I didn’t want to go in the damn limo. I wanted her to come out and talk to me. I couldn’t process this without more information. I couldn’t settle on how to feel until I knew what was going on with her.
How could it be a mistake? How could anything that felt like that be something she regretted? And it wasn’t just the sex. She had feelings for me. It was there. I felt it, I didn’t imagine it, I know I didn’t. She said she loved me. She did say it.
A long horn blared from the front yard.
I put a hand on the door. “Briana, please let me in.”
“Jacob, just go.”
She was crying.
What had I done? Had I done something wrong? I rested my forehead on the frame and squeezed my eyes shut.
My brain was misfiring. It was chaotic and foggy. I was somewhere between the tail end of a panic attack and an earth-shattering development with the woman I loved, and I couldn’t think straight. I was overstimulated and upset, and I needed to level myself.
I stayed with a hand pressed to the door for another long moment. Then I pulled out my truck keys and reluctantly set them in the middle of the coffee table so she could go if she wanted to. And I took my dog and left.
I didn’t get in the limo. I told Jeremiah the truth—I was having problems with Briana and I’d had a panic attack. I couldn’t care less at this point if he believed it. Maybe Jeremiah thought my issue was about the baby. I didn’t care about that either. I was beyond giving a shit what anyone thought anymore.
I called an Uber.
I calmed down a bit on the ride home. By the time I got there, I’d stopped shaking.
I texted Briana when I got into the house.
Me: I went home. I left the keys to the truck for you.
She didn’t reply.
Her air mattress was popped. It sat flat and limp in the living room. I stood there and stared at it. It felt ominous. A sign that things were ending. That her time here was done.
My anxiety pitched and rolled.
I kept going over everything in my head. Trying to pinpoint the moment things went wrong or the reason why she’d have sex with me if she didn’t want to.
Her perfume still clung to my shirt.
She’d been so wet. I could still feel the rocking of her body on top of mine, hear the moan when she came. She’d wanted it as much as I did. She’d practically climbed me. She did climb me.
She’d said she loved me.
Or had she?
Maybe she hadn’t meant it like that. Maybe she said it the way my sisters said it. To make me feel better. To let me know they cared. Maybe she didn’t mean it the way I meant it.
Maybe I’d heard what I’d wanted to hear.
I was on a loop of the limited information I had. There was nothing I could do to sort it out. I couldn’t know what was going on until she talked to me. All I could do was try to center myself and be ready when she came home. So I did the only thing I could do. I sat down and journaled.
Chapter 41
Briana
I cleaned up and came out to join the bachelorette party fifteen minutes after Jacob left. I debated leaving too, but I didn’t want Amy to think her announcement had sent Jacob on a death spiral that I had to leave to nurse him through. I mean, it had sent him on a spiral, but my staying at least made it seem less of a big deal.
When I got upstairs, everyone was in the kitchen melting wax and listening to Michael Bublé. It was Jane, Jill, Jewel, Gwen, Joy, and then half a dozen women I didn’t know but vaguely recognized from the engagement party.
It felt like I’d walked onto the set of a comedy. I stood there with just-fucked hair at the bachelorette party of the woman my fake boyfriend was in love with, while Jafar weaved through feet under the table squawking, “Alexa! Order garlic bread!” and the Amazon Echo was replying that garlic bread was already on the shopping list. It was all I could do to not maniacally laugh.
Someone shoved a cocktail at me that I tasted and then held until the ice melted because it was pure tequila with a drop of guava syrup. Then I made a stupid candle.
I had to move out of Jacob’s house. I couldn’t stay with him after this. I didn’t even know how we’d continue to do this fake relationship for the couple of weeks we had left. It was going to be so awkward and so physically painful to even hold his hand, now that I’d crossed this colossal line.
I was trying not to think too hard about how good the sex had been.
It wasn’t really working.
He was such a good kisser. It wasn’t even funny how good he was. If he’d kissed me before this, I would have been a goner weeks ago. I started to get worked up even thinking about it.
All I could think about was touching him, the way his tongue had tasted and how he smelled and the sounds he’d made.
I thought about how he’d made me touch him. The way he’d yanked my underwear to the side. Rougher than I would have expected from him. Unapologetic. He was not shy with me at all. I had a feeling I’d only scratched the surface today, that Jacob would be full of surprises in bed. I could almost picture him pinning me with that quiet, reflective gaze he has before pushing me up against a wall, pulling my underwear down, telling me what to do…
Oh my God, see, this was my problem. I couldn’t even focus.
I looked down at my candle. The wick was crooked. I’d been making this thing with the only two brain cells that hadn’t been dedicated to the sex tape I was rewatching in my head.
I was a mess. How could I be harmless to him when I couldn’t even be harmless to myself?
Some little part of me said that maybe if we started a sexual relationship, it would lead to more. Maybe he would eventually get over Amy and fall in love with me. We were already friends, we had physical chemistry. A lot of chemistry. Like, a disproportionate amount. We didn’t have love, but that was still two out of three, right?
Pathetic.
Imagine trying to talk yourself into a friends-with-benefits situation in which you were head-over-heels in love and you knew he was actively wishing you were someone else.
I hated myself.
My sulking was disrupted when some drunk woman named Shannon who’d been talking too loudly and wearing a maid of honor hat stood up and clinked her fork to the side of her glass. Everyone looked up from their project.
“A toast!” she bellowed.
She was barely able to stand. This oughta be good.
Amy smiled and everyone lifted their cocktails.
Shannon swayed for another moment. “To Amy,” she slurred, holding up her martini. “A woman who would have been married years ago if Jacob hadn’t strung her along! Huzzah!”
The party fell into an instant hush.
Amy set her mocktail down. “Shannon, that’s not true—”
Shannon scoffed. “What do you mean??? It so is?! He lost the best thing that ever happened to him because he’s too anxious to function.” She laughed at her own joke.
All my jumbled, discombobulated emotions suddenly jerked to attention and honed in on her like a laser.
“He functions just fucking fine,” I snapped.
The room collectively gasped. Shannon blinked at me like she’d just realized that I was here. She peered around red-eyed, looking for allies. She didn’t see any.
“What?” she said, throwing up a hand. “He didn’t even go in the limo. What man can’t handle a bachelor party?”