“Yep. See you later.” I turned to her. “Really nice to meet you, Emily.”
Not.
“Same.” She smiled.
I started to walk away. So flustered, I wasn’t paying attention when a man walking his dog knocked into me. The leash ended up wrapped around my leg as the dog yelped like crazy. The animal then began tearing into my shopping bag with his teeth.
Channing and Emily were still looking over at me when all of my lingerie fell out of the now entirely ripped bag. The thongs and other pieces were strewn about the grass.
This was mortifying.
The owner apologized, but the damage had been done.
They had seen the entire thing unfold. Channing got up off the bench and promptly began to help me pick up my underwear off the ground.
I couldn’t even look at him as he handed them to me. “I can just put them in my purse. Thank you.”
When all of the panties were safely in my leather satchel, my eyes finally met his.
He looked concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. That was really weird.” I glanced over at Emily and whispered, “This is interesting? What brought her back into the picture?”
“Yeah. She texted me out of the blue and asked me to meet here.”
“Wow. Is she still with that guy?”
“No. They broke up.”
Why was my stomach churning?
“I see. Well, I don’t want to keep you. Enjoy the rest of the afternoon.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else but instead just answered with, “You, too.”***Once home, I found it very difficult to concentrate. All I could think about was what Channing and Emily were doing.
Tonight was my night off from working with Milo, but I almost wished that weren’t the case. I could have used a distraction from the thoughts floating around in my head.
Between my upcoming rendezvous on Saturday, to my irrational feelings of jealousy, my mind was all over the place.
A couple of hours later, I was just about to head to bed when Channing walked in.
I straightened up on the couch. “Hey.”
“Hi.” He plopped down next to me, smelling like cold air and cologne. He turned to me, and we just looked at each other for a bit, silently acknowledging the awkward run-in from earlier.
Examining him closely, I tried to figure out whether he looked different—namely whether he looked like he’d had sex. His hair was rustled. That could have been from the wind, or it could have been from her hands running through it. His lips were red. That could have been from the cold, or it could have been from her kiss. Images of him hovering over the sexy brunette flashed through my mind. Even the idea of him having sex with her turned me on, and that was a little disturbing.
I told myself I wasn’t going to pry—unless he wanted to offer the information. But a part of me needed to know how the Emily thing came about, what he was thinking—whether he had fucked her. Everything. I needed to know everything.
Well, maybe I could pry a little.
My heart sped up as I initiated the conversation. “How was your date?”
“It wasn’t really a date. It was just a meetup.”
“So, what happened? I thought she was out of the picture.”
“You and me both.” He chuckled, then let out a deep sigh before rubbing his eyes. Then, he looked at me. “After you and I came home from taking Milo out the other night, I realized I’d missed a text from her. She messaged me because she saw I was in Boston from my Instagram. I rarely post anything, but I’d posted a shot from Quincy Market. She said she’d been thinking about me for a while and wanted me to know that she ended things with her boyfriend. She asked if we could meet.”
“So, she broke up with him? The guy she went back to while she was seeing you?”
“Yup. Apparently, she says it’s for good this time.”
“What else did she say to you?”
“She said the feelings she had for me scared her at the time and that her running back to him was like a safety net. She said she didn’t fully trust that I was ready for a relationship because I hadn’t had any serious girlfriends. But she claims she couldn’t stop thinking about me and that she regretted ending things and not taking a chance. She never planned to contact me, because she figured I wouldn’t want to see her. She took my being in Boston as a sign that she should get in touch with me.”
The jealousy meter was definitely off the charts at this point. I didn’t know what to say. “Wow.”
“Yeah. I honestly didn’t expect to hear from her ever again.”
“How do you feel about all of this?”
He blew out a breath. “I don’t know. The whole thing is sort of complicated. I still have feelings for her and I’m very attracted to her, but at the same time, I’m going back to Chicago, too, you know? Then, there’s the issue of not being able to really forget how she abruptly ended things. That left a bitter taste. I’m trying not to overthink it. I guess I’ll just have to see how things go while I’m here.”