Page 30 of Still the One

“I don’t know what Mac wants other than to, at all costs, always protect her fragile little heart. But I do know she’s not the type to just sleep with anyone. It stunned me that she slept with you.”

I inhale deeply, then slowly let the air escape between my lips. “I hurt her so badly. It’s normal that she can’t act natural around me, even after all this time. As for her sleeping with me, which she initiated, by the way, because I wouldn’t dream of making a move on Mac like that… I’m desperate for it to be something more than it was, although I don’t know exactly what it was either. But, um, yeah, I don’t know.” I’m rambling now. “I don’t think Mac knows either. We have all this pain between us and it’s still so much bigger, so much more powerful, than the love we had, or the memory of that. But maybe, just for that one night in Maui, Mac let go of her pain.”

“Maybe,” Leila says.

No wonder I’m babbling. I haven’t had a conversation like this about Mac in a long time. Add in all the feelings that being with her have stirred up, it’s a miracle I’m able to string a semi-coherent sentence together at all.

“What if you and her had a long overdue conversation? To get it all out into the open?” Leila asks.

“Again, Mac’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to rake up the past.”

“Just like she made it clear she didn’t want to see you again, yet here you are?” Leila has a point, but she also hasn’t. She had to nudge Mac for me to be here. I lost the right to nudge Mac into anything a long time ago. “When it comes to you, Jamie, she’s the champion of saying one thing, but wanting—and doing—the opposite.”

“I’ll, um, do my best,” I say, because I would love for Mac and I to have a difficult but necessary conversation. We can’t go back in time and say the things we needed to say then, but we can still say something now.

“So will I. For Mac’s sake,” Leila says, reminding me where her loyalty lies.

Chapter 17

Mac

“Do we have to talk about this?” I give Leila a look, but she’s either too tipsy to interpret it correctly, or she’s willfully ignoring me—both are possible.

“If Izzy can take it, so can you.” Leila winks at me. Earlier, she and Jamie disappeared onto the roof for a while. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. I’ll ask Leila about it the first chance I get, when we’re alone.

“I can take it,” Izzy confirms. She leans her head against Leila’s shoulder for a moment. “It was a real meet-cute moment, very much the opposite of when Leila and I met.”

“It was a proper eyes-meeting-in-the-mirror kind of moment,” Leila says. “We were in the studio makeup room. I was getting my makeup removed and Mac was getting hers applied. I was already in the chair when she walked in. I knew who she was, and I tried to make eye contact in the mirror. I hadn’t expected Mac’s gaze to linger like that, though. It was like… eye foreplay.”

This happened a long time ago and this story doesn’t really mean anything anymore, apart from the fact that Leila is very fond of telling it. I’ve heard her repeat it so many times over the years, but Jamie’s hearing it for the first time, and she’s sitting right next to me. Her presence in my home has been unsettling. It’s like she doesn’t belong here, in the life I made for myself after her.

“You make it sound as though we jumped into bed that very evening, after a couple of glances in the mirror.” I shake my head. For some reason, I don’t want Jamie to think that I would do that—that I’d hop into bed with someone mere hours after meeting them.

“For the record, we didn’t,” Leila says. “But I hung around the studio until Mac was done and then I asked her out. The rest is history.”

“How long were you together?” Charles asks.

“Who wants more coffee?” I say. Turns out I can’t do this. Not with Jamie sitting so close to me, I swear I can feel her body heat. I’m so aware of her, of her every move, that it throws me off. It has thrown me off all night. I might have been able to put our history aside in Maui, because I was far away from home and I was there for Sandra most of all, but Jamie’s not my friend. She’s not like Alan, whom it’s easy enough to welcome back into my life. Alan’s entertaining and fun. Jamie just gets under my skin in all the wrong ways.

I get up. “Does anyone need anything from the kitchen?” I’ve barely lifted a finger all night and the irony’s not lost on me that I would now suddenly start acting like the prefect host.

“No thank you, Mac,” Alan says. “But every dish you prepared for us was sheer perfection.”

I crumble up my napkin and throw it in his direction.

“Aw!” he shouts dramatically. “I’m a gravely injured man.” He holds up his hand with the broken pinkie finger.

“I think you’ll live, darling,” Izzy says to Alan, and he melts into a puddle. “Give me your hand.”

Alan offers her his hand. Izzy pretends to kiss the tip of his broken finger.

“There. All better.”

This entire evening is so strange. I’ve enjoyed being witness to Alan meeting his idol, but it would have been less stressful, and more fun, if Jamie hadn’t been here. I’ve tried, but I can’t relax around her. I can’t sit next to her all evening and pretend we’re good. It’s not an option, because we’re not and we never will be.

It would also be easier if she wasn’t so damn attractive. Why does my body still react to her like this? I don’t get it. And I don’t want to know. Maui was a fluke. A consequence of the circumstances. I managed to pull myself together while I was still there, under the spell of the island. I made my decision. I told her, in all honesty, that I didn’t want to see her again. So how come she’s sitting in my house less than two weeks later? How did this happen? When did I lose control of my senses again and agree to this?

I’m still standing, looking as ridiculous as I feel. As ridiculous as Jamie made me feel twenty years ago. She didn’t just break my heart. She also made a fool of me and of our love, of all the beautiful things we had between us.

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