Girl Crush(40)

Me: Do you think I’m a hag?

I hit send before I could back out of it.

Collier: What are you talking about? I think you’ve had too much wine. Back away from the bottle!

Collier: Giselle, what’s wrong?

Me: Nothing. I’m fine.

Collier: Clearly something’s wrong. You never text me, and the word hag indicates anything but a happy day.

Me: Just ran into some people a couple nights ago that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

That was vague and noncommittal.

Collier: Who?

Beck knew I had been married, but I seriously doubted Collier did. I wasn’t prepared to show him my hand. We weren’t close. We were barely friends. One day at the track didn’t make him my buddy, and neither did a few days spent lounging around his pool.

Me: An ex.

Collier: Women can be catty. Don’t let it get to you.

Me: <smiles>

There was no point in trying to explain this if I wasn’t going to be honest. I tossed my phone onto the couch and poured the last glass of wine. My sofa embraced me when I leaned back and put my feet on the coffee table. I needed to quit while I was ahead. Tomorrow would be a hung-over mess, but the next bottle of wine called to me from the fridge, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to bury my emotions in the fermented grapes. Sometimes I had to cry it out when talking wasn’t an option. Tonight was filled with tears.

Two glasses into the second bottle, my doorbell rang. I tried to ignore it, knowing I wasn’t interested in company at eight o’clock at night, but then the knocking started. And the voice boomed from the other side.

“Your car’s out front, Giselle. I know you’re here. Answer the door.”

The sound of Collier’s voice scared the crap out of me. I wasn’t expecting him or anyone else. I knocked over my glass trying to set it down and called out to him while I quickly tried to sop it up with a dish towel. “Hang on. I’m coming.” The words came out exasperated instead of emotionally weary.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror just before opening the door and about fell over. If he hadn’t thought I was a hag before, he certainly would now. In nothing but a tank top and pajama shorts that were too risqué for the eyes of Collier, I scrambled to try to do something with my disheveled hair, but I quickly realized it was pointless. My face was puffy, and my eyes were bloodshot from crying. There was nothing I could do to salvage my appearance before greeting my uninvited guest.

Inhaling deeply, I opened the door.

“Jesus, Giselle. What’s wrong?” He swooped in and set the bags in his hands on the floor. His foot shut the door behind him, and his arms wrapped around me in a comforting hold.

I couldn’t stop the onslaught. The hiccups. The waterworks. The incessant nonsensical blubbering. It all came pouring out, and Collier just stood there, hugging me and rubbing patterns on my back. He didn’t retreat—he held his ground while I unloaded nothing and everything. He kissed the top of my head and laid his cheek on my hair, squeezing me gently for reassurance. God, he smelled good—a mixture of honey and lemon. When my sob-fest finally ceased, he released me to grab the bags and followed me to the couch that I promptly threw myself on in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, Collier. I don’t know what came over me.”

“West. And don’t worry about it.”

I stared at him, taking in the eyes he shared with my friend. Twins had never been so lucky as the two of them. They had similar features, but both were gorgeous in their own ways—Beck’s feminine to his masculine—but those eyes…they were the palest shade of green with a dark rim around the iris that was almost navy blue.

He started to unload the bags he’d brought with him, and with each container he pulled out, my mouth watered at the aroma of Chinese food. “You want to tell me what happened that has you so upset?” He handed me a pair of chopsticks and a plastic fork. I chose the chopsticks and a carton of Szechuan veggies. “I noticed you don’t eat a lot of meat, but if you want some of mine, you’re welcome to it. There are egg rolls in there, too, but you seem to be a carb snob, so I wasn’t sure you’d want one.”

I stopped mid-bite and blinked multiple times. Beck had to have told him about the carbs—no guy ever noticed details like that. The first bite seemed to right the world, put it back on the proper axis. I moaned in pleasure when the spice hit my taste buds—it could have been the wine, but the food was delicious. “Nothing in particular.”

Collier settled in to eat and chat. It should have been awkward, I hadn’t invited him over, I looked like I’d been beaten in a boxing match—hell, I didn’t even have a bra on—but instead, it was oddly familiar.

“Dating trouble?”

I groaned and rolled my eyes while stuffing my face with another enormous bite of food and then nodded. “When did this get so hard?”

“Puberty?”

“Oh, come on. I doubt you’ve ever been turned down. My guess is you were the heartbreaker.”

He scoffed. “Hardly. Adolescence was not good to me. Then add Beck to the mix, and I spent more time fighting off her suitors than chasing any of mine. It wasn’t until college that I managed to come into my own, and then my parents died, and I became a full-time caregiver to my sister.”

“So you’ve never been in a relationship?”