Chapter 2

Jana

When I walked into the restaurant, Megan was not hard to spot. She was the girl at the table by the window with about a thousand wedding magazines strewn everywhere. She was balancing her glass of wine on a stack of venue brochures, and she had a basket full of highlighters. I shook my head and laughed as I made my way through the seating and approached the table. Megan looked up at me with her bright eyes and smiled big. With her working at Walker Industries exclusively now, we didn’t get to see each other as often as we liked. She used to work with me at Easton, but after getting the new plant going and undertaking all that work at Walker with the environmental team, there was no way she could juggle both places.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said, squeezing me hard. “I ordered you a Chardonnay.”

“I'm all right,” I said, seeing right through her hugs and alcohol. “Don’t do this.”

“Okay,” Megan said in a high-pitched voice, throwing her hands in the air.

“So,” I said, flipping at the pages of the magazines. “What is on today’s agenda?”

“I want you to be my Maid of Honor,” she said smiling. “You are my best friend. I can’t be up there without you.”

“Awe,” I cooed, having a moment. “That’s so sweet! Of course, I’ll be your Maid of Honor!!”

“There’s just one teensy weensy catch,” she said scrunching her shoulders and smiling.

“He’s the Best Man isn’t he?” I knew it; I knew there had to be a catch. However, I couldn’t lie that a huge part of me was relieved that I would get to spend time near him, even if he did pour whiskey on my date’s shoes.

“Mmhmm,” she said shaking her head and handing me my glass of wine. “See, I knew it was bothering you. Talk to me. Maybe we can have you walk out of the ceremony with the ring bearer.”

“It’s fine,” I sighed. “I wouldn’t do that to the flower girl. I can’t go forever avoiding him. I mean it’s not like I didn’t like the guy. In fact, that was the whole problem. I liked the guy way too much. I didn’t want my heart to be broken. I didn’t want to be just another pile of pussy in his book.”

“Ugh,” Megan flinched. “That’s gross.”

We both busted out laughing at my vulgarity and clinked our glasses together. The waitress approached, and we stopped giggling, trying to act like adults. The waitress gave us a fake smile and looked at the table, unsure of where she was supposed to set the salads Megan had ordered. We moved the papers around quickly and took the plates from her hands, trying to hold our laughter back.

“Speaking of piles of pussy,” I said, trying not to spit the wine still in my mouth all over the table. “Are you and Ryan going to, you know, get you a little?”

“First, ew. Second, no. I have waited all this time; he is going to have to wait just a little bit longer,” she replied with a scrunched-up face.

“What if you get married, and on your wedding night he has a pencil dick? Or worse, he has a walrus dick!?” I whispered it to her trying to take the staring eyes from us. We were worse than fifteen-year-old girls.

“Stop it,” Megan said, throwing a piece of lettuce at me. “Besides, I’ve already seen it.”

I gasped. “You naughty girl!”

“You know that Jason really is hung up on you, he hasn’t dated anyone since you stopped seeing him,” Megan said looking over her fork, changing the subject slyly back to my love life, or lack thereof.

“Yeah, but how many people has he slept with?” I shook my head, nauseous at the thought of him with anyone else. I didn’t want to give in to just how much I cared; I was too afraid to get hurt.

“Nobody,” she replied. “He has pretty much gone to work and either gone home or come and hung out with us. He hadn’t even really been drinking until last night.”

“Probably why he got so wasted so fast,” I replied. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t really even like Steve. He’s kind of a pompous ass.”

“Why did you bring him then?” Megan took a sip of her wine and lifted an eyebrow.

“To get to Jason,” I muttered, embarrassed at my own childish games.

“You didn’t,” she gasped. “Well, you definitely got to him. A bottle worth of Woodford got to him.”

“I know, did you see how he just tipped that glass and poured the drink all over him? I wanted to laugh so bad, so I masked it with outrage,” I admitted, chuckling. “I don’t think Steve bought it. He told me there was too much drama in my life.”

“I thought it was kind of cute, to be honest,” Megan replied. “He used to be such an ass, but now, he’s like this sweet, puppy dog eyed, lost kid.”

I shook my head, smiling, not knowing exactly how to take this new information. We changed the subject back to the wedding and spent the remainder of lunch going over more details of the event. I didn’t have a huge lunch hour. When Megan left Easton to go full time at Ryan’s company, our boss gave me all of her current cases. I was now the one working on the environmental issues all over the city. It was nice to get a promotion, but I sure did miss her wit and sass at work.

When lunch was over, I hugged Megan and wrote down our dress shopping plans before grabbing a cab and heading back to the office. On the ride there I stared out the window at the trees whose leaves were beginning to change color with the approaching fall. It was my favorite time of year, and I couldn’t help but wish Jason was there to snuggle up with when the cold nights started to creep up on us. As I passed by the Walker building, I stared out at the people on the sidewalk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jason, but he wasn’t anywhere around.

Back at the office, I had files upon files piled up on my desk, screaming for me to get through them. Half of them just needed to be double checked and filed, while the other half were actually open water contamination data. My mind floated back and forth between the wedding, work, and Jason. I couldn’t concentrate to save my life. I decided that filing was the best thing to do to get me back into the swing of things, so I pulled the large pile from the desk and wheeled back and forth in my chair putting the manila folders in their respective alphabetical slots. As the wheels of the chair squeaked along the roughly carpeted floor my mind floated off to the bedroom where Jason and I had spent most of our time.

He was incredibly sexy with his dark brown eyes and messy hair. He worked out on a regular basis, and I loved running my hands down his strong back, feeling his muscular arms wrapped around me. When we first hooked up, I think we both just thought of it as a hot, drunk sex night but by the next evening, I found myself holding my cell phone, wanting to call him. Apparently, he was thinking the same thing because before I could dial the number, he was at the front door. Sure, we started off the night rolling around in my bed, pissing off the neighbors with my loud moans and tapping head board, but afterward, we actually laid around talking about our lives, our jobs, and our family. It was that moment that I realized this guy had gotten to me bad and after hearing his “Whore” stories, I stopped taking his calls. The last thing I needed was to be hurt, and by my best friend’s new boyfriend’s best chum.

I sighed and tried to shake Jason from my mind, throwing the last few files into the filing cabinet and pulling myself back up to the desk. I opened a new case and attempted to start reading but what Megan had told me at lunch was stuck in the forefront of my brain, not allowing any new information in until I faced it.

What if he actually was changing his ways?

If he hadn’t slept with anyone, or seen anyone since I stopped calling him maybe he really did want an actual relationship with me. Now I was not only scared to get hurt but more so I was beginning to fear being wrong about him and missing out on a possible amazing relationship. I put my head down on the desk and tapped it gently against the wood. I guess with us throwing our best friend’s wedding together; I’d have plenty of time to figure it all out.