One Night Stand-In (Boyfriend Material #3) - Lauren Blakely Page 0,26
done it for myself.
I certainly haven’t always done it with the woman across from me.
The night I went to her dorm, I wasn’t ready to face the truth of my feelings.
There’s no need to now either.
But I can do something I failed to do then.
Maybe it’s because of the salt and carb high, or maybe it’s because of this crazy night, or possibly it’s because not many have the opportunity to say what they should have said way back when . . . Whatever the reason, I draw a deep breath and speak from the heart as she reaches for a fry. “Hey, you.”
She looks up in surprise.
The fry falls into the basket as I say, “I’m sorry, Lola.”
9
Lola
They’re words I longed to hear nearly ten years ago.
They’re the only words I wanted then.
Well, those, followed by Let’s try this whole first date thing again.
But I can’t quite believe he’s saying them. And I don’t want to misread him. Is he sorry for what happened to us? For our crazy siblings? For our absentee parents?
Or maybe just for the fry that fell?
Nerves thrum through my bones as I wipe my hand on my napkin. “For what, Lucas?”
He heaves a sigh, then rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “There were a lot of things I didn’t handle well the night I came to your dorm.”
My heart speeds up. It’s pumping with anticipation. But not for romance, or for sex. It’s an anticipation I didn’t expect to feel.
It’s the wish for resolution.
To truly put the past behind us.
To say the things we couldn’t say as two hotheaded twenty-one-year-old aspiring artists who wanted each other. Who wanted to see if maybe there was something more to all those nights of friendship.
“What sort of things?” I ask, my pitch climbing as I study his handsome features.
Gone is the sexy smirk he wears so well. In its place are serious eyes, flecked with honesty. “For starters, I shouldn’t have said that thing about it being only one night. The night before,” he explains. “That was dumb and—”
I know exactly what one night he means, and I am bursting to say something too, something I didn’t even realize I needed to say until just now.
“I’m sorry too,” I blurt out, cutting him off, because it feels so damn good to say it at last.
He flinches in surprise. “What are you sorry for?”
And I know. I know exactly what I’m sorry for. I didn’t give him a chance to truly apologize. Sure, he should have batted first back then. Definitely, he’d needed to explain better. But I was so wounded that I put on my armor immediately. “I didn’t give you a real chance to explain. I went into self-protection mode,” I say, my voice marked with potholes as we revisit the past.
In the scheme of things, it’s not such a terrible moment. No one died, no one fell ill, and no one lost a home.
But even if it wasn’t the end of the world, it was the end of something else—it marked the end of a fantastic friendship.
There was a before and there was an after. And Lucas and I were never the same.
“Lucas,” I say, leaning closer, emotions bubbling up inside me, spilling out. “I was so upset that weekend. When you didn’t show. I was . . .” I pause, searching for the right word, recalling how I felt as I waited for the guy who’d rocked my world a few nights before. “Devastated. I was devastated.”
His face falls, and sadness clouds his features. “I’m sorry, Lo. I felt like shit. For what it’s worth, and I know it’s not worth much now, but you were pretty much all I thought about while I was away.”
A smile pulls at my lips. “Yeah?”
He nods decisively. “And I was so damn frustrated that I didn’t have a way to get in touch with you. And the guys, well, you know how they were. Jock pride and all. The captains basically said, ‘If anyone needs to call his mommy or daddy, do it now and do it on speakerphone.’ So yeah, I couldn’t.” He heaves a sigh, long and full of regret. “In retrospect, I should have. But in retrospect, I should have come to your dorm when the weekend was over and groveled. Got down on my knees and said, ‘I’m sorry, can we have a do-over? Here are flowers and chocolate and a thousand mea culpas.’”