Mine To Have (Southern Wedding 1)

"This smells amazing," he says, and I look over at him as I pour him another glass of wine and then fill my own glass a bit more than I should.

"You sound both shocked and amazed by this." I try not to laugh as I sit down in front of him.

"That’s because I am." He doesn’t lie to me, which I guess I should give him props for.

"Well, I can use an oven like no one else can," I joke with him and cut the pie in fourths. "It’s hard to fuck up when all you have to do is set the temperature and put on a timer."

I hold out my hand for his plate and he hands it to me, our fingers graze. "Didn’t you burn a pizza pocket?"

I glare at him as I put a big piece on his plate. "That was in the microwave and I pressed an extra zero by accident."

He laughs as I hand him his plate. "Didn’t you have to buy a new one?"

"No," I say, putting my own piece on my plate and sitting down. "I just chose to because I couldn’t scrape out the cheese and it smelled bad." I roll my eyes. "I can’t believe it exploded," I say, laughing at myself. "Who would have thought."

"It was a massacre," he adds in and waits for me to pick up my fork before he picks up his own.

My stomach is so twisted in knots I barely eat anything, and when he grabs his glass of wine and leans back in his chair, I ask him what I’ve been dying to ask him ever since I saw him standing in my waiting room. "Travis." I say his name, grabbing my own wine and take a shot for liquid courage.

"Harlow." He says my name and I ignore the smirk on his face. If I wasn’t so nervous, I would laugh at how crazy this whole thing is. If I wasn’t so nervous, I would make a joke about it. If I wasn’t so nervous about all of this, I wouldn’t be able to ask him the loaded questions. But he is here and it’s been four years; if I get anything out of this, it will be the questions answered I’ve asked him in my head the last four years.

"Why are you really here?" I ask him. My heart is starting to pick up its pace and the back of my neck suddenly feels like it’s on fire.

My eyes never leave his as I wait for him to answer the loaded question I just asked him. "I missed you," he says, and I don’t know if it’s the nerves or the wine or a bit of both but I laugh.

"You were getting married last week," I say, the words tasting like bile in my mouth. "And you missed me?" I shake my head and laugh bitterly as I take another sip of wine. "You broke up with me." Fuck, I want to kick myself for making it sound like it still bothers me.

"I broke up with you," he says, putting his glass of wine back down on the table. Then leans back again in the chair, folding his hands in front of him, looking calm, cool, and collected. Irritating me even more, because he looks so fucking good doing it. "Because I was an idiot."

My mouth gets dry all of a sudden and all I can say is, "Keep going." Trying to get my heart to calm the fuck down.

"I broke up with you because I knew I couldn’t do the long-distance relationship." His eyes never leave mine.

"Who said you had to do that?" I lean forward, putting my glass on the table. "Who told you that we had to be in a long-distance relationship?" I throw up my hands as he opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. "You didn’t even ask me. You never had a conversation with me." The hurt from four years ago is now suddenly front and center.

"But your family is here," he says softly, and I have to wonder if he is feeling like he, too, is back to that moment four years ago. "And you had everything mapped out for you."

"Plans change," I finally say to him. "Things change. You didn’t even sit down and talk to me about it." I try not to cry, I try to fight away the tears as hard as I can. I shake my head, angry that it’s still getting to me and knowing that whatever happens from here, I have to know what the fuck he was thinking four years ago. "How could you just have made that big of a decision on your own without so much as talking to me about it?"

"I didn’t want to make you choose," he says, looking down.