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I smirk. ‘Well, I am, so prepare yourself.’
We’re headed through the Highway 26 tunnels into the city, and when we emerge, the driver turns up the radio for a Neil Diamond song I’m familiar with, ‘Love on the Rocks’.
‘I’d like to dedicate this song to your relationship. Blast it, Jacob.’ Our driver humors me and turns the song up, revealing that he’s a music fan, too, and has decent speakers.
‘I don’t even know this song!’ Jade yells over the music.
‘You don’t know Neil Diamond? My God, woman. He’s a legend. I’m going to need to introduce you to some stuff.’
‘Aren’t you a little young to be head of the Neil Diamond fan club?’ she asks, totally enjoying this.
I laugh. ‘My dad’s in the fan club, so whenever we got out the karaoke machine – I’m from a musical, sometimes obnoxious family – he’d belt one of Neil’s songs out, and I learned to love him. The guy is like Wayne Newton legendary; they’re Vegas-performance famous.’
‘So is Celine Dion,’ Jade says. ‘Does that mean you’re singing “My Heart Will Go On” next?’
‘Blech, no. But maybe one day I’ll serenade you with Britney Spears, another Vegas God. Who doesn’t love her?’
Jade nods her head. ‘Now, she is a legend of your time.’
‘Until I was eighteen, I fell asleep to her on my ceiling. Seriously, though, this was Neil’s number one song, and I feel like it could be the theme to your current “engagement”.’
With the buzz settling in nicely and her suggestion of me singing along, I impress the girl with my ability to remember nearly all the lyrics. After a few lines, she and Jacob encourage me to continue. Jacob is singing along too, so he and I do a full-out duet performance in his Uber car, bouncing in our seats. Jade doesn’t know the words, but her laughter fills the car, and something inside me is so thrilled with this. I’ve never seen her this happy around Conner. But then again, he’s probably never sung a ridiculous song to her like I am. We all moan when the song ends and moves on to something less cool.
‘Now that that’s over, let’s return to my thoughts on Corndog. I think your relationship has been on the rocks since day one. Why didn’t you break up before he left?’
‘Because we’re in love,’ she says as if trying to convince herself.
I shake my head, flashing her a suspicious smile. ‘Not after two months. You were in the honeymoon phase of infatuation.’
‘No way,’ she argues. ‘I’m in total love with the guy.’
‘Alright, what do you love about him?’
She opens her mouth to answer, but nothing leaves her lips, causing her to slump back in her seat with a huff.
‘If you truly loved the guy, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You deserve someone way better than Conrad Francis Walsh III.’
Confusion fills her face. ‘How do you know his whole name?’
Shit. Now I have to come clean with her, or it’ll blow up in the future and fuck me over. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you this and want you to know I didn’t exactly agree. I thought he was nuts and wanted him to get lost.’
‘When was he nuts?’
‘The night before he left. You were distracted by customers, and he legit asked me to “keep an eye on you” while he was gone.’
‘What? Like a stalker?’ she snaps. ‘I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not a child.’
Perhaps after we’ve both been drinking wasn’t the time to tell her this news.
‘I’m sorry I blurted that out. But you should know what kind of guy he really is,’ I say, reading her reaction. ‘My sister was this love blind at one point and wasted a decade of her life on the wrong man. Now she regrets all of it. But I’m no expert on anything, love included. All I know is that there are three things you can never get back; people after death, words spoken, and time wasted.’ I lift a finger with each one. ‘You’re a nice girl, sweet, funny, gorgeous, all that shit. I think Corndog is wasting your time.’
Her brows stitch together as she thinks this over. ‘But he proposed.’
‘Yeah, that part I haven’t figured out yet. Personally,’ I say, taking a breath, ready to let the truth fly as usual, but for some reason, I think twice about it this time. I don’t want to hurt Jade – not even a little. ‘I think he wanted to get laid this summer, and being in mourning, you probably responded just as he’d hoped to all his love-bombing bullshit.’
‘You think he love-bombed me?’ she asks, worry on her face.
‘He was the perfect man, swept you off your feet, then once he got what he wanted, it all stopped. That’s love-bombing, and yeah, I think he did that.’
