“Do I hear sixteen hundred?” Mitzy asks, a strain in her voice that makes me acutely aware of the uncomfortable silence that’s fallen over the room.
Most of these women know that Naomi and I were high school sweethearts before she went on to bigger things and I wised up and married a woman worthy of my devotion. A sweet, wonderful, loving woman who was taken from me too soon, before we could move into the house we were building or start the family we’d dreamed of.
Jenny died almost two years ago, and I’m ashamed to say I’m starting to forget the sound of her laughter. Sometimes I have to glance at her picture on the dresser to remember where the dimples popped on her cheeks. I’m forgetting what she smelled like fresh from the shower, when she used to crawl in bed beside me and tuck her cold toes beneath my legs.
I’m forgetting the little things about my wife of three years, even as my stupid subconscious clings to old memories of Naomi that I wish to God I could make disappear.
But I can’t seem to forget her. I still remember the way she cried when I told her I loved her for the first time. And if I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath of winter air, I can pull up every detail of the last time we made love in the tree house behind my dad’s place, from the glow of Naomi’s skin in the moonlight, to the hitch in her voice when she promised never to let me go.
But she did let me go.
She left Bliss River a week later, leaving nothing behind but a Dear John letter. It was a decent Dear John letter, I guess—swearing I was her favorite person and she loved me so much, but that she just wasn’t ready to settle down at eighteen—but her excuses hadn’t done a thing to ease my broken heart. I’d thought we were so much more than boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought we were best friends, soul mates, and honest with each other in a way the other angsty teen couples we knew never could or would be.
My Naomi, the one I thought I’d known, could never have broken up with me in a note.
She wouldn’t have broken up with me at all. She would have stayed and found a way to make things work. Or at the very least asked me to go with her.
That was the worst part—how stupid and gullible and foolish I’d felt. I’d been so certain, so sure of her. But I was just another dumbass Dear John walking around with his head up his ass, thinking everything was fine while the girl I loved was drafting her goodbye.
After she bailed, I locked up every tender emotion I possessed and threw away the key until nearly a decade later, when my friend Jenny from the gym slowly became something more.
But it had taken years, years for me to forget Naomi and let another woman in.
Maybe someday, years from now, when the loneliness gets to be too much, I might find the strength to lower my defenses again, but it sure as hell won’t be for Naomi Whitehouse, no matter how much of her Hollywood money she throws down.
Some things can’t be bought, and forgiveness is one of them.
I hold her gaze, hoping she’ll see the futility of this stunt and back down while she has the chance. But Naomi only takes a deep breath and stands up straighter, meeting my challenging gaze with a determined one.
“Sixteen hundred?” Mitzy squeaks again, but the room remains as silent as a honky-tonk on a Sunday afternoon. “All right, then! Fifteen hundred going once, going twice, and Jake Hansen is sold to number fifty-eight!”
With one final glare in Naomi’s direction, I turn on my heel and stalk back down the catwalk, barely able to hear the polite applause or the throbbing bass line of the music over the roar of my blood rushing in my ears.
I haven’t been this angry in…
Hell, I can’t remember the last time I was this angry.
But I won’t be forgetting this, and when I pick up my “date” on Friday, I’ll make sure Naomi suffers for every second my heart spends lodged in my throat.
Chapter Five
Jake
By the time I escape through the curtain to the backstage area, my hands are balled so tight my knuckles are crackling.
I want to hit something, to slam my fists into the punching bag at the station weight room until my hands are bruised. Instead, I shrug on my T-shirt and sweater and prowl over to the snack table, pouring myself a cup of soda and doing my best not to squeeze the red Solo cup into plastic splinters as I take a drink.