Chapter 4

I might not have the slightest clue as to what Jamie thought or how she felt about what I had said, but neither of us was going anywhere tonight. Besides, love was still an all-too-new feeling for me, and I was more than willing to let that discussion wait until the morning.

“Are you serious right now, Shaie?!” My best friend, Lucy’s voice pierced through my head, gaining my attention.

She didn’t seem mad as she stood in front of me with an evening dress on each hand, but she definitely looked exasperated as she glared at me incredulously. It was Saturday afternoon, and Lucy had invited me over for lunch to help her decide which dress she was going to wear for Tony and Marnie’s rehearsal dinner later.

“What?” I asked, sitting just a bit straighter on her bed.

“You. Spacing out on me for the fourth time in the last 90 minutes.” She pointed out, deadpan. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I sighed, a little embarrassed by the fact that I had been spacing out. “I just have a lot on my mind right now, I guess.”

Well, not a lot, really. Just one specific thing that kept breaking off into a hundred different tangents.

I had woken up that morning to find Jamie just about completely dressed. It was strange because she usually liked to sleep in, and she was putting her shoes on as she sat on her side of the bed. For a moment, I thought she was about to sneak off, but she had turned to me and smiled when she had heard me stir.

“Good morning,” Jamie had greeted softly, brushing off a few curls that had fallen across my forehead. “I didn’t want to wake you up yet until I absolutely had to.”

“You have somewhere else to be this morning?” I had smiled back while I stretched out my limbs, glad that last night hadn’t scared her away.

“Yeah,” Jamie had replied. “I have to pick up my dress and make sure it’s all good for tomorrow. Plus, a bunch of other little errands before the wedding rehearsal—but I’ll see you later tonight at the dinner, right?”

She had turned towards me again and waited for my response, kissing me lightly on the lips when I had nodded as I sat up. Jamie had given me another kiss before she left, and I had lain back down on my pillow when I heard the door close behind her.

For some reason, I had begun to grow uneasy, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt that way. Jamie seemed fine. I mean, she didn’t seem anxious or upset about last night. She was the same way with me that she had been these past two months, actually.

And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and that feeling had been nagging at me ever since. It had constantly distracted me all day, even now that I was supposed to be helping Lucy out.

“Like what?” Lucy prodded, managing to pull back my attention before it wandered off again.

She brought her hands down to her sides and walked towards me, prompting me to stand and move away as she got closer. I wasn’t really in the mood to be pried at the moment.

“It’s nothing!” I said, frowning when Lucy narrowed her blue eyes and tried to peer into my face. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

When my friend merely continued to study my features, I decided to bring the subject back to the reason I was there in the first place.

“This one.” I told her, touching the dress she held in her right hand. Both of them would look perfect on her actually, having been handpicked by Lucy’s personal stylist as part of her new wardrobe, and it was really just about making sure that Lucy would neither be overdressed nor underdressed tonight.

There was a short pause before Lucy glanced at the dress I had picked and considered it again.

“Okay,” she finally said, laying the dress down on her bed. Then she moved to return the other one and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“So, how are things between you and Jamie?” Lucy suddenly called out from her closet, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. I should have known she wouldn’t just let the matter drop.

“Fine.” I answered simply. “Are we all good with the dress?”

“Pretty much,” Lucy replied, coming out and heading towards her dresser. She opened a drawer and started casually rummaging through it. “I just need you to help me pick out the earrings to go with it. Wow, two months have got to be some kind of a record for you!”

I had stood up and leaned sideways against the wall behind Lucy as she spoke, and it took me a moment before I finally realized that she was still going on about Jamie and me.

“Hey, I’ve dated some people for longer than that before!” I protested lightly, shaking my head as she held out two different earrings to her ears and waited for my reaction.

“In the last five years?” Lucy asked drily, quickly turning back to her jewelry and then holding up a new mismatched pair.

“Left.” I decided. “And what’s your point?”

Lucy shrugged, grinning as she placed the earrings back and turned her full attention back to me. “Just saying I’m glad things are going great between you two.”

“They are.” I told her, leaving out the part about my creeping suspicion that things somehow weren’t so great anymore after last night. I didn’t want to talk about it with Lucy, at least not until I knew for sure.

“Then what’s been bothering you?” Lucy sighed exasperatedly and I grinned. She really couldn’t stand not knowing.

“Okay, look,” I shrugged. “How about I’ll tell you if—and only if—you tell me what happened on your ski trip last weekend?”

There had been something different about Lucy ever since she had gotten back from that trip. She seemed more uptight than usual as of late and, although she tried to pretend as if everything was normal, I knew her all too well to believe that was the case.

I watched now, with a bit of amazement, as a slow blush crept across Lucy’s cheeks.

“Nothing,” she replied, seeming a bit flustered. “And it wasn’t a ski trip. It was a work trip. It was… nothing.”

I smiled, choosing not to say anything further.

From the way Lucy had responded, it was clear that the trip wasn’t ‘nothing’ at all, but I was more than willing to leave the subject, so long as Lucy let my own ‘nothing’ go—which she finally did.

I arrived at the rehearsal dinner at about a quarter past 7 in the evening, wearing a thin-strapped, lacy, black dress and heels. The event was held in Marnie’s childhood home once again, and I instinctively scanned the rustically decorated room for Jamie as I greeted the happy couple by the door.

Finally, I found her.

She was speaking with Jenna and one of Tony’s groomsmen at the far end of the living room, her tan glowing deeply against the knee-length, soft mustard dress that she was wearing. Her dark curls cascaded in two long and sexy waves over her shoulders as she nodded at something Jenna had said.

Her make-up gave her the perfect evening look, and I watched as Jamie’s cherry lips broke into a sexy grin the moment her dark brown eyes fell on me.

In that moment, it felt like everything was right again. It was if Jamie and I had always been in sync and I had no reason to be worried in the first place.

I set my course towards her, and I couldn’t help but smile at the appreciative look she was giving me as I approached. Jamie greeted me with a quick kiss, taking my hand as she seamlessly joined me in on their conversation. Lucy found us a short while later just as dinner was being announced, and the five of us took our seats at the long table.

Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Speeches were made, conversations were had. It was quite a great evening altogether and yet, somehow, the unsettling feeling that had been with me all day returned as I sat there next to Jamie.

My disquiet grew stronger by the second until I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t there. Something was definitely off between Jamie and me, and it frustrated me to no end that I just couldn’t seem to figure out exactly what it was.

It wasn’t like anything had changed with the way we interacted or talked. It wasn’t like Jamie was suddenly being distant. No, she was the same as she had always been with me—engagingly flirty and subtly affectionate. She was always holding my hand or touching whatever little part of me that she could, even while she was conversing with other people.

A third of the way through the main course and a couple glasses of wine later, Jamie gently squeezed my thigh under the table and lightly leaned her cheek on my shoulder. We were all laughing at a little anecdote that the bride-to-be’s uncle was telling, and her touch brought my eyes to her.

I watched a subtle, nearly imperceptible shift in her demeanor as she giggled and relaxed against my right shoulder, and that was when it finally clicked.

Jamie hadn’t been relaxed around me all evening.

She hadn’t been acting any differently, but now I could see that it had been a conscious effort on her part not to act differently. It was as if there was some invisible strain on her to stay the exact same way she had been with me for the past couple of months—before last night, before I had told her that I was in love with her—and, in a sense, she had been silently urging me to follow her lead.

What if this was all that Jamie wanted us to be? The thought entered my mind then, unbidden. What if this was as far as it could go for her?

Jamie’s rebound, her ex had called me. Not that I would normally put too much stock on what Joan says, but it wasn’t like that thought had never crossed my mind before. I knew from the start that it was a possibility, and I had always thought I was prepared enough to be fine with things if that ended up being the case.

But the idea of being Jamie’s rebound now…

I would probably laugh if it were someone else in this situation and not me. I was the one who liked to keep things casual. I was the one who had no problem getting out of a relationship before feelings started getting in the way and someone ended up getting hurt.

All this time, I guess I just never thought it was my heart that would ever be at risk of breaking—and it was too late to do anything about it now.

My heart was already on the line and in Jamie’s hands, and damn if the sudden uncertainty of it all didn’t scare the shit out of me.

We dropped Lucy off first before I started driving Jamie towards her apartment. I was only taking her home since we had both agreed to get some rest tonight in our respective beds, given that, as a bridesmaid, Jamie would have to be at the wedding tomorrow much earlier than I did

Everything had been really nice with Jamie for the last hour or so, and I was pretty sure that the amount of wine that she had drunk over dinner had a lot to do with it. I wasn’t complaining, especially since that intangible wall between us seemed to be thinning out as a result.

The wine had also loosened her lips, I noticed, as Jamie produced a steady stream of chatter to keep me amused while I drove. She held my hand in hers, her finger absently tracing squiggles on my right palm as she talked. Things felt perfect in that moment and, for one fleeting second, I wondered if following Jamie’s lead and acting like last night never happened would be so bad after all.

As soon as the thought had come to mind, however, I immediately recognized that it simply wasn’t possible. Last night did happen and, like it or not, things just weren’t the same anymore.

I couldn’t deny or ignore how I felt about Jamie now even if I tried, and I knew I didn’t want to end this night still uncertain of how she felt about me as I drove.

“Jamie, I think we need to talk.” I told her, cutting off her story about the wedding rehearsal they had earlier. I almost regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth, but they had to be said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, wasn’t that what we were already doing?” Jamie teased, smiling at me but avoiding my gaze when I glanced her way.