Page 86 of Checking It Twice
“An intervention.” He pushes past me without invitation, heading straight for my kitchen. “You’ve been moping around like someone shot your dog. Time to talk.”
“I don’t mope.”
“You’ve been moping for three days. Even the equipment guys are asking what’s wrong with you.” He cracks open two beers, slides one across the counter. “So talk. What happened in Minnesota?”
Everything. Nothing. I brought home the most incredible woman I’ve ever met, let my family fall in love with her, fell for her myself, then chickened out like a fifteen-year-old with his first crush.
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit.” Chase opens the wings, steam rising from the container. “Eat something. You look like you haven’t had a decent meal since you got back.”
He’s not wrong. Food tastes like cardboard, sleep comes in restless fits, and I keep catching myself looking toward the PR department whenever I’m in that part of the building.
Looking for her. For that soft smile, the way she tilts her head when she’s listening, how her eyes light up when she’s about to say something that’ll cut you down to size in the most beautiful way possible.
“It’s complicated,” I say finally.
“What’s complicated? You went home for Christmas, came back looking like hell. What am I missing?”
“I brought someone with me.”
Chase’s eyebrows shoot up. “Someone? Like a woman someone?”
“Clare. From PR.”
“Clare Johnson?” His voice kicks up an octave. “You brought Clare Johnson home to meet your parents?”
“It was supposed to be simple. Just needed someone to get my family off my back about being single.” I run a hand through my hair, already regretting this conversation. “Fake girlfriend for the week.”
“Right. Clare. She seems cool. What’s she like?”
Where do I even start? She’s funny, sharp-tongued, gorgeous when she’s not trying to be. She fits with my family like she’s always belonged there. She makes me want things I swore off after Hannah.
“She’s...” I take a long pull of beer, buying time. “She’s not what I expected.”
“Good different or bad different?”
“Terrifying different.”
Chase nods like that makes perfect sense. “Ah. So you’re in love with her.”
I nearly choke on my beer. “What? No. I’m not—we’re not—it was fake, remember?”
“Right. Fake.” The skepticism in his voice is thick enough to cut. “That’s why you look like someone carved out your soul with a rusty spoon.”
“I don’t look that bad.”
“Mitchell, you look worse than when Hannah left. And that was a shitshow of epic proportions.”
The comparison hits like a body check I didn’t see coming. Because he’s right. This feels worse than Hannah leaving. Way worse.
Hannah hurt my pride, made me question my judgment. This feels like losing something I didn’t know I needed until it was gone.
“That’s impossible,” I say, but the words sound hollow even to me.
“Is it? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you finally found something real and scared yourself out of it.”
I want to argue, want to tell him he’s wrong. But I keep thinking about Clare sitting beside me on the plane, carefully professional, like the weekend never happened. Like I never held her while she slept, never kissed her by that frozen pond, didn’t spend four days watching her become part of my family.
