Saving Us by Wendy Million

Chapter Fourteen

When the doorbell rang at an ungodly hour, there was only one person it could be. Johnny. I pried open an eye and checked my bedside clock. They had early morning practice today.

I groaned. Their schedule now lived in my brain, taking up vital space. What was happening to me?

I stumbled around my room, throwing on a bathrobe and trudging to the door, but Annika was already there. In the hall, out of sight, I froze.

Johnny’s charm was turned to full blast. His dimples popped, and he stared at Annika as though she was a piece of candy he’d love to swallow whole. In one hand, he held a large bouquet of red roses, and in the other, a card or envelope.

Annika was framed in the doorway, still in her pajamas, arms crossed, not meeting his gaze. Reluctantly, she took the flowers.

“I wrote you this last night.” Johnny thrust the envelope toward her. “I’m not good at saying the right words, but everything’s in this letter. I poured my heart out. I mean it, Anni. Every word is true.” With his hands empty, he shoved them into his pockets and gave her a hopeful look. “I want to see you at practice later.”

Annika kept her gaze averted, but she’d accepted both of his peace offerings. “Is that all?” Her voice remained cool.

“I hope not.” Johnny backed up. “I want to see you later tonight.”

When Annika closed the door and flipped the lock, I tiptoed to my room, letting out my breath.

On the nightstand, my phone was lit up with notifications. Sebastian had sent me another text after he left. Did he return to the party? Did he find someone else to amuse him? Those questions were exactly why I couldn’t let him get any closer.

Remembering the slivers of hurt in his hazel eyes the night before, I fired off a quick reply. Deliberately hurting his feelings wasn’t in me. As soon as the text said delivered, it was read, and three dots appeared.

Breakfast, sleepyhead?

I grinned. Your early morning practices are insanity. I don’t understand how you survive on so little sleep.

Is that a yes to food?

I cradled my phone. No need to overthink it. Breakfast was a meal. That was it. Taking a deep breath, I replied. Ready in 30.

I tossed my phone onto my unmade bed, and I headed for the shower. Annika’s door was open, and I peeked in. She wasn’t there. I checked the living room and then the kitchen. On the table, strewn across it, was Johnny’s letter.

I stared at the pages from a distance.

Whatever Johnny had decided to tell Annika, it was long. I moved closer, keeping my hands gripped together to avoid picking up the papers. If Annika left them here, she must have known I’d see them.

It was wrong to read them. Maybe skimming them would make me understand his raging temper.

I leaned over the table, speed-reading. Comments Annika had made the night before jumped out at me—go the distance, so much potential, never felt this way before. Everything Annika had been dying to hear was mirrored in the letter. His sentiment should be a comfort, a positive sign. The words mine and no one will ever love you like I do also sprung off the page.

I considered gathering the pages into a neat stack and putting them in her room. But then she’d realize I saw them, read them.

Turning on my heel, I went to the bathroom to shower. Reading her letter was wrong, and I used more soap than normal trying to scrub the icky off. Even if I suspected Johnny wasn’t good for her, I shouldn’t have so much as peeked at her personal note.

In the mirror, my brown eyes were tired in my pale face, but at least my jeans and sweatshirt were clean. Grabbing mascara and lip gloss out of my makeup bag, I tried to conceal my fatigue. Would Sebastian even notice?

At the knock on the door, I grabbed my keys and purse from the hall table. Sebastian was dressed in jeans and a hoodie. The weather was getting increasingly cooler, and the leaves on the trees outside our townhouse were beginning to turn color.

“Where are we going?” I asked, stepping out.

“Diner down the street.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “My treat.”

“I can pay my own way.”

“Sure, but I asked you. When you ask me, you can pay.” He smirked as though he assumed an invitation from me would never happen.

“Sounds like a challenge.”

“However you want to take that, that’s up to you.” He grinned.

“I don’t normally do mornings. You’re lucky I’m awake, so I doubt I’ll ever invite you to breakfast.” I tugged my sleeves over my hands to combat the chill, and a leaf twirled to the ground in front of me onto the sidewalk.

“You disappoint me, Nattie. I thought you’d rise to the challenge.”

“There are lots of things I’ll rise for. Breakfast, out of the house, isn’t generally one of them.” I gave him a sideways glance.

“Johnny came over? That’s why you’re gracing me with your presence? I saw him hot footing it after practice. Figured he was headed to your place.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “They in there making up?”

“Not at my house. You and Annika must have been two ships passing in the early morning light.”

“A long, leisurely breakfast it is, then. I would hate to interrupt them at our house. Never much privacy there.” He held open the door to the ’50s-inspired diner.

“What made you decide to live there when you transferred?” I asked while the waitress got our table ready.

Sebastian shrugged. “All the guys there are on the team. Frat house. Parties. Win-win-win?”

We followed the waitress to our booth near the window. The napkin holder was in the shape of an old jukebox. The atmosphere was rundown and vintage. The vinyl seats had rips patched with duct tape. Like always, it was busy, though. Decent, cheap food was a college staple. There was a nice buzz circling us as people sobered up or fueled up for the day ahead.

“What about you? Why Annika out of the others on your floor?” He perused the menu.

The waitress reappeared, and we ordered while I mulled over his question. “Annika and I get each other, accept each other for who we are. We don’t share a love of football, but we enjoy and appreciate each other. We’re both passionate, opinionated people. I thought we saw the world the same way, for the most part.” I stirred cream into my coffee.

“But you don’t anymore?” He sipped his black coffee.

I froze, realizing what I’d said. He was the same as Annika and didn’t see the potential menace in her relationship with Johnny. “Forget I said that. It’s probably not what I meant.”

He gave me a wry grin, “You mean, Johnny, right?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I do. I don’t want to talk about him anymore. You and Annika think he walks on water, I suspect he’s standing at the gates of hell. The conversation will go in circles until either something happens or it doesn’t, you know?”

“The gates of hell are a little overboard.” Sebastian frowned.

A slow smile spread across my face. “So is the walking on water part, but you didn’t dispute that.”

He chuckled. “You’re quick, Natalie Chapman. You’ll make a hell of a lawyer one day. You going to climb onto your soapbox as a public defender?” The tension eased out his shoulders, and we were on playful banter ground.

“I’m not sure. My dad doesn’t want me to go that route. No money in it.” I stacked the creamers into a tower. “I can’t imagine being a criminal lawyer defending the assholes my dad has uncovered over the years. Wouldn’t be right. Corporate law would bore me.”

“Sounds as though your dad brought his work home with him. What was that like?”

“Hard. Annoying. Eye-opening. Everything you’d expect it to be. He was pretty strict when I was growing up, set in his ways. He still is, but now that I’m a bit older, he at least listens to my opinion from time to time.”

“My parents were liberal when I was a kid. They could have been hippies in a commune.” He shrugged. “Very civil about the divorce. Neither believed monogamy was best for them in the end. No hard feelings.”

“Either of them ever remarry? Do you have any siblings?”

“No, neither remarried. Surprise, surprise.” He smiled. “I have an older sister.”

“Are you two close?” My heart squeezed in my chest at the tenderness on his face while he talked about his family. Their situation might be unusual, but it was clear they were much loved.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “She chose to stay in Bermy with my dad when my parents split. So, I don’t see her as often. She flies in for big games with my dad, which is nice.” He eyed me for a minute and then tipped his chin. “What about you? Siblings? Your mother? I haven’t heard you say anything about her yet.”

My stomach dropped out in that familiar way it always did whenever the subject of my mother was raised. I carefully crafted my words to leave her out, which had been the hardest piece to get used to when she died. An erasure. Years later, her death still felt wrong, not final, as though she’d turn up knocking on my door.

“She died a few years ago. Cancer,” I said. “I have a younger sister.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” he said. “I can’t even imagine. I’m tight with my mom. It would crush me if anything happened to her.”

Tears pricked at my eyes, and I willed them to stay in. Crushed was the perfect word. I wasn’t going to cry about my mother in a ’50s diner with a guy I barely knew. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Impossible for anyone to imagine until it happens. Even then, sometimes it doesn’t feel real, and other times it’s breathtakingly permanent.” My voice caught on the last word, thickening with tears. “It’s not a club you want to be part of.”

He reached across the table and intertwined his fingers with mine. When I looked up, he drew my hand to his lips and kissed my palm. He sandwiched my palm between his and stared at me. The air grew thick and heavy, and the things we weren’t saying to each other stretched, another layer laid over top.

The waitress appeared with our food, and Sebastian eased his grip out of mine. We spent a few minutes in a deep companionable silence, adding ketchup, salt, and pepper to our breakfast plates.

“Have you been here before?” Sebastian took his first bite.

“Truth?”

“Always.” His lips twitched. “What, did you bring a one-night-stand here? Is this place your unnamed walk of shame?”

“If I sleep with any guy, there’s no walk of shame or else I shouldn’t have done it in the first place.” I squeezed more ketchup onto my plate. “Clay and I came here a few times at the start of the semester.”

He took a bite of his toast and examined me. “So you were sending mixed signals to the poor guy? Here I was thinking he was kinda pathetic for not understanding the two of you were done, and now you tell me you were still hanging out when I first met you?”

I flushed. “I wanted to stay friends. He said he wanted to be friends too. You can’t say that and then avoid each other.”

“He was in love with you?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. “He was.”

“Why’d you break up?”

Picking up my coffee, I took a long sip. The liquid burned, but I needed a minute to formulate a response. “He wanted things from our relationship that I didn’t. Maybe if I’d met Clay ten years from now, our outcome would have been different.”

Sebastian frowned. “I doubt it.”

I gaped at the iron certainty in his voice. “You’ve never even been in a monogamous relationship. Ever. How would you know?”

“If the word ‘maybe’ enters a sentence about getting married and having kids with someone then the answer might as well be no, ’cause it sure as hell ain’t yes.” Sebastian threw his last piece of toast in his mouth, and his expression oozed self-satisfaction as he chewed.

“You think you’re some sort of love expert?” I arched my eyebrows.

“No, Nattie. I am a decision-making expert. With something that important, you go all in, balls to the wall, and you dig in, burrow deep.”

“I sense a football analogy coming,” I teased.

He laughed. “Nah, I wouldn’t do that to you. I’d lose you the minute I started. I enjoy amusing you, not boring you.”

“And yet, you still want me attending your games.”

“You don’t enjoy watching me prance around the field in my tight pants?”

Heat rose to my cheeks, but I managed a laugh. “Prance is an excellent word. I approve.” His tight pants were a reason I didn’t mind going to the games lately.

“We should do this more often.”

“Go out for breakfast after you’ve been prancing around the field?” I slopped up the last of my egg with my toast.

“No, hang out. Just the two of us.”

I glanced up and then hesitated. “I’m not sure. People might get the wrong idea.”

“Not if you wear this.” He slid his phone across the table.

A woman who resembled me was wearing a tight white T-shirt with the words wing-woman emblazoned across it. I burst out laughing. “What in the world?” I wiped my mouth with my napkin and leaned closer to the image.

“You can touch the phone; it won’t bite. You didn’t go for my other suggestion.”

“I’m worried it’ll suck me in, and I’ll emerge wearing that shirt. She looks like me.” I turned my attention to him, and he smirked.

“Photoshop.” He shifted in his seat. “I was bored?”

I slid the phone back to him. “That’s weird. I’m not wearing that.”

“Too soon for the white T-shirt. Got it.” He nodded as though our exchange made complete sense. “But you’ll still hang out with me again?”

“You are persistent.” The last sip of my coffee slid along my throat.

He slotted his phone into his pocket. Then he sat, drinking his coffee, watching me. Silence stretched between us. He planned to wait me out.

“Okay.” I relented. “Fine. We can hang out more if you want.” I rolled my eyes, but inside my stomach fluttered. I couldn’t let these feelings for him get out of control. “People will talk, though. You know that, right? Wing-woman or not, I’ll be a cock-blocker.”

He choked on his coffee, stifling a laugh. “How did wing-woman and cock-blocker end up in the same sentence? That was amazing.”

I shrugged. “That’s because I’m amazing.”

His grin widened, and his hazel eyes, so different from my darker brown, twinkled. “That you are,” he said. “That you are.”

My stomach dropped to my feet at the naked admiration. I was already in way too deep.