Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)(32)

“Okay, now you can proceed.” Sienna stopped covering her ears with her hands.

Now that she had the floor, Xoey didn’t know where to begin. So she started with the first thing that popped into her head. “Isaac and I are trying out a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement.”

All four girls stared back at her like she’d lost her mind.

She was really beginning to think she had. “I know, I know. Stupid right? We’re going to ruin our friendship beyond repair. I just… I can’t stop thinking about him, or wanting to be with him. Every time I tell myself to stop, I just…can’t—I love spending every night with him. And I find it harder and harder to picture being ‘just’ friends again. But every time I start convincing myself that maybe, just maybe we could give it a shot and start a relationship again, I end up thinking about what would happen if it didn’t work out.”

Even the thought of it made fear slice her heart in two. “He’s my best friend. I can’t lose him.”

“Who’s to say it wouldn’t work out, sweetie?” asked Dani. “You two are great together.”

“We were always great together. That wasn’t the problem.”

Quinn sighed. “Then what is the problem? Why did you two break up last year? Honestly, I thought you two were in it for the long haul.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” said Lia. “Did you two have problems?”

“No. Never. Sure, we’d bicker and have verbal spar matches all the time, but it was always in fun. And I loved being with him. Toward the end, before I broke it off with him, I even started to fantasize about the future. Matching wedding bands, house, kids, a dog.”

She shot a sad glance over at Dani. “But then it happened.”

Dani’s eyes softened with sympathy. “You are still hung up on him, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

Sienna frowned. “Something tells me you’re not talking about Isaac.”

“No, not Isaac.” Exhaling a long, slow breath, she started at the beginning. “It was a guy back in college, Dani and I talk about him sometimes. He was my first. He was handsome and smart and charismatic. Pretty perfect, in a business tycoon sort of way.”

“The suit,” Quinn murmured.

“Yep, the suit. There I was in a club in Phoenix, twenty years old using a fake ID to go drinking with my friends, and this suave, movie star gorgeous guy comes over to talk to me. He was drunk. Really drunk. But still so sweet. We both ditched our friends and just danced all night long. I don’t think we really talked about anything groundbreaking. I was pretty drunk too. But we connected. At least I thought we did.”

That deep sense of hurt and betrayal she’d felt when she’d realized he’d played her was still as fresh today as it had been almost a decade ago. “I’d been saving myself for Mr. Right up until then. And yes, it was my own fault for getting drunk and going home with a guy whose last name I didn’t even know. But still, looking back, I truly don’t think it was the alcohol or even my own naiveté. Even now, I feel that rush in my veins, that throbbing of my heart whenever I think of him—regardless of the fact that he never called the next day.”

“Well, it was your first time,” reasoned Sienna. “That’s a big deal. Are you sure your emotions aren’t tangled up with that?”

“It happened before he took my virginity.” Her voice was near silent, as if she were trying to keep the secret from even herself. “It was dark, and he was holding me. He didn’t say a word. But he looked at me…like I was the miracle of life itself.”

Dani leaned forward in surprise. “You never told me that.”

“Because I knew how crazy it sounded. It wasn’t like that look was the reason why I’d slept with him. We were already headed down that road. He didn’t have to look at me like that. But he did. And I know how school girlish and foolish that sounds. Logically, I know no guy would look at a girl he’d picked up at a club like that. Not after a few hours. Maybe not ever.”

She pressed a hand to her chest. “But I can’t forget that look. I had work the next morning—here, in fact—so I left him a note spouting some sort of fanciful starry-eyed drivel, I’m sure. Then I left. My only memory of him an old football jersey I’d borrowed to do my walk of shame.”

Chuckling bitterly, she looked at Dani. “By the way, that’s where I got that Walter Payton jersey you saw once, the one signed by the entire Chicago Bears team after their 1985 Super Bowl victory.”

Dani’s eyes bulged a little, as did Sienna’s, but they said nothing.

That was loyalty right there.

Because in truth, they should probably be reading her the riot act for taking a jersey worth a few thousand dollars. Not that she’d known it at the time. She’d just thought it was an old jersey that was long enough to cover her slightly ripped mini-skirt, and cheaper than his expensive work shirts. Irony of ironies.

Staring off into space, she tried, just as she had countless times, to conjure his face, and as always, she failed. All she could see were his eyes, cloaked in darkness…and that look.

“How is it that even though I can’t even remember what the guy looks like, even though I never even knew his name, even though I was heartbroken when he never called…all my stupid heart can register when I think about him, is that one look?”