by Unknown
“Please, please don’t say anything. You want to bring this up with Esme because you’ve been sleeping with her? Is that it?” Sadie demanded.
Jude didn’t reply, but she saw how his shoulders and back tensed. Esme wondered if he experienced the same surprise Esme did at her sister’s question. How had Sadie known? Had Jude told her before Esme had arrived on the scene?
“Jesus, Jude. Did you have to go and mess with her, too?” Sadie asked, seeming to intuit his answer even though he didn’t reply.
“Mess with her? Is that what you think I do? Mess with women? That I messed with you?” Jude asked, his tone bitter and insulted.
Esme thought she heard a soft moan. “No. I’m sorry. That’s not what I think. Not really.”
“I’m sorry if me and Esme being together is so inconvenient—”
Esme’s heart had started to beat so loud in her ears, she couldn’t quite make out the rest of what Jude said. Holding her breath, she stepped forward silently, one step…two steps. Around the privacy hoods, she saw Jude reach out. She couldn’t see Sadie, but she knew he was touching her sister.
“You know it kills me a little,” she heard Jude say intently. “Every time I see you and Mat together—”
Suddenly, Jude turned his head. Esme didn’t think she’d made a sound, but given his reaction, maybe she had uncontrollably whimpered in dismay. Jude dropped his hand and took a step back. Esme found herself in the spotlight of his piercing blue eyes.
“Es,” he said, his voice flat with disbelief.
Sadie stepped around him, her gaze locking on Esme. She took one step toward her, a concerned expression on her face, and then came to an abrupt halt.
“God damn you, Jude,” Sadie cursed pointedly under her breath. She turned and walked away, but not before Esme had read the pain and guilt in her sister’s eyes.
Esme met Jude’s stare, amazed that everything remained still when it felt like the floor had just dropped out from beneath her.
By the time they pulled up to her mom’s house in Tahoe Shores, it was quarter to three in the morning. Esme felt like the outsides of her eyes had been coated with sand paper. She rubbed them and blinked repeatedly as the truck rolled to a stop. She glanced over to the driver’s seat.
“Thanks for driving me back, Mat. I mean…not for just driving me back. Bringing me back in the middle of the night instead of sleeping in your nice, cozy bed in the hotel you’d checked into,” she said hoarsely. Her throat was almost as dry as her eyes. Not surprising, given the fact that she’d been crying almost nonstop for the first two hours of the trip.
Mat flipped on the overhead light and reached for her hand. He squeezed it.
“I wish I got what was going on,” Mat said. “I’m worried.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” she said automatically.
“You and Jude finally got together. Now something has gone wrong.”
She blinked in surprise at his terse statement. It hadn’t been a question. Mat had been nothing but sweet and conciliatory ever since she’d pulled him aside at the Moto Café and begged him to take her back to Tahoe Shores. Even though he’d clearly guessed something big had gone wrong, he thankfully hadn’t peppered her with questions.
But Mat had always been incredibly observant—the smartest of their whole group, probably. He’d understood without Esme ever telling him any details about what was happening with Jude and her.
“How’d you know?” she asked.
“I saw the way Jude was looking at you when we were sitting in the booth,” Mat said simply when he noticed her surprise. He shrugged. “It’s not rocket science, interpreting a stare like that one.”
Esme scoffed. In her opinion, interpreting Jude was more complicated then rocket science. That conversation she’d overheard, for instance. It confused the hell out of her, but one thing had come across crystal clear.
Jude had told her point blank that there was nothing between Sadie and him. But clearly, there was a hell of a lot of emotion swirling between the two of them, and that was just weird and unsettling. Esme knew they’d slept together once. As to what else had happened between them through the years, she was clueless.
But there was obviously something between them, not the nothing Jude claimed.
It was one thing to secretly know they’d slept together when they were eighteen. It was another thing altogether to realize that incident still caused ripples of emotion between them in the present day.
Jude had come at her in that hallway after Sadie left, insisting she listen to him. But Esme had suddenly been overwhelmed by the wrongness of it all. She couldn’t breathe, recalling the intimacy and the rumbling volcano of emotion between Jude and her sister.
And she—Esme—was an outsider to it all.
The realization hurt like hell. She understood at that moment it was an old feeling she’d had almost her whole life, one that had been reanimated to full, throbbing life by hearing that secretive, intimate conversation between Jude and her sister.
It felt like she couldn’t get out of that bar—like she couldn’t get away from Jude and Sadie—fast enough.
“When did you two first get together?” Mat asked in that straightforward manner of his that broadcasted loud and clear he wouldn’t be judgmental about anything she said.
“We ran into each other last fall in Beverly Hills. Things just…happened. I don’t know how or why,” she sniffed. Her sore eyes swelled again with damnable tears.
“Surely the why isn’t that hard to figure out,” Mat said, reaching for the box of Kleenex she’d aggressively hurled in the backseat an hour a half ago when she’d grown sick of crying.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, irritably whipping two tissues out of the box and wiping her cheeks.
“You two have always loved each other.”
She made a disgusted sound. “As friends. When we weren’t busy hating each other.”
Mat laughed softly. “Hate implies some degree of passion. You two were both stubborn as mules. I guess it just took this long for the passion part to break through.”
“I wasn’t the stubborn one,” Esme declared hotly. Mat just smirked at her calmly. “Damn it,” she muttered under her breath when more tears spilled down her cheek. She reached for her purse. “You know I love you, Mat, but I’m tired of crying. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s too—”
“Complicated?”
She glanced over at him, startled by his grave certainty.
“Painful?” he added.
She wiped at her cheek and swallowed, a realization going through her about his expression of complete, resigned understanding.
“Shelly?” she asked shakily, referring to Mat’s wife. Somehow, she just knew he was talking about his own marriage.
Mat nodded.
Mat and Shelly had gotten married when they were only eighteen, just out of high school, Mat the handsome, All-State high school running back, Shelly the pretty, popular head cheerleader. At the time, everyone assumed they’d married because Shelly was pregnant. But she’d retained the same girlish figure for twelve years. Mat had given up a highly competitive scholarship to Berkley. Instead of becoming a wide-eyed college freshman, he’d become a husband, with all the worries of paying bills and providing food for the table. He’d gone on to get his college degree at a local university, and ended up being very successful. But the entire trajectory of his life had changed forever that summer.
Esme had suspected theirs wasn’t a happy marriage, but Mat never spoke about it. Never. He was always pleasant, but non-forthcoming when it came to his marriage.
But his expression hardly looked stoic now. She forgot her misery for a moment. She was stunned he was bringing up such a taboo topic.
“Shelly’s and my marriage has been far from simple. We don’t really talk.” He laughed, but it was a harsh, bitter sound. “We don’t really relate. But you and Jude can. Talk, I mean. Figure it out. Whatever has come u
p between you two isn’t as big as it probably seems to you right now.”
She hesitated.
“Do it for me, Es? An old friend? Someone who would give anything to have the chance to talk. To work things out.”
“You can still work things out, Mat,” she said, compassion replacing her own misery. She adored Mat.
He shook his head once firmly, and she had the thought that she’d never seen such a regretful man. She leaned across the console and hugged him tight. But she felt inadequate. She’d never liked Shelly.
What could she say to comfort him?
“You should talk to Jude as soon as possible,” Mat said, squeezing her back tight before they separated. “Talk to him about what’s making you uncomfortable. Because time does make a difference. And you can’t go back.”
“I’m not sure it’ll matter.”
“It’ll matter.”
“How do you know?” she wondered, a little amazed by his certainty.
“Because I know Jude, and I know you. And I saw the way he was looking at you last night,” he said with a sense of finality. He nodded at the dark house. “Now go and get some sleep, and I’ll see you on Christmas Day.”
“Not tonight for Christmas Eve?” she asked, knowing her mother had invited him.
He shook his head. “Nah, we’ll be spending that with Shelly’s parents.”
“Okay. I’ll see you on Christmas, then. For the big day,” she smiled gamely. “Thanks again, Mat.”
He nodded. When she turned to open her door, he grabbed her hand again. She looked back over her shoulder.
“Remember: talk to him. Don’t be afraid. That’ll be your Christmas present to me, Es. If I can’t ever have what you two have, at least I’ll rest easy in the knowledge that two of my best friends are happy.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mat’s advice still echoed in Esme’s head when she woke up the next morning. She’d left a note in the kitchen for her mother, saying that she was home, but would probably sleep in, because she’d gotten back so late.
For a full five minutes, she just stared at her cell phone charging on her bedside table. She’d turned it off last night while she waited for Mat in the parking lot. Mat had been telling Z they were leaving. Esme had pleaded with Mat not to tell Jude and Sadie directly, but to ask Z to break the news to them later, after Mat and her were already gone.
She craved to know if Jude had texted or called, and what he’d said if he had. Surely he had tried to contact her.
Or maybe he hadn’t? Especially because this was her second time running out on him since they’d started sleeping together.
She’d left him alone at the café with Sadie. Maybe it’d been the perfect opportunity for them to smooth some of that raw, choppy emotion swirling between the two of them.
Maybe they’d found consolation in each other’s company…
Recognizing her paranoid thoughts were barreling fast toward the deep end, Esme threw back the covers and started to get out of bed.
There was a light tapping on her door.
“Come in,” Esme called.
Ursa’s head poked around the door. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“It’s okay, I was awake,” Esme assured. “What’s up?”
Ursa entered. With her hair mussed and the flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers she wore, her little sister looked adorable…and about twelve years old. Esme was about to tell her so fondly when she noticed the black duffel bag hanging from Ursa’s shoulder.
It was the bag she’d taken to Columbia with Jude. She stood up abruptly. “Did Jude drop that off?” she asked shrilly.
Ursa glanced down at the bag as if she’d forgotten it was there.
“Yeah. Just now.”
Esme swallowed thickly, trying to silence the sudden buzzing in her ears.
“He’s downstairs, then?” Esme asked, trying to sound normal. Her brain starting spinning, thinking of what she’d say to him when she went downstairs, whether she should apologize right off the bat for her insecurity last night or ask him to go somewhere private to talk before getting to the nitty-gritty, what clothes she should put on…
“Jude just dropped off the bag, and then left,” Ursa said, interrupting her train of anxious thought. “How come you didn’t drive back with Jude?”
“Mat drove me back,” Esme mumbled, trying to disguise the fact that her heart had felt like it’d dropped into her stomach at Ursa’s news.
Ursa nodded. “Sadie came in with Jude.”
“She’s back, too?” They’d gotten home at the same time? And Jude hadn’t bothered to ask Ursa about me before he’d left?
“Yeah,” Ursa said. Her beautiful, fresh face brightened. “And guess who else came home? Z.” She beamed at Esme. “It looks like we’ll all be here for Christmas and the wedding, after all.”
Esme hesitated outside the kitchen when she heard her mother and Sadie talking. She’d been so consumed with thinking and worrying about Jude, she hadn’t thought about the discomfort of seeing Sadie again.
“So we’re going to do roast beef, Swedish meatballs and seafood for the Christmas Eve buffet tonight, and then Stephen is going to smoke two turkeys for Christmas dinner—and the wedding reception, of course. How does that sound?” her mom was saying to Sadie when Esme cautiously entered the room.
“It sounds great,” Sadie said warmly. “I’m sorry about being away while you’re planning all this.”
“It was worth it. I’m so happy you all talked Z into coming back. Stephen is beyond grateful. It wouldn’t have felt right not to have him here. We were talking about postponing the wedding until things could be worked out. Now, thanks to you all, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“So what can I do?” Sadie asked, pointing to her mother’s list.
“And me?” Esme added. Her mom got up to greet her with a hug. Esme glanced over her Mom’s shoulder, meeting Sadie’s wary gaze.
“I was just telling Sadie how grateful I am that you kids were able to talk Z into coming back.”
Her mom looked so happy and excited, Esme didn’t heave the heart to tell her that she hadn’t had much of anything to do with convincing Z to return. In fact, she hadn’t been very conscientious at all. She’d been too caught up in Jude, too hypnotized by the magic of spending time with him, falling in love with him on a whole new level…
Don’t think about that now.
“Well, Ursa has already made a couple different casseroles, and I’ve done the meatballs and have the roast ready to put in the oven,” her mom said, returning to the table and her list. “I thought we’d do a chowder for the buffet, can you two be in charge of that? Ursa’s going to do a pear and walnut salad tomorrow for Christmas. I’ll need some help with the pies and the caramel apple coffee cake for Christmas morning.”
Ilsa stood abruptly, grabbing her list and shoving it in her purse. “But for us to tackle that, I need to get my butt over to the grocery store first.”
“I’ll go, Mom,” Esme volunteered quickly.
“No, I can,” Sadie insisted, standing. Esme glanced at her sister quickly in resigned understanding. Neither of them wanted to be alone with the other.
“I need to talk to Stephen really quick before I leave, so I’ll go,” Ilsa said. “You two get started on the chowder. Everything you’ll need is in the fridge,” Ilsa said with an air of someone who had a million things on her mind.
Their mother exited the room like a whirlwind. The door to the garage closed after her.
Sadie and Esme stared at each other in the awkward silence.
“I’ll find the recipe for the chowder,” Esme said, starting toward the built-in bookshelf filled with familiar cookbooks.
“Esme,” Sadie called, making her halt in her tracks.
Esme turned around slowly. Sadie had stood. Her older sister looked especially somber as she regarded her.
“Are you okay?” Sadie asked softly.
“I’m fine.”
Sadie winced. “No you’re not.” She moved her hands restlessly, like she didn’t know what to do with them.
“So…You and Jude?”
“Jude and I, what?”
“You’re together?”
“Did Jude tell you that? Last night?” Esme wondered.
“No,” Sadie said. “I guessed it. There was something about the way you two were looking at each other at the table last night.”
Esme felt her stomach sink. She stared blankly out the window. It was a clear, sunny Christmas Eve.
“Jude didn’t tell me. He wasn’t saying much of anything last night, after he realized you’d left without telling him,” Sadie continued. “He was furious. At me.”
Esme turned. “At you? Why?”
Sadie shrugged. She started to rub her fingers over the rough grain of the kitchen table. Her cheeks looked flushed.
“I think because he was asking me if I’d give him my permission to tell you something when you…overheard us.” She saw her sister’s swan-like neck convulse as she swallowed. “It’s about something that happened a long, long time ago, Es.”
Sadie looked up. Esme saw tears in her dark, velvety eyes. She felt her stomach clench tight. She hated seeing Sadie distressed.
“It’s something I’m not very proud of,” Sadie continued. “I guess Jude thought it was important to tell you, now that you two are involved. He was asking for my permission to talk about it with you…and that’s what you overheard us arguing about last night in that hallway,” Sadie said in a congested voice. She gave a sad, brittle smile. “See, the thing is—”
“No. Don’t say it,” Esme interrupted abruptly.
“But Jude thinks you should know—”
“I already know.”
The silence that followed was so heavy; it seemed to press the breath out of her lungs. Sadie appeared startled.
“What do you mean you know? Did you and Jude talk this morning?”
“No. I’ve always known. All these years.”
Esme took several steps toward her sister. “I saw. Out by the pool, that summer when I was sixteen, and you were eighteen. I came back from art camp early and…Well. I saw,” Esme finished lamely.
