THREE YEARS LATER
Chapter 18
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Jace
My girlfriend, Kaia, seemed understandably upset when I returned to our table at the Japanese restaurant. Her eyes shot daggers. “Do you mind telling me what the hell that was all about?”
There was no easy way to say it. “That was her.”
“That was…” She blinked. “That was…Farrah?”
“Yes.”
Her face turned red. “Of all places we could eat lunch, you take me to the restaurant where she works? What the hell, Jace?”
“For Christ’s sake, Kaia. I didn’t know. I had no idea she worked here. You think I would have put you through that intentionally?”
Kaia’s eyes softened. “You swear you didn’t know?”
“Of course not.”
This restaurant didn’t even exist the last time I was in Palm Creek. To the best of my knowledge, Farrah hadn’t waitressed a day in her life, so the fact that she worked here made no sense. I’d been looking for a peaceful lunch after a horrendous week. Instead, I got the shock of my life.
Still reeling from my run-in with Farrah outside, I wiped sweat from my forehead.
“She’s beautiful,” Kaia said. “You know, like, you’ve heard that saying—the face that launched a thousand ships? Helen of Troy, I believe? That girl is the face that drove Jace out of town.”
There was no safe way to agree with that. Kaia was a ticking time bomb as it was. So I stayed silent.
“Well, it’s not like I didn’t think she would be beautiful,” Kaia continued. “Why else would you have risked everything for her?”
I couldn’t disagree with that, either. Once again, this was an appropriate moment to shut up. Farrah had looked as beautiful as ever, albeit with a coldness in her eyes I didn’t recognize.
Kaia fluffed out her cloth napkin almost violently. “What did she say to you?”
“We didn’t talk much. She basically…left the building. I caught up to her along the main road after she crossed the parking lot. She asked me what I was doing in town, and I told her my mother had died. She seemed upset to hear that. She gave me her condolences…asked how my father was. Then she said she had to go and kept walking. That was the end of it.”
“Why the hell did she run away in the first place? She couldn’t say hello?” She laughed angrily. “Or at least she could’ve done her job and taken our order.”
It killed me that Farrah had run like that. But she’d never expected to see me sitting there. Fleeing was a knee-jerk reaction. I should know. “I think she was just in shock and didn’t know how to handle it.”
“Boy, you must have really fucked her up to make her run like that.”
I hoped Kaia wasn’t right. I hoped Farrah had gotten over what I’d done to her by now. But all signs pointed to the fact that she hadn’t. In any case, I once again chose not to address my girlfriend’s comments.
This entire thing sucked. Kaia wasn’t supposed to see Farrah. Heck, I wasn’t even supposed to see her. Kaia and I had been in Palm Creek for a week. She was leaving tomorrow to fly back to Charlotte, while I stayed to help my dad after the sudden loss of my mother to a heart attack.
Kaia and I had been together for a year. She never understood why I wouldn’t come home, why I wouldn’t ever take her back to Florida with me to meet my parents. My mother and father had come to Charlotte a couple of times to visit me that first year after I left, but that had been before I met Kaia. So she’d never had a chance to meet my mother.
All Mom ever wanted was for me to come home to Florida again, and I couldn’t grant her wish—until she died. No one had seen that heart attack coming. I couldn’t remember my mother being sick once. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. My father had been the one with cancer. Now Dad was fine, and my mother, who was the glue that held our family together, was gone. Fifty-nine years old. Not that I wished my almost seventy-year-old father had died instead, but life was so damn unfair. Losing Mom was probably the only thing that could have deflected my attention from all the other reasons coming home was traumatic. The pain of her death cut so deep that nothing else could compete with it.
Up until the past week, my life had been pretty good. After a couple of years of feeling lost, I’d pushed myself to move on, and I’d managed to escape into a comfortable life with Kaia in the past year. She and I had met through a mutual friend. I cared for her, but it was getting to the point where she wanted more of a commitment from me, and I’d yet to take that step. We’d been discussing moving in together, but I kept putting it off.
After Dad called to tell me about my mother, Kaia insisted on coming to Palm Creek with me. When she sensed my extreme discomfort, she grilled me until I finally came clean on the circumstances under which I’d left town three years ago. I told her about everything—from the shooting to my relationship with Farrah and the fallout with Nathan.
The drive down here from Charlotte had been tense. Kaia kept wanting to talk, analyzing everything I’d confessed. Meanwhile, I was numb because—for fuck’s sake—my mother had just died; I didn’t have the mental energy to analyze anything.
Kaia believed I must have unresolved feelings for Farrah. It didn’t take a scientist to figure that out. Still, I refused to acknowledge how I felt, because from the day I left, I’d done everything in my power to block out the mess I’d made, which meant trying to forget Farrah. I hadn’t felt anything in three years. And now with my mother gone, I had bigger things to do than dig up old pain. But damn if my chest didn’t ache after seeing Farrah again. All of the feelings I’d buried seemed to smack me in the face at once.
My mind was all over the place as I stared blankly at Kaia from across our table at the restaurant. Someone finally figured out our waitress was MIA and came around to take our order. She brought us two waters and placed a pot of hot tea in the center of the table. Kaia ordered the teriyaki chicken. My brain was too fried to think about what I wanted—not to mention that I had no appetite—so I told the waitress to bring me the same thing.
Kaia poured some tea, and instead of drinking it, she stared down into the steaming cup. She tapped her fingers along the porcelain. “Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about this…and after what happened just now, I feel even more strongly about it.”
I’d started to pour some tea but stopped. “What?”
“I think we need to take a break.”
“You’re breaking up with me…”
“No. Not exactly. I just think you need to figure out all the shit that’s keeping you from being able to move on. And I think you need to do it without being tied down.” Her eyes became watery. “I love you. But I realize now that there’s a lot you haven’t dealt with. Until you do, I’m not sure you can ever be the man I need.”
“You don’t think that sounds like you’re breaking up with me?”
“Well, it’s not a breakup. But it’s a break. A separation. I won’t blame you for anything that happens while you’re figuring shit out here. Do what you need to do. But if you come back to me, your baggage can’t come with you.”