Page 45 of Still the One

“Maybe she wanted to hit a nerve so you would do something. So you don’t just sit back and accept that it’s all over between you and Mac,” Charles offers.

“This is why I should talk to Mac,” Alan says. “Feel her out. Find out what she really wants.” He puts his hand on mine. “But I’ll only meddle with your blessing.”

“Do it,” I say, because that chat with Sandra made me change my mind about giving up hope. “Please.”

“I’m on it, darling.” Alan squeezes my hand. “Meanwhile, start thinking of ways you can win her back.”

I huff out some air. “How do you win someone back who can’t trust you?”

“You’ll find a way,” Alan echoes Sandra’s words.

Yeah right.

Chapter 25

Mac

“How did you feel when you were with Jamie?” Leila asks. “Not in the moments of doubt, but when you were intimate. When she was lying in your arms.”

“I don’t want to think about that anymore.” Truth be told, I was expecting a touch more understanding from my friend, not this unpleasant interrogation she’s subjecting me to.

“You should, Mac. Trust me.”

“It was always a confusing mix of emotions,” I lie, because when I was in bed with Jamie, for brief pockets of time, I could forget about our past. When I looked into her eyes while we were making love, I could forget she ever hurt me. When she pushed inside of me, I wanted to keep her in my bed forever. “Our past was always hanging over us.”

“I have trouble believing that because if that were really the case, you wouldn’t have kept sleeping with her for so long.”

“Fine. On very rare occasions, it made my heart sing.” My poor old heart that she bruised black and blue. “Every so often, when I was with Jamie, it felt like my soul found some new sparkle again. An effervescence that I haven’t felt since she left me.”

“That’s what I thought,” Leila says. She tops up our wine glasses. “Don’t you want more of that?”

“That only happened when we were in bed together. It made her extra hard to resist, because who wouldn’t want to feel that again?”

“The way I see it.” Leila pins her gaze on me. “Is that perhaps instead of just your legs, you should also open your heart a bit more to Jamie.”

“Excuse me?” My eyes widen. “Did you really just say that?”

Leila just shrugs, as though she just imparted the world’s greatest wisdom.

“For the record, I’ve stopped, um, opening my legs to her.”

“How foolish is that? Do you know how rare it is what you and Jamie have? To feel that way about another person? And you’re walking away from that?” Leila shakes her head. “Just because you can’t get over yourself?”

“People have walked away from a great love for far lesser reasons.”

“I know what I’m talking about, Mac. I never believed in all that bullshit about ‘the one’ and whatnot. About this person who comes along and sets the world as you know it on fire. In fact, even saying it now, speaking these words out loud, makes me cringe a little, but I can’t ignore that it happened to me when I met Izzy. After the past few weeks, there’s no doubt in my mind that Jamie is that person for you.”

I somehow manage not to roll my eyes. “Being ‘the one’ clearly doesn’t mean she can’t break my heart. And it most certainly doesn’t absolve her from hurting me.”

“She made a mistake. An enormous one, granted. But you’re both here, your hearts and your love relatively intact. You have something to work with, but only if you want to.”

“I don’t remember asking you here for a lecture.” I arch my eyebrows. “I was hoping for a good bottle of wine, commiseration, and bottomless understanding.”

“I understand where you’re coming from—that place of hurt that still has such a hold on you—but Jamie’s not just anyone.”

“You weren’t just anyone when we were together.” I must be desperate if I’m raking up our sad old love story. “You were a completely trustworthy person, yet I didn’t manage to trust you and I screwed up our relationship. If I can’t trust someone like you, how can I possibly trust Jamie? Who has already proven to me how untrustworthy she is?”

“Was, Mac. Was. That was twenty years ago.”

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