After I’d eaten my feelings in the form of a bacon cheeseburger, I kissed Beau on the cheek and told him I’d call him later.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, reaching out a hand and pulling me back to him before I walked away. “You’re not acting like yourself.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I told him while trying to remember the last time I actually felt like myself, whoever that was. “I’ll see you later,” I smiled at him before squeezing his hand once before letting go.
On one hand, I was this girl that seemed to have it all together. I had a good job, a nice boyfriend…I was content. On the other hand, I was seriously tempted to be reckless and forget about the seemingly normal life I had made for myself. To throw caution to the wind and be with Reid.
I sat in my car for a few minutes as I watched Beau drive away. Today, I was Beau’s girlfriend. Real Estate Agent. Upstanding Halstead citizen. Before that I was the dedicated college girl who’d battled depression, and an almost unwed mother. And, before that, Reid’s girlfriend. I was starting to see that the many hats I’d worn over the years were piling up and giving me a headache. Perhaps it was time to actually think about who I really wanted to be.
The sun broke through the clouds and reflected off of something stuck under my windshield wiper. A CD case with the words PLAY ME and a smiling face written on it stared back at me. A smiling face that had witnessed the deluge of roles I’d been playing. I retrieved the CD and popped it into my player, hoping that whatever was about to come through my speakers was a voice of reason with answers to all of my life questions. Instead, it was the voice of one John Bon Jovi telling me that he’d be there for me. The same voice that had serenaded me in my Jeep years ago. It might not have been the voice of reason, but I knew the person responsible for the impromptu promise session and contrary to what I’d thought before, I wanted to believe the sentiment of the song.
He hadn’t been joking when he said he was going to fight for me.
“We have to have the track done by Saturday,” I blurted out before I started to explain the situation I’d accidentally forced myself into. “We’re having people over to ride.”
“Ha!” Brett laughed from the cab of the skid steer he was currently sitting in. I’d waved him and my brother over from the track the second I jumped out of my truck. “I’m good on this thing, but I’m not a miracle worker, RT.”
“Well you’re going to have to be. We’re having a party and I might have invited Beau and Nora. So it has to be done.”
“How do you might have invited someone to a party?” Hoyt asked, as he continued to rake over the whoop section, which appeared to be the only part of the track that was actually able to be ridden on. We had managed to get the majority of it tilled up that morning so we had at least one thing going for us.
“Don’t worry about it.” I shook off his question. “Just worry about raking the dirt and getting this thing somewhat in riding condition in the next four days.”
“Dude,” Brett said. “Why in the world would you invite them here? I get wanting to win her back, but inviting her boyfriend out with her seems like a bad idea.”
“Well, yeah, it’s less than fucking ideal,” I bit out, hearing the levels of my frustration rise. I took a deep breath to try to stay calm. I needed to play this whole thing in a calmly manner. I couldn’t be second-guessing every move I made. Every single move I made from here on out had to be perfectly calculated. “I don’t think she would have taken me up on the option to come alone. I’ve got to work with what I’m dealt.”
Would I have rather had time alone with Nora? Absolutely. We had a lot to discuss and I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the way she’d been checking me out. The way she was looking at me today when we were standing outside the diner was not the way friends look at each other. It was probably unfair of me to flaunt what the good Lord, and hours of time on the track and in the gym, gave me in front of her the way I did, but seeing her reaction was enough to make me not care. She might have thought she was covering up her desires, but she was a terrible liar. I saw the way she held her breath and her muscles tensed when I stepped toward her. She was still attracted to me. And I was damn sure still attracted to her.
I’d spent the past few days replaying everything that had happened since I’d returned to Halstead and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how she ended up with Beau Gregurich. Then it hit me, she wasn’t dating him because she was head over heels in love. She was dating him because when you live in a town the size of Halstead, your options are limited. Beau was the means to an end. He had to be.
Now that I was back in town, I wanted her to know that the pond had another fish in it. A big, fucking fantastic fish that was willing to do whatever it took to prove to her that he regretted what happened all those years ago. If inviting Beau to my track was the only way to get to see her, then so be it. I’d manage to find time to talk to her one way or another.
“Seems risky,” Brett interjected. “Having them here together. One whiff of you making a play for her and he’s going to forbid her from seeing you or some shit. You should play the friend card a little longer.”
“She’s not in love with him. She’s in love with me. I can see it. I can feel it.”
Hoyt and Brett both looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had, but that didn’t change what I knew to be true.
“She sure looked in love when he was groping her out in the parking lot,” Brett reminded me. He’d reported back to me that he’d seen the two of them when he’d went out for a cigarette. “Looked like she was rather enjoying herself if you ask me.”
“I don’t care what you saw,” I told him. “Things are different now. There was… stuff… in the past I didn’t know about. We’ve talked and I know that she’s just scared. I have to convince her not to be.” There was a tiny bit of doubt that what Brett witnessed had meant something, but I’d convinced myself that it meant nothing. At least to me. Even if Nora thought she was in love with Beau, I knew that what they had couldn’t even compare to what we had. And, as many times as I heard her say she was with Beau, she’d never once said she was in love with him. I needed to talk to her, and in a setting that allowed for more than just some witty banter and the exchange of a few heated glances.
“Four days,” I reminded them as I walked over to the backhoe. I didn’t have time to explain to them what my plan was. Besides, even if I wanted to, I didn’t quite have it figured out myself. I had four days to rebuild a track and come up with the exact right thing to say to her to make her see that she needed to give me a chance to be more than just her friend.
I might not have been planning to stick around Halstead for too long, but we could make it work. We were older now. Wiser. I’d put in the effort to make it work if she’d just give me a chance.
* * *
I pulled on my boots on Saturday morning, making sure my race pants were securely tucked down in them, and buckled them tight. I felt the nervous energy that I usually reserved for an actual race coursing through my veins.
Tonight was the night I was going to talk to her for more than five minutes. Tonight was the night I laid it all on the line. There was a chance that I was going to end up alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods, but it was a chance I had to take.
You’re Reid Travers. You win.