ME: Why did you leave so early?
DANA: Jodi needed to pick up Max.
At least that was what her text said when she finally replied nearly an hour after mine.
My head wasn’t on straight. I’d acted like a fucking idiot most of the weekend.
My emotions, if that’s what you call the bastards who were driving me nuts, were all over the place. Not only had I not came out and told her how I felt, I’d selfishly put her on the spot—while we were having sex.
Who, in their right mind, pulls that kind of fuckery?
I threw my clothes into my duffel bag, not giving a fuck that they were all wadded up, causing them to barely fit.
Again, my head pounded like I’d drank my ass off, but it wasn’t a hangover. I hadn’t had more than one drink in the past two, long, frustrating days.
“Can I ride back with you?” Trevor asked when I drug myself upstairs.
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Good, because I already put my stuff in your truck.” Pulling the last clean dish out of the washer and putting it in the cabinet, he added, “Dad is riding back with Reuben, but not until later. They’re going with Becca and her sister to eat lunch after everyone is ready.”
“Let me guess? You want to see Mia.”
He didn’t reply, but his face said it all.
“Fine. Let me fill up my coffee mug and we’ll go.”
After I made sure Nolan would lock up, I backed down to the water, pulled out the boat, and parked it in the garage. I wanted to think that I’d be back to the cabin sooner than later, and that Dana would come back too, but things felt weird.
On one hand, the stuff she told me last night, before she sucked every intelligent thought left in my head straight out the end of my dick, was promising. She rarely shared things like that with me, but it kind of sounded like something else too.
Shit was confusing, and, as I drove down the highway, I kept to myself until Trevor blurted out, “What’s up with you and Dana?”
There was no point in denying it. According to her, he’d seen her at the house anyway. Still, I wasn’t sure how much he knew or what was appropriate to talk about with an eighteen-year-old.
I settled for the truth. “I don’t know.”
His backpack sat at his feet. He retrieved an apple from it, and then took a loud bite.
“I saw her come out of your room this morning, and go in it with you last night.” He paused long enough to swallow and kick his foot up on the dash. “And she was at the house when I stopped by awhile back.”
“I know.”
“Okay, so what’s going on? Around everyone you two pretend like you don’t even know each other.”
“It’s just complicated.”
His apple suddenly looked appealing, and my stomach growled since there was only coffee in it. I looked over at him, and he was waiting for me to go on.
“All right. So we met a few weeks ago—maybe a month ago. You were there. At the coffee shop?”
“Yeah, did you get her number from Jodi then?”
“Actually, no. I didn’t have to. She started coming to the gym.”
He playfully slapped my arm like we were old buddies, but wasn’t it just a few years before that he’d been in diapers and falling off his bike?
“Cord, that’s cool. So what’s the problem?”
I slapped his foot off the leather dash, and he rested his big foot on his other knee instead. It blew my mind that it was him I was about to have that conversation with.
Life was weird.
I hesitated and shot him one more look.
“What? Oh, come on,” he chided. “You always told me I could talk to you about anything. Goes both ways.”
He had a point, and, looking back, I supposed he had come to me a couple times.
“All right, but—“
“But nothing. It stays between us.” My little buddy was turning into a damn good man. “Now tell me about her.”
Her.
That was a different subject all together. I could talk about Dana for hours. Her and us were conversations poles apart.
“She’s a pain in the ass. Argues about everything. Hates being wrong, but really she’s usually not. Just watching her is a good time, and she’s got this sweet spot in her laugh.” I shook my head and twisted my hands around the steering wheel. “I wanted her immediately.”
He threw the apple core in a plastic bag. “And she’s into you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I have no doubt. Sometimes I have no fucking clue.” I ran my hand over my hair and shook my head.
“I know all about that.”
At eighteen? “I’m sure.”
“No. For real. When Mia and I started dating, she’d just broken up with someone, and she told me she didn’t want to be in a relationship. Then, without either of us saying anything, it was like we were in one, and that was that.”
I turned up the air and aimed the center vent at my face, queasy from—well, just take your pick. “Yeah, but I told Reuben I wouldn’t date her.”
“That was dumb.”
“He didn’t want me to jack up their wedding and stress out Becca if things didn’t work. So I told him I’d wait.”
“Were you on the boat with us yesterday? I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but there was something going on between you two. Reub and Becca were off in their own little world.”
“Yesterday sucked.” I put my blinker on and finally passed an SUV that I’d been following for miles. “And then she left this morning without really saying anything.”
“What do you expect her to say, when you won’t admit to your friends she’s special to you?”
It felt like I’d been punched. “I wanted to say something, she said to wait,” I defended.
“Okay. You just said she likes to argue. So why in the hell did you even ask her?”
I didn’t like that he was making so much fucking sense. Not even a little. I was thirty fucking two. “Like I said, it’s complicated.” I propped my elbow up on the edge of the window and rubbed my temple.
“Doesn’t sound complicated.”
“What do you know? You’re still in high school.”
“Yeah. Well I found the girl for me, and I’m going to marry her. I’m going to build a future for us, and Mia knows it. And, you know what? I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks,” he explained resolutely.
Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a book.
It was a long drive home.