Page 34 of Saving Ren
“We were new, been seeing each other a couple of months. Man, I’m not embarrassed to admit, I was falling hard and fucking fast. I’d just turned twenty-one, had finally ended the toxic relationship I’d been in since school a few weeks before we met, and she was everything the last one wasn’t.”
My brothers are both holding forks laden with food mid-air as they listen to Jack. He puts his cutlery down and rubs both palms over his jaw and cheeks.
“She was heading off to Uni after the summer, so I went into it thinking it was just gonna be a casual, summer thing. I knew pretty much straight away I was wrong, that it was gonna be more. She was a couple of years younger than me, not much experience, so we took it slow.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, and my chest actually feels tight watching the way talking about this girl is affecting him.
“Finally, ya know, spent the best night ever together. I left her in bed the morning after, working out plans in my head on how to make the long-distance thing work once she went off to Uni when my ex calls to tell me she’s pregnant.”
“Ohhh,” Zac says, putting down his fork and leaning back in his chair.
“That sucks,” Coop adds.
“Is this your kid’s mum?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he responds. “That phone call literally knocked me on my arse, took me a few days to get my shit together and decide what I was gonna do. Biggest fuck up I’ve ever made wasn’t getting Eden pregnant, I love my kid and will never regret him, but Blue, I fucked up big time with her.”
“Why, what happened?” Zac asks the question we all want the answer to.
“I spent the day thinking I should just let her go. She was eighteen, about to start a whole new life in Sydney. She didn’t need to be dealing with my shit. So, I did what I thought was the right thing and stayed away. No contact.”
He shrugs again, and again pushes back his fringe.
“I’d fucked her for the first time. . . no, that’s not the right term. Man, how do I say it without sounding like a pussy? It was more than that.”
He scratches at the back of his head and gives us all a grin before shaking his head.
“It was though, it was so much more, but then I stood her up that night, thinking a clean break was for the best, and didn’t make any contact with her for the next couple of days. When I did finally get my head on straight, she didn’t answer my calls or reply to my texts, so I went to her house. Her older brother opened the door and basically threatened to end my life if I didn’t fuck off and leave her alone, so I did exactly that. A few days later I was like, yeah, fuck that, I went back to her house, and it was too late, she’d gone. Packed up her life and moved to Sydney a few weeks earlier than planned.”
Jack wipes his hands on a paper napkin, screws it up, and drops it onto his plate.
“I shouldn’t have waited, shouldn’t have hesitated. We lived in a small beach town where everyone knows everybody else’s business, bit like this place but smaller, much smaller. As soon as I got that call, I should’ve gone back and told her what was going on. The biggest regret of my life is that, instead, I acted like the world’s biggest dick and left her hanging. I let her down, and she didn’t deserve that. She was a good girl, the best. She’d obviously heard about the baby through the town’s gossip network at some stage, packed up her bags, and left. I’ve never seen or heard from her since.”
We’re all quiet for a long moment. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an intense conversation, about a girl, with a bunch of blokes sat around a table in my life. My jaw is clenched so hard I have a sharp pain in my temple.
“And she was a redhead?” Zac asks.
“Yep. Red hair, blue eyes, short, curvy. That’s why I noticedyourlittle redhead last night. I had to look twice just to make sure.”
“She’s notmylittle redhead,” I snap.
“Fuck off,” Jack says. “You looked like you wanted to reach across the table and rip my nuts out through my throat when I mentioned her earlier.”
“He’s got a point there, mate. You totally looked at him like that’s what you wanted to do,” Zac feels the need to voice his opinion.
“Who asked you, fuck face?” I ball my napkin and throw it across the table at him.
“Calm ya fucking farm. Far out, this bird really has got you all tied up in knots.” I have no response to Zac this time. Instead, I fold my arms across my chest and sit back in my chair.
Cooper, who’s sitting next to me, slides his arm across my back, slaps my shoulder, and asks, “Well, in light of all that, what would your advice to our young Gabriel be?”
“Mate, if you’ve got it this bad after only meeting her last night, then I’d say pursue things.”
“She only left her husband this morning. He’s playing golf, chances are, he don’t even know she’s gone yet.”
“Fucking hell,” Jack adds a whistle to his response. “That’s, yeah, nah. I don’t honestly know what to say then.”
Coop squeezes my shoulder where his hand still rests. He knows there’s more to Lauren’s story, but it’s not my place to be saying anything to the boys about it.
“Did you say she’s staying at Jo’s?” Zac asks.
