A Wild Ride (Jessica Brodie Diaries #3)(10)

It was a laptop! The latest and greatest! Even the box was light. High-tech!

I turned to grab it but immediately got distracted by two handbags, both high-fashion. Each was filled with more presents.

“William, what…’

Gifts were everywhere. Jewelry boxes, lingerie, shoes—he even got me the romantic comedy I made him watch one rainy day. Among the treasure trove was a CD, homemade.

Everything had a connection to me, my attitude, something we shared together, or something I had said. He had obviously latched onto all the memories he loved and bought gifts for them.

I looked at him wide eyed for a second, not knowing what to say. He was looking back, love oozing around his obvious embarrassment. Way overboard. Unrealistically way overboard. Extremely touching, but too much. I wasn’t comfortable accepting this much money for any reason.

“William--”

“Don’t say anything,” he interrupted quickly, knowing what I was about to say. “I had hoped that you would go through each of the gifts and realize what you were losing. That you would remember all the things we had. I tend to get carried away when things don’t go my way...”

“You are insane, do you know that?”

“Yes,” he mumbled with a red face.

“This is all going back, too, you know that, right?”

“Half of it isn’t returnable. The other half...well, I won’t tell you what stores they’re from. I want you to remember the things I love about you; about us. I just wish I wasn’t such an idiot about the whole thing.”

“In all fairness...you had really valid points. I would’ve been thinking the same thing. Difference is, I might’ve given you a flaming bag of dog poop instead of a collection of exquisite gifts, but you are a better person than I am. I accept that. But… not only lack of trust in me, but also in Adam? What gives?”

William sighed. His clear blue eyes turned cloudy as they looked inward. “Let’s talk about this later. We have to get ready.”

“I won’t forget.”

“Oh. I know. Trust me. You’ll latch on this like a dog on a bone.” He walked back to his car, shaking his head.

“As long as you remember that!” I yelled after him.

By the time I reached his house, I’d listened to some of the mix and scanned over the rest. I was deeply affected by his choices. It was all songs from our most tender or memorable moments. Some were from before we were together, and I still remembered those dances or touches like they were yesterday. How different those small things looked from this side. How blind I had been for his deep regard for me. And how deep that regard!

After we were showered and changed, and as we were in the car to pick up Lump, I went for it.

“So...Adam?”

“Another time.”

“William, I have to know. This almost broke us. Kinda.”

His face fell. “You remember Dezeray?”

“Trying to forget her, actually.”

“Be nice.”

I answered in silence. It was as nice as I would get.

“Dezeray and I were together for about a year before she developed an...attachment to Adam. She started trying to sit next to him, talk to him, get to know him. I thought nothing of it since he was a friend of mine. By our second year she was showing up to a few places he would be, without me. By our third year…”

William’s jaw clenched. He waited until he turned a corner before he kept going. “By our third year she went to his house a couple times. Alone. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why.”

“Did you flip?” I asked in hushed horror.

“I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me right then. He’d rebuffed her and she’d been embarrassed—begged him not to tell me.” William shrugged. “Finally, though, she said his name...while we were...”

“No!”

“I went immediately to Adam, thinking he’d had my girlfriend. I slapped him one good one before I even said I was pissed.”

“You slapped him?”

“Punched him.”

I nodded, waiting for more.

“Anyway, he didn’t fight back. He laid on the ground and asked what was going on. He knew, of course. I told him what happened, and he slowly got up, hands up to ward me off. He told me he hadn’t touched her, but that she had showed up at his house a few times.

“I confronted her, of course. I was deeply in love with her. It was my first love, after all. I wanted to make it work. We talked it out. She’d said she wanted me. But she never stopped looking at him, probably dreaming about him. It killed me that I wasn’t good enough for her, but Adam was.”

William’s dejected sigh filled the car. It still hurt. My heart ached for him.

“Finally I stopped caring,” he went on. “I even would’ve given my blessing for them. I knew it was time to let her go, then. That I wasn’t in love with her anymore. The deep feeling was there, but it was just a dull ache, bordering on pain.”

William shrugged again. “I thought it was happening all over again with you. You, who I feel for ten times more deeply... I couldn’t live with that again, so I would have let you go. It would have killed me, but I would have let you go.”

“I know how you feel. Lump is my Adam. Most of the guys I dated were my Dezeray. She is a classic L.A. beauty. Actually, Adam is also a classic L.A. beauty. Airbrushed beauty. Although, he’s a bit more masculine when you get to know him. Her, too. Funny. Anyway, all the guys wanted her instead of me. They were happy with me until they met my friend Lump, who didn’t give two shits about any guy. They had to have her. They stayed with me to get close to her.”