” he admitted. “I didn’t come back because I realized how much this place dragged me down. How much my mom dragged me down. There wasn’t anything in this town left for me and moving in with my dad showed me that. He also showed me what a lack of opportunity this place had and how moving away can help you reinvent yourself for the better. Sometimes old habits die hard and it was up to me to change that.”

There was nothing left for him. Including me.

I bit my lip in an attempt to fight off the tears that threatened to fall at any second. “Is that why you stopped talking to me? Because you wanted to forget everything about a town that had nothing for you?”

He curled his lips inward and shot me a look. “Like I said, I’ll only tell you everything I’m comfortable with. That’s about as comfortable as I can get right now.”

“Fine.” I was no longer hurt, I was angry. “So why come back? You obviously didn’t care enough about your mom to visit her before. Why come back now when she’s sick?”

Low blow, Raquel. Low blow.

“She’s my mom, Rocky. Regardless of everything she did. Regardless of what a shithole this place is—”

“Hey!” I protested. “I still live here, dipshit. My family and I grew a very successful business here—one you work in, might I add. Careful what you say!”

He bowed his head apologetically. “Fine, let me rephrase that. This town only provides opportunity for certain people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You, Stephanie, that
Ethan
guy.” The way he said Ethan’s name made me uncomfortable, but I chose not to dwell on it. “You all obviously had the potential and backing to make something of yourselves here. Not me. Not the kid who was struggling to find money to buy something to eat only to find out his mom blew it all on cigarettes.”

“If you needed help why didn’t you just ask? You know my family and I would have helped you.”

“I know and that’s precisely why I didn’t want to ask you.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Can you imagine what my mom would have done if she found out? She would have found a way to move into your house and drain you for every penny you had!” He shook his head in disgust. “My leaving was necessary for me and my mom. Did you know she finally held a job for longer than three months after I left?”

“Three years,” I replied, nodding. “I used to go to Gold Diner whenever I visited my family on the weekends during college. I’d see her in the back cooking.”

“Yeah, guess it runs in the family.”

“What does?”

“Never mind.” He reached out and touched my arm. Even with all the layers I was wearing his touch warmed my skin and caused a bolt of electricity to run up and down my arm. “I don’t expect you to understand my choices, Rocky. I really don’t. But I am here now to take care of my sick mother because she has no one left to do so. If you knew anything about me, you’d know that underneath that dumb teenage facade I used to hold I was always a good guy. I’m even better now.”