Page 66 of Don't Lie to Me

Macy flipped me a look. It said I was full of bullshit and she wasn’t going to push, but our conversation wasn’t over.

I pretended to flip through the re-admission paperwork for DePaul University I downloaded earlier in the week. I also had a stack of paperwork for Chicago University, Marquette University, and Notre Dame. I hated the idea of running away and going out of state to finish school. I didn’t want to be the girl that ran from the guy who broke her heart. I wanted to be strong and hold my own ground. Chicago was my city and I’d be damned if I let Jack and my feelings for him cause me to cower like a scared little girl in a corner, afraid to see him.

But I was, and I hated it. Everywhere I went over the last week, I saw Jack. I saw him in the parks we’d taken Logan, I saw him when I drove by businesses and buildings I knew he had bought and or sold. Everywhere I turned, reminders of him smacked me in the face and made my chest ache. Who knew Chicago was such a small town?

“I still can’t believe you’re thinking of going out of state for college, though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of you for wanting to finish college finally, but Indiana or Wisconsin? Do you have to go so far away?”

I pushed the hair off my face and looked at my best friend’s sad eyes. She hated this just as much as me, and she had the added bonus of having to see Jack every day. Something she hadn’t let me forget. Apparently over the last week, he’d become even more difficult to work for and this girl’s night in was for her, just as much as it was for me.

“I don’t know, Mace,” I said quietly and then picked up the letter of recommendation Martin had given me. It was impressive, cataloging all the work I’d done for Jack and singing my praises. If I were to send this letter out, I’d be able to get a job with no problems. Having such a glowing recommendation from Jack McMillan would surely open dozens of doors for me. And yet, I hated….hated the idea of allowing him to help me. If I was going to move on, I was going to do it my way and not take a single little bit of help from him.

“I just…I don’t know. I feel like I need to get away. With everything going on with Jack, and now Marcus, I feel like I might explode.”

“But Wisconsin? Really?” She wrinkled her nose into a squishy icky face and I giggled.

“I know,” I said, smiling now. It was practically sacrilegious for a die-hard Chicagoan to move to the cheese state up north. “But Notre Dame and Marquette are still close enough to be able to see you on the weekends, and for Marcus to see Logan.”

“How’s the daddy doing, anyway?” she asked with a slight inflection I wasn’t sure I appreciated. Marcus had become, friendlier, over the last week to say the least.

He started coming a little bit earlier every time it was time to pick up Logan, and staying a bit later every time he dropped him off. He said it was because he wanted to be around Logan as much as possible, and I wanted to believe it, but I had also caught a few lingering glances of his in my direction. He watched me just a little bit closer…with his eyes a little bit softer. I didn’t say anything, afraid I would embarrass myself around him. I wanted to believe that he was concerned about me.

Something told me it was more than that though, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. So I did the most mature thing possible and ignored it. Denial was my closest ally when it came to Marcus.

I rolled my eyes at Macy. “He’s fine. He took Logan to a movie tonight.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.” She set down her glass of wine on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch. “I heard him in Jack’s office today.”

I shook my head. “I said I don’t want to hear about him anymore.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Not even if they were arguing about you?”

My hands froze on the Notre Dame campus brochure. I set it down when I noticed my hands were shaking. I did want to know. I desperately wanted to know what in the hell changed so quickly with Jack that he could profess his love for me and then throw me out like some used tramp. I knew something was going on, and I hated that everything ended with so many questions. And yet, I was too afraid to hear the truth. Maybe he just decided I wasn’t worth the trouble, or that Logan wasn’t worth it, and Marcus was just defending my honor or some silly bullshit.

Either way, I didn’t think knowing the truth, or the rumors about what Jack and Marcus were yelling about would help anything.

“How are your wedding plans coming?” I asked, changing the subject again. It was the lamest attempt in the history of the world and Macy pursed her lips, but because she loved me, she humored me.

“Fine,” she said. Then she picked up her three-inch thick binder that she used for coordinating every single possible need she could have for her wedding. Everything was tabbed and color coordinated. Pictures and prices of wedding venues, invitations, florists and potential bouquet pictures, dozens of styles of bridesmaid dresses, and everything else you could imagine were packaged perfectly into sheet protectors inside this binder. She guarded that book with her life.

She was a little bit psycho about the wedding planning, although January was only a few months away. Why she wanted a winter wedding, I had no idea. Chicago in the winter was freezing cold, windy, and downright miserable. But she got stars in her eyes and looked all fan-girl silly when she talked in a dream like voice about starting out the new year, as a new bride with a new name and the man of her dreams.

Who was I to argue with my best friend’s happiness? If a January wedding was what she wanted, I wanted to help her in any way that I could. Even though I cringed when she kept showing me pictures of strapless maid of honor dresses.

I feigned a groan of frustration when she opened it to the invitation section and patted the seat next to her on the couch.

“You asked for it,” she said jokingly and I moved to sit next to her. We spent the next couple of hours, drinking wine, laughing about Tate and Dean, and picking out invitations for the bridal shower and wedding, along with flowers for the wedding party.

When Marcus brought Logan home, we were well into our second bottle of wine and laughing hysterically about You Tube videos we had watched with wedding parties doing flash dances down the aisle. It was apparently all the rage in weddings this season, but Tate had two left feet and we couldn’t imagine him pulling off something so cool looking.

We were right in the middle of drunkenly acting out Tate’s version of smooth dancing – which looked similar to the chicken dance -when Marcus opened the door.

His jaw dropped in surprise as we sang and robotically moved, off beat, to Maroon 5 blaring through my speakers.

“Having fun?” He finally asked with a smug grin. Logan held his hand and looked up at his dad with a questioning look. He probably wondered what in the world was going on with his crazy mom. Macy and I collapsed onto the couch in a fit of laughter.

Gasping for breath through my laughter, I held my arms open for Logan to crawl into them. “We were pretending to be Tate dancing.”

Marcus chuckled and set down Logan’s backpack before joining us in the living room. He turned down the volume on the stereo so we could hear him and smiled lazily at Logan curled into my lap.

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