Riptide Affair, page 17
“Merrin?”
The door slams shut.
“Merrin, sweetie? Everything okay?”
I don't have the energy to turn around, so I wait for them to come to me. Which they do, of course, and are all struck silent as they stare down where I'm kneeling on the floor. Yesterdays makeup streaked across my face. Barefoot because I have no idea where my shoes ended up. Rumpled clothes because I peeled them off in haste to make the biggest mistake of my life. All around me, the air reeks of despair and shame.
“Mer?” Harper stoops over so she can brush a tangle of hair from my face. “What's wrong?”
Lord. Where do I even begin?
“Pretty sure I know what the 911 was for,” Laura says softly, “and there's no reason to be all doom and gloom about it.”
I jerk my head back and stare blankly over her shoulder. It's circulating through town? Already?
“You know?” I croak.
“Yeah.” She smiles, and there's so much warmth there. “You're pregnant.”
More tears spring to my eyes as I shake my head.
“That's what the 911 is about, right? I mean, there were like nine 911s and twenty exclamation points.” She looks me up and down when I don't answer right away, then looks at the other girls. “I'm right, right?”
They wait. Kind smiles and attentive eyes at the ready. And then they wait some more. How do I follow that with something like this?
I can't... I can't take their smiles. Their hope. Their friendship. It hurts. Everything just...fucking hurts.
Swallowing the shards of glass lodged in my throat, I force myself to speak.
“I slept with Rhett.”
My hands cling to the material around my neck as the damn shirt I'm wearing tries to strangle me, just like my guilt. Every bat of my lashes sweeps tears away as I focus everything I have on breathing. On forcing my way through the hurt.
It's so quiet. Their silence seems to last a small eternity. But Kate's somber expression paired with her hands clasped over her heart hits me the hardest. “You...you did what?”
“I slept...with Rhett.”
God, the words are so putrid on my tongue I have to swallow to keep from gagging. There are boulders where my lungs should be.
The room tips.
And then I tip with it.
Kate grabs me by the shoulders before I can faceplant on the carpet, and I find myself shoved into the corner of the couch with three pairs of hands holding me still as I sob. Purging my anguish through tears until all I feel is the burn. The ache. The sorrow threatening to drown me.
I don't know how many minutes pass, but eventually I'm able to rake in a lungful of oxygen that doesn't feel like acid, and it's all due to the hand gently rubbing circles along my back, grounding me, bringing me down, offering me the connection I need to know I'm not drowning alone.
“Start at the beginning,” Kate urges. “Just talk. Breathe. Get it out. All of it.”
I open my mouth, ready to give them the least painful version of the story—the Reader's Digest version—but words start coming out and they just won't stop. Like a waterfall of filth, I spew every sin out into the open through tears and hiccuped breaths. How blitzed I was, how elated I felt, the blackness...and then the total destruction and absolute devastation etched into every line on Jared's face when he found us this morning.
It's so mortifying, I cry and stutter and keep my eyes cast to the floor as I speak, only coming up for air and meeting their eyes once I reach the end. And they're all staring. Wide-eyed. At a loss for words.
Except Harper. My favorite pessimist.
“Maybe it's a sign,” she says, tapping her chin with a single finger.
Laura's brows shoot together as she turns on her friend. “A sign meaning what?”
Harper shrugs, but not in an unkind way. “That it wasn't meant to be.”
“Jesus.” Laura shakes her head, lip curling in disgust. “Do you throw away everyone in your life with that kind of justification? Do you discard partners at the first sign of turmoil?”
Harper just nods. “If they deserve it, then yes.”
“But Jared didn't deserve it,” Kate points out, her voice even and motherly as always. The voice of reason. “He didn't do anything wrong.”
Despite how reasonable she's being, it hurts. All the words hurt. And I snap.
“No!” I scream, sobbing harder. “I did! I did something wrong! I did everything wrong! I did it! Me!”
“That's not what I'm saying either, Merrin. It was a mistake.” She raises her voice to be heard over my breakdown. “People make mistakes. People are allowed to make mistakes. It doesn't mean that you should give up on them. It doesn't mean a relationship is doomed. And it sure as shit isn't a sign from the heavens that it's not meant to be.” Her hard eyes whip to Harper, and then back to me. “Relationships are fucking hard, Merrin. Hell, life is hard! Being an adult and making sane decisions and keeping your head and heart above water is hard. When you fail, and you will fail, often and spectacularly, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It simply means you're human.”
Human.
I'm human.
A shitty, stupid, cruel human.
“So you think Jared is just going to forgive her?” Harper asks. “You think they'll hash it out and pick up all their pieces and superglue them together and go on like nothing happened?”
“No,” Kate bites out. “I think they'll grieve and heal and then learn to live with the wreckage or...”
Her sentence tapers off, but I wait, gripping her hand hard as she searches my eyes. “Or what?”
In a blink, her eyes soften. One more blink, and her passion is gone, leaving room for a sadness I've never seen from her. A sadness meant for me.
“Or he'll walk away.”
The vice around my heart tightens.
She squeezes my hand so tight the bones in my knuckles grind together. “But if he does that, it only means he wasn't strong enough to forgive you.”
I shake my head. “Strong enough,” I scoff. “I don't think strength has anything to do with this.”
“Actually, it does.” Laura fights with the wrapper on a package of donuts she produced from who knows where. “Forgiving someone is one of the toughest things anyone can do. Forgiveness takes so much more effort and strength and character than holding a grudge.”
Harper checks her watch. “Okay, gurus, then what's the plan? Because we have twenty minutes until we have to open.”
Kate stands, dragging me up with her. I don't want to get up. I want to bury my head under the carpet and stay there until December.
“The plan is to get this hot mess ready for work,” she says, her voice filled with authority as she shoves me toward the bathroom. “Better to be pissed at rude, ungrateful customers than stay here all day and sulk.”
“I'm not sulking,” I say...sulking.
I dig my heels into the carpet, intent on staying exactly where I am, but Kate is stronger than she looks. “Shower,” she barks, gripping my forearm and dragging me down the hall. “You can't plant your ass on the couch and draw the blinds and pretend like the world has come to a halt just because of your pain, especially when you're the cause of it.”
“Um. Fucking oww!” I grimace, her words tearing a piece of my heart away, but she's right.
“Life goes on, Merrin. The earth continues to spin and nothing stops just because your heart is broken.”
Every step I take feels like I'm dragging feet encased in concrete blocks, but my girls are not deterred. They talk about everything but Jared as I get ready for work, and by get ready I mean Kate finds a clean uniform and force-dresses me while Laura does my hair and Harper shoves a toothbrush in my mouth, nearly choking me. Then, together, they apply my makeup in just a way to make me appear as if I'm not dying inside.
Once my lip gloss is recapped, Kate cradles my cheek in her palm. “We've got you.” She winks.
Numb, lost, and grateful all at the the same time, I nod.
They've got me.
No one trust me to drive, so Kate leaves her car behind and drives my SUV to work since it's already pushing ninety degrees and my AC works better than hers. Thankfully, Mama Bear doesn't force me to make small talk on the drive and we're silent the entire way, allowing me to stew over my plethora of mistakes. By the time we pull into the parking lot I've managed to collect myself enough to think clearly and realize that, although this hurts, it's not the worst day of my life. Despite everything hurting. Despite having to plaster on a fake smile when all I want to do is cry. Despite the hurt that buries under my skin as I zoom from the dining hall to the kitchen and back. Despite wanting to curl into a ball on the floor and let customers trample me.
Despite all that...I've endured worse.
I've survived worse.
And still, I'm a glutton for punishment, because every time there's a lull in business, I slink off to check my phone. It's plugged into the wall behind Harper's hostess station since it didn't charge last night, but every time I unlock the screen, I find nothing. No calls. No voicemails. No texts. Every message I've sent has gone unanswered.
I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to do any of this.
It was a mistake.
Please don't shut me out. Don't walk away from this.
You want me to beg for forgiveness? Because I will. I'll fucking beg.
I would never intentionally hurt you. Please know that.
The words are generic, but the sentiment behind them is far from that. Even so, as I read back over the texts, I wonder if Jared deserves better.
Actually, I know he does, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I thought I deserved a man like him in my life but now I'm not so sure. Every instinct I had said we should be together, but that doesn't matter anymore because I cut him in a way that he never, ever deserved. One colossal mistake is all it took to crumble our foundation, leaving nothing but rubble.
“Stop texting him.”
I yip in surprise and turn to find Harper, hip propped against the counter, arms crossed, glaring at me in disapproval. But I don't need all that. I'm already beyond ashamed of myself.
“I wasn't,” I say, fidgeting with my phone. “I was just...checking to see if he texted back.”
“Uh huh. And did he?”
I grimace. “No.”
Harper pinches the bridge of her nose and the light catches on her glossy black nails when she shakes her head. “Don't make me hide your phone. Please? Can you have some dignity and at least wait until your shift is over?”
Um. Ouch?
Harper's a big fan of tough love, so I shouldn't be hurt nor surprised, but damn if that didn't shove the knife in just a little deeper.
My shoulders sag in defeat, knowing that even though it's tough love, it's still love all the same, and she's right. “Fine. Hide if from me. I don't care. He's not texting back.”
“Good girl,” she says, taking my phone. “Dinner rush is about to hit. Get your shit together.”
I shake my head. “Thanks for tip-toeing around my feelings, Harper. I appreciate it.”
Maroon painted lips tip up in a half-smile. “Anytime.”
As pessimistic and dark and brooding as she is, Harper isn't just a friend. She's family. Like an annoying little sister that reads your diary when you're not looking and tells you how fat your ass looks in your favorite jeans. And I remind myself that this is why I love her.
I make it all the way to the kitchen door before Harper calls my name and I turn to face her, wondering what last-minute remark she has for me, but she's waving the cordless phone above her head, scowling. I don't know who would be calling me at work, but I jog back and take it from her.
“This is Merrin.”
“Hey! It's Ash!”
I instantly recognize the high soprano voice as the bartender who should be working right on the other side of the fish tank. She's worked at Woody's just as long as Kate has, but hasn't stepped foot inside this restaurant in years. I don't know why she's calling me. We're barely acquaintances.
“What's up, Ash? Did you need to put in an order?”
There's a pause on the line and I hear a door slam. “No. Actually, I have a little...situation.”
I duck around the corner into the office so I can hear her better. “Okay. What kind of situation?” And why didn't she just walk around to the kitchen and find me if she needed to talk?
The phone crackles with static as she sighs. “Well, your boyfriend is over here and he's trying to leave but I took his keys.”
The word 'boyfriend' may as well be a hollow-point bullet to the gut.
“Okay...and why do you have his keys?”
Another sigh, this one filled with disappointment. “Because he's about five shots past shitfaced and we've barely been open an hour.”
I close my eyes. Take a breath. Roll my shoulders.
“And, let me guess, he's trying to drive home.”
“Bingo,” she says. “I tried calling Brian but he isn't answering and I don't have Rhett's number. Think you could do me a favor and come drag his drunk ass home before he ralphs all over the new floor?”
Dammit.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Ashley's not asking much. I can take him home. I can call Brian and make sure he's taken care of. I can arrange for his Jeep to be picked up later.
The question is: should I?
Will he fight me the whole way? Will he say all the horrible things he's been ruminating over since we parted? Will he sink the knife in deeper? Will he intentionally break my heart beyond repair?
I shake my head, knowing none of that matters. All that matters, all I care about, is getting Jared home safe.
“Give me five minutes.”
“Thank you,” she sighs through the phone. “I know you're busy and I'm really sorry, but I don't want him trying to hot-wire his car with half a bottle of Jack sitting in his belly.”
That makes two of us.
I hit the button to end the call and walk it back to Harper, who's shaking her head. “Don't do it, Merrin. Don't go after him.”
My hands are shaking as I untie my apron and toss it under the counter. No one will mess with my tips if I leave it there, not that I care at the moment.
“I have to.”
“You don't have to do shit!” She smacks a hand to the counter. “He's a big boy, Merrin, with big boy britches. Let him figure his own shit out before you go wading into the thick of it.”
Blinking back tears, I bring up the time clock on her computer and enter my code to clock out. She's not trying to be calloused, everything she's saying is coming from a good place—a caring, fearful place—but I have to do this. Not out of guilt or even in hopes of forgiveness. Not even as penance. I have to do it because, no matter what happened, I still love him.
I love Jared.
“Laura can cover my tables.”
I expect Harper to push, to argue, to stand in my way, but she doesn't. She just sighs, shakes her head, and moves to the side so I can leave.
And that's the beauty of our friendship. I'm about to do something incredibly stupid, something that will hurt me more than it heals me, but she's not standing in my way. She wants to, I know she wants to shove me back in the closet and bar the door, but she won't. My heart is bleeding, aching, cracking, and this will make matters worse, but if I don't go...I'll never forgive myself, and she has the foresight to see that.
“See you in a bit.”
I grab my purse and sprint to the back.
This morning, Jared may have saved his heart from me, but tonight, it's my job to save Jared from himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jared
“Hit me!”
The sound of my leaded glass forcefully meeting the cedar bar makes my head hurt. Everything makes my head hurt. For hours it has throbbed and nothing, not even getting rip-roaring drunk, has helped. Ever since I walked in and saw her with him, lying curled up in a ball, her ass pressed to his hip, both of them draped in nothing but a three-thousand thread count sheet, the pain hasn't ebbed one damn bit.
Ashley eyes me from behind the bar where her and her twin sister—didn't even know she had a twin—are drying highball glasses in perfect sync. “Jared,” they both sigh. “This is a bar, not a blackjack table, and even if it were, I'm pretty sure you broken twenty-one with your last outburst.”
“Pfft. Nonsense.” I wave her away, tapping the bottom of my glass on the bar. I thought this was a universal sign for 'fill 'er up', but clearly she's not reading me. “Another. Please.”
Another sigh. “Well, at least your manners are still intact.” She takes my glass and turns her back to me. When she returns it, it's so full a few drops slosh out the top.
Perfect.
Make it stop.
Make it fucking go away already.
“Thanks, Doll.”
Ashley cuts out a biting laugh. “Don't you Doll me. You ran off half my clients when you slaughtered the best Johnny Cash song ever recorded.”
I halfway recall standing on the karaoke stage with a mic in my hand, but other than that, nothing, so I shrug. “Eh. My bad.”
I take half my shot in one gulp. It doesn't burn. The second swallow doesn't either. I glare up at Ashley.
“This isn't whiskey.”
“No,” she smiles. “It's Pepsi. Just like the shot before that. And the one before that.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” I slam the glass down and slide it back across the bar, shaking my head. “Betrayed by my own bartender. Can't trust any women in this damn town,” I grumble under my breath. “You're all a buncha lying, two-faced—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She smacks a hand between us, cutting me off. “Don't you start that shit with me, Jared Sullivan, or I'll damn well finish with you. You got that?”
Everything inside of me shrivels and I duck my head. “Yes, Ma'am.”
“You see that sign?” I follow where she's pointing and yeah, there's a sign, but the letters are a dancing, jumbled mess. “It says leave your problems on the porch.”
