by Unknown
“Chassidy?”
I look up and see Carter standing at the entrance. He waves, and his warm smile makes me feel better, like a glass of milk after eating something spicy. I stand, smooth my dress, and head toward him. He’s out of the waiter/busboy uniform and in the T-shirt and jeans I’ve gotten used to seeing him in.
“Thank you for this, Carter.”
“No problem at all.” He says good night to a few of his coworkers as we head out of the door.
“Hey, Carter, we’ve got her coming around for you,” the valet attendant says with a smile.
“Thanks, Jake.” Carter slips him a large white box.
“You’re the best,” Jake says, and Carter laughs.
In less than a minute, a white Mercedes pulls around and another valet person jumps out.
“Man, she rides smooth. I love this car.” I watch as Carter hands him a bill, then the valet driver makes his way over to open the door for me. “Let me get the door for you.”
“I could have gotten that,” Carter says.
“No, my pleasure,” the valet driver tells him with a wink.
I smile to myself before getting into the car. The seats are plush and heated and the interior is already toasty, the perfect contrast to the whipping wind we escaped.
“I hope I didn’t ruin any plans you had tonight,” I tell him as we pull off.
“You didn’t interrupt anything. I have an early morning tomorrow at work,” he says.
“At the not-for-profit?” I don’t want to pry, but I wonder why he works as a waiter. I know he probably gets great tips, but he has this car ,which is obviously expensive, and the rent in our building isn’t exactly below market rate.
“Yeah, I work here a couple nights a week, and the real gig takes up the rest of my time,” he says, turning down the music and letting me know he’s open to conversation, which isn’t surprising. Our conversations always are smooth and easy, as if I’ve known him for years.
“Why do you work there?”
He sort of shrugs. “It’s good for networking. You never know who you’ll meet at these types of places.”
“Are people nice to you?” I worked for a couple of months as a waitress in college and most of my customers were terrible to me, and that was at a breakfast place. I assumed people would be snooty at a place like Maestro’s. I wouldn’t have imagined them networking with the waiter.
He laughs. “Generally, there’s always one spoiled apple in the bunch. You really learn how to deal with people in places like that.” He chuckles. Not only is he handsome, but there’s something about him that could probably charm the bad attitude out of most people. “I could have chosen another job, but my father always stresses the importance of serving others. It really shapes your character.”
“Are you close with your dad?” I ask, thinking he has to be to choose an entire second job based on his opinion. I didn’t even used to want to eat the food my dad suggested.
“Yeah, I am.”
“I hated waitressing. I did it in college and it sucked. I thought a place like Maestro’s would be worse.”
“It’s not as bad as you think. Most people are good, I think.” He shrugs. “Or want to be.”
“Really?”
“You disagree?” he asks, but not in a challenging, condescending way.
“I don’t know. I think people are more bad than good. Have you seen the news lately? It’s so depressing that I stopped watching it.”
“Yeah, but the world is a good place… or tragic, depending on who’s looking.” He sighs, and for a moment, there’s a heaviness to him. But in a flash, it’s gone. “But most people are good, they just make bad choices. They don’t see the consequences of their terrible decisions. They only see that moment, never beyond it, and before they know it, the choices they’ve made have crippled their morals, shriveled their humanity.”
I look at him, surprised. “Were you, like, a philosophy major or something?”
He grins. “No, people are just sort of my thing. I did take some psychology classes though.”
I think back on the position he saw me in tonight and feel the need to explain myself for some reason, but I bite my tongue. Bringing it up seems awkward. But I know he has to be wondering about it. I let out a small sigh.
“Hey, what you saw tonight, it wasn’t what it looked like,” I say feebly, then I wonder if anyone who ever said that line was telling the truth.
“No judgment here,” he says quickly.
“I actually just met him today. You remember me telling you that?”
“Do you want to know my honest opinion?”
My stomach sinks. I only want to hear it if it’s what I want to hear, but if he started with that disclaimer, it’s probably not what I want to hear. He glances at me and I smile. I guess he’s waiting for permission.
“Sure,” I say unconvincingly.
“If I were your husband, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone’s hands but mine on you like that.” His face is hard, and my cheeks heat up in embarrassment.
I don’t say anything because what can I say? How can I defend what he saw? I’m not sure how it looked, but I know how it felt.
“Were you okay with it?” he asks.
“He was just being overly flirty.” I laugh. I see his face harden through the rearview mirror. “Nothing was going to happen.”
“Isn’t that unprofessional of him though?”
“It was. But his sales record is phenomenal. I really think he’s going to be great for my career.”
He nods. “I just would be concerned about how disciplined he is, if he can’t even control himself at a business dinner.”
The little voice in my head says he wouldn’t have had to control himself if my husband was there, and another little voice tells me that I should have had better behavior whether Bryce was there or not. I think of all the days Bryce is gone to so many different places, with so many different people, how many women he meets and sees and how I would feel if this situation was turned around. How would Bryce feel…? But Bryce left me. He hasn’t called me—he’s abandoned me. Why should I think about his feelings now? Is he thinking about mine? I’m so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice us pull into our garage.
“Home sweet home,” Carter tells me brightly as he parks.
We get out of the car and head toward the elevator. Our ride up is quiet but not awkward. We reach our floor, and Carter lets me walk out first, then he walks me to my door. I think of what would have happened tonight if Carter hadn’t spotted me, if he hadn’t offered me a ride home. I’d like to think that nothing would have happened. I’d like to believe that the moment of briefly considering what Davien was saying was just a moment of insanity, but how could I even come that close? Davien isn’t the first man to hit on me since I’ve been with Bryce, or since I’ve been married, but this time it was different. I felt vulnerable to his temptation. I felt weak. I’ve never been at a place like this my entire life, and it’s terrifying.
“Thank you for tonight. I really appreciate it,” I tell him.
He gives me a half a smile. “It was just a ride.”
I nod, sticking the key in my door.
“Hey—”
I turn around. His hands are in his pockets, and he looks nervous, which makes me smile.
“If you ever need someone to talk to—it doesn’t matter what about—I’m here,” he says, and he truly looks sincere.
“Thank you,” I tell him, returning his smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
When I get inside, I pull out my phone and stare at the picture of Bryce and me, how happy we looked. There’re still no missed calls or text messages though. I throw the phone on the couch and head into my bedroom to sleep alone, with only my memories of tonight.
2 years earlier
“Be honest with me. Tell me what you really think. Is it terrible? Does the plot line make sense? Are the characters one-dimensional? Is it a pile of garbage that should nev
er see the light of day? Whatever you think, I want the truth,” she rattles off nervously. When she’s nervous, she tends to hold her breath or talk really loudly, and this time she’s managing to alternate between both.
“Chas, you’re one of the most talented people I know. I doubt it’s going to suck.”
She pouts and lets out a frustrated sigh. “No, you have to be tough. You have to be honest. I really want your opinion to be unbiased.”
I can see how serious she is, how scared she is. I get that she’s afraid to share her words with the world, but she doesn’t have to be that way with me. “You’re going to be my wife in three months. I’m sort of required to like whatever is a part of you, and these words are a part of you. If they really suck, I’m going to have to like every sucky one of them.”
She smiles but fights it, letting her back fall onto the bed, and I fall beside her.
“I love that you love everything about me, but I need your unbiased opinion.” She climbs on my lap and brings her lips to mine, but they don’t touch. “I need to know my words are good, that you think they are because they are and not because they’re mine.” When I try to kiss her, she pulls back and laughs, her hands planted on my chest to keep me at a distance. “And I figured you might say something like that, so I thought it’d be good for me to give you three chapters of my manuscript and three chapters of a manuscript that isn’t mine, and you give me your honest opinion on both.” She gives me a wide, sneaky smile.
“But I hate to read.”
She swats my chest. “No, you don’t. You love it, liar.”
She’s right. I’ve loved to read since I was six years old. I went through a very brief stage of wanting to be a writer, but I gave up when I discovered I couldn’t write a book as fast as I could read one. My dream of being an author died when I was ten, and I went on to my new dream of being a world famous baseball player. That lasted until I was fourteen and realized I only liked to play when my friends were on the team. When they didn’t make the cut, it wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be.
“I’ll read three hundred manuscripts as long as you promise to show up at the altar,” I say as I trail my fingers down her stomach and reach for her waistband.
She jumps off me. “I’ll let you know once I read your critique,” she teases me before giving me a brief kiss.
“Okay,” I say with a groan.
I can’t believe this woman is agreeing to be mine forever, that I’m the last person who will ever have her, make her smile, hear her laugh, make her mad and make it up to her for the rest of our lives. I think back on Jax’s words about being with the same woman for the rest of my life, and I can’t think of living my life any other way.
She grabs her laptop and plops back on the bed. I can see the excitement all over her.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Getting everything ready to send to you.”
“You want me to read them now?”
“Well you don’t have to,” she says, looking at me with big puppy eyes.
“Okay, go in the living room. I can’t focus with you here,” I tell her grumpily.
“Yay!” she squeals, clapping. She bounces to the door, then runs back over and jumps on my lap. “Did I tell you you’re the most fantastic fiancé in the history of the world and even in the history of book boyfriends?”
“No, you haven’t, as a matter of fact,” I tell her, rolling on top of her.
She cups my chin and kisses it. “Well, you are.”
“Better than Travis Maddox?” I ask, remembering how she talked my ear off about him when I first met her. I think he’s the first fictional character I’ve been actually jealous of.
“Hey, let’s not go that far.”
I tickle her, and she wiggles out from under me.
“Call me when you’re done,” she says before slipping out of the door.
I adjust some pillows behind my back, plop her laptop on my lap, and open the first manuscript. This isn’t the first time I’ve read Chassidy’s stuff. Usually it’s only things that she writes for class, but I know this is different. She didn’t write this for a grade; it’s what she’s put her blood, sweat, tears, and dreams into. What she’s sacrificed time with me, her friends, and her family to create.
I know she wants to be a writer more than anything in the world, and if it doesn’t happen for her, I don’t know what she’ll do, who she’ll be. It’s the one thing I worry about for her. Not that she’s not talented enough to make it. I know she can do whatever she puts her mind to, but she’s not good at recovering from the blows life throws you. She shuts down. Two months after we started dating, the store she worked for shut down and she was in a funk for weeks. I know she loved working there, but it took a lot of pushing and encouragement to get her to get back on the job horse.
I allow my eyes to scan the page and fall in love with her words all over again. It takes me about four hours to finish making notes and giving her the detailed critique she wants. It’s not hard for me—I began my college career as an English major. I send her a text that I’m done, and in less than a minute, she’s back with a wide smile. I keep my face like stone, and she squints at me, her smile lessening a bit.
“Have a seat,” I say in my best professor-esque tone.
“Look at you being all critique-y,” she says teasingly as she sits.
I let out a tired breath, and she chews her lip, concern taking over her face.
“It was that bad?”
I let out another stressed sigh. Her face goes blank, and I see her inhale as if to brace herself. I set the laptop on her lap, kiss her forehead, and leave the room, shutting the door. I sit on my sofa and turn on the television.
My brothers, Duke and Max, come in like a whirlwind, loud and boisterous as they always are.
“Well what do we have here? Its Thing One without Thing Two. Pigs must be about to fly,” Duke jokes as he heads to the refrigerator.
“Isn’t that ironic coming from Tweetle Dumb?” I say. “And actually, Thing Two is in my room, so can you guys try to not act like farm animals?”
Duke gives me the middle finger. “I can’t wait until you’re out of here so this place can be the bachelor pad it was always meant to be.”
They high-five.
“I’m going to miss her food though,” Max says, grabbing a casserole dish full of beef stroganoff that Chassidy made and popping it into the microwave.
It wasn’t easy being the big brother of twins, especially when they outgrew you by five inches and a combined total of four hundred pounds. I had to learn pretty quickly how to outsmart them. Chassidy says we all look alike and they’re just bigger and sort of scarier when they’re around food, which I can’t argue with at all as I watch them fight over the last Krispy Kreme doughnut.
“Could you ask Chassidy if she could make a chocolate cake?” Max asks after losing the battle over the donut neither of them bought.
“She’s my girlfriend, Max, not your personal chef. If you got the football out of your brain, maybe you could keep a girl around long enough to trick them into cooking for you.”
“You tricked me!” We turn around to see Chassidy smiling, her eyes wide with tears in them.
I can’t fight the smile on my face. “How did you read through all of my notes that fast?”
She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me into one of the best kisses of my life. Max and Duke catcall from the kitchen.
“You knew they were both mine?” she says breathlessly.
“I knew your voice the moment you spoke. You think I couldn’t recognize the words you’ve written?”
“Duke and Max, unless you want to see an embarrassing amount of affection, could you excuse us?” she says, her eyes locked on me.
“Only because we like you,” Duke says as they make their way to the door.
“Hey can you bake, Chas?” Max asks.
I glare at him to get him to leave, and he makes kissy faces at me.
“Sickeningly so,” she promises before pulling me to our bedroom.
Chassidy
“Hey.”
Whenever I hear his voice, no matter how long it’s been or how mad I am, it always passes through every part of me. I never realized how much I missed his voice, but after being deprived of it, I’m reminded of how it can heal the little broken parts of me bit by bit. His smile would let me know everything would be okay.
I close my eyes and take in his voice. His tone is dry, but there’s a hint of surprise in it. He didn’t expect me to call him. I probably shouldn’t have, since he’s the one who left me outside of his friends’ house after I had an emotional meltdown.
“It’s so good to hear from you.” Sarcasm radiates through my tone, but I do mean it.
He’s quiet. I don’t know if it’s out of frustration or if he doesn’t know what to say to defend his actions. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk to me.”
“Where are you?” I ask, anger and hurt peeking through my words.
“I’m still at Tiffany and Jax’s.”
“I thought you might have been working.”
“No, I’ve actually had the past few days off. I fly out again tonight.” His voice is matter-of-fact with a hint of frustration.
I can’t help but feel he said that as a jab. I think of the last time he had a week off, how once upon a time, we’d spend those days together, wrapped in each other’s arms, talking and making love for as long as we could. Now it’s normal for us to be apart, for him to not know what’s going in my life and me to have no clue what’s going on in his.
“So are you just going to live there, go back to the old days?”
A little voice inside me tells me I’m being ridiculous, should tell him I miss him, and shouldn’t pick a fight because this stalemate we’re in isn’t just because of him, but the stubborn part of me wins out, as it has been recently. He lets out a frustrated sigh, and I can see his face in my mind, his lips pressed together in frustration.