What to do . . . what to do . . .
“Jared?”
Of course. As if my day couldn’t get any shittier.
Out of all the people I could possibly run into, it had to be him. Looking up, I had to squint, the low winter sun right behind him. “Tom. Fancy meeting you here.” I stood and brushed dirt from the damp arse of my jeans. “What are the odds?”
“Pretty fucking high.” He eyed me warily, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing as me. Four months ago we’d both assumed we’d be travelling home together at Christmas, no question. “Sooo . . .” He looked pointedly at the bags near my feet. “What happened?”
“Mike.”
His scoff and subsequent eye-roll told me I didn’t need to say more. Tom never liked him. “Can’t believe he fucking left you here.” He waved a hand at the car park. “How the hell did he think you were going to get home?”
His anger on my behalf sent a warm thrill through me, gripping somewhere behind my ribs and setting off the deep ache I’d had for the last four months.
I’d missed him so fucking much.
Running a hand through my hair, I sighed. “I guess after I called him a motherfucking cunt, he didn’t particularly care.”
Tom snorted, a smile tugging at his mouth, and suddenly I was hungry to see it bloom into the wide grin I knew so well. I hadn’t had that beautiful smile directed at me in far too long. Biting his lip, he seemed to be considering something. I was pretty sure what he was going to ask but held my breath anyway.
“D’you want a lift home?”
I could tell how much it cost him to ask me that, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse. And besides, even though it was going to be awkward as fuck, I didn’t want to.
“Yeah, please,” I muttered, looking down at my shoes, unable to meet his eyes. Best friends for over ten years and I couldn’t even look at him while thanking him for saving my stranded arse. With an eye-roll of my own, I forced myself to face him.
And there it was.
As soon as his gaze locked on mine, I felt it deep in my bones. That spark, that flare of attraction that I’d tried so hard to bury for the last four months, because I knew he didn’t feel the same.
That memory was burned inside my brain no matter how hard I tried to flush it out.
The silence threatened to wander into uncomfortable territory—not something we ever suffered from before—so I cleared my throat and looked away quickly. “If you’re sure, that is?”
“Wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.” His lips quirked and I recognised that flash of amusement in his eyes, like a tease reminding me of what I fucked up. “It’s not exactly out of my way.”
“I suppose not.”
Four houses separated our childhood homes; he wouldn’t even have to drop me off. It still felt like this was a huge deal though. As he went to grab my suitcase, I knew I had to say something more to acknowledge it. “Thank you. I know things are pretty shit between us at the minute.” He opened his mouth to reply, but I quickly raised a hand to stop him. “And I know it’s my fault. So thank you for doing this. I’d be fucked otherwise.”
He stared at me for a long moment, searching for what, I didn’t know. His expression was hard to read. As the seconds ticked passed, my pulse quickened, until finally his lips curved up into a small smile. Not a patch on his usual one, but I’d take it.
“Come on.” He extended the handle on my case and tugged it towards him, glancing up at the grey-white sky. “We should get a move on. Looks like it could snow any minute.”
I gave the sky a cursory glance. He wasn’t wrong. It had that ominous colour about it that threatened heavy snow. Not something we saw too often down here but was all too common where we were headed.
With a sigh, I grabbed the bag of Christmas presents and trailed after him to wherever he’d parked his car.
Twenty-five minutes into the journey and the silence was already getting to me. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Music blasted through the car, but we hadn’t said a word to each other since we’d left the services. My fidgeting didn’t go unnoticed, and when I shifted positions for the third time in as many minutes, Tom’s hand shot out and turned off the music.
His sigh was loud in the sudden silence, and I winced.
I could feel a talk coming on.
Should’ve bloody well kept still.
“I refuse to spend the next two hours with you jiggling about in your seat every ten seconds,” he grumbled, eyes still on the road ahead.
“I wasn’t jiggling.” I so was, but I ignored his raised eyebrow and turned to look out the window. The scenery rushed past as we made our way up the M5, but I only got a few moments reprieve before he sighed again.
“I know you don’t want to talk about this. You made that quite clear with your refusal to answer any of my texts, calls, or emails.”
God, it made me sound so petty when he put it like that, but in my defence, he’d started it. “You ignored mine first.” Turns out I’m okay with being petty. And okay it might have only been for a day, but it had felt like weeks.
“I know, and I’m really sorry about that. Which you’d know if you’d read any of the messages I sent you.”
“I read the first one.” And that had said all I needed to know. I didn’t need to read a million more saying the same thing.
He tapped the steering wheel, fingers drumming to an imaginary beat. He did that when considering his words carefully. After what seemed like an entire lifetime passed, he shot me a glance. “I’m sorry about that one. I was drunk when I sent it.”
I knew that. His spelling had been shite, but the message had been clear enough. “Did you mean what you said?” I thought back to the words imprinted on my brain.
Tom: Whey the duck d u you do that? You ruined everything
As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t much more to discuss.
His sigh didn’t bode well.
“I meant it at the time, I guess, but—”
My indignant huff earned me a warning glare.
“But, it was a knee jerk reaction. I apologised the next day. And about thirty times after that, which you’d have known if you’d read any of my fucking texts.”
I shifted uncomfortably, not liking where this conversation was going. I’d felt justified in ignoring him after that first one. Convinced I was protecting myself from further heartache, and well . . . he’d really fucking hurt me.
Had my stubbornness fucked up our friendship, though? Could we have salvaged things if I’d just picked up my bloody phone?
Maybe the more important question was, did I want to?
I’d always harboured feelings for Tom. Feelings that promised more than friendship if I let them surface. But I’d buried them deep, refusing to acknowledge them. Too scared to even imagine the possibility. We’d been friends for years. If anything was going to happen between us, wouldn’t it have done so already?
But that kiss . . .
It had been all my fantasies rolled into one, and then some. My box of inconvenient feelings was well and truly open. Deep down I suspected I hadn’t replied to his texts because part of me didn’t want to go back to just being friends.