Page 16 of Until I Found You
Seven
Halle
“I’ll have what she’s having!” Brea shouts over the music, as she slides onto the barstool next to me.
“Hey.” She smiles, bumping shoulders with me.
I look over at her, giving her the smile that matches the look I imagine I have on my face.
“Why so gloomy, pretty girl?”
“I just never expected it would be so hard to see him again. I’ve spent all this time wishing I could see him, wishing he were home. Now that he’s here, I’m reminded of how much everything has changed between us. It almost makes me wish he weren’t here again. At least I didn’t have to worry about it being thrown in my face over and over, ya know?”
Things weren’t always so easy for her and Mason. If there is anyone who can relate to how I’m feeling, it’s her. Despite them being best friends before they started dating, there was a time when she felt like his past was thrown in her face too.
“Oh, I know alright,” she says, as the bartender sets the shot glass in front of her and fills it with Jack Daniel’s.
“I’ll have another,” I mutter. I need to call it quits after this one. Drowning my sorrows in liquor won’t do me any good. If anything, it’ll loosen the seal I have on my lips, which only gets me in trouble.
We toss them back together, as I slide the empty glass across the bar to where Danny stands.
“I understand why Kinsley planned this trip. It’s perfect for Callum and Ellie, but I hate the idea of spending the weekend with Graham in the city he took off to when life got too hard for him. So hard he decided I wasn’t worth the effort anymore, so he was going to throw in the towel on us too.”
Getting it off my chest to someone feels good. Therapeutic almost. I’ve been putting on a smile for everyone around me. They have enough of their own shit. The last thing I need to do is burden them with my baggage from five years ago.
“It was hard enough thinking about who he was with and what he was doing when he was in Chicago. Now he’s back here, looking like a damn G.I. Joe, throwing it in my face how sexy he looks. I can only imagine all the women he had throwing themselves at him.”
Groaning, I rub my hand over my forehead. That last shot was probably not a good idea.
“Is that really what you’re worried about?” she asks.
Rolling my head to the side, I see the smile she’s working to cover. Narrowing my eyes at her, I imagine as if I’m shooting daggers at her right now.
“There’s nothing funny about being sexually frustrated. Not all of us get to live with our smoking hot boyfriends, Brea. You have the freshly fucked glow about you, so don’t look at me like you find my misery funny.”
The smile falls from her face, knowing I just called her out. I throw my head back laughing.
“It wasn’t like that, you know,” she says, as my laughs stop.
I’m not sure if she’s talking about her and Mason, or Graham.
“What do you mean?”
“Graham. It wasn’t like that. Well, not entirely. There were women who noticed him, but it’s hard not to.”
Yeah, not at all what I wanted to hear.
“He wasn’t interested. I never quite understood why he was so closed off and never giving them the time of day. Not until I met you.”
Looking down at the solid oak of the bar, I clasp my hands together and twirl my thumbs in circles around each other.
“He meant everything to me. Everything. Until he wasn’t anymore. Until he was gone, and he took my heart with him.”
Tears fill my eyes, but I do my best to blink them away. Now is not the time to get all emotional. Not when he’s standing ten feet away from me.
“Sorry,” I mumble to Brea. “I just need to stop thinking about it.”
“I understand,” she says, running her arm over my shoulder, wrapping me in a side hug.
