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CHAPTER ELEVEN
charlee
The fact that I was going stir-crazy all morning, unable to concentrate on anything, was enough to tell me that my previous declarations of, “That’s it. I’m done with him. He’s changed too much, has too much of an edge. Wants nothing to do with me. Screw him,” were nothing more than sound and fury.
Words I tried to convince myself I meant. Because my head was telling me to run as fast and far away from Lucas as possible.
Instead, I attempted to occupy myself with cleaning my house. The projects I’d wanted to tackle? Tossed out the window. I had the concentration of a gnat this morning, and it was all I could do not to crawl out of my skin waiting until “the afternoon.”
What did that even mean? Noon? Definitely too early.
I pressed a button on my phone.
Natalie picked up on the first ring. “How you doing?”
“Not good.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“If I need you to come here to distract me so I can make it a few more hours, that’s a problem.”
“The fact that you’re counting the minutes to go see a guy who has borderline been an asshole to you this last week—”
“Borderline? You’re being generous.”
Natalie laughed. “I am. For your sake.”
“That’s just the hurt talking. I can see past that.”
“Ha! That’s not what you said the other day when you walked out of his shop.”
Admittedly, I had not. “What are my options? Not even try to see if there’s something still there? You know I’ve never stopped caring for him.”
“Caring. I wish. You’ve never stopped loving him, and that, my friend, is the problem.”
Indeed, it was a problem. Besides being hotter than hell, he was a good kisser, used his fingers better than any other man I’d known, and was downright interesting. The way his mind worked fascinated me. Lucas, or at least the old Lucas, always had a way with words, saying things that constantly made me wonder, How did he think of that?
I could remember some of his one-liners as if it were yesterday.
After he told me he was joining the Army, and I asked him why, he’d said, “We play with the toys God gives us.” Apparently, his toy was a mind smart enough to realize he had limited options otherwise. Or so he thought.
Another time, when I asked him why he was waiting so long to ask me to the prom, he’d said, “You call the tune we all dance to. That’s how it works. If you want to go to prom, we go to the prom.”
Why he thought I might not want to go had been beyond me, but I remember thinking then that the surest way to deal with Lucas was not to play games. He liked blunt, and so I’d learned to be blunt. To ask for what I wanted. In return, he gave the same to me.
“Ask and you shall receive,” he’d always said, and Lucas wasn’t joking around. I loved that about him.
Did I love Lucas Warner?
After dating many guys since he left, it had become even more painfully clear. There was one simple, undeniable and utterly frightful answer.
I did.
And hated that I did, but denying it served no purpose.
I never did stop loving him. “I think you’re right,” I told Natalie, to which she burst into laughter.
“You think? That’s rich, Charlee. Go to the studio with my blessing. But if he treats you like he did at KC’s and you don’t kick him to the curb, I will not be a happy camper. Actually, maybe I should come. Just to keep you on track.”
