Finding Kyle(65)

“You are so totally gone for this girl,” Andrea murmurs when I finish.

“I am. But I fucked it up too badly,” I tell her. “Ruined it.”

“You don’t know that,” she offers helpfully.

“I do,” is all I say. I can recall with keen detail the look on Jane’s face when she found out the truth about me, and it wasn’t even the entire truth. She didn’t know about any of the bad stuff.

“You don’t,” she pushes back at me. “You haven’t even had a meaningful conversation with her to know that. You absolutely cannot assume you know her feelings just based on that one interaction after it all went down, at a time, which I’ll remind you, must have been incredibly stressful for her.”

“What are you saying?” I ask guardedly, trying to keep any hope from filtering into my reasoning. It’s self-preservation, really.

“I’m saying that you need to go to her and talk,” Andrea says as she turns to look at me. She shifts in the chair, reaches out, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Kyle… you deserve something good. She’s the thing you deserve. But you’re going to have to go after it.”





CHAPTER 27




Jane


“I’m already so sick of pumpkin spice and it’s only been out one week,” I lament quietly to Christa as I make a pumpkin spice latte at the espresso machine.

Christa snickers as she wipes down the counter. “I told you… come October 1st, people seem to just go rabid for the stuff. But don’t worry… in another month, you’ll be sick of peppermint mochas.”

I’m sure that’s true.

The morning rush is over, and I look around the small coffee shop where I’ve been working as a barista for the past month. It had been my hope to get a teaching job when I’d moved to Boston, but I’d not had any luck yet. So I was doing what I could to make ends meet, working at this boutique coffeehouse during the day and painting by night. I’d set up an online shop to sell my art, but it’s been tough getting it up and running. I haven’t quite figured out yet how to get visibility.

“Any plans for this weekend?” Christa asks as she leans a hip against the counter. I finish off the pumpkin spice latte and hand it across the counter to the customer, who doesn’t even give a simple “thank you.” I’ve found that people in the big city aren’t nearly as friendly as in Misty Harbor, and I think that’s because everyone is just in too much of a rush to get places. I’ve been completely overwhelmed by this transition from small town to big city life, but it was something I had to do.

There was simply no way I could stay in Misty Harbor after Kyle blew my heart apart. Everything I always equated to happiness in my hometown was stripped away when he left, and I felt completely disconnected. That warm, settled feeling that kept me tied to Misty Harbor was gone, and it was because it was the place where I fell in love and then was left far behind.

Granted, I know I reacted harshly to Kyle that night. I was completely wigged out by being attacked, and I’d felt completely deceived by him. But then the person who is always my voice of reason sat me down and gave me a strong talking to.

Miranda had finally said to me, after another evening of listening to me vilify Kyle, “Jane… get your head out of your ass. The man was a fucking undercover agent who infiltrated a dangerous biker gang and he was in hiding. Don’t you think that’s something he had a right to keep secret from you?”

I’d stammered and tried to argue with her, but she held her hand up and I snapped my mouth shut. Then her eyes softened and her voice was uncharacteristically kind when she said, “I know your heart is broken. Maybe his is too. Ever think of that?”

And well, no… I hadn’t thought of that. I was too mired in my own misery.

So it was all Miranda’s fault that I started to think hard about it. About how unlucky Kyle and I were in our timing, and how things might have been different with just a slight change in circumstances.

Then that got me thinking of a change in circumstances, and I realized that I couldn’t sit back and wait for happiness and love to find me again. I had to go out and make my own way, because one thing was for sure… Kyle wasn’t coming back to Misty Harbor. That was one thing he had been honest with me about from the start.

The move to Boston saddened my parents, because they not only lost me, but also Miranda as well. No way she was letting me go on my own because, in her words, “You need protecting, Janey. You’re too na?ve.”

This was true.

Miranda got a good job bartending and makes way better money than I do. After we split rent and utilities fifty-fifty, she has money left over to do fun things with while I have enough to get maybe one cup of pumpkin spice latte if I was so inclined to drink one.

“Hello?” Christa calls out to me, and I blink my eyes rapidly, realizing I’m staring at the empty counter space where the customer had been waiting for his latte. “Earth to Jane. Come in, Jane.”

“Sorry,” I say as I focus in on her. “What were we talking about?”

“I asked if you had any plans for the weekend, Space Cadet?” she says with a grin.

I give a small laugh back. I hit it off amazingly well with Christa, and we’re a lot alike in our humor. “Um, by plans do you mean do I intend to splurge on Velveeta Mac and Cheese over the powdered Kraft?”