Say the Word(85)

“I don’t know what to say to you,” I admitted, my words hesitant. “I don’t know how to do this. All I can tell you is that I’m sorry for hurting you all those years ago, and again this afternoon. I’m sorry, Bash.”

He nodded. “I know. Me too. And honestly?” he added, the specter of a smile crossing his face. “Hating you is absolutely exhausting.”

I laughed lightly. “You too.”

Once again, silence descended.

“You moved here when he died?” he asked eventually.

I took a deep breath, prayed for composure, and nodded. “After, I needed a clean break. It was too hard to be there without him…too many memories.”

Our gazes caught once more, and I knew he sensed I wasn’t just talking about Jamie.

“You never came back.” He looked at me with a question in his eyes. “That summer, after that day, you were just gone. Both of you. You vanished from Jackson, from my life like ghosts and I never saw you again.”

“I’m surprised you noticed,” I teased, hoping to steer the conversation out of dangerous waters. “With all your adventures at Princeton I can’t believe you even had time to think about Georgia, let alone visit.”

He looked at me as though he were staring at a mountain of puzzle pieces, trying to align them in his mind and figure out which ones were missing altogether. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter than before.

“I didn’t go to Princeton.”

My eyes flew to his face. “What?”

“I didn’t go.” His expression was blank but there were thoughts working in his eyes.

I took a steadying breath and tried to keep my voice free of malice. “But what about your father and all his grand plans?”

“I told him to go f*ck himself.”

Sebastian smiled — a real, genuine grin that made the corners of my own mouth lift. I thought about his words for a moment, and small bubbles of hysteria began to dance within me like popcorn kernels just before they burst open. They filled me, vibrating and expanding in my chest until I could no longer keep them contained, and I burst into laughter. Spurts of giggles popped from my mouth into the air like a flurry of exploding kernels.

“I’m sure that went really well,” I gasped out between fits of laughter, my mind conjuring up images of the senator’s face as his golden boy broke the news. My reaction probably didn’t make much sense to Sebastian, but I couldn’t help myself — there was a tremendous amount of karmatic justice in the fact that, after everything the senator had done to ensure it, Bash still hadn’t ended up on the path to the presidency or even followed in his father’s footsteps.

I glanced over at Sebastian and was pleasantly surprised to find him still grinning, rather than looking at me like I was a crazy person. “Sorry,” I whispered. “Just the thought…”

“Of his face?” Bash shook his head, grimacing. “Yeah, not pretty at the time but, in retrospect, pretty damn hilarious.”

“So no Princeton…” I trailed off, an unspoken question hanging in the air between us.

“He cut me off, of course,” Sebastian said, his happy smile still in tact. Evidently, he hadn’t been too upset about this turn of events. “I went to art school out in California. To pay my tuition, I worked my ass off every night doing freelance for local magazines and spent my mornings as a waiter, serving breakfast at this tiny diner. Then I g—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted, holding out a hand to stop his words. “You, Sebastian Michael Covington, were a waiter?” I contorted my expression into a mask of horror. “The same boy who didn’t know the difference between an omelet and a frittata? Who’d never even been inside a kitchen unless it was to sneak cookies from the pantry? Who’d never eaten a waffle until he was eighteen?” I stared at him in disbelief. “How on earth did you manage to deliver orders?”

Bash dropped his forehead into his palm. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he muttered, groaning at the memory. “Though you’re right — the first few weeks were pretty brutal. It’s actually amazing they didn’t fire me after my first shift. I spilled an entire pot of coffee, accidentally gave an order of huevos rancheros to a vegan, and mistakenly charged someone’s credit card for another table’s order.”

“Oh my god.” I snorted. “And they chose not to fire you because…?”

“I begged the owner for another shot. She was a great lady. Plus, it’s hard to say no to this face,” he joked, winking at me.

I laughed and rolled my eyes.

“After graduation, I got lucky. National Geographic had an opening doing some foreign correspondence stuff overseas. They needed someone young without any attachments back at home — someone who’d be willing to drop into dangerous places to shoot photos, with the knowledge that they might never come back. Frankly, at the time, it sounded perfect,” he told me, some of the light fading from his eyes as he thought back. “And for a while it was. I saw pretty much all of the Middle East, and a lot of Asia. Some of Africa, a few cities in Europe. I didn’t come back to the States for almost three years.”

“Sounds amazing,” I murmured. Sounds lonely, I added in my thoughts.

“It was.” He looked over at me. “Though if I never eat rice or see sand again, I’ll die a happy man.”