“Hold on,” Ward said, rubbing his temples with both hands as he struggled to adjust to the information I was laying on him. “Hold on.” He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “You’re in love with her? With Kate? My sister, Kate.”
I nodded. “Yes. And I’ve never been surer of anything or more serious about anything in my whole life. I’m in love with her.”
Ward stared at me and I could see the second when he became convinced that I was telling the truth. His shoulders relaxed a moment later, not all the way, but a little bit. “Does she love you back?”
That was more complicated. My stomach cramped. “I don’t know.” I paused and stared at the ground between us. “I really hope so.”
Ward didn’t say anything for long enough that I thought we’d just stand here in uncomfortable silence until one of us fell over in exhaustion. “I was seriously considering beating you up when I came over here. I wasn’t sure if I could do it you know, on account of my knee, but I figured I could get a few swings in before you got away.” He grinned at me and I didn’t smile back at all. He was disturbingly serious. Ward smirked at my face and continued, “I saw this paper in Waco and drove me and Emma back immediately. I yelled at Emma when she told me that she knew, too. She’s angry with me.” He looked guilty.
“Don’t be mad at Emma. Kate swore her to secrecy.”
Ward sighed. “I’m not mad at Emma. Not really. I was mad at you, but now that’s gone too.”
“Wait. You’re not mad?” It was true that he didn’t look mad, but I still didn’t totally trust it.
“No. I mean, I’m not exactly fucking pleased to learn that you’re nailing my sister, but at least you love her.” He shook his head. “How can I be mad at you? I want Kate to be with somebody that loves her, and it’s obvious that you do.” He seemed as stunned by his answer as I was to hear it.
I didn’t want to talk about the fact that I was ‘nailing his sister’, but I was grateful that he wasn’t angry at me. Ward was being surprisingly reasonable about all this, actually. It was not what I expected, although of course he’d matured since we were in college. I wondered why Kate had insisted on the secrecy in the first place if it wasn’t about Ward.
“Sometimes I wonder if I even really know Kate at all,” Ward said eventually, waving me over to the nearby park bench. I left the ball sitting on the ground and joined him on the bench. I could tell Ward’s knee was seriously bothering him today. He was limping pretty badly. I didn’t mention it, but he probably shouldn’t have been out here playing catch with me. He should have probably been icing the damn thing and keeping it elevated.
“What do you mean? You probably know her better than anybody.”
Ward shook his head. “That’s true in some ways,” he said. “But she’s got secrets she doesn’t share with me.”
I shrugged at him. “Everybody’s got secrets.” I was a fat kid until I was about ten. Nobody knew but Jimmy and my mom. And if I had my way, nobody ever would.
“Yeah, I know,” Ward agreed, “but it’s different with Kate. She’s my sister but she’s also become pretty much my best friend now that we’re grown up. But I think she knows me better than I know her.”
It was beyond strange talking about Kate like this with Ward. “She pretty much thinks that you hung the moon.”
Ward smiled thinly. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I just worry about her sometimes.” He was holding something back, but I didn’t push him. This conversation represented a fairly massive shift in our relationship, so I wasn’t going to test the boundaries just yet.
“I’m going to treat her right,” I told him. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
Ward looked at me for a long moment. “I know.” He smirked. “I’ve never known you to be in love with anybody before, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Ward nodded at me. He wasn’t smiling at me, but he wasn’t beating my ass either. That was a victory as far as I was concerned.
My head was starting to pound from all this talking about feelings with Ward, but what really worried me was Kate. If Ward was so damn reasonable now in his old age, why had I been sworn to secrecy? What was Kate trying to protect? There was only one place I could go for answers.
36
Kate
Six years ago…
My new roommate was a drag. The pint size blonde named Emma Greene just transferred in from freakin’ Yale and had a stick up her butt so big that it was amazing that she could comfortably sit down. I’d told her I was trying to stop smoking, but still stole outside for a cigarette now and then. Emma had said it was fine, but her housewarming gift to me was a bunch of Nicorette patches and a passive-aggressive hallmark card reminding me to clean up any cigarette butts since they were bad for the environment.
Emma seemed so unbelievably uptight that I worried she’d shatter into a million pieces if I cursed in front of her. Every interaction with her left me walking on egg shells. I got the feeling that she thought she was better than me with her girly-girl style and super-organized everything. Her room was spotless and everything in it looked expensive. In our bathroom, all her meticulously organized stuff smelled like flowers. Even her books were alphabetically organized. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met before, and not necessarily in a good way.
“Hey, Emma?” I knocked on her door carefully. “Can I come in?” I needed to talk to her about the utilities at our apartment. I’d been putting it off, but I was afraid the city was going to cut our power.
“Sure,” she responded. Her voice sounded weirdly high and thick. “Come on in.” I cracked open the door to her room and was surprised to see her blotting away tears. She stuffed the crumpled-up tissues into her trashcan as soon as she saw me. “What’s up?” She asked, putting on a thin, fake-looking smile.
My overall irritation with her faded when I saw how upset she was. “Emma are you ok?” The utilities could wait. “Do you need anything?” I didn’t like seeing anyone cry, not even her.
Emma’s doll-like face, so delicate and pretty, was visibly torn. She looked like she wanted to talk, but she didn’t know me well. We’d only been living together for two tense weeks and were still learning one another’s personalities. So far, it seemed like we were pretty incompatible. She pushed her long, shiny blonde hair out of her eyes. I saw the second when she decided to trust me.
“My boyfriend and I broke up right before I moved here,” she told me after a moment, “and I just really miss him. He was a complete raging fuckwad, but I miss his dumb ass.”
The fact that Emma had just called anyone a ‘raging fuckwad’, even if it was her ex-boyfriend, made me start to reevaluate her in a more positive way. “That sucks,” I told her. “Why’d you break up?”
Her porcelain white cheeks turned a bright pink. “He was my professor and he dumped me to marry somebody else. He was cheating on me the whole time we were together. And he was my first. What do I do? I feel so lonely.” She looked at me with wide, green eyes, as if expecting dismissiveness, judgement, or laughter.
It turned out Emma was human after all and came complete with a past and everything. All I could do was gape at her. I never expected Emma to open up to me like this. I honestly thought she looked down on me. Although she didn’t know I came from a trailer park, I figured my manners gave it away. But there she was looking for my advice? Did it really look like I had my life together enough to advise anybody?
Oh shit. Emma’s ex was way worse than my sob story.
“I’m really sorry,” I told her, sinking down on her desk chair before remembering what I had in the fridge. “He sounds like an ass. Hold on, I know what you need. I’m gonna’ go grab us the sparkling rose and chocolate cake I have in the fridge. This might take a while.”
And from that first night bonding over bad relationships and a shared love of cake, our friendship was born.
<
br /> Emma and I started hanging out more, and over time I cut ties with most of the so-called friends I met during my freshman year. I realized that they were more interested in seeing me fail than succeed, whereas Emma actually cared about my wellbeing and happiness. Unlike some of the people I’d thought were my friends, Emma wasn’t looking for someone to validate her own poor life choices and share in her bad decisions. She challenged me to be a better version of myself and wanted me to do the same for her. My health improved, I gained back the weight I’d lost, and I started doing better in my classes.
But it was still months before I told her about Cole. We were putting away groceries one evening when I slipped up started telling her about it as we were talking about losing our virginities.
“Yeah,” I was saying, “my first time was actually really amazing. It wasn’t painful at all. The funny thing is, the situation itself was completely messed up. So, the fact that the sex was good is sort-of shocking. See, it wasn’t with a professor, but it was almost as bad. I ended up losing my virginity on the middle of a golf course, to a guy that took me on a date to an Applebee’s and a strip club.”
Emma paused from where she was lining up the boxes of macaroni and cheese in our cupboards. “I’m sorry, what?” She turned to look at me with huge eyes. I couldn’t imagine Emma in either an Applebee’s or a strip club. She’d probably spontaneously combust with rage if a guy brought her to either.
I winced. It really didn’t seem so great when I said it like that. “It’s not quite as bad as it sounds.”
“Considering that it sounds tremendously bad, I should very much hope not.” Emma was the only person I knew who could say something like that and not sound like a conceited asshole. That was just how she talked.
“Well, it turns out that the whole date had been planned to make me hate him. He’s my brother’s friend, and he didn’t want to get involved with me.”
Emma tilted her head to the side like a confused cocker spaniel. “So, why’d he ask you out in the first place?”
“He didn’t. I asked him.” That day had marked the pinnacle of my self-confidence. It would never be that good again.
“But if he didn’t like you, he could have just said no.”
“I think he wanted to make sure I didn’t continue to hold out hope. I’d had a thing for him for a long time. Since high school, actually. He isn’t a bad guy at all. He was just trying to discourage me.”
Emma’s face was skeptical. “So, he took you on the world’s shittiest date on purpose to make you hate him?”
“Yeah, basically.” Now that it was more than a year in the past, I was able to laugh about it. But it had taken a full twelve months to get there.
“That sounds like a load of bullshit.”
“It does,” I admitted, “but it’s true.”
“And then you still slept with him?” Her question was direct, but her face was nonjudgmental. Emma was a surprisingly openminded person when it came to sex. She didn’t sleep around, but if other people wanted to do it, she didn’t care one bit. In fact, Emma was the person you could rely on to high-five you the next morning after you got some.
“Not right then, no,” I told her. “I was pretty unhappy, obviously. We hooked up almost six months later when we ran into each other at a party.”
“Hmm. He sounds like kind of a jerk.” Emma looked angry at Cole on my behalf.
“He’s not, I swear. He’s really, really nice.” Even I could hear the longing in my voice. I crumbled up the paper bag I’d just emptied with a bit more force than necessary.
“And he’s one of Ward’s friends?” Emma asked carefully. She rarely mentioned my brother. It was more than a bit of a sore subject for her.
“Yeah. His name is Cole Rylander. He graduated last year with Ward. He’s playing professional football now.” I tried my best not to spend my free time cyber stalking him and was mostly successful at it. Not seeing him regularly had helped me move past my feelings for him, at least a little bit.
“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”
I shrugged and pretended to be casual. “Probably not.” I cracked open a can of diet Dr. Pepper and looked anywhere but at Emma.
“If you did see him, would you sleep with him again?” Emma seemed skeptical of my entire story. I got the feeling that she was fishing for some kind of detail that would help her make sense of it. I couldn’t really help her with that. The situation was what it was. I’d come to terms with it eventually, even though I still had a lot of unresolved feelings for Cole.
“Probably,” I told her. “I really like him. Even after everything.”
Emma shook her head at me. “I’m sorry things didn’t turn out like you wanted with him. You never know though, maybe someday you’ll see him again.”
“I don’t know if I could take it,” I admitted. “It was because of him that I started the whole smoking and drinking and running with the wrong crowd thing that I was doing when you met me.”
“Oh.” Her response was little, but her reaction was big. I’d told her a bit about the risky, not-so-smart stuff I’d done during my freshman year, and I think it had blown her pure, squeaky clean little mind. I hadn’t even told her the worst of it yet.
In reality, I was very lucky that none of my antics had resulted in anything worse than a few bad hangovers and a fairly expensive coverup tattoo on my hip (what had I been thinking when I got that stupid rainbow taco?). Considering all the sketchy parties I went to and the drugs I experimented with, I could have ended up in a shallow grave somewhere.
I was proud to have put that chapter of my life behind me. I never wanted to feel that low again. “I’m working on learning to protect myself,” I told Emma. “Don’t worry about me. The next time I see Cole, if I ever see him again, I might sleep with him but I’m not going to let him turn my life inside out. Nobody deserves to have that kind of power over me.”
37
Kate
Present day…
Cole picked me up at three-thirty a.m. on the dot. He was driving the i8 Coupe. It looked like something that had driven right out the future. The door opened upward, revealing an interior made of leather and chrome. The new car smell was absolutely divine.
“I really like the blue!” I told him, slipping down into the low seat and marveling at all the luxurious, pretty finishes inside the car. There were so many shiny buttons! Some of them even lit up! My fingers itched to push every single one and find out what they did. I ran my hands up and down the smooth, wonderful smelling leather.
Cole’s smile was proud. “I was going to go with the silver, but when I saw the blue, it was all over. It was just total love at first sight.” His excited smile widened, revealing his white teeth. “It’s the exact same color as your eyes.”
It wasn’t. My eyes were an unremarkable cornflower blue. This was a vivid, electric blue. The sort of blue that was so saturated that it looked like it might glow in the dark. Such a corny line shouldn’t have made me blush, but this was Cole. He could use the corniest pickup line ever and it would still work on me. I smiled shyly back at him.
“You’re really sweet,” I told him before leaning over for a kiss.
He turned my gentle peck into a real kiss, claiming my mouth like he’d been away from me for a week, not a day. “Are you in a good mood?” he asked when he pulled back.
I nodded breathlessly, suddenly wary. “Why?”
He sighed. “Because I’ve got to tell you something and I’m afraid you’re going to be angry with me.” He reached behind himself into the back seat and deposited a newspaper onto my lap.
“What’s this?”
Cole switched on the overhead light. “Read it,” he told me. His face was still, and it made me nervous. I looked down.
The picture of Cole and I making out pretty much said it all. There wasn’t a whole lot of point in reading the article, but I did anyway. According to the author of the article, “Speculation is wild that Cole Ryland
er and Kate Williams, the sister of UT football star Ward Williams, have become an item.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Ward knows,” Cole added. “He showed up at my hotel room this afternoon.”
I shook my head, not remotely understanding. “Ward and Emma went to visit my mom in Plano.”
“They did, but they never made it north of Waco. Ward saw this, went ballistic, and insisted they come home immediately.”
“Emma didn’t tell me.” Why hadn’t she warned me? She should have warned me!
“I think she might have been busy. Ward was pretty angry with Emma about it. She admitted that she knew about us of course.”
My anger evaporated. Oh no. That wasn’t what I wanted. I never meant to create trouble between them.
My heart sank. “I have to talk to Ward. Tell him not to be mad at her. I was the one that wanted to keep it a secret. I made her keep it from him. It wasn’t her idea. This is my fault.” Guilt rose up in my throat, making me feel ill.
“I already told him. I told him everything Kate. I told him that I love you.”
My mouth fell open, effectively cutting off my next statement. I stared at Cole in the dim overhead lighting of his space car. “I…you…what?” Not my finest response by any means, but this was a lot all at once.
“I love you Kate,” Cole looked at me with such intensity that my guilt over Emma and my shock over the newspaper couldn’t compete. All I could think about was the fact that Cole—the man I’d waited for, dreamed about, and pined after—was here, next to me, saying that he loved me.
Kiss Me Like You Missed Me Page 18