Song Chaser (Chasers) (30 page)

My eyes grow wide and my mouth falls open, “So you’re still going?” My voice is louder than I expected and I feel my body start to betray me. I shake slightly, suddenly freezing, and my face grows hotter and hotter.

He winces, stepping toward me again but each time he steps forward, I step back. “It’s her grand opening, Kellee. She’s been wanting this her entire life and I’m her best friend. I have to be there.”

My jaw clenches shut and my eyes harden. “You need to leave, Tanner.” I know he’s her best friend, I know they have a relationship that I don’t fully understand, but this isn’t about her or the bakery or the concert – it’s about Tanner. It’s about his heart and where I fit in it.

“Kellee, please,” he begs, his eyes softening. Pain is written all over his face but I can’t back down on this. He steps toward me and I don’t have any room to back up further without backing into my closet so I cross my arms and turn my face away from him.

“Don’t,” I say when he reaches out to touch me. He freezes, his hands dropping slowly. My breath is running rampant and I have to pull my lips between my teeth to keep from crying. I don’t want him to leave, I don’t – but I knew this would happen. I knew one day he would have to choose, and I knew it wouldn’t be me. He still loves her, and even if it means losing me, he’s going to her this weekend.

And that fact absolutely wrecks me.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Kellee,” Tanner says softly. From the corner of my eye I see the muscles in his arms flex and release, his body shaking like mine. “Please, tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

I turn back to face him and wish I hadn’t. His eyes are hurt, and when he sees the tears in mine they fall even more. I can tell he’s fighting against his urge to pull me into his arms and as much as I want him to, I can’t let him.

This is it. This is our breaking point. We tried, we came back from our first punch but this is the knock out. He loves her, and something deep in my gut tells me he loves me, too – but I don’t know if he can do both. At least, not like this.

“I just want you to leave, Tanner.” I say the words, but I don’t mean them. My mind is screaming for him to stay, to choose me – to love
me
. I hold my stare and will the tears to stay hovering between my lids until he leaves. I don’t want to break.

Tanner looks helpless
and more tortured than I’ve seen him, but he grabs the last of his things and throws them into the bag I started. He throws it over his shoulder and goes to leave, but crosses the room and stands in front of me again. Slowly, he leans in like he’s going to press his lips to my forehead but I flinch, closing my eyes and letting two tears slide in a race down my cheek. He stops, his body still so close to mine, but he doesn’t push.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I wish that was enough.

I keep my eyes shut until I hear the front door close and I know I’m alone.

And then, I completely lose it.

Crack the Code

Tanner

My feet ache like hell and I think a blister is starting to form on the heel of my left foot, but I keep walking anyway. I walk everywhere and nowhere, staring straight ahead in a numbing daze. I left Kellee’s just after two and it’s almost six now, the sun threatening to break on the sky. I can’t wrap my head around what happened tonight, how in a matter of minutes everything in my life that was right, everything that made sense and centered me, completely shattered as I stood there watching helplessly.

I come out of my daze long enough to notice that I’m right by the High Line, so I veer left and head toward the fence. At this point, my feet just carry me – my body feels weak and heavy and completely useless. After trudging through the brush up to the old train tracks, I find the
place where I stood with Kellee the night of our first date and finally stop walking, lifting my arms up to rest on the railing and staring out at the city.

A large breath pushes from my lungs and a little cloud forms when it mixes with the cold air. I still haven’t thrown my jacket on, even though I’m freezing. It almost feels like I should just let myself be numbed by it, anything to not feel the ache forming in my chest.

Kellee’s face is still vivid in my head, the way the tears rolled down her cheeks and how she flinched when I tried to touch her. It was like I disgusted her, like she
hated
me. Seeing her like that fucking gutted me.

And the worst part is, I’m not even sure what the hell I did wrong.

I fish my phone out of my back pocket and thumb to my music before hitting shuffle, letting the sound filter around me through my phone’s speaker. I need something to combat the thoughts raging in my head, something to drown out the feeling just a little.

The concert. I can’t fucking believe I forgot about the concert. It’s her favorite band and I know she’s been looking forward to it. Hell, I’ll never forget her face when I gave her the damn tickets. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone light up that way. But even still, something tells me this isn’t about missing the concert.

I sigh, because as much as I want to pretend like I don’t, I know it’s about Paisley.

Not about me being friends with her, not about me going to support her at the grand opening of her business – no, this is about what she is to me. It’s about what she has been in the past, what she is now, and what that all means for Kellee. I know it now and I knew it when I was standing in front of her, desperate to touch her yet not being able to find one fucking word to say why I deserved to.

I wanted to assure her, to say forget about Paisley I’ll call her and cancel. To just pull her into my arms and kiss the sadness from her face and prove to her that I don’t care about Paisley anymore.

But then why didn’t I?

There’s still a hold on me. I can feel it. I feel it pulling me one way and throwing me the next. I feel Paisley, the old Paisley and the old me, tugging at the back of my mind. My heart has been broken over her for so long I think it’s forgotten how to mend without her. Shit, how to
function
without her.

But I care about Kellee, and that’s an understatement. I know it’s more than that, I know that I want her in my life and that I don’t want to be with Paisley anymore. Kellee is who I think about every
waking minute of every day. Kellee, not Paisley.

So what the fuck is going on?

The song playing catches my attention.
You’re the Reason I Come Home
by Ron Pope. I used to belt this song out and let Paisley fill my mind while I did. I envisioned her, felt her – she was the perfect girl to think of when I sang the lyrics. And now, hearing it, I still think of her.

But why?

Angry, I hit the next button and a new song comes on.
Paisley
. I hit next again. Paisley, she’s all I think of. Next. Over and over again I hit next and every time it’s Paisley. Finally,
Heartbreak Warfare
by John Mayer starts crooning through the speakers and I don’t think of her. Hell, it seems more appropriate for the situation with Kellee right now, so I let it play.

If you want more love, why don’t you say so?

The lyrics hit me hard. If it’s about choosing, if it’s about her wanting to know where she stands with me, why didn’t Kellee just
say
something? Why doesn’t she demand it, demand to be felt, demand to be
loved
?

I shake my head, wishing I could punch myself in the fucking jaw. Because she shouldn’t
have
to demand it – she
deserves
it. Simply by breathing and existing, she deserves to feel wanted. She deserves to know that she doesn’t have competition.

Another song flows from the speaker, another song that reminds me of Paisley.

Kellee deserves everything she wants and more.

She deserves to be the only one in someone’s heart.

And even though I want it more than anything, I don’t know if that someone can be me.

*     *     *

I throw another shirt in my bag without looking at it, not really caring what clothing options I have. I checked the weather and of course it’s fucking hot in Florida, even though it’s less than two weeks until Christmas. I haven’t slept since I left Kellee’s. In fact, I haven’t even crawled in my bed to try. I’m exhausted, but sleep evades me like a black fly in the night. My mind races and I don’t even try to fight it anymore. I just let it run wild, let it drown me in questions that will never be answered and possibilities too far out of reach.

My phone buzzes with a text from Paisley. I slide my finger to unlock the screen and a photo of her fills the screen. She’s holding the phone herself to take the picture, her arms outstretched and her smile huge in front of her bakery sign.

Hoot’s Bakery.

The two “o’s” in
Hoot’s
look like owl eyes and the sign itself is an aqua blue with the white logo and various colored baked goods splashed across it. Paisley has had a thing for owls for pretty much her whole life, but I know this name means something more. Corbin had given her an owl necklace when they went on a trip to Key West, and I know it holds something more for them than just her love for the bird itself. He’s a part of her life – hell, maybe he
is
her life now.

I feel kind of sick, but I text back a line of exclamation points and a smiley face and let her know my plane leaves in five hours. I’m kind of glad she decided to do an evening opening with a reception and everything instead of just opening at the ass crack of dawn like most bakeries. I glance at the clock. It’s just past eleven, which means Kellee gets off work in three hours. I wonder if she’s still going tonight. A tick of jealousy hits me when I think of her going with another guy, but something tells me she wouldn’t do that. In fact, she probably ripped up the tickets and hasn’t thought about me since the night she told me to leave.

Or maybe she’s hurting just as much as I am.

My phone vibrates in my hand but instead of a text from Paisley, Mom’s face illuminate
s the screen. I sigh, not really wanting to talk but knowing she probably wants details for the opening since she and Dad are on the road heading to Orlando to be there for it. Paisley and I have been close friends for so long that she’s practically family, and there was no way my parents weren’t going to be there today, too.

“Hey Mom, you get Dad lost yet?” I try to joke, but even I hear how strange the words sound when they leave my lips. My mom is like a fucking hound dog, she’s going to sense something’s wrong in two seconds flat.

She laughs, but just as I expected, it’s a wary laugh. She already detects something. “Your dad decided not to trust me with the map this time and made me buy one of those damn GPS things,” she says and I hear Dad laughing in the background. “He also made the woman who directs us have a British accent, which is driving me more insane with every mile.”

I smile, walking to grab my toothbrush, shampoo, and razor from the bathroom. “Hey, British accents are hot, Mom.”

I hear my dad say, “That’s my boy!” and Mom laughs. “What time do you get in, son?”

“My plane lands at six twenty, just enough time to catch a cab over to the bakery before the ribbon cutting.”

“Want us to swing by and pick you up?”

I shake my head, “No
, I’m good.” I don’t want to see anyone before I have to.

“Okay, sweetie,” she says, but her voice kind of lingers on the last syllable. I know it’s coming, so I brace myself and hope I can get through talking about this shit without falling apart. “Honey, is everything okay?”

I sigh, flopping back onto my bed for the first time in two days. The comforter feels cool against my skin and I tuck one arm under my head, staring up at the ceiling fan. “I don’t know, Mom.”

“What’s going on?” She pauses for just a second and then says, “It’s Kellee, isn’t it?”

“What is it with you moms and your shit-is-fucked-up detectors?”

She laughs softly, “Oh sweetie, it’s something you won’t understand until you’re a parent yourself. And you’re lucky I’m not there to wash your mouth out with soap for all that foul language. I’m still your mom, you know.”

“Sorry,” I sigh again. “I just don’t know how else to phrase it. Shit
is
fucked up. I was supposed to take Kellee to a concert tonight and I totally forgot about it when Paisley reminded me this was the date for the bakery, so when I told Kellee about my trip the other night she flipped out. Well, not really flipped out, but she called me on forgetting about the concert and basically kicked me out of her place. She wouldn’t let me talk to her, wouldn’t let me touch her,” my breath gets heavier just thinking about it. “I just fucked up, I guess.”

Mom is quiet for a moment, probably exchanging knowing glances with Dad. I’m on speaker, no doubt. “Honey, do you really think this is about a concert?”

“I’m not that stupid, Mom.”

“So then you know this is about Paisley. Specifically, Paisley and
you
.”