Page 8 of Knockin' Boats
“Nothing. I don’t know. He was mad that my party was rowdy, as if I could control that.”
“Uh-huh. That’s all?”
“Well…” I removed the onions and mushrooms from the burner and slathered the bread with butter.
“There’s more you’re not telling me,” she guessed.
I didn’t know how she always did that. I never could get shit past Mel. Probably just one of a hundred things that had doomed us as a couple. The first one being that I’d started dating her for all the wrong reasons.
“A drunk woman kissed me,” I muttered. “Right there while he was watching.”
“Oh, geez, Ash.”
“He acted like I liked it, and well, I guess I acted like that too, because what else could I do?”
“Tell the bitch to keep her mouth to herself?”
I grimaced. “That’s not theDreamBoatway.”
“Stop parroting your creep of a stepdad. Kissing strangers is notyourway. That’s all that matters.”
“I guess.”
“You could tell Sawyer the truth, you know?”
“About what?” I focused on layering a piece of gruyere over the swiss, both pieces of cheese draped over the mushroom and onion filling, all of it ready to melt into a delicious gooey mess.
If only my mess with Sawyer could be so appetizing.
“About why it all happened.Howit happened.”
I scoffed. “As if he would listen now. It’s way too late.”
His scowl from earlier tonight flickered through my mind. The chestnut hair that had escaped his hat and curled over his forehead. Those dark, glaring eyes.
How I’d love to wipe that expression off his face. To just make himseeme.
Not the guy he’d written off as a backstabber, but the one who’d learned to ride bikes, drive boats, and surf wake with him.
The one who’d spent so much time at his house that his mom had called me one of her boys.
But he didn’t see that. Not anymore.
“It’s never going to get better until you two have an actual grown-up conversation,” Mel said.
“Don’t count on it.”
She huffed an exasperated laugh. “Men are idiots.”
“We really are.”
I turned off the burner to remove my dripping grilled cheese in favor of starting the next. This one wouldn’t require as much prep work, and since my fucking blackberries were gone, I wouldn’t be making the third.
I slid the finished sandwich onto a plate and got the next piece of bread grilling, mouth watering at how damn good it smelled.
“I wish you could both just let it go,” she said.
“I know, but it’s not that simple.”
