“I’m not over it, Lu. I’m a freaking mess. Last night he wiped some marshmallow goo off my face and I swear…I nearly melted into a puddle on the floor. From his hand. On my face. I hate that he still has this effect on me. What is wrong with me?”
Surprisingly, Lulu laughed.
Kylie narrowed her eyes at her. “Thanks. That’s really helpful. Some bestie you are.”
Once she’d sobered, Lulu pinned Kylie with a serious glare. “Okay, first of all, never call me that. In fact, if you even say that stupid-ass word around me, I might accidentally judo chop you in the throat. Purely as a reflex.” She shrugged as if to say consider yourself warned, and continued her speech. “Second of all, nothing is wrong with you. You have unresolved feelings for someone you still care a lot about. Honestly, you want to know what the weirdest and most awkward part of this entire past year has been for everyone around you?”
Kylie opened her mouth to say something but Lulu rushed on.
“You pretending not to care about him.”
“I guess acting is out as a career choice then?”
Her friend nodded. “Most definitely. Thank God you can sing.”
Kylie sighed. She ignored the urge to look back up at the stage. Even though she knew there was no way Trace could hear her conversation, she felt as if she’d shouted her confession from the rooftops.
“So you were going to give me the expert opinion of Mike Brennen?”
Lulu shook her head. “No, I was going to tell you what he told me sort of by accident.”
“Jesus. If you start telling me y’all talk about Trace in the throes of passion, I’m going to—”
“No. God, no. Nothing like that. I was going to tell you that Gretchen called Mike the other day. They share an addiction specialist dude or something.” Lulu waved her hand as if the details were inconsequential. “Anyways, when they hung up, I made a snide comment about why she didn’t just call her boyfriend to get whatever info she needed to know about the AA dude.”
Kylie couldn’t help it. She winced when Lulu referred to Trace that way. Her friend offered her a sympathetic smile and continued.
“And um, here’s the weird part. Mike was totally lost. His exact response was ‘I didn’t even know Gretchen had a boyfriend.’”
Before Kylie had time to register the full impact of what her friend was saying—or the oddly disturbing fact that her face had gone strangely numb and prickly—Lulu put her hands up.
“Ky, I’m not saying you should take him back or run back to him with open arms or whatever. I’m just telling you what Mike said. According to him, Trace and Gretchen weren’t together—um aren’t together. They went to rehab together as friends…like a moral support buddy system thing or something.”
“Oh.” Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t get any more words to come out of it. She licked her lips and snuck a glance to where he stood on stage talking with his drummer.
Her brain said that this was good news. Maybe he hadn’t chosen someone else over her after all. But her heart said that she should keep that steel wall around it firmly in place and run like hell.
Because if this were true, if he really had just gone to get help so he could be better and then he’d come out only to see her with Steven—which she was pretty certain had sent him right back into rehab—then she wasn’t just a wounded ex-girlfriend who’d been dumped for someone else.
She was a complete idiot who’d basically cheated on the only man she’d ever loved.
But to her, it didn’t necessarily matter what the official status of Trace and Gretchen’s relationship was. They definitely had an intense—and likely very complex—one.
The words he’d said when she called him out for walking away from what they had still plagued her.
It was for the best. It was what was best for you, for both of us, and if I had to, I’d do it again.
Those words rang out in her head like a tornado siren screaming a warning to keep her heart safe in its bunker. Especially that last part.
Because the truth was, dating or not, he’d told Gretchen about his drinking when he couldn’t tell her. He’d gone into rehab most likely at Gretchen’s prompting. She wondered if it was that same prompting that led him to break things off with her before he left. She knew Gretchen didn’t like her, would probably never like her, and Trace clearly valued her friendship and her opinion.
It was an equation for disaster, one she couldn’t sort all of the factors to. Or even begin to process with him singing on stage a few feet away and the humidity making her sweaty and confused.