He gives me that look, and I get the idea. “Uhm...okay.”
“How about you get those social media pages set up?” he asks to veer the subject to safer territory. Little does he know that every time he helps me with this shit, I want to fucking crawl right over into his lap.
I nod to try to hide my thoughts. “Sure.”
We spend the next couple hours or so getting me set up with various accounts. He gave me the contact for the website builder he used for his own business in case I want to make things more official. He always talks about this business with such confidence. Like he has no doubt I’ll be able to do it. I’ve never had anyone believe in me like that before. I don’t really know how to handle it.
“We should go get you some more cooking equipment tomorrow, so you can handle larger parties. What we had last time wasn’t really that great,” he says.
I sigh. “Yeah, but I don’t really have enough saved up yet.”
“I’ll buy it,” he says without even thinking about it.
I turn to face him fully. “I can’t let you do that.”
He smirks at the road. “Really? That’s the thing you can’t let me do?” he asks sarcastically.
I shove his arm. “Shut up! And yes! You’ve done enough already. If you want me to be able to handle things myself, then you can’t always take care of everything for me.”
He glances my way and smiles. “I’m just helping you get out of the hole. Consider me an investor. You can pay me back once you’ve done more events.”
“I don’t know,” I sigh.
He smirks at me. “Or you can pay me back tonight.” He winks.
I throw my head back and laugh. “Reed Michael!” I smile at him. “So we really are just openly doing this now?”
I was just being playful, but once the words are out of my mouth, we both pause. Fuck. We really are just doing this. Neither one of us is trying to stop it. The only thing we care about is keeping it a secret. We’ve moved past the point of being able to deny it.
His eyes connect with mine, and he gives me the smallest of smiles, trying to gauge how I’m feeling about it. I didn’t realize until this moment how happy I actually am. I don’t want things to go back to how they were. I want them to move forward.
“We can’t stay at the house,” I blurt out.
“Hm?” he hums.
“After tonight, we can’t stay there. I’m going to text my cousin and see if we can stay at her cottage,” I say as I grab my phone and pull up her name.
My cousin Ellie is really my only real friend. We grew up together, but then she was actually able to get out of this town. She married some guy who develops phone applications. He’s super sweet, so you’d never be able to tell he’s loaded.
Unfortunately for me, she moved out of state, but they do still have a cottage a couple hours north of me. They usually come a couple times a year during the summer since it’s on a lake, and I’ll visit them for a day or two while they are here. She always offered to let us use it during the summer, but Jake always acted like that was charity and didn’t want to.
Fuck. He really was an ass. How come when you’re with a person, you never notice these things. I mean, I would get annoyed when he’d say no, but then he’d make me feel like I was the one with the issue. It seems like it’s impossible to see how ridiculous someone is being when you’re on the inside.
Ellie is the only other person who really knows what happened between Jake and I. She came the day before the funeral to see me, and I told her everything. I couldn’t hide it from her even if I wanted to. I needed to tell someone, and I knew she would keep it a secret. She doesn’t like coming back here since she has even worse issues with her family than I do. We’ve drifted apart since she moved and I was married to Jake, but I know she’ll always have my back when I need her.
Me: Can we use the cottage this weekend?
She must’ve been on her phone because I see she’s typing already. My phone dings multiple times in a row.
Ellie: We?
Ellie: Oh my gawwwd!
Ellie: A boy?
Me: Is that a yes?
Ellie: Answer the question woman!