Page 30 of Forever & Always You
“You never hit the clubs? How about dating?” Austin asks, repeating my questions with a teasing smirk.
“Sometimes, but the clubs are full of Duke students who are way too young for me,” I say, heaving a nonchalant sigh, “and all of the suitable Duke alumni I’d actually be interested in have already left town, so I’m left with college freshmen trying to grow facial hair or middle-aged Durham locals. It’s slim pickings up there. Oh, you wanna hear my latest dating nightmare? It involves a man with a blatant foot fetish.” I toss the remainder of my egg roll in my mouth and pause mid-bite when Austin’s smile falters. “What?”
“I’ve realized I’d rather not hear about your dating life.”
“But we’re trying to be friends again,” I say, pouting. “Friends talk about these things.”
Austin pulls his plate back and pokes casually at some duck, briefly glancing up at me. “So you’ll be perfectly happy to hear me talk about the couple of times I spent the night with Sasha? That wouldn’t bother you?”
It takes everything in me to maintain my easy expression, to not even so much as blink in surprise as my stomach plummets. Not only does Sasha get Austin’s forgiveness so easily, she also gets him in bed. And that makes me irrationally envious.
“Nope. Doesn’t bother me.” The words taste metallic on my tongue.
“You’re a terrible liar, Gabby.”
Quite frankly, keeping my features this aligned hurts, so I immediately give up my carefree act and hunch forward, elbows on the table. “You’re right. Let’s not talk about our dating lives.”
“See, it’s too weird.”
“Yeah. Too weird,” I agree. But it’s not weird at all. It’s raging fucking jealousy, and it’s making me feel sick. I frown at the dent I’ve barely made in my plate of food, because at this point I’ve lost my appetite.
“Yeah, you’re really demolishing that plate,” Austin comments after a while, and I can’t even appreciate how sexy histeasing smiles are, because now I’m lost inside the depths of my chaotic mind and wondering whyhethinks it’s weird to share our dating history. Weird because he’s known me all my life, or weird because the thought of me with someone else makes him uncomfortably jealous too?
And that’s all it takes to send me spiraling again, my thoughts chasing each other in endless circles as I ruminate over Austin and whathismind is doing.
If I don’t say something now, I won’t be able to sleep.
“Okay, listen,” I say, clearing my throat. My earnest tone catches Austin off guard, because a flicker of confusion travels across his features before he straightens his shoulders and offers me his full attention. “At the risk of embarrassing myself to the point where I’ll probably avoid making eye contact with you for the rest of the weekend, there’s something I need to ask. If I don’t, I’ll overthink myself to death and end up as an anxious wreck, and I’m not on my A-game with my sarcasm when I’m anxious. I’m probably way off the mark, and maybe it’s just my ego thinking too highly of myself, but—”
“Christ, Gabby, spit it out.”
His interruption is met with a scathing glare. “YouknowI ramble on when I’m nervous.”
“Why are you nervous?”
“Will you shut up and listen?” I run my hands down my face and take a deep breath. My eyes find Austin’s, curious and waiting, and part of me doesn’t even want to ask the question in fear of the answer. “We were best friends .?.?. but did you ever like me more than that?”
Silence pulses between us while I hold my breath and instantly wish I could cram the words back in my mouth. Austin’s lips twitch with the threat of a smile. He’s holding back laughter.
The embarrassment scorches my face. “Can I retract thequestion?”
“It’s not really a question when you already know the answer,” he finally says.
“But Idon’tknow the answer. Hence I asked.”
That laughter he’s been fighting finally breaks free, filling every crevice of the house until I’m pretty certain it’ll haunt me when I’m lying wide awake tonight at 2 a.m. replaying this conversation over and over again. “Gabby, seriously? You didn’t know? You think I followed you around obsessively because you were my friend? You think I left gifts on your front step for the hell of it? You think I asked you to prom as yourfriend? I had the biggest fucking crush on you.”
My lips part and air gradually seeps back into my lungs. “You did?”
“C’mon, Gabby,” Austin says, shaking his head in amused disbelief. “You were always top of the class with your grades, yet you couldn’t figurethatout?”
“I just .?.?. I didn’t see it back then. Only now in hindsight,” I explain, then add, “I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not like things would have been different,” he says. “I never stood a chance with you anyway, and we were kids, Gabby. All I missed out on was some high school romance that would have lasted approximately two months and then ended with us dramatically breaking up during lunch in front of everyone in the cafeteria. Trust me, I’m over it.”
I drop my gaze to my plate, poking at some chicken. The way I hurt Austin seems a thousand times worse now that I know he had deeper feelings for me than just those of a close friend. No wonder my betrayal cut him so deep. But he’s also right, because thingswouldn’thave been different had I known. My mother wouldn’t let him step one foot in the house and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone thinking we were friends—there’s no way I’d have dated him. It makes sense now why he put up with theawful way I treated him for so long.
“What’s going through your mind, Gabby?”
