Whatever weight was left on my shoulders from this whole thing lifted instantly. I immediately felt filled with the pride he said I should have. “I am. Thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome, Son. I can’t wait to tell your mother. Or did you want to? I can wait if you wanted to call her.”
“No, go ahead. You can tell her.”
“You should come up this weekend, and we could celebrate. Ellie’s here already. I’ll invite your brothers. This should be celebrated. Your mom is going to be thrilled.”
I started to stutter through an excuse. We hadn’t all been at the house since my mom’s birthday last May. It wasn’t always a pleasant experience. We were too old to be forced back into our childhood habitat. It made us act like kids again.
Spoiled, bratty, mean little kids.
But the sheer joy in his voice made me rethink my answer. He had been so cool with me, proud even. And it made me feel good that he thought this was something the whole family should celebrate. It made me feel like I’d done the right thing all over again.
“Okay, yeah,” I told him. “That sounds good.”
“Okay, yeah,” he repeated, surprised that I’d agreed so easily. “Your mom will call you with the details, but just plan on spending at least a night with us.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Now my voice was choked with emotion. I cleared my throat and tried again. “For your support. I really appreciate it.”
“I love you, Beckett. I hope you know how much.”
“I love you too, Dad. See you this weekend.”
We hung up, and I sat back on my couch feeling revived. Today had been a good day despite everything else. I still felt the pit in my stomach…the hole in my chest, but life wasn’t over.
I had good things happening.
I was on the right path.
There were other girls out there. Britte was just one of a thousand…millions. Maybe not millions. But the point was, I would find someone else.
I would fall in love again.
I was still young. I had plenty of time. My life wasn’t over. It was only just beginning.
I got up and grabbed a frozen dinner out of the freezer, and started heating it up. An hour later I got ready for work and enjoyed my job because it was awesome.
Later that night, I spent a couple hours working on homework and watching mindless TV. Then I showered and went to bed, still convincing myself that I didn’t need Britte.
That I could find someone else.
Hours later, after I was sick and tired of staring at my ceiling and tossing and turning in the bed that reminded me of her and everything about her and everything I’d lost with her, I decided to concede defeat.
I didn’t want someone else.
I wanted Britte.
I wanted that forever.
But she didn’t want me. She wouldn’t give me a chance.
And so I had to let her go even if I didn’t want to… even if it killed me.
Even if I never recovered.
Chapter Twenty
Britte
“Boom, sucka!” Ellie did a wiggly dance around the foosball table, celebrating her recent goal. Her arms went straight out like an airplane, and she ran around the basement shouting, “Gooooaaaallll!!!!” as loud as she could.
Fin looked up at me from across the table. “She’s such a gracious winner.”
I smiled at him and my celebrating partner. “It’s one of her strongest personality traits.”
Jameson flipped his handles around, so the little people in the middle of the table did flips. “I can’t believe we’re losing to a bunch of girls.”
“Hey!” I scolded. “We’re not just any girls. We’re foosball champions. You should have known better than to get in the ring with us.”
“And to bet money on the game,” Fin and Jameson’s friend Charlie Ryan taunted. “You guys aren’t going to have any gas money to get back.”
“It’s for a good cause,” Fin mumbled. “At least we know they won’t be eating bread and pickles all week.”
Ellie settled back at the table. “Haters gonna hate,” she declared. “I don’t know what you people have against my delicious sandwiches, but seriously.”
Fin looked at his girlfriend. “You people?”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Don’t hate the game.”
Charlie cocked his head and leaned over the table. “You’re not using any of those phrases correctly.”
“You’re not using your face correctly,” Ellie retorted.
Fin and Jameson dissolved into laughter at Ellie’s antics while poor Charlie tried not to laugh.
“You’re not going to win with her, Charlie,” I told her. “She’s the comeback queen.”
“She speaks gibberish and lives on pickles,” he argued. He ran a hand through his already unruly light brown hair and waved at Ellie with his other hand as if that explained it all.
Charlie and Jameson were still seniors at La Crosse while their BFF Fin had gone on to med school. The three guys had driven up to Ellie’s parent’s house today when they’d heard the two of us had been hanging out all week.
We had mixed emotions about their arrival. On one hand, it had forced us to get dressed, put on makeup and return to the land of the living. On the other hand, it had interrupted our Gilmore Girls Netflix marathon and made us get dressed and put on makeup.
Fall break hadn’t been the most productive week of my life. On the plus side, my nails were all freshly manicured and painted, Ellie had attacked my eyebrows with her super tweezers, we’d let her parents feed us until we gained five pounds apiece and we’d laughed and cried and talked about everything there was to talk about.
We’d gotten to do things that we didn’t even do back in the apartment that we shared. Usually, there was too much school and work and life to interrupt us. So this week had been exactly what I needed.
We planned to go home tomorrow, and I dreaded the idea of leaving this perfect home where the parents loved each other and all their kids that lived here or visited or showed up uninvited.
Like me.
The Harris’s were the best kind of people, and I was so happy to have them in my life.
Not just Ellie, but all of them.
Which made what had happened with Beckett that much worse. This week had been healing in a lot of ways, but not for my heart. If anything, the heartache I’d forced on myself had only gotten worse.
Ellie had listened to me while I’d cried over him, ranted over him and missed him. She’d offered advice, but she’d also been careful of my raw feelings.
I was irrational and quick to attack. I knew that. I tried to tone it down for her, but there were moments where all my flaws and shortcomings seemed stapled to my forehead for the world to see.
And Ellie, being the intuitive friend that she was, caught them first.
“Just talk to him, Britte,” she kept telling me. “Just see what he has to say.”
“You okay, Nichols?” Jameson asked from across the table. “You lost your game face.”
I cleared my throat. “Sorry, just thinking.”
“Let’s finish this,” Ellie crowed. “We just need one more point to win!”
“You won,” Jameson groaned. “It’s nine to zero. Let us leave with our dignity.”
I forced my emotions under control and taunted them. “Quitters.”
Jameson grabbed his heart. “You wound me.”
I shook my head at him, “I just expected more. You’re college athletes. Where is the sense of competition? Where is the never-say-die attitude? Where is your spirit of victory?”
“I blame Ellie,” Fin announced. “Somehow this is her fault.”
She popped her hip out and dropped her hand on it. “For being awesome. It’s my fault for being so awesome. You guys just can’t keep up.”
Charlie always watched Ellie with a sense of wariness, like he was afraid she would strike out and bite him. I didn’t think it was just Ellie though. He
seemed to watch most women that way. Unless they were the cheerleader type. Charlie had no trouble with cheerleaders.
He looked at his friends. “I can’t keep up. For real. I have no idea what’s going on.”
Jameson laughed and slapped his hand down on Charlie’s shoulder. “It’s probably better that way. Trust me.”
We dispersed from around the foosball table and found our way to the couches set up in Ellie’s parent’s basement. The walk-out basement had been designed to entertain kids. There was the foosball table, a pool table, a massive entertainment center with plenty of seating, a wet bar stocked with snack foods, soda, and beer—now that everyone was twenty-one. And in the unfinished storage room there was a huge, inflatable boxing ring complete with sumo suits, gigantic boxing gloves, and all manner of foam weapons that could be used to beat the crap out of each other.
I imagined Ellie’s childhood as maybe the most fun time in all of history.
Her house could have swallowed mine whole, but it didn’t feel too big. It was so full of happiness and love and laughter that it was easy to feel at home as soon as I walked through the door.
I took a seat on the couch and Jameson sat down next to me. Charlie sat on the other side of him and started flipping through sports channels. Ellie and Fin snuggled on the other couch laughing and whispering to each other.
I knew they missed each other, but it was nice of Fin to bring his friends so I didn’t feel like I was intruding on their time together. Hanging out as a group was much better than pretending like Ellie and Fin weren’t making googly eyes at each other all day.
“How’d midterms go?” Jameson asked next to me.
I groaned. “I can’t talk about them yet. Maybe after I get the letter from the board explaining that I’ve lost my scholarship. And I’ve gone through thousands of dollars’ worth of therapy. And developed a drinking problem. Ask me then.”
Jameson laughed. “They can’t be that bad.”
“They’re bad,” I assured him. “They’re really bad.”
He made a sound. “I don’t believe you.”
“Rude,” I grumbled.
He laughed again. “So what went wrong?”
“I had a bad week,” I told him. “A really, really bad week.” Even if moments of it were freaking spectacular.
“I still bet you did better than me,” he argued. “We should bet on it.”
The sound of pounding footsteps pulled my attention to the stairs before I could answer. Ellie’s older brothers appeared one after the other.
Lennox… then Grayson. I held my breath but Beckett was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s a party,” Grayson murmured as he took in the sight of all of this.
“I’m trying to help you find friends,” Ellie shot back. “I know how hard it is for you to get people to like you.”
He stared at his sister in disbelief. Ellie’s brothers were funny, in that they never thought anything they said was offensive, but they were always shocked when Ellie insulted them.
So they were funny and a little sexist.
But only in the way brothers can be.
Fin stood up and greeted both of her brothers. “We’re taking off before the celebration,” Fin explained. “We just came up for the day.”
I turned to Ellie, “The celebration?”
She ignored me. “When do you guys have to go?”
Charlie looked at the time on his cell, “We should probably leave soon. I have to work in the morning.”
Fin turned back to Ellie, “And I have to drop them off and keep going.”
Ellie stuck her bottom lip out in a pout.
I turned to Jameson, “What celebration?”
He looked at me funny. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t know what?”
A third set of footsteps bounded down the stairs. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no!
Beckett appeared on the bottom step and halted to a stop when he saw all of us. Those deep gray eyes took everything in quickly, scanning over his brothers, his sister, his sister’s boyfriend and friends, then landed on me, where I sat on the couch next to Jameson.
His expression didn’t change except for a ticking in his jaw, but I felt the tension spread through him and spread across the room until the atmosphere was simmering and straining with pressure. His hard gaze stayed on me for only a moment, but I felt it all the way to my toes.
He looked the same. It had only been a week and a half. And yet he felt so different.
I knew this man. Intimately. I had given him something I could never give another person.
And I liked that.
The realization jolted through me and set my blood on fire. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anyone else. It belonged to Beckett.
I belonged to—
No. I couldn’t think that.
The plan.
The goddamn plan.
Beckett tore his gaze from mine and waved casually at the room. “The guest list grew.”
Fin held up his hands. “We’re leaving. We just came to spend the day with Ellie.”
Beckett’s gaze moved to mine again. “You’re leaving?”
I couldn’t swallow. There was a rock in my throat. Or a tumor. Probably a tumor. I was probably going to die in the next five seconds.
“Britte came with me,” Ellie answered for me. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”
I watched Beckett swallow, the muscles in his strong throat lifting and dropping. Apparently, he didn’t have a tumor in his throat.
Jameson stood up, and the movement finally broke my staring contest with Beckett. I stood up too, feeling awkward sitting while the men towered over me.
“Let’s get going then, Hunter. Say goodbye to your women and let’s head out.” Jameson looked back at me and smiled. Quietly, he asked, “You okay?”
I nodded quickly. “Fine. I’m fine.”
Charlie tossed the remote to me, and I caught it reflexively. “It’s in your hands now, B. Use it wisely.”
I smiled because Charlie had the oddest sense of humor—meaning he fit in well with us. “I’ll do my best.”
Jameson and Charlie said goodbye to the Harris boys and gathered their things while Ellie and Fin stepped outside through the walk-out entrance. “We’ll meet you around the front of the house,” Fin told his friends.
After they had left we all stood there awkwardly. Lennox and Grayson had started a conversation about something I wasn’t paying attention to while Beckett stood there glaring at Charlie, Jameson and me.
The awkwardness actually physically hurt me. I felt sick to my stomach.
“I’ll walk you guys out!” I volunteered brightly, too loudly.
They looked relieved to have something to do. I turned my back on Beckett and his brothers, leading the way up the stairs and to the front of the house where Fin had parked.
We stood outside in the chilly evening air, and I wished I’d grabbed my coat before walking outside. Or at least slipped shoes on.
“It was fun, guys. Thanks for hanging out.”
Charlie smiled at me. “It was either this or a FIFA marathon all weekend.” He shrugged. “I could have gone either way.”
I looked at Jameson with wide eyes. “Good to know.”
Charlie got in the car, and Jameson and I started laughing. “He’s better when you know him better.”
I shook my head. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Jameson’s eyes grew serious, and he glanced back at the house. I followed his gaze, afraid Beckett would be standing there like a century, refusing to let me back in.
Then I would be stranded out in the freezing cold without a coat and bare feet.
Maybe Jameson would give me a ride back.
Seeming to read my mind, he turned back to me and said, “You know, we could give you a ride back if you’re ready to go home. Fin won’t mind.”
I thought about his offer, seriously thought about it. I could escape the awkwardness of being aroun
d Beckett, but also the heartache. And I could get a jump start on the week. I’d only done the bare minimum work this week, and I was so unprepared to face the rest of the semester.
But then some of Beckett’s words came back to me. People are so afraid of the uncomfortable.
You’re the bravest girl I know.
Was he wrong about me?
Was I nothing but a coward? A weak, pathetic coward?
“I’m okay,” I told Jameson. “My stuff is everywhere. I don’t want to hold you guys up. Plus, I need to stay.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
He looked at me funny, but he didn’t push it.
Ellie and Fin walked around the corner of the house, and pretty soon we watched the boys pull out of the big circle driveway. We stood arm in arm in an effort to stay warm, but as soon as the guys were out of sight, we sprinted for the door.
“Are you going to answer me now?” I hissed at Ellie. “What’s the celebration?”
She gave me a sideways look when we reached the door, resting her hand on the knob but not pulling just yet. “Promise to still be my friend?”
“No,” I told her immediately. “No, I do not.”
She glared at me.
“Tell me!” I demanded.
“It’s for Beckett. He got this coaching job at La Crosse. My parents wanted to have a special dinner with him.”
“I’ll still be your friend,” I told her seriously. “But only because I plan on killing you, and it would be mean to kill you and stop being your friend.”
She stepped inside and held the door for me. “I couldn’t tell you! You would have wanted to leave!”
“So you tricked me into staying?”
“Only because I love you.”
“That’s a lie. You hate me.”
“I love you,” she whispered. “But not as much as—” her voice trailed off into a pointed whisper while she nodded her head in the direction of Beckett, who had just reemerged from downstairs.
I wanted to die.
Oh, my God, my best friend was an idiot. An adorable idiot. And her brother was also an idiot. Also an adorable, sexy, infuriating, gorgeous, kind, generous, hilarious, hot, stupid idiot.