“No problem. Oh, and he looks good! Did you know he’s engaged? Crazy. Yeah, he seems to be doing really well for himself.”
“Good for him,” Jenna says with a straight face.
“Isn’t it?” Blair digs in.
“Yeah,” Jenna whispers. Then she stands, excusing herself as she walks away. She doesn’t run or storm out; she just simply walks through the kitchen and out the back door.
I glare at Blair. “Wow,” I say.
“What?”
“There are times I don’t think you can be any more of a bitch than you already are. And you manage to prove me wrong every single time.” I stand and walk off toward Jenna. In the background I hear Blair asking Bryson if he’s going to let me talk to her that way. Bryson simply brushes off her remark by starting up a conversation with Santino. That’s right. Even Bry knows when she’s acting like the fucking queen bitch.
“Hold up,” I yell out, running to catch up with Jenna. She doesn’t look at me or stop; she keeps going at a quicker pace. “I hate her,” Jersey Girl finally blurts out.
“I know. She’s a bitch.”
“A bitch is a nice description. She’s a cunt.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. I’ve never seen her this pissed off. I finally catch up and walk beside her until we reach the end of the dock. She steps close to the edge, looking down. I stand by. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she were about to jump in at any time.
“Don’t let her get under your skin. She doesn’t have a good bone in her body. She does shit like that just to get a rise out of you.”
“Well, she sure knows how to hit a soft spot.”
“Who’s Eric?” I ask, my breath still a bit raspy from jogging.
Jenna drops her arms to her side, her hands tightening into fists.
“Who is he?” I ask again.
She squares her shoulders defensively.
“Jersey Girl.” I grip her shoulder. “I’m not your enemy. You can talk to me.”
Jenna shuts her eyes; her breathing calms and the tension in her body relaxes beneath my grip. Then she lets out a long sigh.
“He was someone I thought loved me.”
“An ex-boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
I nod. “I see.”
“He was my first.”
“First?” I raise a brow. “As in first guy you ever slept with?”
She turns her head, eyes glistening. “Yeah, that too. But he was also the first guy I fell in love with, the first guy I ever trusted, and the first guy who broke my heart.”
“What happened between the two of you?”
Jersey Girl turns her head away, her gaze skimming over the lake. She breathes in one deep breath, and then lets out a sigh, her shoulders deflating in the process. “I got sick.”
“Sick?”
“Yeah, sick. There was a time where I was at my lowest point in my life. Well, at the time I thought it was my lowest—”
“Like, the flu sick?” I interrupt.
She brings her eyes back to me. “Just sick, Logan. The point that I’m trying to make is that Eric couldn’t handle it and he left me. It was heartbreaking because it was when I needed him the most and he walked away from it all.”
What kind of bastard does that to someone he claims to care for? “Do you know where he lives now?” I ask.
Her brows draw in. “No. Why?”
“So I can go kick his ass.” I shrug at her wide-eyed expression. “I mean it’s an instant reaction. Do you have a last name? Social security number?”
She laughs.
There it is—her smile. I grin along with her, but I’m dead serious about hunting down this Eric guy. I put those thoughts aside and pull her into me. She nestles into my chest.
We stand there for a while before she pulls away and looks up. “So, there were a couple pretty girls at the party tonight.”
I smile. She’s talking about two girls that showed up. Jersey Girl caught Santino staring at them and overheard him tell me he thought they were hot. “Yeah, there were.”
She looks down, lightly tapping her sneaks into the edge of my boots. “Well, maybe you should ask one of them out sometime,” she says softly.
“Maybe,” I say. But they’re not you. That’s what I really want to say.
“So,” I say. “What’s going on with you and Matthew? Are you guys a couple or something?” I ask.
She snorts. “Hell no. I told him I’d prefer to be friends. We have nothing in common.”
You sure have a bad habit of putting guys in the friend zone, Jersey Girl. I make sure to keep that remark to myself.
Jenna lifts her chin. Her pouty lips twist into a gentle smile and her large cinnamon-brown eyes gleam. And that’s when it hits me: the feeling. It feels like one hard shot to the chest, punching all the air from my lungs. They slowly struggle to expand as I try to catch my breath.
Jesus Christ, Jenna is beautiful. She’s not the kind of beauty that you use for a one-night stand. She’s also not a friendly, sisterly kind of beautiful. She’s more than that.
Jenna is the kind of beautiful that I can get lost in. Lost from all the fucked-up-ness in my head. She’s the kind of beautiful that laughs at all my nonfunny jokes because she gets me. She’s the kind of beautiful that’ll put me in my place without batting an eye. Jenna is the kind of beautiful that can transform a nonbelieving man like me into a man who wants more. A man who can fall hard, stumbling over his own two feet because he’s so tangled up in her.
Fuck. Did I actually just admit that to myself?
Yes, I did. Because it’s all true. I’m falling for her.
Jenna has me strung the fuck out and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Maybe if I just tell her, maybe she feels the same.
But she’s made it very clear we should remain friends. If I tell her, she’ll just pull away. Do I risk our friendship over these feelings I have—feelings I’m not sure I can control any longer?
I know she feels it. She has to; there’s no way I’m feeling every bit of this on my own, it’s that damn powerful. Whatever is going on between us is definitely more.
I want to give her more of me, show her what I’m capable of. But I’m not even sure what the hell I’m capable of.
This is fucking frustrating.
“Are you okay?” Jenna asks. I nod. “Are you sure? You seem a little out of it.”