Best Dating Rules: A Romantic Comedy (The Best Girls Book 2) (34 page)

Anne said, “I’m still worried. I don’t understand what could’ve gotten her so upset. Are you sure nothing else happened? She didn’t kiss Josh, did she?”

“I hope not.” Spencer rubbed his throbbing head.

Anne and Gherring received simultaneous text messages. “Is it Emily?” asked Spencer. “What did she say?”

“She says she’s spending the day in Central Park,” said Gherring.

“She didn’t happen to mention where in Central Park, did she?”

“Sorry, Spencer. No such luck.” Anne shook her head.

Spencer’s phone received a text. His hope surged. Maybe she’d finally responded to him. At this point, he’d rather have her scream at him than continue to avoid communicating. When he opened the text, he noted with disappointment it was from Brad. He opened the attached photo.

“Oh god! Oh god! This can’t be happening!” He blinked furiously at the tears that rose in his eyes. The picture blurred, but he could still see it clearly in his mind. Brad’s message was brief.
Someone sent her this picture
.

“What is it?” said Anne. “Is it something about Emily?”

“It’s Becca! Oh god! I’ve lost her. It’s just like you said would happen. I’ve lost her.” He felt a surge of nausea.

“What happened?” demanded Gherring.

“Someone sent this to her.” He handed his phone to Gherring. “It happened at dance class. But it’s not what it looks like. Becca was there, and I had to dance with her. She practically attacked me and then I left. That’s it. That’s all that happened. I ran out and came straight here. And that’s when Emily came back with Josh, and I got angry.”

He couldn’t bear to look at their expressions. The picture was bad—they wouldn’t believe him. Emily would never believe him.

“Who took this picture?” asked a grim-faced Gherring.

“There’s a studio photographer at every class. They put pictures up on Facebook the next day.”

“Well, this certainly explains a lot.” Anne put her hand on Gherring’s arm. “What can we do?”

“You were right,” Spencer told Gherring. “You told me this would happen.”

“I wasn’t making a prediction. I was giving you a warning. But I didn’t actually lose Anne, and you’re not going to lose Emily either.”

“What can I do? She’ll never believe me.”

“Of course she will,” said Anne. “If she knows you love her, she’ll believe you. You just need to tell her again. And again. We have to hear it a lot of times.”

“I’m not exactly sure I ever said the actual words, but I implied it when we talked about getting married.”

Gherring raised his hand before Anne could respond. “Spencer… Son, we need to talk, man-to-man.”

Emily slept for four hours but by noon she was awake, haunted by her own thoughts. She could hear soft snores emanating from the bedrooms. Having slept in her clothes at the hospital, she felt sticky and dirty, and she couldn’t wait to bathe. When she slipped quietly into the bathroom to shower, she noticed a set of drawstring scrubs with a note on top.
For Emily
. Relieved at the prospect of changing into clean clothes, she stripped and stood under the water, letting the warm torrents pound on her stiff muscles. She toweled off and put on the soft clean scrubs, chuckling as the drawstring bunched the large amount of excess material. The top also hung loosely on her thin frame, but at least she wasn’t wearing her old dirty clothes. She looked in the mirror at the wild mass of long, wet, curls, belatedly realizing she didn’t have a brush. She attempted without success to comb them with her fingers. She’d have to borrow a hat.

She was poking around in the kitchen, looking for food, when Brad walked in. “Hey. Good morning. Feel free to eat anything you can find. It may be sparse.”

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“No, we’ve both got to be back at work at two thirty today. It’s already one o’clock.”

“Wow! They don’t give you much time to sleep.”

“No. But we get used to it. Sometimes our schedule’s more normal. Occasionally, we get a whole day off, or even two.” He grinned at her. “You look much better in those scrubs than Josh does.”

“You’re right about that,” said Josh as he entered the kitchen, playfully ruffling her wet hair.

“I’m taking a shower,” said Brad, disappearing into the bathroom.

Emily found a bowl and cereal, and Josh helped himself to a bowl as well. They ate in companionable silence for a while. Josh spoke around bites. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Much better than at the hospital. Thanks for the couch. And the scrubs. And the shower. And the cereal.”

He smiled and nodded.

She added, “And also, thanks for not telling anyone where I was. I don’t think I could’ve handled seeing him.”

“And now? Can you handle it?”

“I’ll have to. We work at the same place. I’ll talk to him with other people around, but I don’t want to talk to him alone. He’ll just manipulate me with my emotions, and I’ll end up forgiving him and giving him another chance.” She shook her head, lecturing herself. “I let myself fall in love, knowing he would eventually want to be with a different girl. But I told myself I’d never give him a second chance if he was with someone else. Anyway, I feel sure he wasn’t going to date me much longer. He was probably planning to break up last night, anyway. Seeing us together just gave him an excuse.”

“You know, a player really can change. I don’t ever want to be with another girl besides Charlie.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I know. I’m not talking about you.”

She jumped at a loud rapping on the door. “Who’s that?”

Josh peered through the peephole, and then turned back to her, grimacing. “It’s Spencer.”

Spencer fidgeted while he waited for someone to answer the door. It had finally occurred to him Brad must have seen Emily or at least talked to her if he got a copy of the picture. He might know where she’d actually gone.

After a long pause, he was about to knock again when the door opened. Josh stood in the doorway, wearing shorts and no shirt. “What do you want?” he asked, his body blocking the entrance. His body language told Spencer he wouldn’t be invited inside.

“I’m... I’m looking for Emily. I just wanted to talk to Brad for a minute. I thought he might know where she is.”

“Why do you want to know? Haven’t you hurt her enough already? By the way, you look terrible. Did you sleep in those clothes last night?”

“Look, Josh,” he snapped. “It’s none of your business, but that picture was a set-up. I love Emily, and I’d never be with another girl—especially not Becca.”

“Really? A set-up? How’s that? It sure looked like you had your arms around her and your lips locked.”

“I was at a dance class. Okay? A stupid ballroom dance class, because I wanted to surprise Emily. And I didn’t even know Becca was going to be there.”

“So, let me get this straight. You were trying to learn to dance for Emily while she was trying to learn to play racquetball for you? And you got mad at her and walked out. And then she got mad, and she’ll never forgive you?”

A small voice behind him said, “Okay, let him inside.”

Josh moved out of the way and made a grandiose gesture for him to enter. He walked through the door, frantically searching for the source of the voice. Then his eyes focused on her. She was sitting alone on a stool, clad in oversized scrubs, with her hair splayed around her face in loose flowing curls, emphasizing her huge eyes—her huge angry eyes.

Emily observed from her perch on the barstool as Spencer entered the room, blinking his eyes as they adjusted from the bright sunlight. The moment his eyes met hers, he started her direction.

“No. Don’t come any closer. You can sit over there on the couch.”

His face revealed his hurt, but he obediently moved over to sit on the edge of the couch. From this position, she looked down on him. It felt powerful, and she liked it. She was strong. He’d hurt her, and he’d lied to her. But he’d never do it again.

“Can we talk alone?” he begged her, glancing at Josh.

“No. We can’t.”

Josh grinned and picked up his cereal bowl and spooned a mouthful, munching with noisy abandon.

“Look Emily. I wasn’t with Becca. I didn’t kiss her. I really was taking ballroom dance lessons, so I could dance with you at Sam and Tanner’s wedding.”

Josh laughed out loud, and Spencer shot him a furious look.

“I can prove it. There are pictures of the class on Facebook by now. You can see, it really was a dance class.”

“Spencer,” she said, blinking tears back. “Even if it wasn’t true this time, it’ll be true another time. I’ll always be waiting for it to happen. I thought I could settle for a year or however long you’d give me, but it just hurts too badly. I can’t go through that again.”

He blinked a few times, his mouth hanging open. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I mean, when we talked about getting married, didn’t you know I meant—”

“Getting married? We never talked about getting married.”

“Of course we did. How could you forget? We were sitting on the glider on the porch—”

“We didn’t talk about getting married—we talked about breaking up. You said you only wanted to date for a year.”

“Yes, because I wanted to get married as soon as possible.”

“You didn’t say that!”

“Yes, I did!”

“Spencer,” Josh interrupted with obvious amusement. “When you’re arguing with a woman about what was said, she will always be correct. Women have little digital recorders in their minds. They remember every minute detail. She will remember the exact words, the inflection of your voice, and what you were wearing at the time.”

“Can he leave us alone now?” asked Spencer, clenching his teeth.

“No.”

Josh’s mouth stretched in a broad smile as he poured another bowl of cereal.

“The point is,” Spencer squeezed out the words, “I do want to marry you. I love you and I think I told you that.”

Emily frowned and shook her head.

He sighed. “Okay, well I meant to tell you. But I thought I was showing you. That’s why I was taking dance lessons.”

“Even if you think you love me, Spencer, I think you might be fooling yourself. You could get tired of me at any time. You’re used to excitement and variety.”

He groaned. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Just then, Brad came out of the shower and proceeded to pour a bowl of cereal and sit down to observe.

“Please, Emily. Can’t we talk alone for just a minute?”

“She doesn’t want to be manipulated by her emotions,” explained Josh with a grin. “So you’ll just have to talk with an audience.”

“This is great,” said Brad between mouthfuls. “What did I miss?”

“Let’s see,” said Josh. “He was taking ballroom dance lessons when someone snapped the picture with Becca. And he thought he’d asked her to marry him, but he’d really asked her to break up in a year. And he didn’t tell her he loved her when he thought he did. But he took dance lessons instead.”

Brad laughed so hard he almost spit out his cereal, and Emily struggled to suppress a grin. Now was not the time to forget her anger. She had to be firm and make a clean break.

She added, “And I’ve just explained it’s not just about the picture. Even if it turns out to be faked, it only shows how vulnerable I am. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone where I’m constantly waiting for him to move on to the next girl. Or go back to the last one.”

Spencer covered his eyes and muttered crossly. “There is no other girl. There never will be another girl. There never was another girl.”

“Of course there were others,” said Emily. “I’m not that naïve, you know. I know what you were like before we started dating.”

“There were no others.” His voice was flat, like a computer was talking.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Brad chuckled. “You were the first, Emily. He’s saying you were the first one.”

She blushed painfully to her roots. “We didn’t ever... I mean... We haven’t ever done that.”

Josh grinned. “Then neither has he.”

Spencer moaned and buried his face in his hands.

Emily was flabbergasted. “I don’t believe it. You’re lying. You’re just saying that to make me believe—”

Brad’s laughter cut her off. “Oh no, Emily. There’s no way he’s saying that in front of us unless it’s the truth. He’s really and truly a virgin. Pretty remarkable these days.”

Josh bit back his smile. “Seriously, Spencer. I know you may not believe this, but I’d give anything right now if I could take back my past and say something like that to Charlie.” Then he chuckled. “But not in front of two other guys.”

Emily sat in stunned silence, contemplating this new information while Josh and Brad put their bowls in the sink, moving toward their rooms.

Before he disappeared, Josh turned back with a wink. “Emily. I think you’ve humiliated him enough now. He loves you, and you can trust him.”

Then his face lost its joking façade. “Just one thing, though. I need you to remember what this feels like. Both of you. Because this is how I feel right now about Charlie. All the time. Every day. So, I’d appreciate it if you’d put in a good word now and then.” He spun and slipped through his bedroom door.