“What are you saying? That you don’t want to be with me?” His confusion seemed to morph to anger right before my eyes. “After all this fucking time of expecting me to change, I finally do exactly what you want and now forget it? You’ve changed your fucking mind?”
His voice had raised enough to worry me a little. I’d never known him to get physical or violent, but it was also rare for him to get this upset.
“Is this about Jack? Are you seriously dumping me for a glorified bus driver? The week of my grandfather’s fucking funeral?”
“I’m not dumping you. We aren’t together,” I reminded him.
“Could have fooled me,” he snapped, whipping the covers off and scaring both cats into hiding. “I’m going home.”
I stared in disbelief as he threw on his clothes and stomped into his shoes. When he finally headed toward the door, he grabbed something off the kitchen counter and threw it at me before storming out of the apartment and slamming the door.
I looked down at the yellowish-orange box in my hands.
Milk Duds.
Now I felt like a total ass.
I glanced back up at the closed door. Had he really been making a serious attempt to start something between us, or was this the comfort seeking I’d originally thought it was? This box of candy was one of the most thoughtful things he’d ever done for me, and I’d ruined it.
26
Jack
The trip to New York with Rourke had kept me sufficiently distracted, although I couldn’t stop myself from sending Teo a quick text the morning of the funeral just to let him know I was thinking about him. Predictably, he didn’t message me back, which was fine.
Okay, it wasn’t fine. But that was something I just had to get over. I’d had a surprisingly nice time in Rourke’s company in New York and was even scheduled to meet him for a dinner theater experience in a few nights. We’d discovered a mutual love for unique theatrical experiences and had spent lots of time talking about the productions we’d seen in our respective travels.
It had been fun being out with him in a way because he was a recognizable public figure and people swarmed to him. He wasn’t so famous that we weren’t able to eat our dinner in peace, but he was popular enough from a TED Talk he’d done that he was approached several times during our time together. The fans gushed over him, and the best part was watching him come alive under the attention. No matter how tired he was from traveling, speaking, or simply making his way around the city in a wheelchair, he always perked up when fans appeared.
Despite having a great time in his company, I wasn’t tempted to try for more with Rourke. He was sexy as hell, and if I hadn’t met Teo, I would have probably tried desperately to get him into bed with me, but I had met Teo. And meeting Tee had moved the bar so high up, I worried another man may never reach it again.
So I tried to take it as a sign that this wasn’t the season of my life that needed to be filled with sex. It was the season I needed to spend on figuring out what else I enjoyed spending my time doing. An unexpected project popped up just at the right time when Millie and Kirk mentioned wishing the one large rec room in their house was a guest bedroom and bath instead. Up till now, it had been a giant catchall-type room with a guest bed and also a desk for when Millie and Kirk needed to catch up on bookkeeping and admin from home for their small business.
Since money was tight right now due to the unexpected departure of Kirk’s business partner, they couldn’t afford to hire contractors to do the work. My dad had volunteered the two of us to do it as a baby gift to them. We’d done similar work on my parents’ house when I was in high school. I was looking forward to spending some time with my dad, and I thought working together to create a guest suite where I could come for lots of baby visits was a great idea.
Two weeks after the funeral for Gordon Banks, I was finally buying into my own attitude adjustment. I’d been running twice with Chelsea, been out to the interesting dinner theater with Rourke, and had even met a couple of old high school friends in the city for beer one night. My dad and I had planned to meet up on Saturday to make a game plan for the renovation and start ordering supplies.
I was doing well. Totally fine. Excellent, in fact. My life was right on track.
And then Teo’s messy brown hair and vibrant green eyes flashed up on my phone screen just as I was walking away from Rourke’s Cessna after a quick day trip to Minneapolis. My finger pressed the green button to accept the call before I even processed what was happening.