“Yeah, just give me a minute,” he replied. “Nova, I need to get going.”
“Austin, I didn’t plan on making you talk about our relationship,” I said quickly. “I just want to hear your voice, to see how you’re doing. I love you, so I want to know that you’re okay.”
There was another pause, and as I sat down in a chair on the guesthouse patio, I rubbed my left temple with my fingers and told myself not to cry.
“I love you, too,” he finally replied. “But it really does stress me out, Nova. This is all new to me—racing in this division, all the new things and new people—and I just need to focus for a while. I’m working my ass off, I’m tired, I’m frustrated, and I need to make this season work somehow.”
“So it’s okay to love you and miss you, I’m supposed to do it from a distance? You honestly don’t have room for me in your life, do you,” I stated.
I heard another voice speaking to Austin, so I wasn’t surprised when he said, “I really need to go. I’ll, uh, talk to you another time, okay? Bye, Nova.”
He hung up before I could respond, but even if he’d given me the chance to, I don’t know what I would have said. Out of frustration, I threw my phone.
It landed in Field Four.
I just sat there for a minute, unsure of how things with Austin had gone so wrong. I knew that he had a lot to prove, and this first season with his newest team was really crucial to him. I understood all of that. But I didn’t understand why he thought he had to do it without me. It made me fret over who I was as a person and if there was something about me that made me hard to be in a relationship with. I didn’t know if that was the case or not, but maybe Austin really did need me to back off.
I heard the screen door open behind me so I glanced back to see Ben. I had mixed feelings when I saw him. I really was glad to see him, but on the other hand, I didn’t desire any type of conversation that had to do with Austin.
I guess I could see how Austin felt whenever he dreaded discussing our relationship.
“Hey,” Ben said.
“Hey. What are you up to?”
He sat down in a chair next to me. “Not much right now.” He did a double take and looked at me again. “Everything okay?”
I slowly shrugged. “Not really, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
He barely nodded. “Do you feel like going to a concert tonight?”
“A concert?”
He nodded again. “A few friends of mine are going to see Brandon Flowers at the Fox.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. You interested?”
“Definitely. I mean if it’s okay that I tag along?”
He smiled and said, “Of course it is. I invited you, didn’t I? I have an extra ticket.”
“Will your friends mind?”
“My friends?” he chuckled. “Why would they have a say?”
With a shrug I replied, “Uh, I don’t know. Just making sure. What time is the concert?”
“Eight, but we were going to get something to eat before that. Can you be ready to go in an hour?”
I glanced at my watch and said, “Sure, I guess so.”
“I mean we don’t have go early if you—”
He stopped short when we both heard a cell phone ringing. He listened so he could tell where it was coming from, and since I was trying not to laugh, he looked at me with confusion.
“Excuse me, but I think someone’s trying to get a hold of me,” I said as I stood. I made my way to Field Four and climbed through the fence railing. My phone had stopped ringing by then, but I picked it up out of the grass just as Ben arrived at the fence.
“Interesting,” was all he said.
“So I didn’t exactly like how the conversation ended,” I shrugged. I stepped through the railing again and faced him as I stuck my phone in my back pocket.
“Hmm. And I suppose if I ask you about it you might throw me into the pasture.”
I smiled, feeling a little embarrassed. “Nah. I might kick you, but I don’t think I could hoist you over the fence.”
“Fair enough. So what happened on the phone?” he asked, pretending to put up guard, just in case I really would kick him.
We started walking back towards the house and I shrugged. “I guess I’m too much of a burden for Austin to deal with right now. It’s kind of stupid because I can understand where he’s coming from—the whole career thing, and achieving your goals and such—but we just don’t agree on how to make it work. I can’t argue with him anymore because it doesn’t get anywhere, and he’s getting tired of feeling pressured. Even though I wasn’t even the one that brought it all up,” I added with a groan. “I didn’t say a single word about where we stood when we were in Texas together. It was even just like it used to be between the two of us and then… And then he completely shut himself off from me again.”
We both returned to the chairs on the patio. “What do you mean he shut himself off?”
“He won’t answer my calls, he won’t even call me back… He’ll text me back if it has to do with a race or something, like how he did or whatever. And then today he called because of the message that I left—pretty much begging him to call me—and it was just…a really crappy phone call. I know he’s really busy, but honestly, how hard is it to fit in a five minute phone call?”
He thought about that for a moment before he asked, “And what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you guys stand?”
“How the hell should I know?”
He chuckled. “Well…how do you feel?”
“Pissed. Isn’t it obvious?”
“Yeah, on the outside. But I think that’s just so you don’t let anybody see you’re hurting.”
I eyed him carefully and he was looking at me, too. I sighed, knowing that he was right, but I really didn’t want to get into it at the moment.
I stood up and exhaled a deep breath of air. “Well, I’m going to head upstairs and get ready for my date with Brandon.”
Ben smiled and stood too. “I’m sure you don’t have to do much to your appearance and you’ll catch his eye.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“So how do you know Ben?” I asked Charlie.
“How do you know Ben?” he countered with a suspicious smile.
I was amused—it only took five minutes of being around Charlie to summarize his personality. He was really goofy.
“Well I’m going to assume that Ben already told you how he knows me,” I told him.
He gave me a quirky eyebrow. “True. But maybe someone’s gonna make something up and I can crack open a big huge conspiracy.”
I laughed at his feigned seriousness, and then I lowered my voice and said, “You’re right, just don’t tell anybody that Ben is actually my brother.”
He gasped. “Brother?” he hissed. “Wow, that is the complete opposite of what he said!”
“What did he say?” I asked with narrowed eyes.
He shook his head and dramatically glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Just that the two of you are actually married but can’t let anyone know about it.”
I chuckled. “Oh, did he really open up about that?” I asked.
He nodded decisively. “Yes, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“Okay,” I whispered back. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Charlie took a drink of his soda, so I had another bite of my food. We were the only two at the table for the moment. Ben and Andy had gone to get another pizza and more drinks, and Laurel had made a trip to the bathroom. Laurel was Andy’s girlfriend and I really liked her. She was very easy going and we both had similar backgrounds. Apparently Charlie’s date was ill and had to cancel that day, which is why Ben had an extra ticket. Charlie claimed that I was his date since I got Veronica’s ticket, but Ben made it clear that I was no one’s date and warned him to keep his distance.
“It’s true, though,” Charlie finally said.
&n
bsp; “What’s true?”
“Ben.”
“What about him?” I chuckled, unsure of what he was talking about.
“I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Tell what? Are you talking in riddles, or what?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Because I can’t tell.”
I studied him for a few seconds and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, don’t tell. But tell me how you know Ben. You, Ben, and Andy all went to school together, right? I think that’s what he said.”
“Kind of,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food. He swallowed and added, “Ben and I were pretty good friends—not as close as him and Austin—but I was more the junkie that always got Ben into trouble.”
I studied him closely. “What do you mean?”
“I was a junkie,” he shrugged. “Ben and I were friends, but while he got caught up in the gambling world, I got hooked on heroin. He had a hard time hanging around me because of it—which was understandable—but Ben was the one that got me clean. Beat the crap out of me one night and made me admit myself into rehab. I’d be dead by now if he hadn’t intervened.” I guess I was just staring at him because he smiled and said, “Oh, he didn’t exactly share that about me? Not surprising I guess. Ben’s kind of a respecter of privacy.”
I chuckled and said, “Actually I think he’s kind of nosy.”
Charlie laughed. “Oh, you mean he questions you about your life and stuff? Well that’s different. That’s just because he’s a good guy like that and he’s truly concerned about people. I meant that he keeps people’s private matters private.”
“Oh.”
“But he doesn’t have a problem speaking his mind, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I replied, taking a sip of my water.
“It bothers you?”
I set my cup down and took a moment to think about it. “No, I guess not because I like talking to him. We’ve become friends.”
He watched me for a few seconds and took a bite. If I wasn’t mistaken, I could swear he had a smirk on his face. But Ben and Andy set another pizza in the middle of the table just as Andy asked, “Laurel’s still gone?”
I guess she had been gone for several minutes, but I hadn’t thought about it since I’d been talking to Charlie.
“You want me to go check on her?” I asked him.
“Uh…yeah, if you don’t mind,” he replied. “I mean she, uh, might not be feeling well…”
“Is she sick, too?”
Andy gave me a tiny smile, almost seeming embarrassed. I only glanced at Ben—who didn’t react except for a tiny raise of his eyebrow to clue me in—and I decided not to wait for an answer.
“I’ll go check on her,” I said, leaving for the bathroom.
Laurel did look ill when I spotted her at the sink. She looked like she’d just thrown up, and she took a deep breath after blotting her mouth dry with a paper towel. She saw me standing near the doorway and froze for a moment.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
She took another deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, I just… Well… I’m…”
“Yeah, you don’t have to talk about it. I can figure it out.”
She paused for a moment, seeming to think. Then I could tell she was crying and she wiped away the tear that slid down her cheek.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
She grabbed another paper towel and blotted around her eyes. “No, that’s okay. I mean maybe I do, but not here…”
“Yeah, I understand.”
There was silence again and I was thankful the restroom was empty when she started to cry again.
“Andy wants to marry me,” she said quietly. I waited for more and she added, “I don’t want to marry him.” She looked at me and said, “I mean that’s the right thing to do, right? I know he loves me, and I know that he would be a great dad, but… I just don’t feel the same way about him.”
I leaned against the counter. “At all? Do you think you might if some time passed, or maybe after the baby is born…?”
She barely shrugged. “I don’t know. Right now I just think it’s wrong to marry him just because I’m pregnant. I mean this shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but it’s a little late for that,” she chuckled sarcastically.
I smiled sympathetically.
“How can it be a good start to a marriage if it’s done out of obligation?”
I slowly shrugged. “It’s a hard thing to determine because you don’t have that option right now. But at least Andy is taking responsibility for it. If you don’t feel right about marrying him right now, then don’t. You still have time to consider your future. And I don’t know the two of you that well, but I think Andy is willing to give you whatever it is you need. That alone says a lot about what kind of guy he is.”
“I know,” she nodded. “And he is a good guy. I just…don’t like feeling pressured.”
Just hearing her say that made my stomach sink. It was just like Austin and I, only the roles were reversed.
“Can you just tell him to give you some time to sort everything out?” I asked.
“I did, and he agreed. But I do know that it’s what he wants—marriage—and I don’t. At least not right now.”
“Okay, so—”
A woman walked into the bathroom and briefly glanced at us before she entered a stall. I motioned to Laurel and she followed me out.
“We can talk about it later if you want,” I told her.
“Okay,” she nodded. “Uh, thanks, Nova.”
“Sure, anytime.”
After quick glimpses from everyone at the table, we sat down and proceeded with our pre-concert meal. I watched Andy and Laurel out of the corner of my eye, though. Andy had put his arm around her when she sat next to him and I could tell he asked if she was okay. I’d barely known the two of them an hour but they both seemed like good people. And Ben had kind of given me a quick rundown of personalities before we’d met up with everyone, and I had to agree that his friends were pretty nice.
“Everything okay in the little girls’ room?” Ben asked as we left the restaurant.
“Um, yes, conversation-wise. But I think only time will tell for the other stuff.”
He slightly nodded as he opened the passenger’s door to his Jeep. “Laurel worries about what everyone else thinks instead of what’s important.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling slightly defensive for her sake.
He remained at the door as I sat down in the seat. “She cares too much about the reasons behind staying with Andy. It’s dumb because they were going to end up together anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” I replied.
“I don’t? They’ve been together for a year, Andy even had a ring—before the whole baby thing happened—and there’s no doubt she would have said yes.”
“Well maybe proposing might have actually helped?” I retorted sarcastically.
He kind of scoffed and then shut my door. I watched him walk around to the driver’s seat and sit down.
“So a guy can’t be nervous about proposing to a girl?” he asked me as he turned the key. “He only had the ring for a couple of weeks. He had everything planned—how he was going to propose and when—and then two days before he can get it out, she tells him she’s pregnant. What’s that supposed to do to a guy? He feels like an ass if he says, ‘Well, see, I wanted to marry you anyway…’ ”
“And he didn’t say that?”
“Should he have? I mean he did eventually, but she already had it in her mind that it was for the wrong reasons. When you’re feeling the heat, your head isn’t thinking straight and you don’t exactly say the ‘right’ things. Yeah, later on he wanted to kick himself—when he didn’t tell her right away that he already had a ring and wanted to marry her.”
“You mean he told her that and she didn’t believe him?”
“Well I don’t know if she didn’t ‘believe’ him, but she was pretty skeptical.
I think she was already pretty stressed out about it.”
“Understandable.”
“So why are you blaming Andy? He was stressed out, too.”
“I’m not blaming anyone.”
“You seem to have your opinions set.”
“And what opinions are those?”
He sighed heavily and then slowly shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Ben, I don’t know Andy and Laurel very well. All I know is what she told me—that she didn’t want to marry him—and I think that it’s just a matter for the two of them to—”
“Wait a minute. She told you she doesn’t want to marry him?”
“Well…”
“At all? She doesn’t want to marry him at all?”
He seemed totally shocked and I didn’t know what to say. Neither of us said anything for several seconds, but I could tell that I’d just made an even bigger mess.
“I think she’s very emotional right now, Ben. I wouldn’t take stock in what she says right now. Just give her some time to vent all of her worries.”
He drove in silence for a minute as we headed north. I was hoping the conversation was over, but after a while he said, “I kind of thought you’d be on Andy’s side for this one.”
I glanced at him as he drove and he wasn’t hesitant to look at me, as well.
“Why, because Andy and I are in the same boat? We’re both pathetic fools that are in a relationship with someone that doesn’t share our same relationship goals?” He didn’t reply so I added, “Maybe Andy and I should just marry each other.”
He chuckled at that. “Nah, he’s too in love with Laurel.” I didn’t disagree but he quickly added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with you, it’s just that…”
“Yeah, yeah, sure… We all know I’ll become a spinster.”
He laughed again and shook his head as we took an exit. “Whatever. You could have any guy that you want. Except Andy because he’s taken,” he joked.
“And except Austin because he’s got more important things on his list.”
The Jeep was silent again but I could tell that Ben felt bad for me. I knew I was throwing myself my own little pity party, but it was hard not to.
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