Page 109 of Embracing the Beat
“What?” Her nose crinkles in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve known you since you were nine years old. You’re like another son.”
If those words don’t twist the knife in my chest, I don’t know what would. The pain feels so real, so palpable, that I lift a hand to rub at my heart.
“Didn’t Sawyer tell you?”
“Tell me what?” she asks.
“About Michaela and me…about…” I can’t. The words lock themselves behind my lips, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Are you sure you’re not sick? You look a little gray around the gills.”
I can’t help the chuckle that breaks loose. “I think you mean green around the gills.”
“You’re not green, you’re gray,” she tells me. “Now, what’s going on?”
“Now I know where Sawyer gets it,” I mumble, but she still hears me.
“That’s right. But you still won’t distract me from my question.” She levels me with a stare, and I give up.
“Michaela and I…we…”
“You broke up,” she supplies after several moments of awkward silence when I can’t finish my statement.
What?
I mean, we did. But I would have phrased it more like I was an asshole.
“Sawyer said it happened when she left for California. I got home, and he was there and said you two had broken up. And in the next breath, he told Dan and me he was taking us to dinner.”
“Yeah, uh—”
“You know you didn’t have to leave,” she interrupts.
“I—”
“Or was it too painful to be in our house?”
Having to see pictures of Michaela every day? Imagine her in her room? In my room? In my bed?
Painful would be tame.
Agony. That was a better description.
But I’m in agony even after the change in location.
“You can always come back,” she offers, and I smile through the gut-wrenching ache at the idea.
It’s not home either.
Because I ruined it.
“I…” I can’t bring myself to destroy the hopefulness on her face, so I stall. “I’ll think about it.”
“Would you also think about coming by for dinner one night next week?”
“I—yeah,” I stutter. “How’s Michaela?”
Her gaze turns soft with sympathy, and she rubs her hand up and down my arm.
