Page 9 of It's Always Sonny

I glare and push away from him. My pencil skirt has ridden up to my mid-thighs, so I shift it down and steal a glance at Sonny.

He’s in a fitted charcoal hoodie that can’t hide his muscular frame. A black knee brace is strapped over his black joggers, causing a twinge of worry to my heart that I squash like a bug. He hasn’t been mine to worry about for almost seven years.

Seven years of watching his star rise higher and higher in college, elevating him to the first round of the draft, and now to Super Bowl champion and future Hall of Famer. Seven years of knowing I did the right thing breaking up with him. Seven years where I didn’t let myself reminisce or long or doubt, no matter how hard it was.

And look at him now.

Actually, don’t look at him now. Those eyes are a tractor beam. Avert your gaze! Avert!

I pull my eyes from his in order to grab his crutches. When I hold them out to Sonny, he’s balancing on one leg as comfortably as most people on two, but he doesn’t reach for them right away. Instead, his eyes rove over my face.

“You look … different, PJ,” he says, using a nickname few people know. By a funny quirk of fate, my best friends and I all share a middle name—Jane—so we occasionally call each other by our initials. PJ, MJ, AJ, etc. But to Sonny, I’ve only ever been PJ or, when he’s speaking for emphasis, Parker Jane.

I hate how much I still love it.

“You just saw me at the Super Bowl. And at Millie and Duke’s wedding.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s been seven years, Santino,” I say, using his real name precisely because he doesn’t like it. Also because his show of core and thigh strength is excessive. He has yet to put his foot down for balance. “I’ve grown up.”

“I seem to remember you telling me that was my job. I hadn’t realized you had any growing up left to do.” Sonny says this casually, teasingly, yet for an instant, his light eyes turn almost icy against his naturally bronzed face. I let myself study him, let myself take in how the hint of baby face he had in college has vanished, leaving sharper features. He keeps his dark hair shorter than he used to, and he has a five o’clock shadow that he never had in college. He probably couldn’t have even grown a beard back then, but boy can he now. He has grown up, all right.

So have I, regardless of his barb. “I was a dumb college kid once, too, remember,” I say lightly. “I thought I’d take the business world by storm. Get hired on as an exec in some big startup before I was thirty, cash out, and be made for life, opening me up to follow my passions for the next few decades.”

What’s that slow blink of his supposed to mean? “You’ve got time. Don’t count yourself out yet.”

“I’m happy where I am. Jane & Co. is growing and I’m proud of us. But I’m never working for anyone else again.”

“Good for you. You always were the boss, even before you had any employees,” he teases.

“Not hardly. I never had any control over you.”

“My transferring to Clemson would say otherwise.” For a moment, the lobby gets darker. A cloud must be passing over the sun. But it passes quickly. “But that’s all water under the bridge.”

No. He does not get to poke and poke like that and then just walk away.

“Water under the bridge,” I agree sweetly. I feign like I’m going to give him the crutches, but then I pull them back. He’s still standing on one foot. “It’s great to see you up on two feet. Mostly.” And even though I have absolutely no right to anything so private, I say, “You never did tell me the prognosis.”

He looks down at his knee. His thigh muscles are on full display through the joggers. I bet those same muscles are burning, holding that pose for so long. “Rehab.”

“No surgery?”

“Nope. Just a mild sprain.”

My relief is a full body thing, but I won’t let him see it. I exhale slowly, and my permanently tense muscles relax more than any massage could cause.

“How lucky for you! Everything’s always coming up Sonny,” I say too brightly. I must sound like an insane person, because Sonny looks at me and then bursts out laughing.

“Something’s different about you, Parker Jane. I like it.”

And my scowl’s back.

I hand him the crutches and start walking.

I walk the final ten steps to the door of the lobby and stop when I see my reflection in the glass.

I.

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