Page 64 of When You're Home
“How’d I do?” he deadpanned.
“You nailed it. Well, most of it anyway…”
“Okay, what did I miss?” He took a long sip of his drink, watching her over the rim of his glass.
Tori paused before replying.
“Rhett and I have been… more than friends… since spring break of his junior year.” She gave Jake a knowing look. He nodded but stayed quiet, waiting for her to continue.
“He didn’t get over us like I thought he would when he went to Easton. I broke up with him before college for the same reason I won’t be with him now—he deserves better than me.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed at her self-deprecation.
“He deserves more than me and what I have to offer,” she clarified. “I came up with the idea. We could be… together,” she chose her words carefully, “when he’s home if and only if he dated other people at school. Enter Chandler.”
Jake’s mouth was wide open now, but he still didn’t make a sound.
“I actually set them up,” she confessed. “I downloaded the dating apps on his phone, and I created his profiles. I did all the swiping.”
“That’s fucked up, Tori.”There it was. She knew the judgement was coming, and now her hackles were raised.
“I just wanted him to have a distraction back at Easton. It was a way to casually keep things going until he graduated and moved away for good. I wanted it just as much as he did, and it worked out well enough over the last three years. It’s more than just sex,” she added, “for both of us. I know I can’t let him get too close or too attached… but I’m not strong enough to keep him away, either.”
She gazed over at Jake, trying to gauge his response.
“So then what happened this weekend?” he implored. His voice was gentler now. “Why did you fly off the handle when she showed up? You know about her. You literally hand-picked her.”
She stilled at his jab. She could feel her body tense up defensively at the thought of Chandler.
“Everything has been amped up since he came home unexpectedly in February. All my resolve to keep him at arm’s length has disappeared. I feel like I’m on a Ferris wheel that I can’t get off. This thing isn’t stopping, but I’m enjoying the ride too much to care. I’ve been having a hard time remembering why I can’t be with him…”
“And why is that, exactly?”
Tori shook her head. Jake knew this part. Did she really have to repeat it? If he needed a reminder, he was about to get a reminder.
“Do you want to help your best friend pick out a coffin for me in the next ten years, Jake? You guys do almost everything together. I’m sure he’d let you tag along.”
Jake recoiled at the dark place she had gone so quickly.
“Tori,” he scolded her. “Baby. Just because your mom…”
“No.” She cut him off. “You don’t get to talk about her. You don’t get to offer your prediction for what my future holds. I’m not sick yet, but I will be someday, Jake. It’s not an if. It’s a when. I have test results to prove it. While other women my age will be having babies, I’ll be having a hysterectomy. And even then I’m probably just buying myself some extra time. My life cannot be his life. I’m never leaving this town. I’m never moving out of that house. Rhett will want to get married. He’ll want to have kids. He deserves those things, and I can’t…”
“Okay, okay. Stop, Tori. I get it. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were going to go nuclear on me like that. Give me some sort of warning next time, okay? So this weekend…” Jake tried to steer her back to where they had left off.
“Right, sorry. This weekend. We went to a concert on Friday night, then we went to the cabin. It was amazing. It felt so good to be together, no secrets, no hiding. It was all so easy.” Tori sighed.
“Rhett asked me to try again this weekend. To try us again. All those things I just said about my future? I let myself pretend that wasn’t my reality. He asked if we could be together, and I didn’t say no.”
Jake’s eyes grew wide with comprehension.
“So you guys were, like, officially together when Chandler showed up at Clinton’s yesterday?”
Tori groaned. “Technically yes. We didn’t talk everything through at the cabin, but he called me his girlfriend, and I knew he was planning to end things with Chandler. I let myself get swept up in all of it. You know how he is. He’s smooth and charming and…”
“He’s golden.”
“Exactly. He’s golden. We hadn’t figured everything out, but we had agreed to try. But then things started to unravel. Maddie called. Chandler called. He didn’t tell me about any of that as it was happening. Once we got to Clinton’s and I found out that he had talked to her that morning without telling me, I picked a fight and freaked out on him,” she confessed to herself as much as to Jake.
