Second First Kiss

Chapter 30

Sage

Sage answered her phone. It was Kennedy. Again.

“If this is another last-ditch effort to get me to keep seeing Jasher Hotchkiss, you can save your breath, or your phone minutes or whatever.”

“Nobody has phone minutes to save anymore, Sage.”

Whatever. Sage took another big bite of her cinnamon roll, the one slathered with cream cheese frosting and studded with walnuts and dried apricots. Too bad she was never going to be able to chew and swallow it. She spit it into a napkin.

She hadn’t been able to swallow a single bite of food in days. Not since telling Jasher to get away from her.

“This is not a phone call telling you to see him.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to hang up on you.”

“Good, because I’m outside your apartment.”

Kennedy was in town? Sage jumped up. She was still in her pajamas. Her hair was in one of those gross ponytails consisting of lumpy strings of unbrushed hair. Mascara had smudged its way so far down her cheeks she could’ve passed for a ’70s glam rocker. “I’m a mess rivaled only by the state of my apartment, but you can come in.”

Swiftly, Sage swept piles of used Kleenexes into the trash. Beneath those sedimentary tissue layers lay the still-open photo album she’d used to more or less eject Jasher Hotchkiss from her life.

“What on earth happened here?” Kennedy gazed around at the room. “Did you hire that spider monkey woman and her beloved pet to come and redecorate for you?”

Thanks for the salt in my wounds. The spider monkey incident had happened the day Sage saw Jasher again for the first time. She hiccuped. Why did every single thought have to harken back, have to revolve around him?

“Sorry,” was all she could say. “If you can clear a place between the blankets, go ahead and sit down.”

“It’s ninety degrees outside. Why the blankets?”

“I was making a fort.” She’d been hiding beneath them, more like. Hiding from the truth that she’d fallen head over heels in love with a man who kissed like he could set her on fire. “A fortress, I should say.”

“To keep yourself in or someone else out?” Kennedy raised one of those annoying knowing eyebrows. Ugh. “Just kidding. I’m not really trying to be condescending. I came to bring your raspberry jam. And to see how you’re doing.”

“My jam?”

“Yeah, remember? You bought it that one day, when we were at the festival? I was doing a little excavation in my car and came across these six jars. Sorry. I should have found them earlier.”

They were freezer jam, not shelf jam. Sage would have to throw them away. Just like she’d have to throw away everything she recalled from that fated day.

“Thanks.” She took the jam and held it up to the light. It was still a beautiful, jewel-tone red. “The Raspberry Festival seems like a really long time ago.” A lifetime.

Holding it up to the light made her think of Jasher holding the ring up to lasso the moon.

Dang it! Everything was Jasher. Everything!

“What are you muttering and spitting about over there?” Kennedy came into the kitchen and sat down on a bar stool. “Are you going to eat the rest of that cinnamon roll?” She picked it up and held it poised near her mouth, as if waiting for the go-ahead. Sage gave it over, and Kennedy took a large bite. “Mm. These just get better.”

The only other time Sage had shared any cinnamon roll was with Jasher.

See? It was inescapable!

“I gotta be honest, Sage.” Kennedy finished the last bit of the pastry. “Your mom asked me to come over and check on you.”

“You drove down all the way from Reedsville?”

“It’s Saturday and rodeo weekend. It’s fine.”