Page 31 of Until Forever

“I think it’d be good for us to spend some time together,” he replied. “Now that you’re living here again, and we’re under the same roof—taking care of Claire.”

I stifled a laugh. Were we taking care of Claire? Last I checked, I was the only one she could actually count on. I was still fuming over the way he left her waiting there at the hospital when it was finally time for her to be dismissed. How long would she have been waiting on him if I hadn’t shown up? After being cooped up in there so long, even five minutes was too long. It would have felt like an eternity to her.

“I don’t know that there’s a need for us to spend any time together,” I huffed. “It’s all pretty simple. You treat my best friend well, and I have no problem with you.”

“Well, you obviously have a problem with me,” he smirked. “So I guess you’re implying I don’t treat her well?”

I rolled my eyes, biting my tongue so hard I thought it might bleed. How did I politely point out everything he did on a daily basis to demonstrate my point? Of course, he didn’t treat her well. And according to Keith, I wasn’t the only one who saw it either.

“I just think…you could be a little more…present,” I said through clenched teeth. My words were strained, like a dam about to burst.

“I’m here now,” he insisted, standing up from his chair to cross the kitchen to the fridge. He lingered entirely too close as he walked by. “I’m trying to bond with my wife’s best friend because I know it’s what she wants. She has enough on her plate to worry about without us fighting all the time.”

It was a low blow to use Claire’s well-being to guilt trip me into being his new drinking buddy.

“I’m not much in the mood for a beer. But…sure, yeah. Okay,” I submitted reluctantly. “I’ll sit with you for a bit. We need to go over her upcoming appointments anyway and figure out who’s handling what.”

“God, don’t you ever just relax?” he laughed.

I wanted to hurl the glass in my hand against his head, but again, I swallowed down all of my frustrations with him and refilled it with ice, then water. I sat down at the kitchen table, feeling impossibly tight with tension.

I could do this. I could be civil to him, for Claire’s sake.

“Sorry if I don’t seem like buckets of fun,” I told him. “I’m in the middle of a huge project, in case you forgot. And all of this heat is getting to me.”

I left out the part about how Keith and I had just kissed, and anything I could say about the big, tangled mess of complicated feelings that stirred up inside of me. Instead, I focused on spreading out Claire’s appointment book, my planner, and the calendar we kept hanging in the kitchen to keep track of it all.

“How are things going at the marina anyway?” he asked as he rejoined me at the table, cracking open a beer as he went.

He absentmindedly tossed the bottle cap across my mess of papers and schedules. I glared at him and flicked it away, pondering his question. How were things going at the marina? Well, let’s see… The marina itself was coming along well, aside from the occasional disagreement between Keith and me. But it was becoming astoundingly clear how foolish I was for signing up to be business partners with my archnemesis and former crush, from high school. There was too much brewing between us. He was playing games, and I was starting to fall for it. I wanted to say I wasn’t, but I had just kissed him.

My heart pounded, and I was finding it hard to sit still. I wanted more than anything to go bursting into Claire’s room, to wake her up, to spill the beans about everything. But instead, here I was, sitting across from the only other guy I loathed even more than Keith—doing my best to pretend to be friendly.

“The marina’s going great!” I forced myself to say with a breezy smile.

“That’s good,” he nodded with another sip of his beer. Another awkward silence fell, and he was obviously waiting on something. He wanted more. I had to try harder to feign interest.

“And how are things at the lumber yard?” I asked finally.

“Busy,” he grunted, shaking his head.

“Right. Okay, well…” The conversation was obviously going nowhere. Aside from Claire, we had nothing in common and nothing to talk about. Aside from all of that, I was in no mood to pretend otherwise. “How about next week? What’s your schedule looking like? She has three PT appointments and a check-in with her main doctor. She also has that visit to see her students at the elementary school. You’re taking her to that, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it under control,” he answered, but I hardly felt convinced.

After mulling over our schedules a while longer, I wondered if I had put in enough time to convince him that I really did care about Claire enough to be friendly with him. Was it too early to escape our little chat, or did I have to tolerate him longer? I tapped my pen anxiously on the table, racking my brain for what to say to him even if I did force myself to continue humoring him.

He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “You know, Lana. With you deciding to stick around so suddenly, I never got a chance to say… I think it’s really cool how you’ve come to Claire’s side. I know I can be a pain sometimes, but really…I know how much it’s meant to her to have you around.”

“Of course. I’m her best friend. We’re like sisters, really. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.” The proof of which lied in me sitting across from him, pretending to be friendly, that very second.

“It’s been hard for me, you know? Seeing her like that…in a wheelchair and struggling to get around, take care of herself,” he added. His eyes looked off with what should have been sadness or pain…but all I saw was emptiness.

“Hard for you?” I said with a scoffing laugh. “Just imagine what it’s like for her.”

“No, I know that. That’s not easy either,” he defended. “It’s just…complicated. When maybe not everything is as it should be, and then something crazy like that accident happens and…”

“What do you mean?” I puzzled. “What was wrong before the accident?”

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