Kiss Me Like You Missed Me

by Taylor Holloway

  “You don’t know how much I wanted to call you the next day and confess everything. I almost did.” His eyes were begging me to believe him, too. “I should have.”

  Despite everything, I giggled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you shouldn’t have.” He looked up at me in disbelief. I shook my head at him, wondering what sort fantasy world he thought we lived in. This wasn’t a fairy tale. “You did the right thing. You were about to graduate to play in the NFL. I’m…” I laughed again, feeling ridiculous. “I’m not good enough for you. I never was.”

  There. I’d said it.

  Now he knew the truth. The whole, ugly truth. The real, secret truth.

  The thing I didn’t want to admit even to myself.

  I wasn’t good enough for Cole.

  Why else would he not want me? He was perfect, but me? I was ordinary. Average. Disposable.

  I stared at him, shocked at myself for admitting the truth, and there was an equal amount of shock in Cole’s eyes. Then he laughed. I stepped back, astounded and instantly offended. Before I could lash out, Cole grabbed my hands and pulled me back to him. He swept me up in a hug so powerful that I could barely breathe. I squeaked in surprise.

  “You’re not good enough for me?” His voice was totally and completely appalled. “That’s so fucking off-base it’s not even funny. I’m not even fit to be in the same room with you. I love you though. Please, please take me back. Will you, Kate? Will you give us another shot?” He had both of my hands and stared up at me with so much affection and tenderness that it hurt to see.

  All my childhood, I struggled with not being good enough. My family was poor, I was the second, less-talented child, and my dad took off like my brother, my mom and I were all disposable. As a young woman, I learned that men who seemed to care could easily cast me aside. Even the good guys, like Cole, might not want me or stick around. But knowing that he loved me—that he’d always cared and wanted to be with me—it changed everything I thought I knew about the world. It changed what I thought I knew about myself.

  I don’t cry a lot. I’m not a very weepy girl in general because my usual response to feeling pain is to lash out and cause some of my own. But now I was fighting big, fat, hot, ugly tears. They crawled down my face in ecstasy while I nodded yes. My response to realigning my worldview in a positive way was a good, old fashioned, ugly cry. I smiled and laughed through my tears.

  Cole pulled me into his arms and laughed, rocking me back and forth like a baby. I could feel the relief radiating off him in waves. We were two real pieces of work, him and me. Neither one of us seemed to believe we were worth a damn thing. At least we had each other to remind the other it wasn’t true.

  A familiar call of a distant “Kate where the hell are you? We’re slammed out here!” followed by a much closer “What the fuck?” made me lift my head off Cole’s chest. Ward was standing in the doorway. His face was a mask of total, dumbstruck horror.

  Cole and I were both red-faced balls of emotion, clutching at one another in the desk chair. This was not a flattering way to be caught by my brother (although it could be worse, all things considered). His eyebrows were so high they were about to be swallowed by his hairline and his jaw was slack. I could see a white ring all the way around his blue pupils. He backed up and out of the office without another word. Clearly, he did not want to deal with whatever very private, extremely emotional thing was going on in here between his sister and his best friend. He disappeared around the corner, still walking backward.

  “You know, I feel like I should have taken a photo of your brother’s face just now,” Cole said to me after Ward had gone. Humor had returned to his voice, and I knew that we were going to be ok. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Ward be struck truly speechless. That was a first.”

  “I know. We’ll probably never see it again, either, since he’s gonna be too busy bitching about seeing us like this for the rest of his life.”

  43

  Kate

  When I finally peeled my body off of Cole’s and went back to work, I kept moving nonstop until close. It was hours before the bar even remotely began to settle down. This night had been one for the record books. At least we were making money, because my feet were definitely going to pay for the effort the next day.

  The good thing about being so busy was that except for the occasional, disgusted glance from my brother, we didn’t discuss what he’d witnessed in the office. Neither one of us had time to think, let alone talk. The bad thing was that my news about quitting the bar, let alone sharing news about my reconciliation with Cole, had to wait for almost four and a half hours.

  Ward was taking the last tray of glasses to the kitchen when I finally had a chance to drop my tired ass into a chair around the table where Lucas, Emma, and Cole were already sitting.

  “Mazel tov!” Lucas said to Cole and I, toasting us with his last sip of beer. “Glad you two idiots figured it out.” He was somewhat drunk. He’d been celebrating all evening.

  “Thanks Lucas,” Cole said, brushing my hair back from my tired face and kissing me on the forehead. “Tonight is a night for all kinds of victories. You have your deal, I got my girl--”

  “And Kate has her new business!” Emma chimed in. “Don’t forget about that.”

  Neither Lucas nor Cole looked surprised. “Wait, you guys know?” I asked. “How?”

  “I learned from Ivan,” Lucas said, shrugging. “Why, was it a secret? I think it’s great you’re opening a lingerie boutique. I’ve seen too many beautiful women wearing ugly panties in this world. Life is too short for ugly knickers.” He said this as if it were a very profound insight. Some genius he was.

  “What about you?” I asked Cole. His answering smile was mysterious. “Tell me!” I squealed. I looked at Emma, but she shook her head innocently.

  “I know how to keep a secret,” Emma insisted. “Unlike Lily, apparently.”

  “Well then how did you figure it out?” I asked Cole. I frowned at him until he cracked.

  “Jolene,” he finally admitted. “She heard that you’d listed your condo. I put two and two together. Who do you think helped drive up the price so high on your place?”

  My jaw dropped open and Cole and Lucas both snickered at my expression. “You bought my condo?” My shock was complete. Not that there was a thing in the world wrong with my condo, but it didn’t exactly scream millionaire athlete bachelor pad. Even on its’ best day, my little condo was several hundred thousand dollars below the very bottom of Cole’s budget for a place to live. We were on totally different planes of existence when it came to finances.

  Unexpectedly, Cole shook his head. “I tried to buy your condo,” he corrected. “Somebody outbid me.” He looked annoyed. “I had this whole plan to buy it and give it back to you if I managed to get you back, but now it’s ruined.”

  “You know that you drove the price up way beyond what it was worth,” I told him. “You’re lucky that you didn’t win.”

  Cole looked unconvinced. “I wanted to buy it for you. I knew that you didn’t really want to sell it. You were only selling to fund your business.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t buy it,” I told him. Secretly I was sad that I’d come pretty close to having both my beloved condo and my business seed money, but it didn’t really matter. I had Cole. He was better than anything that money could buy.

  “At least it was some other dumb shmuck that overpaid for Kate’s condo,” Emma said. “I wonder who it was?”

  A familiar voice cleared his throat, and all four of us turned to see Ward approaching with a fresh pitcher in one hand and something small in the other. “Emma, my love, that dumb schmuck would be me,” he announced. All four of us stared at him in shock.

  It took the entirety of the pitcher, but we eventually pieced together what happened.

  “I can’t believe you outbid me,” Cole groused, looking at Ward with annoyance.

  “I’m not as dumb as you thought I was, huh?” My br
other was preening disgracefully. “I called Kate’s friend Tiffany and had her do a little extra reconnaissance on my part in exchange for a small, off-the-books commission. Let’s just say that I made extra sure my final offer was higher.” That sounded vaguely unethical, but given the circumstances, I’d let it slide.

  “How come your name wasn’t on any of the closing documents?” I asked. “I thought I was selling it to some real estate company.”

  “You did. My new holding entity bought your condo,” Ward said matter-of-factly. “I needed to reorganize all my rentals anyway, and some expansion was in order as well.” Sometimes I forgot that Ward had business savvy buried deep in skull beneath all the brain damage. He was doing pretty well financially, though, so I supposed it made a bit of sense that he’d want to invest in the booming Austin market.

  “So, you’re going to rent it out?” I asked, wondering if I could rent it back from him. Having Ward as a landlord was not exactly ideal, but since he was already the person I called in the middle of the night if the toilet broke, at least he was used to it.

  He gave me a disbelieving look. “No.”

  “Oh, are you going to flip it then?” I’d thought I’d done a fairly good job with the improvements to my condo, but what did I know? Ward was the property guru here. Maybe he was going to paint everything beige and turn a huge profit. HGTV was always telling people to paint shit beige. Apparently, that’s what normal people liked.

  Ward shook his head at me. His grin was wide. “Wrong again.” He was enjoying this way too much. Teasing me had always been one of his favorite games. I’d venture he liked teasing me even more than he liked football, and he liked football far too much.

  Lucas, Cole, and Emma were all hiding smiles at this point. I hated being the last one to figure something out. It made me feel dumb.

  “Well then what are you going to do with it?” I asked Ward, annoyed. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t have the same level of real estate knowledge as the rest of them.

  “I’m going to give it back to you, you dummy!” Ward looked exasperated that he had to spell it out, but he was also fighting chuckles. “I swear, you telepathically seem to know if I change my brand of breakfast cereal, or need some life coaching, but you are not very self-aware. If someone wants to help you, or god forbid, cares about you, it’s just freakin’ mystifying to you, isn’t it?” After his outburst, he shook his head at me in a mixture of affection and annoyance that I was very used to seeing from him. He and Cole exchanged a look that bordered on camaraderie and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. The last thing I needed was those two bonding about how hard I was to deal with.

  “Shut up. I’m plenty self-aware,” I snapped. It wasn’t true, but I had to defend myself anyway. Otherwise Ward would think that he could just walk all over me. “So, you knew I wanted to start a lingerie boutique?” I’d never told him about my ambition. I hadn’t even told my diary, since I didn’t keep one anymore after that time Ward read it when I was in high school. The only people who knew were Lily and Emma.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nope. I had no clue about that. Sounds like you though. You have good taste. It’ll be successful. I’m sure of it.”

  His support was welcome, and I smiled a shy little smile at him. Then another thought intruded and I wrinkled my nose at him in confusion. “Ward, you were going to buy my condo just ‘cause? That hardly seemed like a good investment of money, even if it would be nice for me to have it.”

  Ward chuckled at me and clearly thought he was very clever. “I knew you weren’t going to work here forever. I’m always monitoring the local real estate listings for good investments, so when I saw your condo come up for sale, I figured that you were going to do something big with the money. You’ve never been irresponsible with money. I knew it had to be business related. So… I decided to help.” He glanced over at Cole in clear annoyance. “I didn’t expect to help quite so much, but some asshole decided to bid against me and run the price way up. Thanks buddy.”

  “Oh yeah, blame me,” Cole said sarcastically. “All I was trying to do was win the love of your sister by helping her achieve her dream the same exact way you were. That Cole, what a gigantic, fucking asshole.”

  Ward’s reply was typically childish. “You said it, not me.”

  Their exchange was funny, but another piece had just fallen into place for me. “Hold up. So, you knew that I was going to quit the bar today?” I asked Ward. His face was guilty enough to tip me off.

  “Well… not today, but I figured you would soon.” Oh he definitely knew.

  “But you let me worry all day long about how you were going to handle it? I was seriously concerned you were going to have a nervous breakdown if you lost me and Willie at the same time.” My voice had become annoyed. Ward smirked at me. What an ass. Lucas and Emma were highly entertained by this entire exchange between Ward and me. They watched the two of us fighting like it was a movie.

  “You made me witness whatever the hell you and Cole were doing in the office in my desk chair. Let’s just call it even, how about that?” His face betrayed how traumatic he’d found the experience. Emma reached over and patted his arm comfortingly.

  I looked over at Cole and we both nodded. Considering that Ward didn’t know what Cole and I had done on his desk a few weeks back, I was willing to let that statement stand. There were things my brother just didn’t need to know, and the fact that I’d been fucked within an inch of my life in the exact spot where he signed my paycheck was one of them. “Ok. Fine. You win.”

  Epilogue - Kate

  “Please stand for the bride.” Willie’s voice shook just a little bit, and I found myself blinking away tears.

  Emma was the most beautiful bride that I’d ever seen in my entire life, and I’d watched every single episode of every single season of ‘Say Yes to the Dress’. Her dress wasn’t the one I would have intuitively picked out, but it just went to show that I didn’t know everything about fashion. I would have put her in something slinky and tightly fitted, but Emma? She wanted to be a princess.

  And I’d learned over the years that although she might be shy, in the end nobody gets between Emma and what Emma wants. Especially on her wedding day. So, Emma was a princess. She was wearing a gigantic, blush pink, bedazzled lace and satin ballgown, complete with a tulle petticoat and full, cathedral length, lace train. Atop her golden braid sat a rhinestone encrusted tiara and a massive, bedazzled lace veil. Her bouquet was a barbie pink spray of roses, each of which had a rhinestone glued in the center of the blooms. Even her shoes were barbie pink and covered in crystals. Objectively, this entire look shouldn’t have worked. Not only was Emma too petite, it was just too damn much. She should have looked like the unholy spawn of a ridiculous cupcake and a gypsy bride, but she didn’t. She looked perfect.

  Emma had such natural beauty, grace, and poise that when she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, she looked as elegant as any runway model. She was breathtakingly, heartbreakingly beautiful. Her beaming face, full of adoration for my lucky dumbass of a loveable brother, made everything work. Cole and I shot flirty looks at one another from opposite sides of the makeshift altar, and I knew that my turn wasn’t far away. Secretly we were already engaged, but I was wearing my ring on a long chain around my neck for the time being. The ring was fully hidden behind the many rhinestones encrusting the bodice of my ridiculous, barbie pink bridesmaid gown. It wouldn’t be right to announce my own engagement so close to my best friend’s wedding.

  Today, all attention was on Emma and Ward. My brother looked surprisingly calm and happy to promise himself away for all time. I never thought I’d see the day, but I was happy to be wrong. I couldn’t be happier for him. Beneath all the annoyance and irritation he caused me on a daily basis, I loved Ward and wanted him to be happy. And if my amazing friend Emma was willing to be the one to make him happy, well then, he’d better take care of her and I wished them both well.

  Willie fiddle
d with his bible as Emma finished her slow, careful walk down the aisle we’d created in the bar. He was officiating today, and really, he was the only appropriate person to do so. He’d been Ward’s unofficial confessor for so long that he was basically a saint anyway. He definitely had the patience of one. It seemed weirdly right that Willie should be the one to marry Emma and Ward, here in this bar. Next week he’d be moving back to Lubbock with Nancy, so this was as much his goodbye party as their wedding.

  This wedding was both the ending and beginning of an era at the bar, and the tears I’d been blinking away started to escape as Ward and Emma exchanged their vows. By the time they were kissing their I-Do’s, I was all out bawling. I hope everyone there enjoyed seeing me cry, because I’d already threatened the photographer that if I looked like shit in the pictures, it was his head. Thank god for waterproof mascara.

  “Was that you I heard sniffling over my shoulder?” Emma asked me during the post-ceremony photos.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about” I lied, “It must have been someone else. Your great-aunt was looking really weepy though. It must have been her.”

  Emma arched an eyebrow. “Ethel?” She looked around carefully and then whispered, “I don’t think Ethel even knows this is a wedding. She thinks it’s 1998. She gets very upset if anyone suggests otherwise, because then she remembers that her favorite cat, Buttons, is dead. Then she will cry, at least until she forgets again.”