Not to mention the reverse psychology.
Boy, Corey had this down.
At age twenty-six.
However, this water was so far under the bridge, it had evaporated, rained down, flowed back under that bridge, and repeat.
Therefore, it was no matter.
“There’s no point going over this,” I declared. “What’s done is done. Corey’s dying gift was a one final fuck you. However, I’m taking it as finally having the understanding he was who he was and the relief that my grief at losing a lifelong friend will not last as long as I thought.”
“No point?” Duncan asked.
“Sorry?”
“No point going over this?”
“Well…no.”
“You were the love of my life.”
My stomach folded in on itself so powerfully, I thought I would vomit.
“And you were that from the minute I met you when you were eight,” he carried on. “I knew it when I threw that frog at you and you marched up to me, shoved me and said, ‘Gentlemen don’t throw frogs. You’ll hurt the frog.’”
God, I remembered that.
And I also remembered how disappointed I was he threw that frog, because he was so cute, but he was also clearly a jerk.
It didn’t take him long to reverse that opinion.
“It was little kid love, but it never died,” he finished.
“Yes, it did,” I pointed out.
He flinched.
My heart hurt.
Time to go.
“I’m sorry I pressed this. I should have just opened the box without subjecting you to—”
My preamble to my departure was interrupted by Duncan.
“You wouldn’t want me to know? You wouldn’t want me to know that you didn’t cheat on me with my best friend?”
“It hardly matters now. You haven’t seen Corey or me in over two decades.”
“It hardly matters?”
“Yes.”
“You ride around in that Rolls everywhere, Genny?”
Damn.
I forgot.
I knew Duncan.
And Duncan knew me.
Duncan didn’t let up.
“Hollywood’s down-to-earth female Tom Hanks throws on some heels and folds into a Rolls to take a two-hour trip up to a mountain house in the middle of nowhere?”
His tone was dripping disbelief.
“I think we’re done here. Goodbye again, Duncan.”
And with that, I turned on my Prada kitten heel (when normally, for the most part, I went barefoot, and if I needed to put on shoes, they were slides or T-strap flat sandals, and yes, the slides were Valentino and the T-straps were Chanel, but neither were Prada slingbacked kitten heels), and I started to the door.
I stopped when Duncan cut around me and barred it with his big body.
“We’re not done,” he declared.
“We’re very much done,” I stated.
“Genny, we need to talk this out.”
“What is there to talk out?”
His head jerked, violently, and angry lines formed between his brows.
And his answer was, “Everything.”
“Everything what, Duncan? Seriously, what? There is nothing to salvage from this. You’ve been out of my life more than half the time I’ve been living it. And if Corey has not just demonstrated to you that he is not worthy of your time or emotion, he has to me.”
“I fucked up.”
“Yes, you did, twenty-eight years ago.”
“And we need to talk that out.”
“I disagree.”
“Gen, you’re single. And I’m single.”
He had to be joking.
I felt my eyes grow wide. “Are you mad?”
“If you mean angry, fuck yes. Blind with it at Corey and me for fucking up so colossally.”
“I didn’t mean angry, I meant crazy,” I explained.
“Then I’m not that. I’m very sane and I’m very serious.” He took a step toward me. “And you know it.”
“I actually think you’re crazy,” I contradicted.
“You couldn’t get enough of me,” he declared suddenly.
It took all my talent, of which many were convinced I had a great deal, to force nonchalance.
I waved my hand between us. “I was twenty-four years old and—”
“I’m the love of your life too,” he bit out.
“You were then, Duncan, but my life went on without you at your choice.”
“I had no reason not to believe him.”
Oh no.
I shook my head. “We’re not doing this.”
I tried to step around him.
He stepped in front of me.
I snapped my head back. “Let me out of this room, Duncan.”
“It destroyed me, walking away from you.”
I threw my arms wide. “And yet here you stand, healthy, living your dream.”
“Yeah, you’d know about my dream, Genny, wouldn’t you?”
Goddamn it.
But he wasn’t finished.
“And here you stand, tricked out, showing at my cabin in a Rolls.”
“This isn’t a cabin, Duncan, how many square feet are in this house?”
“Six thousand.”
Oh my God.
Was this the stupidest conversation in history?
“Seriously?” I asked.
“He wanted this, Genny.” He jabbed a finger at the chair with the box and flood of paper on the floor. “Those apologies mean dick. That is not his final message for us. What he really wanted was you standing in a room with me, knowing what would happen if we did.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Duncan.”
“Nothing never happens between us, Genny.”
This was frighteningly true.
And thus, I was at my end.
I changed tactics.
“I cannot describe how little I care that Corey maneuvered this nearly thirty years down the line,” I shared. “He doesn’t get to explain away tearing the man I loved from me with the proverbial thousand apologies and the lame excuse of, ‘I didn’t have the guts to right my wrong.’ He’s not fifteen anymore where we covered his awkwardness for him, and he wasn’t fifteen back then when he drove us apart.”