Best Served Cold

Everything after that had happened so fast, and in a stupid blur of emotion, everything that had happened, happened. There was no way to go back and change it. I couldn’t take back two years of hating him just like he couldn’t take back opening his store.

We’d both made stupid choices.

I just needed to figure out if my feelings were nostalgia or real. And doing that wouldn’t be easy. I didn’t know where to begin doing that, but I knew one thing: I needed to tell Chase.

I needed to talk to him. Not talking was why we’d been through the things that we had. If I’d spoken to him, I might never have needed to break up with him, and he never would have opened that store.

If my feelings turned out to be because he was there and it was comfortable, then he needed to know that. He needed to know that I was confused and unsure and didn’t know what to do.

I owed him that much.

We were adults, and we had to act like it. Especially me. I wasn’t always good at that. My biggest flaw was my tendency to lead with my heart and not my head. I let my emotions take control too often, and the fact that I had a hot temper wasn’t exactly complementary to that flaw.

It was one hell of a pain in the ass to be me. And know me. And love me.

Which made Chase Aarons one hell of a guy.

Still a douchebag—my toe did still hurt—but better than I gave him credit for.

I pressed the button on the drill, and it buzzed, the sound vibrating through the silence. I could do this. I could put a few holes in the walls for my ice cream lights. It wasn’t that hard, was it?

No. It was just a hole.

“What are you doing?”

I turned to see Sophie standing in the doorway. “What?”

“You’re standing there with the drill running and doing nothing.” She fought back laughter. “What are you doing?”

“Oh.” I glanced at the drill. “Thinking about the best way to drill a hole in the wall.”

“Are your lights here? Ooh, ooh, I wanna see!”

I pointed to the monstrous box that Chase had taken in yesterday. “They’re all boxed individually. I opened a couple. They’re really cute.”

Soph ran over and tore open the box, picking up the first small one and pulling out the light. It was so cute, maybe ten inches tall, and one half of it was flat so it would be flush against the wall. Tiny little switches were just under the ice cream part of the light, and I couldn’t wait to see how they looked when they were all turned on.

“How do they attach to the wall?” She flipped it over.

“There’s a little thing that attaches to another thing.”

“That sounds like it can’t possibly go wrong.” She paused. “Why don’t you ask Chase to help you?”

“Why would I ask him to help?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because he’s a man, and because you two had dinner together last night?” Her tone was accusatory, but her eyes said she was messing with me.

I sighed and explained how we’d ended up together. “He was just helping me waste time, that’s all.”

“I can’t believe your dad left your mom.”

“I know. She was still asleep when I left this morning. Maybe we’ll talk tonight, I don’t know. But I can’t focus on everything at once.” I shook my head, picking the drill back up. “Between the store, Chase, and my mom, my head is exploding.”

“Why would Chase be making your head explode?” She waggled her eyebrows. “Are you falling for him again?”

“I don’t know. Can you fall for someone more than once?”

“I think you can fall in love with someone a hundred times,” Soph said, sitting on the window seat. “Just because you fall in love with someone once doesn’t mean that’s the only time. How do you think those couples who have been together for, like, seventy years do it? They don’t love each other at eighty the way they did when they were twenty or even at fifty. Love isn’t one size fits all. Love evolves as you grow and change.”

I leaned back against the counter and looked down at the drill.

“Like, my sister said that when she had Jessie, she fell in love with Dan all over again when she saw him with her. She just found out she’s pregnant again, a total surprise, and she thinks she fell in love yet again when he handled it way better than she did.”

“She’s pregnant again?”

“Like I said, surprise.” Sophie smiled. “She just told us and only because Jessie blurted it out.” She snorted. “But, yes. I think you could fall in love with Chase all over again, mostly because I think that deep down, you never stopped loving him. You just let go of enough hatred to see that.”