She shakes her head and takes a sip of water.
“I haven’t spoken to my uncle since he kicked me out, Zo?. You aren’t threatening a healthy relationship here. Tell me everything that happened.”
A sad smile graces those beautiful lips.
“Okay, there is something else,” she admits, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment. “Looking back on it now, as an adult, I realize what I overheard was probably just you being a guy with your friends,” she says, trailing off at the end like I’m going to piece together the puzzle.
I rack my brain for what she could be talking about. I don’t remember saying anything to anyone about her. I never told anyone her secrets or gossiped about her.
“Zo?, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. This was eight years ago. Help me out here.”
“Okay,” she sighs. “We were hanging out at your graduation party, and I got up when my friend Rachel got there. Remember her?” I nod, and she continues. “So, I hung out with her for a while, and when I went to look for you, I found you and your little group of guys chatting in the garage. I stopped before walking in because I heard one of them say my name.”
The memory of what they were saying in that garage begins to come back to me, and I can feel my entire body heat. I know what she’s going to say she heard, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. She may have prefaced this story by giving me the out of “boys will be boys,” but that shit isn’t right. That’s not an excuse; it’s a cop-out.
“One of the guys said something about us being together, you being pussy whipped, or something along those lines.”
Something tells me she knows exactly what they said, but she’s trying to downplay it, and I feel like absolute shit. But now that I know the full reason behind why she left, I can spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I wasn’t saying it lightly when I told her she was mine.
“Anyway,” she continues. “You basically dismissed them, telling them you’d never see me like that, that you didn’t want anything to do with me in that way. My teenage girl’s heart was a bit broken,” she says with another small smile. “Like I said, I had a crush on you, and to hear something like that come out of my best friend’s mouth? Tough pill to swallow.”
I reach out to take her hand, but she pulls back, retreating back inside those walls she keeps building. I thought mine were tall, but hers are unscalable. Every time I get to the top and peek over, she kicks me back down.
“After that, I was just going to ignore it and leave. I was going to send you a text that I didn’t feel well and go home to lick my wounds. But—” She pauses and swallows, squeezing her eyes shut at the memory. “But, your uncle caught me on the way out. He pulled me into the downstairs bathroom and told me to leave you alone. I never liked him, but I had never seen him angry. He threatened me, told me if I didn’t leave you alone, he wouldn’t let you take over the business.”
“I didn’t want the fucking business. He knew that at that point,” I tell her, like it will change anything.
“I didn’t know that, Wes. I was hurt by what you said, I was scared of your uncle, and I knew I was leaving soon anyway. So…I left.”
“He scared you to make you cut me out of your life. He wanted to put us against each other so that I wouldn’t go with you and stay with him instead.” I reach out for her again, and she lets me this time, squeezing my hand and letting me pull her into my lap. She’s still naked under the towel, and the heat of her skin sinks into my own.
“I never liked him,” she says into my neck. “He always stared at me and watched me in the creepiest way.” A little shiver makes its way through her body, and I hold her tighter.
“You know the only reason I said that shit to those guys is because what they were saying was true, right, Zo-Zo?” I ask her. “I know you didn’t know that at the moment, and I don’t want to make excuses for my shitty behavior, but I only said it because I was head over heels for you,” I say, smiling when a smile appears on her face, crinkling the corners of her eyes.
“Yeah?” she asks softly.
“Yeah, you idiot,” I laugh, kissing her. “Do you know how many wet dreams I had about you?” I ask her, squeezing her ass and pulling her closer.
“Wes skout ma bghitch nraf,” she says, shoving me and throwing her head back in laughter. “Please, stop.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, taking her face in my hands, making sure she’s looking at me when I say it. I need her to know I mean it. “If I could take it back, I would in a heartbeat.”