Page 28 of A Simple Love

“Mike…”

“No, tell me, please! I’m having a hard time believing you feel for him even an ounce of what you feel for me.”

“It’s not that simple!” She shouts, standing to confront me head on now.

“Yes, it is! You and I, together… it is that simple, Vic. We,” I gesture between us with my hand, “Are meant to be!”

She stands there, watching the tick in my jaw, the clench of my fists, and the rise and fall of my chest. I know she doesn’t deserve this anger, but I can’t understand why she’s even entertaining the idea of Ben when I know what she feels for me.

“I think you should go.”

“What?”

“You need to calm down and walk away before we both say something we’ll regret.” She turns to walk towards the door, opening it in an invitation for me to leave.

“Vic, I’m sorry….”

“Just leave, Mike,” she interrupts me, my head falling between my slumped shoulders as I make my way out of her classroom.

“I’m sorry, Vic,” I declare once more, watching her face for some sort of reaction that I didn’t just ruin everything that I’ve been working towards for the last two months. Why did I let the green-eyed monster out of his cage? Why couldn’t I just enjoy the moment when Victoria was beneath me and all was right in the world? Oh, I know. Because I secretly wonder if she’ll be under him next.

“Thank you for the desk, Mike,” she says, and then slams the door in my face.

Chapter 17

Victoria

“Hayley, you look so gorgeous,” I whisper through my tears, admiring one of my best friends completely adorned in her wedding dress, white lace clinging to her body and delicate baby’s breath encircling her head.

“Thank you, Vic. But you need to stop crying, otherwise, all the time spent to make me look like this will have gone to waste,” she teases, dabbing beneath her eyes with a tissue.

“You two both look amazing. I, on the other hand, look like a giant tomato!” Pauline stands in front of a full-length mirror in the white tent constructed at Mrs. Hanson’s pond, wearing a bright red bridesmaid’s dress.

Tyler and Hayley are getting married today, the Sunday before Labor Day, at our town’s annual celebration down at Mrs. Hanson’s pond. Tyler proposed to Hayley last year on this day, so they wanted to keep things simple and make it their wedding anniversary as well. The celebration is patriotic themed, of course, so Hayley opted to change no details besides having their closest friends stand beside them as they recited their vows to one another. When these plans were made originally though, Pauline didn’t anticipate being nine months pregnant for this moment.

“Oh, Pauline… stop. You look radiant! You’re glowing. You’re…”

“HUGE!” she shouts, cutting me off. “I’m a fucking whale, and I’m so uncomfortable, and….” Tears are streaking down her face now, but not out of admiration for our friend. No, these are tears of frustration and utter defeat.

Hayley and I both wrap our arms around her, consoling her while she has her moment, and then she pulls herself together in her usual Pauline-like manner.

“Ok, I’m sorry, Hales,” she musters after a deep breath and wipes her eyes. “Today is about you, not me. Let’s get you married!”

Hayley tilts her head, giving Pauline a sincere smile. “It’s okay, Pauline. It will all be over soon enough, and you’ll have that baby boy in your arms finally. Now,” she bounces up and down with the biggest grin on her face. “Let’s get this show on the road, ladies! I’m getting married today!”

We finish our last-minute touches, reapplying make-up we’ve cried off, securing hairstyles with bobby pins, and clasping delicate necklaces and bracelets on our throats and wrists. The entire town has gathered at the pond this evening and is patiently waiting for the ceremony to begin. The girls and I are hiding out in the white tent rented for the occasion, shielded from the crowd before it’s time to make the fateful walk down the aisle. My body is on high alert, the nerves I’m feeling having nothing to do with standing up on display next to my friend while she declares her love for her man. No, the anxiety has everything to do with the fact that I must walk down the aisle with Mike today, whom I haven’t seen in almost a month.

After Mike left my classroom that day back in August, I’ve been avoiding both him and Ben. The image of the two of them in a standoff that morning, watching each other with such intensity, made me realize that this idea of dating them both was equivalent to me playing with fire, and someone would definitely get burned. I don’t know what I was thinking or who I thought I was that I could honestly date two men at the same time and be okay with it. My stomach has been in knots for the past three months, ever since that fateful night when I agreed to this charade. Until I could decide what I wanted to do or what I knew I needed to do, I figured it was best to just focus on my career I fought so hard for. So I immersed myself in work, attended all of my training, and finished decorating my classroom before school started this coming Wednesday, doing anything I could to keep myself busy and my mind off the mess that my love life had become.

But every time I looked at the desk in my classroom that Mike built me and ran my hands over the hand-crafted wood, I saw flashes of him hovering over me, kissing me wildly with such passion that I felt like I would combust. Then the heat was quickly extinguished by the reminder of our fiery argument in which he declared his frustration with the Ben situation and confronted me about my feelings for him, feelings that I know I can no longer deny.

The truth is, I completely understood where he was coming from. Seeing Ben kiss me couldn’t have been easy, but I couldn’t control that. Ben acted of his own accord. And Mike was very understanding when I prevented our physical encounter from going further. But the rage I saw on his face was alarming and a wake-up call that real feelings were involved and someone was bound to get hurt.

Ben reached out to me to hang out again, but I came up with any excuse I could to avoid it. And Mike had text me a few times in the weeks since then, checking in on me and communicating about Tyler and Hayley’s wedding, since he was one of the groomsmen. But other than that, we haven’t spoken or seen each other since. Of course, with today being the wedding, that time out had ended.

No matter how much I deny it or how hard I’ve fought it, I know Ben will never make me feel the way Mike does. I know that Mike is the one for me, but I’m so scared. I’m terrified to let him all the way in, fearful he will let me down again, or make me fall for him so deeply, I may never escape the hold he has on me if things between us didn’t work out. I still need an answer from him to why he stood me up five years ago. But besides that, I definitely feel that a discussion is necessary to decide how we move forward from here. Not only do I need to talk to Mike, but I need to end things with Ben completely as well. God, what a mess I’ve created.

“Knock, knock,” Dean announces his arrival as he pushes open the flap of the tent that’s masquerading as a door. Stepping fully into the room, he takes in the three of us, mostly admiring Pauline, before Mike cautiously follows behind him. My heart pauses in my chest at the sight of him, before thumping so hard in the next beat that I feel like I’m about to topple over. The navy blue suit clinging perfectly to his body is an anomaly in his appearance, a vision I am more than willing to appreciate in its entirety. Mike’s hair is slicked back identically to his brothers, his clean-shaven jaw so strong under his silent gaze, deadpanned on me. You can hear the crackling of the kindling burning between us, loud enough that everyone else in the room isn’t even speaking while our stare down continues.

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