Page 31 of Those Heartbreak Scars

“I bet you don’t,” she says. “I have a feeling about this one.”

I have a feeling spending any more time with Gray is a bad idea.

Chapter Twelve

Gray

I study the shelf of old volumes in front of me. Some of them America already has. I see their spines in her bookshelves in the dorm at U of C clearly in my mind. She never opened her rare books. She learns language by ear in a way that feels like a magic trick, but those books were her most treasured possessions. I’m betting they still are.

There has to be at least one that she doesn’t have yet, surely.

“Is there something in particular you’re looking for?” The storekeeper is a sweet, older lady with her spectacles hanging on a gold chain around her neck and hair whiter than snow. “Perhaps I can help.”

“I’m hoping to find something for my friend.” I turn away from the shelf as someone comes into the shop. The man glances around as if looking for someone then disappears behind the same bookshelf we’re studying. For a second I’d expected it to be America.

The book idea is a way of apologizing for my screwing up again.

Or perhaps I just want an excuse to see her again.

“Sorry, what?” I ask the woman when she appears to be waiting for a response. These thoughts about America need to get out of my brain. We’re friends. I want to be there for her. I want to protect her from people like that professor. And Mann.

I’ve done my due diligence. Everett Mann is the kind of player All-Star wants to sign. All the talk around him and every articleabout him tells me he’s a good athlete with no drug or alcohol dependencies. He’s also a player off the soccer field.

As an agent that doesn’t bother me. As America’s friend it does.

Because I want her.

No, I want the way she makes me feel. The way she pushes Indy out of my head. It’s not the same thing at all. Any pussy could do that. It absolutely shouldn’t be America’s.

It’s the weekend. Perhaps I can talk Mann into going out with me. Schmooze him a little more while I find someone to fuck who isn’t America. I don’t have to like the guy to work with him. Or to keep him away from her. And if he happens to prove that he’s the player I think he is, I can handle it without him hurting her.

“Is there a particular language they’re interested in?”

“Latin.” She loves to hate it. Complains about how important it is historically, and how bad she is at it.

“You could try this one.” The woman carefully starts to pull a book from the shelf.

“She has that one. Actually, she has most of these.”

We spend another ten minutes trying to find a book that I don’t think she owns. Until the man who entered earlier suggests a book that he was going to buy for a girl he was seeing who also has a love-hate relationship with archaic Latin.

He leaves while the storekeeper wraps the special edition carefully in tissue paper.

While I tap my card, she puts the gift in a bag for me. “I hope she likes it.”

“Me too.” I have to get her to talk to me first, and since she doesn’t answer my calls or messages, and she isn’t at work—I stopped in and grabbed a coffee before I came here—that seems improbable anytime soon. But I’m hopeful.

A little too hopeful.

I’ll give her the rest of the weekend to cool down and then I’ll show up at the coffee shop every day until I catch her during a shift. Like a stalker. Great. But what else can I do?

I can’t ask EJ where she lives without having to revisit that awful conversation we had that morning in Positano.

I’m no longer on speaking terms with anyone else in the Jones family. It’s too difficult talking to them since Indy ended us. It doesn’t matter that EJ’s mom and dad were more like parents to me, when my actual parents didn’t even notice whether I came home after school. They were too busy fighting and fucking each other over.

And as much as I would love to rub the fact that I’m not pining over her in Indy’s face—even though thinking about her still hurts like a bitch—I can’t throw America under the bus like that. Especially when it would be a lie. When the real reason the idea of calling Indy crossed my mind is because I want to hear that she regrets what she did. That she misses me as much as I miss her.

Does she ever wake up next to him and think about waking up with me? The way I still wake up thinking about all the mornings we made love before the alarm clock went off. Is she joined by my ghost every morning over coffee and toast? Does she smell my body wash when she climbs out of the shower?

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