“Casey Garrett,” Casey said professionally as she answered the phone at her new job. She’d been hired by the first company she’d interviewed with and had started on Monday.
“Please tell me you can get away for lunch,” I demanded.
“Excuse me? Who is this?”
“Casey!” I said, complete and total exasperation in my voice. “It’s Taylor!”
“Oh, sorry, babe. You sound a little masculine today.”
“I’m hung over,” I justified and heard how gravelly my voice was. “And I fucked up big time. Can you meet me?”
Casey paused, and I was sure she was looking over her appointments for the day.
“Yeah, sure. I can meet you at twelve-thirty.”
“Great. Thank you,” I said, instantly relieved. “I just, I did something, and I can’t take it back.”
“Yeah, you got it. So who’d you sleep with?”
Damn she knew me too well.
I sighed. “Josh – almost.”
“Josh!” she yelled, piercing my eardrum.
“Yes,” I hissed. “And I need some serious advice.”
“Sure. Do you want me to call Allison?”
“No!” I said quickly, knowing I could never tell my best friend that I’d hooked up with her brother – especially since she would have an absolute field day with that information. She could never know. “Just meet me at our usual place, okay?”
“Okay, fine,” Casey said, exasperated with my dramatics, no doubt.
I hung up the phone and saw that I had a text from Josh.
I’m sorry. Really sorry. Can we talk? I’m going over to the bar for a few hours, do you want to meet me there? We also need to figure out the kitchen remodel. Sean’s asking about the plans Cole put together for us.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Why did I hook up with Josh? This was totally going to fuck up our brilliant working relationship. Why was I so stupid when I drank?
Avoiding the inevitable, I kept my response short and sweet.
Plans today. Sorry. I texted back, avoiding conflict like I’d done with guys my whole life.
Can we talk tonight? he texted back almost immediately.
Grr. He knew I didn’t like to face things head-on, and he so was going to make me deal with this.
Sure, I finally told him, presuming I could spend the day figuring out what the hell I would tell him later.
* * *
“Okay, spill,” Casey said the minute I sat down across the table from her at the deli we’d always gone to when we worked together.
I took a deep breath and told her everything, including Josh’s drunken declaration of love from a few weeks earlier.
“So Josh likes you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say yes. He was really upset when I pulled back last night.”
Casey’s eyes widened in exasperation. “Well, yeah, you left him with a pretty severe hard-on. He probably beat off to images of you while he was in the shower not long after you bolted from his room.”
“Eww, Case, that’s gross.”
“And probably true,” she said, opening up her menu to peruse the lunch specials.
I put my head in my hands. “Shit. What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Fuck him,” she said, nonchalantly.
I shook my head. “I can’t blow him off. He’s one of my best friends, who I happen to live with, and who I now own a bar with. I can’t just treat him like a one night stand and not return his calls.”
Casey grinned. “No, I mean, you can fuck him. That’s your solution.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “I can’t fuck him literally either. If he likes me, I don’t want to lead him on.”
“What? You don’t like him?” she asked, and I could hear the hidden question in her tone. Josh is so hot, why don’t you like him?
“He’s Josh. I’ve never really thought about him in that capacity before.”
Sure, I’d ogled him, and possibly fantasized about doing what we’d been about to do the night before, but I’d never actually considered getting involved in a relationship with him.
“He’s perfect for you,” she said, as she took a long drink of her iced tea.
“Really?” I shook my head. “No, I can’t. I like Alex.”
Casey rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Tay, Alex just wants you to be his piece of ass. You said so yourself.”
I sighed. “I know, but I can’t help how I feel about him. Okay, so what am I supposed to tell Josh?”
It was then that the waitress came over, so Casey couldn’t answer me right away. We ordered our food, and just as the waitress was leaving, my phone buzzed.
I’m bringing home Thai food. You want your usual?
Damn, Josh was too nice. I really didn’t want to hurt him.
“Tell him you have really bad taste in men,” Casey offered, and all I could do was narrow my eyes at her as she laughed.
“Casey,” I whined. “Be serious. Please.”
“He’s going to be crushed,” she said, shrugging. “There is no easy way to tell someone who’s obviously in love with you that you don’t feel the same way.”
“You think he’s in love with me?”
She nodded. “Yeah, he is.”
Crap.
That just made things so much more complicate than I thought they were.
After lunch I went to the mall to burn off some of my nervous energy and stall before I actually had to go home. And you wouldn’t think I could stretch shopping into an all-afternoon event, but I sure did. I spent way more than I should have on things I didn’t really need, but at least I put off the inevitable.
But as I drove home, I started to feel guilty and my stomach got all knotted up. I felt like a first-class bitch.
Josh wasn’t home when I pulled in, so I settled onto the couch with my updated list of to-dos for the bar in an attempt to take my mind off of the conversation I was dreading having, but it was pretty hard to focus.
Fifteen minutes later I heard the garage door open and braced myself for the onslaught of what was going to happen. The door to the kitchen opened, and Josh appeared wearing camouflage cargo shorts and a white polo and looking so incredibly hot that my heart started to pound.
And for the first time, I wondered if I might not have feelings for him too. Had I sprouted feelings for him overnight? Had kissing him turned on something in me that had been dormant before, because damn if I didn’t want to pick up where we’d left off – where we’d left off when I’d unceremoniously stopped us from going any further.
Dammit.
“Can I sit?” he asked tentatively.
He looked uncomfortable as he approached the couch and set the bag of take-out food on the coffee table.
“Sure,” I said, putting my list down and sitting up cross-legged on one end of the couch.
He sat tentatively on the other end, not looking like he wanted to come much closer, which I wasn’t sure how to read.
“So, how was your day?” he asked.
“It was okay,” I said, not wanting to get into the details of how I’d wiled away an afternoon, trying to figure out the best way to let him down easy. “How was yours?”
“Not good,” he said. “I actually spent a lot of time thinking.”
“Yeah?” I asked, knowing what he’d been thinking about.
“Yeah, and I need to say something, so if you’ll let me, I’d like to get this off my chest.”
Oh no, here it comes, I thought. He’s going to tell me he’s in love with me, and I’m going to have to tell him that I don’t feel the same way about him, and it’s going to get all sad and messy and not fun. Unless I don’t tell him that. I mean, I could just let things happen and see where they land.
Watching him pensively watch me from across the couch, I had the sudden urge to curl up in his arms and kiss him again.
“Um, okay, sure,” I said, weighing the pros and cons of having a relationship with him.<
br />
In my quick calculation, the pros were winning, and I was seriously contemplating agreeing to whatever he suggested, because I was suddenly afraid that if I didn’t take this chance with him, he might never offer it to me again. And then I’d lose out on the most amazing guy I’d ever known, a guy who I hadn’t even realized was so amazing until right at that moment.
He took a deep breath and looked right at me. “Tay, this is really hard for me to say, because I care about you so much, but last night was a huge mistake.”
Pardon?
His eyes searched mine for my reaction to what he’d said, and he looked surprised that I didn’t breathe out a sigh of relief or jump up and cheer.
“Huh?” I asked, completely taken aback by his words. Had he said it was a mistake? Where did he get off with that? He was supposed to like me.
He scooted closer to me on the couch, and I found myself leaning back slightly, but with the armrest behind me, I wasn’t going very far. I felt very, very rejected all of a sudden.
“Tay, I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back, because seeing that look on your face is literally killing me, but the thing is I have a girlfriend, and I feel so bad that I cheated on her.”
What? Who? Kimmy? Seriously? Last night was a mistake, because he has a girlfriend? When did that become an issue? When I’d brought her up the night before, he tried to say she was a non-issue. Now she was a factor? This was not how this was supposed to go down. He was supposed to tell me that he didn’t care about her, and I was the one, and he wanted to be with me. I was pretty sure he’d almost said that the night before. That was what had gotten me so freaked out.
Okay, get your shit together, Taylor, I told myself, knowing that what he was telling me was what I’d wanted to hear all afternoon. But that was before I’d changed my mind, before I’d discovered that deep down, I was pretty sure I had some serious feelings for Josh.
But, he obviously didn’t feel the same way, so I had no choice but to cut my losses.
“I know,” I lied. “I feel the same way. It’s why I stopped things when I did.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we were just drunk. It’s fine.”
“Really?” he asked, and I wondered why he was suddenly questioning things.
Did he want me to have feelings for him? It’s what I’d thought he’d wanted until five minutes go. And maybe I did have feelings for him. Shit, even I didn’t know anymore. But it didn’t seem like those feelings were reciprocal, so I wasn’t about to put myself out there and get hurt.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m totally fine,” I replied casually. “A little embarrassed, but that’s all. I know I initiated everything, and you probably thought I had this huge crush on you–”
He smiled, so I stopped talking.
“I might have thought that for a few minutes,” he said, smirking as he probably remembered my aggressive advances on him, and it sort of pissed me off.
Why was he joking around at a time like this? Huh? Not cool.
“Well, I don’t,” I said sharply, as if the idea repulsed me. Yeah, it really didn’t.
Damn, he looked cute. And damn me for thinking that.
Fuck. I liked Josh. I really liked him.
And he, apparently, didn’t like me.
Stupid girl.
Josh’s eventual response was delayed, but even then he just nodded slowly. He didn’t use actual words, and I wondered if I’d hurt him. I didn’t want him to think he repulsed me, because even before we’d hooked up, I’d always found him attractive.
“I feel like first-class idiot, though,” I said then, figuring babbling was a great idea in that moment. “I mean, it’s a really good thing we didn’t have sex. I’m sorry I was drunk and took advantage of you. I was just being stupid. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Then Josh’s face broke into a kind smile that nearly crushed my heart, and I wanted to bang my head against the wall or cry or move out so I didn’t have to look at him every day and know that I was harboring feelings for him that he didn’t reflect. I hated being rejected, so much so that I usually did the rejecting. I wasn’t a big fan of the feeling, especially after what Alex had done to me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said sweetly. “I was drunk, too. I think we both just got caught up in the moment.”
“Yeah, we did,” I agreed, remembering how natural it had felt. And how much I wanted to recreate the night again and again – but obviously with a much better ending.
Dammit. I was really pissed at myself.
“I was so afraid that you had some huge crush on me,” I continued, not sure how to stop talking. “And that I was going to have to let you down easy. I’m so glad I didn’t have to do that. Don’t get me wrong, I totally love you, but you’re my friend. You liking me would be weird – or me liking you for that matter. Too weird, especially since we live together and work together. It was actually the first time I thought I’d had to let an awesome guy down. Since you know you rock in my book.”
Josh put his hand on my knee, and I had to fight the urge to shiver as white hot heat trails traveled up my leg. He had no idea what he was doing to me in that moment.
“Tay, shut up,” he said, but he was smiling.
“Sorry,” I apologized quickly. “I just had the worst day because of this.”
And I’m going to have an even worse night reflecting on my new found feelings for you.
He smirked at me. “So, it would be that bad if I liked you?”
No, it would be awesome.
“It would be weird,” I lied, desperate to save face. He could never know how I felt.
“Yeah, it would be weird,” he echoed. “We’re cool though, right?”
Ice cold.
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
Then we stared at each other for a few minutes, not knowing where to take the conversation next. Okay, so maybe bouncing back from our indiscretion would be more awkward than we both thought. Silence wasn’t really normal for us.
I picked a small piece of lint off of my jeans and longed for the days of awkward silences not existing between us – like yesterday and every day before I’d completely screwed myself over by falling head over heels for my best guy friend who obviously wasn’t interested in me.
Epic fail, I thought, I as I opened the bag of Thai food and silently pulled out my food. “Okay, let’s talk about the kitchen remodel,” I suggested, figuring the sooner we got to a neutral topic the better off we’d be, and maybe, just maybe, I’d stop feeling like complete shit.
“Your cousin’s wedding is this weekend, right?” Josh asked, not taking my suggestion.
I looked up slowly from my food, as my heart started pounding. Josh was looking at me expectantly. “Yes.”
“Do you still want me to go with you?”
No.
I nodded and bit my lip, hating that I didn’t have another option, but I knew I would never be able to find someone else to go with me on such short notice, and I’d already told Marissa he was my date.
“If you can,” I said noncommittally, hoping he wouldn’t say no.
I already felt like a first class loser and going to my cousin’s wedding alone would make me feel ever worse.
He smiled, but it felt like a smile laced with pity. “I’d be happy to go with you.”
“Great,” I said, trying to be cheerful, but in reality, I knew it was a lose-lose situation.
Josh would look amazing in his suit, he’d be a polite and courteous date, and we’d dance and talk and laugh, because that’s what we did together, and I’d feel even crappier about the fact that he’d rejected me.
Did it get worse than that?
Chapter 12
“Happy birthday!” Allison said when she jumped on my bed two weeks later.
I rolled over in annoyance. Not only was I irritated that she’d woken me up after I’d been out for drinks with Casey unti
l late the night before, but she was so damn cheerful, and I was officially twenty-nine with zero prospects on the horizon, so I was not in the mood for cheerful. It was beyond depressing.
“Quit jumping,” I grumbled when another person joined us on the bed and snuggled up next to me.
“Happy birthday, Swift,” Josh said, his lips so close to my ear it made me shiver.
I froze, but he released me before I could react and scooted back against my headboard. It was the closest we’d gotten in the two weeks since we’d had our ‘talk’, outside of dancing at Marissa’s wedding which had been as uneventful and painful as I’d predicted. I’d felt like crying the entire time we’d been there, and after it was over, Josh and I came back home, and I faked going to bed before sneaking out to go have sex with Alex just so I didn’t feel like a total loser.
I’d been in a very low place, and things hadn’t gotten much better since then.
The worst part was, Josh acted perfectly normal around me. He just moved on as if our hook-up had never happened. And we spent a lot of time together, so he had ample opportunities to show me just how unaffected he was by what we’d done.
We were full steam ahead with our plans to overhaul the kitchen since it needed the most work, and we were going to tackle it first. And we’d put together our initial thoughts for the rest of the bar and had met with Cole and Sean to see how much of what we wanted was achievable and within our budget. Cole was drawing up the plans for the remodel, and Sean would handle the construction. We had also interviewed and hired a decorator named Leanna who specialized in bars and restaurants.
Our plan was to remodel the kitchen while we were still open, and then close down for no more than a month to do the rest of the remodel, and then reopen at the end of the summer with a big party. So until we finalized everything, Josh and I ran O’Donnell’s as it was and didn’t change anything. We’d wait until the big reveal to showcase all of our new ideas.
And to get ready for that day, Josh spent time helping me understand ordering, how to open, how to close, how the payroll system worked, how to accept deliveries, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I truly never understood how much went into owning and operating a business, but Josh was a very thorough teacher. And whenever we weren’t doing those things, I practiced making drinks behind the bar. I’d started working during the day when it was less busy, and Josh ‘ordered’ mixed drinks so I could practice when there weren’t many customers ordering things besides beer.
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