Emancipating Andie (31 page)

Chase kept his expression smooth, his eyes on his friend.

“Anyway,” Colin continued. “I was at her place, and I found this.”

For the first time, Chase realized he held something in his hands, and he looked down just as Colin unrolled it and held it up.

It was the shirt Andie had fallen asleep in the night they first made love. The one he let her take home because she said it was the most comfortable shirt she’d ever worn. The one she looked so adorable in. His old, worn-in soccer shirt.

With
McGuire
emblazoned across the back.

He looked up and met Colin’s eyes.

The next thing he knew, a blinding pain seared across the left side of his face as his back slammed against the fridge, the loud thud followed by the sound of breaking glass as a few of the bottles he had above it crashed to the floor.

He straightened up immediately, his fists clenched at his sides and his body poised to spring, but he made no move to retaliate.

“Oh come on, McGuire,” Colin shouted. “Don’t start trying to be a good friend now! Take your fucking shot!”

Chase’s eye was throbbing, a pounding ache that he knew would feel ten times worse once the adrenalin wasn’t coursing through his veins. His muscles were so tense they were shaking, his fists tightly clenched at his sides, ready to defend himself if Colin came at him again.

But he couldn’t bring himself to hit him. He had no right.

Colin laughed angrily, shaking his head. “So let me get this straight. You can swoop in on my girlfriend when I ask you to look out for her, but you’re above taking a swing at me? What kind of fucked up logic is that? Take your shot!” he yelled, his voice shaking with rage.

“Colin,” Chase said, his voice measured. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Oh, and just how was it supposed to be? Were you supposed to keep fucking her behind my back? Well I’m sorry your shit got blown up Chase, really I am. My heart bleeds for you!”

Chase shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. Look, I know you don’t want to hear this now, but nothing ever happened between us when you two were together.”

“Fuck you!” he interrupted, taking a quick step toward him. “Do you think the order of operations makes a difference to me? You selfish prick! You float through life, doing whatever the hell suits you, no responsibility, no concern for anyone but yourself. And I’ve always known that about you. I just never thought you’d screw
me
over. I loved her, Chase! Do you love her? Or are you just going to keep her around for as long as she entertains you?”

Chase stared at him, saying nothing. There was no way to answer that question without making this worse.

“You worthless piece of shit. Your father was right about you.”

A rush of heat flooded Chase’s body as pain stung his chest, rivaling the pain of his eye, and he took a small step toward Colin.

He didn’t know how much longer he could contain himself after that.

“You need to leave,” Chase said, his voice tinged with the anger he felt welling in his stomach.

Colin shook out his hand, looking at Chase with disgust. “When you fuck this up, when you break her heart, I hope you can live with yourself.” He tossed the shirt in Chase’s face before he turned and left, slamming the door behind him.

Chase stood there, his breathing labored and his body trembling as he stared at the door; after a stunned minute he turned, squatting down to collect the broken glass from the floor. He lifted one of the half broken bottles, jumping up suddenly and hurling it against the wall.

“Fuck!” he shouted before he dropped his head back and covered his face with his hands.

Chase wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He was lying on the couch holding a frozen pizza to his left eye, and he didn’t have it in him to lift his head and check the clock. His entire body ached, and he rolled his neck and flexed his free hand, trying to get the tension out of his muscles.

Colin’s voice kept playing over and over in his mind, telling Chase his father had been right about him. He couldn’t stop hearing it, and with every passing second, his body coiled tighter.

The hammering behind his eye was relentless, and Chase pressed the pizza more firmly against it, grunting roughly as the oversensitive swelling ached in protest.

He’d been trying to stifle the anger that had been churning in the pit of his stomach ever since Colin stormed out of his apartment, but the effort was exhausting. He couldn’t figure out what infuriated him more: the fact that Colin had said those words to him in the first place, or Chase’s realization that there was actually validity behind them.

He could just picture his father’s face, the condescending sigh as he shook his head and asked him what kind of man would do what Chase had done.

Chase felt his jaw lock as his muscles tensed again, amplifying the throbbing in his left eye.

He heard the sound of someone approaching his door, the rustling of bags combined with the clicking of heels, and he exhaled a curse. If he had been thinking rationally, he would have called her and postponed this. He was in no mood to speak to anyone right now, let alone enjoy a romantic dinner.

“Hey,” he heard her say, followed by the sound of crunching glass. “Oh, damn it. Chase? Why is there broken glass all over your floor?”

There was a beat of silence before he heard the grocery bags drop. “Oh my God! What happened to you?” she cried, her voice full of panic as she hurried toward him. She sat on the edge of the couch, reaching over to take the pizza off his eye, and her hand flew to her mouth as her eyes went wide.

He knew what it looked like a little while ago; swollen shut, the skin pulled tight over the purpley-pink lump. He doubted it looked any better now.

“What happened?” she asked with alarm, and he looked up at her, exhaling heavily.

Chase watched her eyes change as the realization finally hit her. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “How?”

He knew exactly what she was asking, and he gestured halfheartedly at the coffee table. Andie turned, catching sight of Chase’s crumpled soccer shirt in the center of it. “He found it when he went to your place to pick up his stuff,” he mumbled.

It was a moment before she turned back to him. “I just don’t understand this,” she said, her voice pained. “It was
my
decision to break up with him.
My
choice. You didn’t do anything. You never even touched me when I was still with him. Why would he do this to you?”

Chase laughed bitterly. “Well what did you expect him to do? Shake my hand? Congratulate me on nailing the girl he wanted to marry? Offer to compare notes?”

She jerked her head back slightly, looking somewhat wounded. After a stunned second she closed her eyes and took a small breath before opening them, trying to straighten her expression.

“Does it hurt?” she asked gently, reaching out to touch him.

Chase moved his head out of her reach as he put the pizza back on his eye. It bothered him that she had given him a free pass for that last comment, that she was being so kind to him right now. He deserved to suffer a little.

“It’s just a black eye, Andie. Believe me, he’s hurting much worse than I am.”

She dropped her hand back to her side, lowering her eyes. “You hit him?”

“No, I didn’t hit him,” he scoffed. “We both knew I had this coming. He had every right to do this. Why the hell would I hit him?”

“I just thought…you said he was hurting much worse than you.”

“Yeah, I meant because his heart just got ripped out of his goddamn chest by two people he trusted. Not really something a frozen pizza can take care of.”

She dropped her eyes again, and Chase saw her chin tremble. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, her breath catching before she added, “I’m a terrible person.”

He laughed humorlessly at the very sentiment he’d been chastising himself with for the past half hour. “Well then, we really are a match made in heaven, aren’t we? He should be thanking his lucky stars he’s rid of us.”

Andie lifted her eyes to his; there was a hint of anger behind them, warring with the hurt that had been swimming there since she’d realized Colin had done this. She shook her head slightly before she whispered, “What is wrong with you?”

He laughed softly before sighing. Did she really not know the answer to that?

“The same thing that was wrong with me the night I met you in Justin’s wine cellar, and that first morning we drove to Florida, and the night I offered to give you a piano lesson. The same thing that will be wrong with me tomorrow, and next month, and next year.” He took the pizza off his eye and turned toward her, his voice impassive. “I’m an asshole, Andie.”

She stared blankly at him until he turned away from her to look back up at the ceiling again, and Chase felt the couch dip as she stood.

“Yes, you are.”

He closed his eyes and brought the pizza back to the swelling, and he heard a slight rustling sound accompanied by footsteps; his door opened and then slammed shut, and Chase listened as the clicking of her heels in the hallway faded away until there was nothing.

This time, Chase didn’t have the luxury of being oblivious to time; he felt every second, every minute that passed after the door closed behind her.

It was seven minutes of deep breathing before his heart rate slowed and bordered on regular again. It was ten minutes before the pizza had thawed completely and the wrapping started to come apart in his hands, and it was another five minutes before he even gave a shit. After he’d gotten rid of the soggy mess that remained, it was twelve more minutes of cursing the clusterfuck of a self-fulfilling prophecy that had destroyed this entire evening. He had been so bothered by the fact that Colin called him out for being a prick that he turned around and acted like one to the person who deserved it the least.

Chase was sitting up on his couch now; the throb behind his eye had diminished some and his thoughts were much clearer than they had been a half hour ago. He just kept wishing she hadn’t shown up at his place when she did. If she had come now, he wouldn’t have been such a snarky, insensitive jerk. In his current frame of mind, he would have been able to act like a human, to comfort her, to reassure her.

To take care of her, the way he promised her he would.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, running his hand down his face before he stood.

He had thought he wanted to be alone tonight, but as he stood in his living room looking over at his kitchen floor, at the grocery bags strewn where she had dropped them in the broken glass, he realized how badly he wanted her there.

With a heavy sigh he walked over to the mess in the kitchen. He was going to clean up, and then he was going to call her and ask her to come back. He’d beg her if he had to. He didn’t even care if they had dinner anymore. He just wanted her lying next to him, with her hand on his stomach and her head on his chest and her leg thrown over his thigh. He loved lying with her that way; she fit so perfectly against him, like the universe was reinforcing the fact that they were exactly where they belonged.

As Chase knelt down and used a piece of cardboard to sweep the shards of glass into a pile, he took slow, deep breaths, exhaling the bitterness and shame that had been consuming him since Colin’s visit. With every inhale, he focused instead on what it would feel like when Andie was with him again.

Because
that
feeling was what made all the other shit tonight worth it.

After he had swept up all the glass and wiped the floor down, he put Andie’s groceries away and went to the bathroom to check out his eye one last time.

“Shit,” he exhaled, bringing his fingertips to the lump. It had changed from dark pink to a bluish-purple, and he was still unable to open it fully. It was going to look like hell for the next few days.

Chase sighed as he closed the light and walked out of the bathroom. It was going to be extremely difficult to take Andie’s mind off what had happened with a constant reminder literally staring her in the face.

He grabbed his cell phone and hit the button to call her, closing his eyes when it went straight to voicemail.