“So.”
“I kind of figured you’d at least pick up the phone and call me after you found out I was in town.” He sat back on the vinyl, eyeing me behind the rim of his whiskey glass.
“Same could be said about you.” My voice was terse, smooth. “I wasn’t the one who went MIA for thirteen years.”
“First time I saw you again, you were with Nessy, and you didn’t seem all too happy to see me.” Rob put his whiskey down, angling his entire body toward mine. “What’s going on between you and my ex, Cruz?”
It took everything in me not to tell him the truth. That we were fucking, and laughing, and bantering, and getting to know each other.
That lately, Tennessee stopped spraying her hair into something that resembled plastic, and dropped the weird nails, and slowly began to realize people might see her for who she was if she just gave them a chance.
It was like Cobain’s quote: “I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not”. She decided to be herself, unapologetically. Honoring herself and who she was. Not making amends or trying to appease the people in town.
That I was more than ready to pick up the pieces he’d left behind, and I didn’t think he deserved half a chance with her, even if, unfortunately, she had to put up with his existence for her son’s sake.
But I knew she would never forgive me if I told her ex-boyfriend the truth.
I took a sip of my water. “Not sure how it’s any of your business.”
“I’m her ex.”
“You were kids, and you fucked off before you pulled out of her. You want to know something about Tennessee’s life, ask her, not me.” I slammed my glass against the table.
“Don’t think I don’t remember how you used to pine for her.” He looked angry, contemplative, and constipated. Guess he tried to appear tough.
A lopsided smirk met my lips. “You’re drunk.”
“That might be so, but I’m also right, aren’t I? Am I going to have competition here? The least you can do for me is be frank.”
“Actually, Rob, I owe you jack shit where Tennessee Turner is concerned. If my memory doesn’t fail me, and it rarely does, I was the one who was supposed to ask her out all those years ago. I won the game.”
Was I actually bringing up the rock-paper-scissor encounter from before my balls had fully dropped as though it meant anything?
Wyatt, Kyle, and Tim were taking shots from the inside of waitresses’ cleavage and howling to the ceiling while Rob and I were engaged in a stare down that would have been tense had he been able to focus properly in his drunken stupor.
“You’re seriously still stuck on this?” His mouth dropped. “She wanted me.”
“You fucking left her.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
Rob’s head reared back, and he stared at me with so much hatred, I wondered if I’d ever known him at all. I was putting a dent in his carefully designed plan to make Nessy wife number three.
He wasn’t prepared for resistance from any of us.
Thought he’d walk right in and play daddy to Bear and husband to Tennessee.
His on-hold family, that he’d kept on the back burner, in case all else failed.
And that Tennessee, the town nobody would be so happy, so grateful she’d welcome him back as though she had no pride or self worth. As though she didn’t deserve better than him—hell, than all of us.
“Enlighten me, then.”
Wyatt was now French-kissing a woman who was definitely not his future wife in my periphery. I’d have felt worse for Trinity, if she didn’t patronize her older sister as if she herself had her life all figured out.
Rob blew out air, standing up and sliding out of the booth.
He began to pace.