Page 74 of Bending The Rules

She smiled. “For anything you want, Jay.”

Jason gave her a look that was so filled with love it mademythroat feel tight. “So is that a yes? You’ll marry me?”

“No,” Reese said, dropping to her knees in front of him, so she was on his level. “It’s ahellyes.”

As I watched my baby brother put a ring on, and then kiss and embrace his new fiancée, my thoughts led straight to Toni. What she was doing, who she was with… thoughts of if some day…

Damn.

I’d spent all this time trying to figure out if I should be open to the possibility of something more than friends with Toni… but maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg. Because now that I was more than willing – now that Iwantedthat… it seemed like I had a more pressing question to ask myself.

Have I fallen in love with my best friend?

Thirteen

I curled my lip at my empty wine glass, and then reached for the bottle, pouring the last of it. I shouldn’t be drinking so much, and I knew it, but… how the hell else was I supposed to make this decision?

My business in Lagos had gone fine. It had gone great, actually. Janelle met me, and together we talked with what I hoped would be a new author on our roster. Good food, good conversation, and – potentially – a valuable addition to our Scattered Seeds family made the day a success.

Having an old fling who lived here reach out to me once he heard I was in town made it… something else. He invited me out for drinks, but we both knew what that actually meant. Whenever we found ourselves near each other, we had “drinks” that left me with wobbly legs, a clear head, and a sated sexual appetite.

When he asked me this time, I said yes.

I showered, and epilated, and perfumed, and then… I canceled.

For the whole two days I was there, I wore a smile I didn’t feel. The more I settled into the change in dynamic between me and Justin, the more devastated about it I became. I’d gone from happy and relieved to having my friend back, to wondering if our friendship could survive the fact that he’d… kinda broken my heart.

Again.

It was enough to send anybody reeling, I would think.

But I knew sex with a foreign fling wasn’t the cure for what ailed me – time was. And along with time… honesty. There were conversations I needed to have, instead of talking around them, hoping for the best. That wasn’t really up for debate.

The question was, did I need to have these conversations face to face?

So I was drinking my way through it.

Drinking and crying while I sat in front of my laptop, waffling back and forth over the decision to press the “buy” button on a one-way ticket back home, or a round-trip to take me back there for a few days, and then… anywhere else.

Or, just straight to somewhere else.

No trip home at all.

I could talk to my mother over the phone, and tell her everything I’d been holding on to. I could even make the decision to set up the Scattered Seeds home office there – my presence, for now, wouldn’t even be necessary. Janelle was more than qualified to choose a space. I didn’t have to show my face at all.

And Justin… had made his choice. I wasn’t even sure that conversation was necessary.

There you go again, Toni. Being a coward.

“Or protecting myself,” I said out loud. And maybe that was the same thing as being a coward, but I really wasn’t that interested in having another rejection shoved in my face.

I closed the open windows in my web browser that had tickets that would take me back home. My last open window had a ticket in the shopping cart that would take me from Lagos to London, where I had a meeting in a few weeks anyway. I moved the mouse to the “checkout” button. It wouldn’t be a big deal to just stay there until my meeting. I could find a decent hotel, and conduct business from there.

Just like always.

In my lap, my phone buzzed, and I picked it up, frowning at the screen.

“Hey… you doing all right over there in Nigeria? – LL Cool J”

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