Why Now? (12 page)

At this, I cough and lift my hand, “Thought I should remind you two that we’re sitting here.”

Reilly rolls her eyes. “You don’t count. And sorry, Heath, but you never did it for me.”

My eyes widen. “Christ, Reilly, it wasn’t an offer.”

Sydney laughs and shakes her head. “Can I get you guys anything to eat?”

“I’ll take a slice of crème pie,” requests Reilly.

“Can I have a warm up?” I ask, lifting my moose mug.

Her eyes land on Heath.

“Coffee sounds good,” he answers.

Once Sydney walks away, I look at Reilly. “Where’s Kacey?”

She sets her elbows on the table and rests her chin on her hands. “Heath pretty much followed you out the door when you took off. I tried talking to her but she just kept saying ‘Oh my God’ over and over again. I even shook her.” She blanches when she sees my face go stormy and quickly adds, “Not hard or anything. I just wanted her to stop saying ‘Oh my God’ like a broken record. And it worked. She yelled at me for calling her out during never have I ever, but you needed to know, Jake. Honest to God, if I knew you were hung up on the girl who kissed you, I would have told you ages ago.”

“Then what happened?” I press.

“She stormed into her room and slammed the door in my face. I decided I’d have more luck talking to you two. Though, I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get to break up a fistfight. Are you guys testosterone deprived or something?”

“What will punching Jake accomplish?” Heath asks, raising his hand to gesture at me.

“It always made me feel better,” Reilly jokes.

Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I hug her to me making her laugh. Even Heath cracks a smile.

Sydney comes back with Reilly’s pie, a unicorn mug for Heath, and a pot of coffee to top me off and fill Heath’s mug.

“Scooch,” she orders Heath before sitting down next to him. “It’s slow, so I thought I’d come hang out for a minute.”

Reilly digs into her pie while I drink my coffee and Heath adds a sugar to his.

“So,” Sydney urges, “this is the part where you take pity on me being at work and entertain me.”

Reilly drops her fork with a clatter and grins. “Jake kissed Kacey right in front of Heath tonight.”

Sydney’s jaw drops and she looks at Heath and questions, “So that’s what you were all pissed about earlier?”

He says nothing, just holds her eyes, and lifts his coffee to his lips.

She ignores his nonresponse and looks back to Reilly. “Where’s Kacey?”

Reilly picks up her fork before answering. “As far as I know she’s still locked in her room at our place.”

Sydney looks back at Heath. “Aren’t you two engaged? I might be hallucinating but I’m pretty sure I’m catering your wedding.”

“You set the date?” I bark, making them all look at me.

Reilly lowers the bite she had been lifting to her mouth and proceeds slowly. “I thought you knew.”

Heath just glares at me while Reilly continues, “Next month. The exact date is up in the air because of my mom.”

Pulling myself from the booth, I stand. “I need to talk to her.”

Heath moves to stand, forgetting Sydney is blocking his way and says, “Not without me.”

“Jake, sit back down,” Reilly snaps and the handful of people in the diner look our way.

Shit.

This mess will be all over town tomorrow, I guarantee it.

“I need to talk to her,” I argue.

She shakes her head and pats the seat next to her. “You need to not do anything rash and give her some space.”

“You going to try and stop the wedding?” Heath asks, pushing his unfinished coffee away.

“All I want to do is talk to her,” I reply.

Reilly elbows me and hurriedly finishes the bite she was working on. “I saw that kiss. You want to do way more than talk to her.”

Heath’s jaw clenches and I clip, “That’s not helping Reils.”

Sydney slowly eases herself from the booth, “Thanks guys. That was super entertaining. I’ll just,” she points over her shoulder, “I’ll just be going.”

As she walks away, Reilly glares at Heath. “Great job, Heath. You scared Sydney away.”

He shakes his head and grumbles, “Like she cares.”

Cutting in, I ask, “Why are you so pissed I want to talk to Kacey. You get that I need to talk to her.”

He starts talking more to himself than to either of us. “I thought she liked me. She’s so pretty and she said she’d marry me. God, my mom loves her, and fucking hell she can kiss.”

Growling at that last statement, I pound my fist on the table to get his attention. “What the fuck man? When we were outside you weren’t pissed at me, and now you’re talking like you’re still all gung ho to marry her.”

His head snaps back. “Of course
,
I still want to marry her!”

Reilly drops her fork again. “Even after you saw them kiss?”

He shrugs. “So what? They kissed. Do you know how many times we’ve kissed since she’s agreed to marry me?”

“I’m hoping that’s not a real question because I do
not
need to know that shit,” I interrupt.

“You guys aren’t even in love,” Reilly snaps, pushing her plate away.

He slices his hand in my direction. “And they suddenly are?”

She pulls at her hair in exasperation. “Kacey has loved Jake forever. That’s no secret, Heath.”

“He’s never loved her back,” he scoffs. “Why do you think she agreed to marry me in the first place? She was sick and tired of the whole town feeling sorry for her for carrying a fucking torch for this guy all of these years. What? Do you think she’s going to forget all of that because he finally shows her some interest?”

“Heath,” I start but he keeps going.

“No, she’s not. Not when I’m offering her marriage and he’s going back to the fucking rig once the house is fixed. Think about it. If she chooses him and doesn’t marry me where will she be? She’ll still be alone, because he’s going to leave; only, this time, it will be worse because she’ll have no hope for anything better. Is that what you want for her?”

In the past four hours I’ve kissed two men, or more accurately, two men have kissed me. What is going on here? Nothing like this has ever happened to me.

And Jake . . .

Oh, God, Jake.

Grrr, Jake.

How could he kiss me like that right in front of Heath? How will I ever be able to look either of them in the eyes ever again? They all know what I did to Jake now.

He kissed me, really kissed me, and then left. Who does that?

Jake Whitmore, apparently.

He is so annoying. Why’d he even come back in the first place? Did he do it just to mess everything up?

Heath and I had a plan. Sure, it wasn’t a fantastic plan or anything but that didn’t matter. Every time Heath kisses me I could almost forget I ever loved Jake.

I’m sure once we’re married I’ll love him even more than I ever did Jake. That’s if he still wants to marry me after what happened tonight.

It’s not like we’re a couple or anything yet, but we were headed that way and fidelity was implied in our plan. We never discussed a “you go your way; I’ll go mine, marriage.”

It’s doubtful he was cool watching his fiancée kiss his best friend. The way he took off after Jake, they could be fighting right now.

What will people around here say about me? Moving seems to be my only option. Somewhere as far away as possible from Jake Whitmore. There’s this remote island off the coast of England that I watched a documentary about once. There were more birds than people living there. I could take up bird watching and be quite happy there. While I haven’t necessarily spent much time around any birds, I’ve never met one I didn’t like.

The locals will all know me as the crazy bird watching Yank who talks to herself and can give them eye exams. I drop my head into my hands and groan realizing how absurd my plan sounds.

I still can’t believe it.

They both kissed me.

Our town is not lacking in the attractive men department but Jake and Heath are in a class of their own. Could they both like me?

Heath has made it clear that he does. Is Jake only showing interest because I’m technically off the market, finally? You weren’t very off the market when you were tangling your tongue with his a while ago, I remind myself.

Why did he kiss me?

Is this some sort of challenge to him? He remembered me being blonde that night so there’s a chance he wasn’t as drunk as I thought he was. He remembered but he didn’t remember me, just my blonde hair.

Still, when he found out we had made out he was angry. Part of me had always assumed he would be. Taking advantage of him the way I had was uncool. His anger would have been deserved.

Why did he leave like that? With both him and Heath gone, I’m left here thinking of the worst possible scenarios.

Jake Whitmore kissed me.

The possibility of that would have filled the old me with so much happiness. Over the years, I have put him in this shrine of sorts.

He has been my fantasy for so long, but timing is everything. There’s a reason I gave up on the dream of us. That’s all it was, a dream. Reality is what I want now, and in that reality, I want a husband and a family of my own.

That’s something Heath can give me. Jake lives and works on an oilrig. He works months straight without leaving it. Even if he did like me and wanted to pursue something with me, would I want a life like that? A life where I only saw him a couple of times a year for a few weeks at a time.

Even if I had Jake Whitmore, I’d still be alone.

That’s not what I want, not even a little bit. Well, since it is Jake, maybe just a little bit.

God, my life is such a giant mess.

Reaching over my head, I pull one of my pillows from the pile at the head of my bed and cover my face with it. My limited, and frankly, disastrous dating experience has in no way prepared me to deal with everything that happened tonight.

My mistake was staying in love with Jake for as long as I had. If I would have started dating in high school, I’m sure a night like tonight would have been no big deal. In fact, I could be married with kids by now.

Clearly, this is all Jake’s fault.

Pushing the pillow from my face, I turnover to look at my alarm clock. Reilly gave up on knocking on my door over an hour ago. The apartment has been silent ever since, not that I haven’t cringed at every noise I’ve heard outside fearing one, or all of them came back.

They’ve been gone a long time, though. It’s hard not to wonder what’s happening and I debate checking my phone. When I stormed into my room, I had set it to silent and put it in my closet. It seemed safer in there and I wouldn’t be able to see the screen light up with notifications.

You can’t not check a notification if you see one pop up. Well, I can’t.

Shifting off my bed, I cross my room to my closet and grab my phone. There are multiple missed calls and texts from all three of them. One each from Heath and Jake; from Reilly, a hell of a lot more.

No one left a voicemail. The text from Jake said we needed to talk. No thank you. The text from Heath also says we needed to talk. Crap, extra no thank you to that one.

The first text from Reilly is an apology for her never have I ever stunt, the next asking me about the kiss, the third another apology, the fourth is annoyance at my ignoring her, the fifth is an order to get my phone out of my closet, and the sixth is a dramatic
oh fine be that way, see if I care;
and in the seventh she’s taking back the see if I care text and a reminder that she loves me.

Reilly has never handled being ignored well.

Her texts are the only ones I reply to, letting her know I’m still annoyed at her but will always love her.

Heath and Jake’s texts go unanswered, mainly because I have no idea what to say to either of them. Part of me also has no desire to hear what either of them might want to say to me.

Heath must want to call off the engagement and probably never speak to me again. That would kill me. He’s been a friend of mine for so long and I’d hate to lose him.

Jake must want to tell me the kiss sucked and he felt nothing. He’ll probably also apologize for doing it in the first place. Why else would he have left the way he did? You do not kiss someone and leave the second the kiss is over if you enjoyed it.

I’d rather jump off a cliff into a waiting pool of hungry sharks than have Jake Whitmore tell me that kiss meant nothing to him, not when it meant so much to me.

It wasn’t just the kiss. It was the fact that he initiated it. Jake reaching across the table and pulling me to him is now permanently scorched in my being. For as long as I live, I will never forget that.

No, not that or the way his chest felt under my hands as I steadied myself against him. He was cut from stone but somehow warm and soft at the same time. The heat radiating from him was like an inferno that lit me up from within.

He tasted like gingerbread beer, and the moment his mouth opened over mine, I knew tasting it from him was exactly the special occasion I had been waiting for.

Dropping my phone, I settle myself across my bed again, this time reaching for my pillow to cradle it, not hide under it.