After a long pause, I cringed at the words I was about to say. “If you knew what I know . . . you wouldn’t be.”
He shook his head. “I don’t wanna know. I just want you.”
“We’re just friends, Trent.”
Trent’s face and shoulders fell.
“Next!” the agent said again. He had been watching us talking, and wasn’t in a patient mood.
“I have to go. I’ll see you when I get back, okay?”
Trenton’s eyes fell to the ground, and he nodded. “Yeah.” He started to walk away but turned around. “We haven’t been just friends for a while. And you know it.” He turned his back to me, and I handed my ticket and ID to the agent.
“You okay?” the agent asked, scribbling on my ticket.
“No,” I said. My breath caught, and I looked up as my eyes filled with tears. “I’m a huge ass**le.”
The agent nodded, and motioned for me to move on. “Next,” he called to the person behind me.
I didn’t want to move, just in case it was a dream. As a child, when I visited the homes of my friends, I began to realize that other dads weren’t like mine, and that a lot of other families were happier than mine. From that moment, I dreamed about moving out on my own, if for nothing else more than to just have a little peace. But even adulthood seemed more like a source of constant disappointment than adventure, so just to be sure this moment of happiness wasn’t some dirty trick, I stayed still.
This immaculate and minimalist town house was exactly where I wanted to be: wearing nothing but a satisfied smile, tangled in white Egyptian cotton sheets, in the middle of T.J.’s king-size bed. He was lying next to me, breathing soft and deep through his nose. He would have to wake up in a few minutes to get ready for work, and I would get a great view of his tight backside as he crawled out of bed. That, of course, wasn’t the problem. The next eight hours left alone with my own thoughts would take this staycation from nirvana to nerve-wracking.
A plethora of doubts had crowded my mind during the flight, making me wonder if this time was the last time. Months of built-up nervousness continued right up to the moment I saw him in baggage claim, but then I saw his smile. The same smile that made lying there with him feel like the right kind of wrong.
Maybe I’d serve breakfast in bed to celebrate our first twelve hours together in months? Maybe not. That was me trying too hard again, and I was done being that girl. I would never be that girl again. Raegan had said it perfectly while I furiously packed the evening before:
What happened to you, Cam? Confidence used to radiate off you. Now you’re like a whipped puppy. If T.J. isn’t it, you can’t control it, anyway, so you might as well stop worrying about it.
I didn’t know what happened between me being that amazingly confident girl and now. Actually, yes, I did. T.J. walked into my life, and I’d spent the last six months trying to deserve him. Well, half of that time anyway. The other half I spent doing the opposite.
T.J. turned his head and kissed my temple. “Morning. Want me to run to the corner and get breakfast?” he said.
“That sounds amazing, actually,” I said, kissing his bare chest.
T.J. gently pulled his arm out from underneath me and sat up, stretching for a few moments before standing up and giving me the view I’d been fantasizing about for over three months.
He slipped on the jeans that were folded over the chair, and pulled a T-shirt from the closet. “Everything bagel and cream cheese?”
“And orange juice. Please.”
He slipped his sneakers on and grabbed his keys. “Yes, ma’am. Be right back,” he called out before closing the front door behind him.
Obviously, I didn’t feel undeserving of him because T.J. was an ass**le. It was the reverse. When someone this amazing walks into your bar and asks for your number before he’s had a single drink, you work your tail off to keep him. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that I’d managed to snag him in the first place. And then I’d forgotten about him altogether.
But the moment T.J. wrapped his arms around me in baggage claim, I immediately compared the way he held me with the way Trenton had. When T.J. put his lips on mine, his mouth was just as amazing as I remembered, but it didn’t feel like he needed me the way Trenton did. I was glaringly aware that I was making unfair and unnecessary comparisons, and tried not to the moment it happened, but I failed—every time, on every level. Whether it was fair or not, Trenton was what I knew, and T.J. had become unfamiliar.
Ten minutes later, T.J. jogged back in, placed the bagel on my lap, and the orange juice on the nightstand. He kissed me quickly.
“They called you?”
“Yeah, early meeting. I’m not sure what’s going on, so I’m not sure when I’m coming home.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”
He kissed me again, quickly undressed, put on a pressed white shirt and a dark gray suit, and slipped on his shoes before jogging out the door with a tie in his hand.
The door slammed.
“Bye,” I said, sitting alone.
I lay back down, looking up at the ceiling and picking my nails. His town house was quiet. No roommate, no pet. Not even a goldfish. I thought about the fact that Trenton would probably be sitting next to me on the love seat at home, watching anything with me while I prattled on about work, or school, or both. How nice it was just to have someone that wanted to be around me, in any capacity. Instead, I was staring up at a white ceiling, noticing how nicely it stood out against the clay beige walls.
Beige was so T.J. He was safe. He was stable. But anything could look good from a few thousand miles away. We never fought, but you don’t have anything to fight about if you’re never around one another. T.J. knew what kind of bagel I liked, but did he know that I hate commercials, or what radio station I listen to, or that the first thing I do when I get home from work is take off my bra? Did he know that my dad is a grade-A ass**le, or my brothers were both endearing and intolerable? Did he know that I never make my bed? Because Trenton did. He knew all of that, and he wanted me anyway.
I reached over and checked my phone. An email from Single in Your Area Now, but that was it. Trenton hated me, and that was about right, because he asked me to choose, and I didn’t choose him. Now I was lying naked in another man’s bed, thinking about Trenton.