When I’d asked her how her day was, she’d said that it hadn’t been great because she’d talked to her mom and best friend and it hadn’t gone how she’d expected. So now, in our post coital bliss, she was opening up to me and telling me what they’d said that had made her upset, not breaking the news to me that she was getting back together with her ex.
I began rubbing her back again. “Sometimes people don’t react how you think they would when things like that happen.” She snuggled into me. “And sometimes you don’t know why they’re reacting the way that they are. When Rachel cheated on me, my dad barely said anything to me about it all. I had no clue what he thought or felt about it until today.”
“Today?” she repeated. “What did he say?”
“He said that he didn’t think Rachel was the right person for me and he didn’t want me to get back together with her. He said that he’d had his suspicions about her and Neil and hadn’t said anything at the time and he felt guilty about it all these years. He said that he promised himself he wouldn’t do that again.”
Sasha body tensed slightly. “Do you think you’re going to get back together with Rachel?”
“No,” I assured her. “I won’t.”
Her body relaxed and I couldn’t help but grin. I was glad to see, or feel actually, that I wasn’t the only one worried about exes.
“Do you think you’ll ever get back together wit—”
“No!” She didn’t even let me finish my question. “Never.”
My grin turned up in a full-blown smile at her response. I didn’t know what the future held for us, but it was nice to know that the past wouldn’t be an obstacle that we’d face.
Chapter 27
Sasha
“Life is full of surprises, some of them are good and some of them are gastrointestinal.”
~ Barbara-Jean Nelson
Wishing Well Annual Bake Sale
I read the banner hanging above the several long tables that were set up outside the firehouse. There was a crowd of about thirty or so people gathered in front of the station.
“Well, these muffins aren’t going to sell themselves.” Gam began walking toward the tables.
It was so strange to me that I’d walked up this very driveway a week ago and how different my life had been.
I didn’t know that Gam had been a “tart.” I didn’t know that she had family here, maybe not by blood, but that didn’t make Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Porter, or Mrs. Scoggs any less related to her than I was.
I didn’t know Cara or that she battled childhood cancer and had married her childhood crush.
I didn’t know Destiny had been raised by her grandmother Mrs. Porter and had opened Sugar Rush when she was only twenty-two.
I didn’t know Harmony or Dolly, the female bookends of the Briggs family who had both become two of my favorite people.
And I didn’t know Beau. I couldn’t even express how much meeting him had meant to me or how big a part of my life he had become. I was doing my best to convince myself that I knew what my connection to him meant.
On sets you spend so much time with people that you bond very quickly. When you are on location especially, it’s easy to feel a sense of intimacy from a shared experience. That is a big part of the reason that so many costars end up in relationships. But this wasn’t a set. This was my real life. And this was the first time I’d ever bonded with a group of people this quickly in real life.
I tried to remind myself that what I was feeling for Beau was magnified because of our shared experiences. We related because we’d both been cheated on and although his had happened years ago, we were both dealing with the aftermath this past week because Rachel had shown up.
That was why I felt so connected to Beau. That was why I couldn’t stop thinking about him. That was why I felt closer to him than I’d ever felt to anyone else in my entire life. At least that’s what I was telling myself.
Nerves popped in my stomach as I followed behind Gam carrying the basket of baked goods. I hadn’t seen Beau since the morning after we’d parked at Emerald Cove Lake. He’d been working the past couple of days, so I hadn’t seen him, except when I caught a glimpse of him on drive-bys since the fire station