Make Me Hate You(58)
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“You’d be able to be around Tyler, knowing we’d been intimate, without it hurting you?” I challenged.
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
I sighed, reaching out until my fingertips were on the screen. I traced the edges of his jaw, the fair blond of his hair. “I love you, Jacob,” I whispered. “And I am so thankful for the time we’ve had together. And more than anything, I am so sorry for the pain I’m causing. I just hope… I don’t know,” I confessed. “I hope one day we can…”
“Don’t say it,” he said, shaking his head on a grimace. “Don’t tell me you want to be friends, Jaz.”
I nodded, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
It was all I could offer, and it was absolutely nothing.
“I love you, too, you know?” Jacob said after a long pause. “I hate that you’re doing this, but I could never hate you.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m going to miss you, sunshine.”
My face twisted, and I nodded, my voice shaky through the emotion strangling me. “I’ll miss you, too.”
“What are we going to tell our followers?”
It was an attempt to make me laugh, and it worked, though it hurt where it left my chest as I swiped more tears away. “They might be more devastated than us.”
“Never more than me,” Jacob whispered. “Never more than me.”
It was just as painful the rest of the conversation, though neither of us said much more. We agreed to talk again when I was back home, and then we ended the call, and I felt just as bad as I predicted I would.
No, I felt worse.
I wanted to run, but if I went for a run, I’d have to shower. As it was, I still smelled like Tyler, and I didn’t want to wash him off yet. I was still marked by him, still covered in the remnants of his touch, his taste, his entire being.
For one last night, I let myself wrap all of me up in all of him, slipping under the sheets with tears still staining my cheeks and my heart so heavy in my chest, I thought I’d never walk again.
Thankfully, sleep pulled me under quickly, a merciful release.
Though my dreams weren’t so kind.
“There she is.”
Aunt Laura dropped her beach bag in the sand next to my chair, opening her arms wide.
There was barely a cloud in the sky, and it was one of those warm summer days on the Cape that had you sweating before noon. Everything was so bright — the sun, the sand, the reflection off the water, all the highlighter-colored swimsuits dotting the shoreline, the bright beach towels and chairs.
Everything inside me was dark and shadowed, damp and cold, but on that warm stretch of beach the day before Morgan’s wedding, I could almost forget about the empty cave inside my soul.
Almost.
My aunt was a sight for sore eyes, and after the last forty-eight hours I’d had, it was all I could do not to cry when I leapt out of my chair and hurled myself at her, letting her wrap me up tight.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said on a chuckle, pulling back to hold my arms in her hands. “See what happens when you come to New England and don’t make enough time for your poor aunt?”
“Hey, it’s you who’s been the busy one with all your clients. Not my fault you have the most popular salon in the county.”
“Says the one who’s been wrapped up in wedding planning.”
“Can we just agree that we both suck and get to the part where we’re drinking fruity drinks and catching up on the beach?”
Aunt Laura smiled at that, sliding her oversized reflective sunglasses down her nose enough to waggle her brows at me from under her floppy hat. “Now that’s a plan I can get behind.”
I smiled, helping her get settled in the chair to the left of mine.
The chair to the right of mine was where Morgan was set up, and Azra was right beside her. I’d spent most of the morning listening to them talk about Azra’s childhood, which was annoyingly fascinating, since she’d fled from Turkey with her parents when she was just four years old. Presently, however, Morgan was somewhere talking to one of the many wedding guests gathered on the beach, and Azra was with Mrs. Wagner at the beach bar, giving me a much-needed break.
I’d learned a lot about Azra in the past two days.
She was the center of attention the day she showed up unexpectedly, and the universe still seemed to revolve around her the entire next day, too. I wanted to keep my distance from her, but it seemed everything Morgan wanted me to help with for the wedding, Azra was involved, too.
Because of our close proximity, I’d listened as she told riveting stories of her modeling gigs, her travels abroad, the obscene amount of free products she received all the time. “You should totally come visit sometime and shop my closet!” she’d offered me. “We’re practically the same size, and you’re so gorgeous. I can already picture a hundred dresses and bags and shoes I have that would look amazing on you.”
I wanted to hate her. I wanted to be annoyed by her voice, by her perfect, long, dark hair, by her slender frame and long, lean legs. I wished she was a bitch. I wished she would glare at me and claim Tyler whenever I came near, wrapping her arms around him and planting a kiss on him to threaten me away.