Page 52 of His to Cherish
Even when I got to school, I felt the same sense of foreboding all around me. It hung in the air like a thick, invisible fog, weighing me down all day.
I was missing something.
Something important and something that would change everything.
Yet I had no idea what it was.
—
“I’ll be there, I promise,” I told Suzanne into the phone. It was lunchtime and while I didn’t usually answer personal calls on my cell during the day, I knew my friends were concerned about my own lack of communication lately.
My run with Camden yesterday showed me that I’d been so in my own head, lost in trying to fix men I didn’t even really know and had no business trying to fix, that I’d dropped my friendships.
Again. Admittedly, I had done the same thing when I’d found out I wouldn’t be able to have kids, and when Cory walked away. Apparently, when difficult things happened, I turned into a turtle and curled into my shell.
Not that that was surprising; I always tended to shrink back from attention anyway.
When I saw Suzanne’s name light up my cellphone, I didn’t want to cause her more worry. Which was why I agreed to meet her at Fireside Grill for a pitcher of margaritas and chips and salsa on her.
How could I say no to that?
“See you at seven then,” she sang, because Suzanne was all happy all the time. Someone I really needed to spend time with. “Don’t be late.”
I smiled into the phone after she disconnected. Suzanne telling someone not to be late was laughable. It was common knowledge among our group that if you showed up for plans with Suzanne and were five minutes late, you were still at least five minutes early.
As the day went on I tried to look forward to the night out. A night filled with laughter and margaritas and kicking back and relieving my stress.
I needed it. I needed to remember that there were still good things happening to the people in my life, the people I loved more than anything, and who had been there, supporting me since I’d known them.
Yet as hard as I tried, I couldn’t shake the dark feeling growing inside of me.
As I got ready to meet Suzanne, I just hoped that laughing with her and drinking too much tequila could help me shake the creepy-crawling feeling I’d had following me all day.
—
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I told David with a grin as soon as I slid onto a barstool. “I thought you were just visiting.”
He didn’t look like he was visiting. He looked like he’d made himself completely at home, working behind the bar at Fireside.
David smiled. It was an easygoing grin and one that I was certain had the power to melt panties if he wanted to.
But while he was handsome, with dark blue eyes, and nicely cropped blondish-brownish hair, it did nothing for me. I was particularly fond of a man who embodied tall, dark, and sexy-as-hell.
“Thought I’d stick around for a while, help Declan out. Be here for Aidan.”
I nodded and tapped my fingers on the bar. “You talk to him much?”
David narrowed his eyes, shot me a look filled with confusion. “I thought you did.”
“I do.” I nodded quickly. “Sort of. I don’t know. We don’t really talk much when we’re together.”
Oh my god. I didn’t mean that. My cheeks burst with heated embarrassment.
“Not what I meant,” I said, looking to the front doors, silently begging Suzanne to appear.
“No,” David said, his head dipped, and he stared at me until I brought my eyes back to his. “I thought you spent the day with him.”
My head jerked back. “What?”
