Page 20 of This Time Around
“Nope.” Allie pressed her lips together, then nodded. “I guess not.”
“And we’re also not exactly who we pretended to be last night.”
“Guilty as charged.” Allie shifted on the sofa, bumping his knee with hers. “So where does that leave us?”
“Friends?” There was a hopeful note in his voice, a tone Allie recognized from a long time ago. Years before they’d even dated, back when Jack was the sweet boy in math class with sad eyes. The boy whose father had walked out and left him alone with his mom and a whole heap of trust issues.
She wondered if he’d ever gotten over that.
“Friends,” she repeated, nodding a little. “That sounds good.”
“Excellent.” He leaned back against the cushions, splaying his arms out across the back of the sofa. “So is there anything else you want to confess?”
“What?” Her voice cracked just a little, but she forced herself not to flinch. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve kinda opened all the floodgates here. The fake fiancé, the career paths that didn’t go like we expected. Your law-breaking parents, my shotgun marriage—it’s been very therapeutic getting it all out in the open.”
“Oh. Right. Yes, it has.”
“So I just wondered if there’s anything else either of us wanted to share.”
Her cheeks heated up, and Allie prayed he wouldn’t notice. “You’ve seen plenty of embarrassing stuff from me tonight. Speaking of which, I need to go rinse off this mud mask.”
“And I should probably get this crap off my teeth. Is there more than one bathroom in this place?”
“Yeah, go ahead and use the guest bath you used last night. I’ll wash up in the primary.”
She stood up and headed down the hall, wondering if she should have seized the chance to tell him goodnight and bid him farewell. She rinsed her face quickly, then toyed with the idea of smearing on a little lipstick. She decided against it, ruling out the hairbrush, too. It seemed pointless now. He’d seen her at her worst already.
She turned and walked back down the hall to find Jack standing by the door with his shopping bag in hand. He flashed her an exaggerated grin, showing teeth that no longer bore the film of whitening strips. “Better?”
“Definitely,” Allie said. “Here, don’t forget your whipped cream.” She hustled around the couch to grab it off the table, then met him back at the door and thrust it into his hand.
“You sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you.”
“Deprive me, please. I don’t need the extra calories.”
“You look perfect to me.”
She laughed. “It’s the sweatpants. I know they’re a turn-on, but please try to control yourself.”
He grinned at her and reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It was an intimate gesture, and one so unexpected that Allie realized she wasn’t breathing.
Jack seemed startled, too, and he stepped back a bit. He didn’t say anything for a second, and Allie wondered if he was waiting for something. He scuffed his toe on the carpet, then cleared his throat. “Look, if you need any help with the B&B, give me a call.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “We’re friends now, right?”
“I guess so.”
“You know what I was doing for some of those years before I got my shit together and went back to college?”
Allie shook her head. “No.” She grimaced. “We’ve already established that I’m a self-absorbed bitch who couldn’t be bothered to look you up for the last sixteen years.”
“I never said that.”
“No, but I did.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “For the record, it wasn’t that I didn’t care. I just needed closure, I guess.”
