Page 2 of Known By You
She chewed the giant bite of burger she’d taken while I was speaking, so I did the same.Glorious.Europe had a lot of delicious food, but I deeply missed a few Americanclassics, one of which was a greasy diner cheeseburger with American cheese. The other was Mexican food, which tended to be in the “good try” to “truly abysmal” range where I’d been, and I’d already helped myself to takeout from Guac for dinner last night.
“Mmkay, first, awkward to refer to our step-brother by his full name. Second, this begs at least five follow-up questions, not the least of which is ‘why would you go to work for Bruce and Wilder when you’re supposed to be sabbatical-ing’ but most important is—are you going to say anything about Kenny?”
She made a ridiculous face like she was begging me, eyes big—another throwback to when she tried to manipulate me with her cuteness.
There was no escaping this. I might as well execute. “He appeared very surprised to see me. Just like he did last summer. We didn’t speak. By the time a few others had finished welcoming me, he’d disappeared.”
Her dark brown eyes, the same color as mine, grew large. “Reeeeeeaaalllllllllly?”
I rolled my matching set. “Yeeeeesssss.”
The glare I received was nothing short of sisterly, but she spoke even as she rolled hers right back at me. “Okay, Lizzy, and are you ever going to tell me the deal there? I mean like… did you guys…”
She left off as though I’d fill in the blank with something salacious she could write about in her next novel. “What do you expect me to say?”
She chucked a fry at my plate as though it was a punishment. Foolish move—I would devour every fry in front of me and now I had a bonus fry.Sucker.
“Maybe that you dated? Hung out? Are secretly lovers and have been all along? That he’s pregnant with your babyand you’ve come back to be his baby mama?Literally anythingwill tell me more than what I know, which is that he whispered your name in a shocked kind of awe that saidthings,but I don’t know what, and I’m left chomping at the bit for more.”
With a cough, I almost spewed my recent bite of burger at her, but saved myself, and her, in a heroic effort before recovering. I guzzled the water Catherine had stealthily refilled, then glared at Jo. “You really shouldn’t say stuff like that out loud. If this is like any small town I’ve read about, the fact that Kenny is somehow pregnant with my baby will be in the paper tomorrow.”
She cackled. “Adorable. And this must mean you’ve been reading from the list I made you.”
I scowled. She’d made me a list of romance novels when I had mentioned finishing all of hers in a few weeks, after I found out she was romance author Josie Wade. And yes. I had been. And no, I wasn’t proud of it, but then I also wasn’t proud of that attitude because I didn’t like the idea anyone would feel ashamed to read one of Jojo’s books, so why should I feel bad reading anyone else’s?
I shouldn’t.
Didn’t mean I needed to give her the satisfaction, though.
“Maybe. My point is, what happened between me and Kenny was just shy of nothing.”
She let out a “ha!” and slapped the table. “That means there wassomething.”
Shifting my focus to my now-cold coffee, I drank deep. It was coming on eight p.m. in the time zone I came from though just early afternoon here, and though I’d slept decently well last night, even made it all the way to three-thirty this morning before my first waking, I’d need the caffeine.
“We had a joint operation with the EMU a few years ago. Kenny was on the team we worked with. That’s all.” Mostly all.
And I wasn’t going to say anything else, or I knew what she’d say.
She’d bust out her romance writer brain and figure out a way to throw us together.
He didn’t want that, I didn’t need it… we were fine like this. Let him avoid me and I could give him space and we’d never have to face the awkward reality.
Truth was, ithadbeen nothing. He’d been this gorgeous man-boy on a team of grown men and he’d asked me out. He’d been nice about it, not slimy, but I had… well, I’d laughed. Because he’d seemed soyoung.I wasn’t certain of the age difference between us, but he’d been this hot, cocky young spec ops soldier and I already felt like a grizzled creature at the ripe age of thirty.
So when hotshot jokester Barbie had approached, I’d laughed, taken the compliment, and that was the story.
Had he been the kind of attractive that felt unrealistic? Yes. Had I thought, “Maybe in my dreams”? Sure. And had I known that under no circumstances would I get involved with someone like him because my job was my first priority?
Yes, I did.
So I’d brushed it off, and I was certain he had, too. The coincidence of us meeting againever,let alone here in this tiny town where my sister and dad had made their lives, only contributed to the surreality of living here.
Stepping on the plane to the US with no return ticket had felt odd enough. Arriving here and moving into an apartment instead of the inn or hotel had been another levelof weird. Sitting across from my heart-eyed sister and talking about a man I barely knew who was now my coworker as though it factored into my life in any way? If I found out I was on the set of some alternate-universe reality TV show, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It all just felt so completely unreal.
One more facet of this time that made it all seem like I’d stepped between worlds: I no longer lived the life I’d chosen in the job I had. Right now, I couldn’t go back to it—wouldn’t know when until they told me. I was stuck in this purgatory, though so far, it was largely without punishmentoranticipation. It was simply… in between.
I had the sense that I’d exit this version of life when I returned to work, but for now, I was wandering around in the dark. And as much as I regretted to admit it, I hated feeling lost.
