“Don’t play coy with me, Charlie. Everyone knows you’re good in bed, but the trouble would come when feelings get involved. You say you won’t cheat, but you’ll always be a flirt. I’d get jealous, and then we’ll end up fighting. I’ll say horrible things to you, and after the two years is up and we can finally put a cap on the divorce, we’ll never speak to each other again. Is any amount of money really worth that, worth losing a good friendship?”
He sighed. “We’ll part amicably. If there’s any woman who could pull this off with me, it’s you.” He winked. “For old times’ sake.”
“We don’t even know each other anymore,” I argued, grasping for straws.
“You say that now, but there are no guarantees.”
His intense eyes met mine. I remembered looking into those eyes and seeing my future with him. Yeah, I was quite the dreamer in high school. Everything was always more beautiful and vibrant when he was around me. When his eyes connected with mine, he always got what he wanted.
Not this time!
“We’ve always been friends, Jaime. Nothing will change that.”
“You said yourself that you’ve changed already. We don’t even know each other anymore.”
“So we can get to know each other again,” he said sadly, as if he already knew he’d been shot down. “We used to have a blast. Don’t you remember all the fun we had, all the trouble we got into?”
“Do I have to?”
He softly nudged me. “C’mon. You know it was great.”
“Great? Like the time when you crashed my car and—”
“Hey! I told you not to take the blame for it.”
“You didn’t have insurance...and you were drinking!”
“You always protected me before. Why not now?”
I wanted to say I wanted to have protection for a change. I wanted someone to be there for me and make all my problems go away, someone to lean on when the world crumbled around me, but doing it this way just felt wrong. As much as I always wanted Charlie to see me, he still waited too damn long. “You’re a grown man now. You don’t need me anymore.”
“I need you more than anything.”
“You’d say anything to snag a wife right about now.”
“I’ve always cared about you,” he added gentler, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand. I sucked in a deep breath and remembered to stay focused on what else Charlie made me feel. Anger, annoyance, rage at him abandoning me.
“You never even picked up the phone to call me,” I whispered and stared down at the ground. “I’ve always cared about you. That is one thing that’s never changed...and never will.”
“I was afraid to.”
“Afraid?”
“I felt guilty, Jaime. I stiffed you all that money, and—”
“So in other words, I paid you $1,000 to disappear? If that’s the case, it was the worst investment I ever made! Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
His grip tightened on my hand when I tried to pull away, he lifted my chin with his fingers until his blue gaze locked onto mine. “Sometimes I’d be stargazing at night wherever I found myself and I’d think about us. And I’d wonder what you were doing at that exact moment. I never forgot your birthday. Every August, I’d pick up the phone to call you on your birthday, but I chickened out every damn time.”
“You remembered my birthday?” I asked quietly. Why did he have to do this shit to me?
“How could I ever forget it? I used to think about you all the time, Jaime. I just couldn’t bring myself back to this small town.”