The Josh and Kat Trilogy: A Bundle of Books 1-3

by Lauren Rowe

“If what?”

  I pause.

  “If what?”

  “If things didn’t work out. Between. Us.”

  There’s an excruciating silence.

  “Let me see if I understand this,” she says. “Standing here right now you’re not one hundred percent sure you wanna be with me two months from now?”

  I throw up my hands. “Well, shit. When you say it like that, it sounds horrible. But, yeah, I just wanted to wait until I was sure I wasn’t gonna get your hopes up and then somehow, you know, disappoint you.”

  She blinks and huge, fat tears streak out her eyes and down her beautiful cheeks.

  “Kat, please,” I say, my voice quavering. My eyes are burning. I close them and compose myself for a beat. “It’s no reflection on how I feel about you. I think you’re amazing. And gorgeous. Funny. Smart. Sweet. I think about you night and day—that’s why I came to Seattle early. I’ve never had so much fun in my life as I have with you.”

  Oh shit. Something I just said lit her fuse—and not in a good way.

  “Fun?” she spits out, utterly enraged.

  I roll my eyes. “Did you hear anything else I said? Fun was the very last thing I said—after saying a bunch of other really awesome things. And, by the way, saying you’re fun is a huge compliment.”

  “Oh, thanks for the compliment. Makes me feel great. You can always count on Kat for a little fun.” She wipes her eyes, but it’s pointless—tears are streaming out.

  I look up to the night sky and roll my entire head in frustration. This is so fucking horrific. I can’t believe she’s overreacting like this. She’s so fucking temperamental, I swear to God. “This is spiraling way out of control,” I say. “How much have you had to drink? Are you drunk?”

  “No, I’m not drunk. I’ve hardly had a drop.”

  “Well, you’re acting drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk. I’m pissed. And hurt. Deeply hurt.”

  “Why the fuck are you ‘deeply hurt’? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I’m moving, but I’m not gonna apologize for saying I’m having fun with you—because I am.”

  “I was gonna bring you home to meet my family, Josh,” she says, her eyes watering and her voice cracking. “I obviously can’t do that if all we’re doing is having fun.”

  “What the fuck? You’re not gonna let me come meet your family now? You’re uninviting me from the birthday party?” Now I’m pissed. That goddamned party is the whole reason I flew the fuck up to Seattle in the first place.

  She’s in full terrorist mode. “I’ve brought a grand total of three guys home to meet my family, Josh. Three. And the last one didn’t work out so well. Colby sniffed Garrett out like a St. Bernard tracking a lost skier. Colby knew Garrett was with me for nothing but fun while I was in it for a whole lot more. I’m not gonna subject myself to that ever again.”

  I’m speechless. She’s comparing me to Garrett Bennett? She thinks I’m using her? Could she possibly believe that, after everything we’ve been through together? After everything I’ve said and done to make my feelings clear?

  “That was such a low blow,” I say between gritted teeth.

  “Why is that a low blow? You can’t imagine dating me eight measly weeks from now,” she seethes. “Fifty-two days. My family would know you’re not in it for the long-haul—especially Colby—and they’d eat you for breakfast.”

  “Shit, Kat. Motherfucker. I fucked up, okay?” My voice cracks. I press my lips together, regaining my composure. I wait. My eyes are stinging. I take a deep breath and push everything down. “I should have told you, okay? I’m sorry. But you’re reading way too much into this. I’m not Garrett-Bennetting you. You can’t seriously believe that.”

  She shrugs.

  “What did that fucker say to you, again?”

  “He said I’m fun.”

  “No, the other thing.”

  “He basically called me a slut.”

  “But what were his exact words?”

  She shifts her weight. “He said I’m not ‘marriage material.’”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. I’m an idiot. This is Kat’s Achilles’ heel—her Kryptonite—and I’ve served it up to her on a silver platter.

  “Listen to me, babe.” I grab her shoulders and look into her eyes. “I never said I don’t wanna be with you eight weeks from now. All I said was I can’t make promises about the future. But that’s only because nothing’s for sure in life—it has nothing to do with you, personally. That’s a factual statement. Anything can happen. But right now do I want to be with you? Yes. So bad it hurts—that’s why I came to Seattle early.”

  Yet another battery of tears springs into her beautiful blue eyes.

  “Kat, please, trust me. I’m crazy about you. It’s just that, except when it comes to business, I take things a day at a time. It’s all I can handle—” I have to stop. If I say anymore, I’m gonna lose it. My eyes are burning.

  “I don’t wanna be some kind of glorified booty call,” she says softly.

  “What? Did you hear a word I said? I think maybe you’re clinically insane. Or maybe you’re PMSing or something because that’s the furthest thing—”

  She makes a sound that can only be described as prehistoric, making me stop dead in my tracks.

  “I’m not PMSing! I’m crying because you hurt my frickin’ feelings—not because I have ovaries. You’re the one who can’t imagine dating me fifty-two freakin’ days from now, so don’t try to worm out of your assholery by playing the PMS card!”

  Her nostrils are flaring. Her eyes are wild. She looks like a fucking dragon.

  “Oh my fucking God,” I say. “You’re overreacting. Again.”

  “No, I’m not overreacting. You didn’t tell the girl you’re supposedly ‘addicted to’ you’re moving to her frickin’ city in eight weeks! How’d you expect me to find out? By bumping into you at Whole Foods?”

  I look up to the sky, biting my lip. She’s pissing me off. I should have told her, yes, but she’s making mountains out of molehills. “Yes, Kat. You guessed it,” I say. “I was gonna wait to tell you until after we’d bumped into each other at Whole Foods.”

  She abruptly turns around and marches away from me. “I’m going home,” she says.

  I roll my eyes at her backside. Her purse and phone are inside the bar and I’m the one who drove her here. How the fuck does she plan to go home? Déjà fucking vu. We might as well be in another hotel hallway right now. For a split second, the image of her dripping wet ass cheeks stomping down the hallway after Reed’s party flashes across my mind and I smile. She’s a handful, this one—never a dull moment.

  “Wait,” I command.

  She doesn’t wait.

  “Wait.”

  “Enjoy living in Seattle,” she tosses back to me over her shoulder. “Hope you have fun.”

  “Oh my God. The drama,” I say. In five easy strides, I’ve caught up to her. I grab her shoulders and turn her around and kiss her. Without hesitation, she presses herself into me, throws her arms around my neck, and surrenders to me.

  I always say, when it comes to women, especially angry ones, there’s very little that can’t be fixed with a fucking awesome kiss.

  We stand together, kissing like crazy for several minutes, both of us bursting with desire and emotion and arousal.

  “I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,” she whispers, abruptly pulling away from me. “I would have been bursting at the seams to tell you if the situation were reversed. You would have been the first person I would have called.”

  My heart drops into my toes. When she puts it like that, I suddenly understand why she’s so upset. “Babe,” I say. “I’m just not wired to make promises about the future, that’s all. My brain doesn’t work like a normal person’s.”

  “I’m not asking for promises about the future—you think eight weeks from now is ‘the future’?” Kat shakes her head and steps back from our embrace. “I’m not thinking clearly. You
kiss me and I lose my mind. That’s always been my problem around you. I’m so physically attracted to you, I can’t think.” She rubs her forehead. “I think we need to take a step back. Slow things down. I think we need to find out if we actually like each other in real life. Obviously, you’re scared shitless this thing between us won’t translate to living in the same city—and maybe you’re right.” She swallows hard. “Maybe we should trust your gut.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been living in a weird sort of fantasy from day one,” she continues. “First we were in Las Vegas doing our Ocean’s Eleven thing and now we fly to see each other on weekends so we can role-play imaginary-pornos and get stoned. Everything with us is nonstop excitement—fantasy. We never do normal, real-life stuff like play a board game or go to the freakin’ grocery store.” She shrugs. “Maybe you’re just addicted to excitement, and not to me, specifically. Maybe none of this is real.”

  My blood is pulsing in my ears. “Kat, no. Everything I’ve ever said or done when I’m with you is real. Always. Even our fantasies are real—that’s what’s so awesome about us—real life is a fantasy when it comes to you and me.”

  “Your move to Seattle is for sure?” she asks softly.

  “Yeah. I made a cash offer on a place yesterday. It’s ten minutes away from Jonas’ place.”

  Kat’s face contorts. “I just can’t believe you didn’t mention that to me—especially after how many times I’ve said the long distance thing is killing me or I wish we lived in the same city.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just... ” I don’t finish my sentence. There’s really no adequate way to explain why I didn’t tell her. I’m suddenly realizing I’m a complete idiot.

  She sniffles. “I get it. Sarah told me to listen to your actions and not your words. Well, I guess I just heard you loud and clear. From here on out, I’ll expect nothing from you. We’ll continue to have fun with no expectations and no promise of a future. We can date other people, whatever. We’ll start from scratch. Get to know each other outside all the excitement and fantasy.”

  “You wanna date other people?” I blurt, my heart exploding with panic.

  “No,” she says quickly. “Not at all. I don’t want anyone but you.” Tears flood her eyes. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Well, I don’t want anyone but you, either,” I say. I clutch her to me, relief flooding me. If she’d said she wanted anyone but me, I would have lost my shit. “Kat, we both feel exactly the same way.” I kiss her temple. “Please don’t read into me not telling you. It doesn’t mean anything—we feel the same way.”

  “I don’t think we do, Josh. I don’t think you realize how much... ” Her words catch in her throat. Tears spill out of her eyes. “If I’d bought a house in L.A.,” she says, “I would have been thrilled to tell you about it. I would have talked your ear off about it.”

  “Kat,” I choke out. “You’re breaking my heart. I feel the way you do. I’m just not good at... saying certain things. I’m not good at committing to certain things. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel. Please, Kat. I just need time, that’s all.”

  Kat wipes her eyes again. “I get it. Take as much time as you need. You’re not ready for a commitment of any kind. Good for me to know—better I learned it now than later.” She wipes her eyes and sets her jaw. “Obviously, I can’t take you home to meet my family tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand. I really wanna meet your family—I’m dying to meet your family.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not possible—not when my heart is on the line like this.”

  A little voice inside my head is screaming at me to tell her my heart is on the line, too, but the words don’t come. I swallow hard, forcing down the lump in my throat again.

  There’s an awkward silence.

  Her eyes are glistening with obvious hurt.

  “Kat,” I finally say. “Maybe I should have mentioned it. I just... Please believe me—you’re my fantasy sprung to life.”

  Her jaw tightens. “Yeah, I’m the fantasy you don’t want ‘tainting’ your real life when you move back home.”

  Shit. That was a not-so-subtle reference to my application to The Club, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was. Because I don’t want this shit to taint my real life, I wrote in my application. Oh, God, this is a complete disaster.

  “Kat, no,” I say. “You’re not a Mickey Mouse Rollercoaster. Now you’re just being crazy. Please don’t do this. You’re spinning out of control.”

  “I’m not doing anything but agreeing with you. From here on out, we’re gonna do things Josh-Faraday-style. The future doesn’t exist. There are no expectations, no commitments. All we have is right now. YOLO.” Her lip is trembling. “If I wanna stay, I’ll stay. If I wanna go, I’ll go. There’ll be nothing to keep us tied to each other but however the wind blows on any given day. Just the way you like it.”

  Eighty-One

  Josh

  I flip on the TV in my hotel room and quickly turn it off again.

  What’s wrong with me? Am I really this fucked up?

  I told Emma the magic words, didn’t I? Which means I’m capable of saying them. But Emma gave me a lot more time than this—ten times more time than this.

  But what am I thinking? There’s no comparison between Kat and Emma. I never felt this white-hot passion with Emma—this electricity. How the hell does Kat expect me not to fuck up when I constantly feel like I’m gripping a goddamned electric fence around her?

  I get up and look out the window of my hotel room, a glass of Jack Daniels from the mini-bar in my hand. I’ve got a perfect view of the Space Needle from my room. It’s lit up like a Roman candle at night.

  I could have stayed at Jonas’ house tonight, of course, but I was too embarrassed not to be staying with Kat to ask him. Plus, Jonas looked so happy tonight, I didn’t have the heart to bring him down with my pathetic sob story. Jonas is the one who’s supposed to cry like a big fat baby to me—our relationship doesn’t work the other way around.

  “Let’s take a break for a couple days—see how we’re feeling then,” Kat said when I walked her to her door earlier tonight. “Maybe I’ll realize I’m overreacting; maybe not. I’m just too hurt to think straight right now. I think I need some time to regroup and figure out what I’m feeling.”

  I take a swig of my whiskey, shaking my head. How did things go so wrong? I was on top of the world when I picked Kat up tonight. I couldn’t wait to see her—the same way I always feel when I’m away from her. I couldn’t wait to take her to the fish market tomorrow morning to sing the “Fish Heads” song with her like a couple of dorks. And I was losing my mind about meeting her family tomorrow night, too. And, most of all, I was chomping at the bit to fuck her on her Hello Kitty sheets.

  And now it’s all gone. Poof. And here I am, yet again, where I always am, sitting in yet another hotel room, another drink in my hand, looking out at yet another lonely cityscape.

  I turn on the TV and flip the channels. Sports. Local news. I flip around and around and finally land on a music station. Lenny Kravitz is singing “Fly Away.” Hey, at least something’s going right for me tonight.

  I sit down in an armchair in the corner, lean back with my whiskey, and listen to the song. Yeah, Lenny, I agree: let’s fly away to anywhere but here—you and me, bro—to a place without stress and responsibility and worry. A place where I won’t have this thousand-pound weight on my chest at all times—a place where I won’t feel so fucking lonely all the time. And so fucking guilty. To a place where I’m not constantly being crushed by shit I can’t control and feelings I can’t express and memories that haunt me.

  I run my hands through my hair. I’ve never thought of this song as sad before, but, motherfucker, it’s making me wanna cry. Fuck this shit. I turn the channel to the next music station, only to run smack into “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons. They’re in the midst of singing the chorus and it’s like they’
ve written the words for me. Kat told me her heart is on the line tonight, didn’t she?—and I really, really fucked it up.

  Jesus.

  I take another huge guzzle of my whiskey and stare at the Space Needle.

  The torturous song ends, thank God—but there ain’t no rest for the wicked: the next song is Adele. She’s wailing her heart out in “Someone Like You.” And kicking me square in the balls.

  I take a gigantic gulp of my whiskey.

  No, Adele, I’ll never find another woman like Kat. Fuck you. She’s a fucking unicorn, Adele. One of a kind.

  I rub my forehead and look out the window with burning eyes.

  Goddammit, I fucked up—maybe even irreversibly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but tonight was a fork in the road for Kat and me and I took the wrong path. I should have told Kat about my move to Seattle in the first place, for sure, but even more than that, I should have handled things differently tonight when the shit hit the fan. I should have said all the right things—the things Kat was dying to hear.

  But I didn’t.

  I imagine myself saying, “My heart’s on the line, too, Kat.” Damn, I should have said that to her. Or, at the very least, “Mine, too.”

  But who am I kidding? Kat didn’t want to hear me say my heart’s on the line—she wanted more than that. She wanted the magic words—the whole nine yards. And I let her down.

  I drain the rest of my drink and pour myself another tall one.

  Jesus. Adele’s voice is cutting me like a thousand razors dragged across my heart.

  Kat wanted a promise of forever from me tonight. It was written all over her face. But what she doesn’t understand is there’s no such thing as forever—I mean, shit, there’s no such thing as next week. Anything could happen. Nothing’s guaranteed. A guys’ life can change in a single afternoon. I mean, hell, a guy might go out to a football game with his dad in the morning and come back later that day to find out no one will ever sing “You Are My Sunshine” to him again. Or call him Little Fishy. Or, worst of all, say the words, “I love you.”