Page 79 of The Hookup

Chapter 16

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Bella asked, sounding miserable.

We were a hell of a pair. Hungover and Heartbroken. Sisters in agony.

“I’m fine,” I said, even though my vision was blurring from my tears. I wasn’t fine at all. I felt as terrible as Cain had looked and he had looked like shit. Way more than he did on a usual morning after drinking from what I had seen. But he had probably slept. Or passed out, really. I had spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, wondering how I was going to return to Cambridge and just go on with my life.

Because I had to. I knew that. Which was shit. Sucky, lousy, cruddy, why the hell had I been so stupid as to go and fall for Cain? If there was a handbook for hookups, rule one would be don’t fall for him, you idiot. It’s all about the D. Or it should be.

I was driving fast. I wanted to get home and disappear into my bedroom and cry where no one could see me. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want anyone asking questions because I didn’t like the answers I would have to give.

“Don’t wreck this car, I’m begging you. I have enough issues in my life right now.”

“What issues do you have?” I asked, genuinely curious. I thought Bella had everything she had ever wanted.

“Nothing other than you seem determined to kill us and I have a headache the size of your tuition bill that Dad has to pay.”

Even though I was crying and driving and basically the most upset I had ever been, I still fought the urge to point out to Bella that a tuition bill isn’t a solid, and therefore not an apt comparison, but I contained myself. I was driving too fast and I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Dad doesn’t have to pay my tuition bill. He just chooses to do so. I’m sorry you have a headache.”

“I’m sorry Cain spilled beer on you.”

“He didn’t spill beer on me.” Well, he had but not on purpose. I knew I shouldn’t defend him though. But it wasn’t about the beer. “Honestly, it wasn’t that or the things he said. It’s that it showed how determined he is to wallow, you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I know what you mean. That really sucks. I know you like him and it sounds like the sex was amazing. But sex always complicates things.”

It had been amazing. So amazing that I wondered how I would ever have that again. I bit my lip and thought about hookups. It had never been one, even when we had thought it was. “I don’t think it was the sex that complicated things. The sex was eye-opening and intimate and beyond what I expected. But I think all of that was because we had a connection from the very beginning. We get each other.” I sounded like any girl I might despise. Like I was justifying. But I knew it was the truth. I knew it.

I also knew that lobster fisherman or not, Maine or Boston, if he wasn’t an alcoholic, I wanted to be with him. Forever.

But that he had rejected me in favor of the past.

“I think he is still angry, and doesn’t know how to move on,” I said. “I can’t blame him for that. Would you be able to forgive him if Bradley cheated on you?”

“I don’t know,” Bella said, and her voice caught. “I think I would be angry for a very, very long time.”

“I need a coffee,” I said abruptly. I wish it had occurred to me a week earlier that I might actually be stupid enough to attach to Cain. Then maybe I would have kept it at one night. Nothing more, nothing less. “Do you want anything? I can go through the drive-through.”

“I need a giant iced coffee and a do-over.”

“I can get you the coffee. I can’t get you the do-over.” I assumed she was talking about drinking herself sick. I eased up on the gas, focusing on the lines on either side of the road. Let the road roll under me. Let the car soothe me.

Bella raised her knees up and hugged herself, even with the seatbelt on. “Soph?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you know when you’re doing the right thing?” Her voice was soft.

My heart squeezed for her. Something was off about this wedding. Way off. And the change had happened very recently. I wasn’t the only Bigelow who was hurting. “I could tell you our brains are wired to process information so quickly that what we perceive as our gut instinct is really our brain grabbing on to everything it can in a microsecond and reaching a conclusion as to what we should do.”

Bella snorted.

“But I won’t.” I felt the tears well in my eyes again. It felt like a swell of hurt, just rising up inside me. “Because the brain, I am sadly forced to admit, doesn’t control the heart. I think that if you know what the right thing to do is, you’re lucky.”

“I’m feeling a little unlucky.”

“Cain told me there aren’t answers to a lot of questions. That’s really hard for me to accept because you know I like equations that have solutions. But I think he’s right.”

And it hurt to know that I would never experience what we could have been.

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