Page 3 of Abduction
Maybe it was his way of ensuring I would never go delving for more than he wanted to give me. His way of making sure I didn’t dare look any deeper into what was going on when he was out of the house.
I just wanted to know one way or another. Because right now, it felt like I was losing my mind, unable to work out what was real and what was just my insane brain coming up with stories to hurt my damn feelings.
Maybe I needed to let it go. Let go of the doubt and the fear. It was normal to second-guess things a bit when you were planning a wedding, right? It would be strange if I just dropped myself into it without any doubts at all...
I realized I was picking at my nails beneath the table and clenched my hands together. I always felt like such a mess when I was stressed, my mind racing in a million different directions at once.
“You’re probably just getting distracted because of the exams,” she reminded me. “Maybe you’re just putting some of the stress of that on to him?”
I nodded. I wanted there to be a good reason for it, of course I did, I wanted there to be something I could use to explain the doubt stirring in my guts whenever we were together, but I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. I just needed to put up with the uncertainty for now and hope I was able to put it right some way down the line.
“Besides, you’ve seen how shitty it is being single, right?” she reminded me, smiling playfully. She had been single for pretty much the whole time I’d known her, and I’d heard all of her stories about how bad the dating scene was right now. I didn’t much feel like stepping back out on to it. Maybe it was just safer to push down the doubts in my guts and remind myself he’d done nothing to earn this kind of suspicion from me.
“I mean, look at them,” she told me, nodding toward the bar, where a few girls were hanging on the arms of the guys they were with. They were focusing all their attention on these men, laughing a little too loudly at their jokes and gazing at them as though they were the most fascinating creatures in the world. I was sure they were, if you had enough booze in you, but they didn’t much appeal to me.
“You really want to have to do that to find someone to share a bed with?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, and I managed to laugh.
“Yeah, I guess you have a point,” I agreed. Aaron had been the one to court me, to come after me and show me in all the ways he could that he wanted to be with me, and honestly, I didn’t much know how I would go about it if that wasn’t the case. I had never had to chase a guy before in my life, and I didn’t want to start now. I wouldn’t even know where to start, not really.
“Exactly,” she agreed, her voice dripping with confidence. “It’s just pre-wedding jitters. You don’t have anything to worry about. Okay?”
“Okay,” I replied, trying to let go of some of the tension still nagging at the back of my mind.
I decided I needed another drink if I was going to fully forget about what was going on in my head right now, so I rose to my feet and headed to the bar. It was crowded with a bunch of guys, all of whom seemed to be talking over each other and the girls they were with. I tried to listen in to the conversations, but it was all just vapid flirting and didn’t interest me that much anyway.
As I grabbed my drink, one of the guys leaned over to another and spoke to him seriously. I eyed the conversation for a second, noticing that the men looked strikingly similar. One was a little more clean-cut, with dark brown eyes, and the other a bit scruffier with bright blue ones, but they could have been twins. Hell, maybe they were, I didn’t know.
I got my drink, and the slightly more clean-cut guy brushed past me, nearly knocking it out of my hands. I opened my mouth to say something, but then I saw the look on his face and thought better of it. He was clearly not in the mood to deal with anything from anyone right now, and I didn’t want to start an argument I couldn’t handle. Like I wasn’t in a bad enough mood already.
When I came back to the table, Kimmy shook her head and nodded in the direction of the guy who had almost knocked me over.
“See?” she pointed out. “That’s the kind of thing you would have to be dealing with if you were dating again. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, I really don’t,” I agreed. The thought of handling someone like that, and whatever drama they had just gotten into to go storming out of here so suddenly, was exhausting just to think about.
I lifted my drink to my lips and tried to smooth out the doubt in my mind again. See? I was fine. I was just overthinking, as usual. Aaron would be waiting at home for me when I got back, and I could remind myself just how good we were together.
If he wasn’t smelling of cheap perfume again, of course. Because he still didn’t have answers for me—and I didn’t know if I had the nerve to press for more.
