What would she say to him? How should she be around him? What would he say to her? How would he be around her?
This whole situation was so bizarre. She didn’t know how to just be around him. Part of her just wanted to have it out with him once and for all. Lay all her cards on the table and let him do the same. But another, bigger, part of her just wanted to leave with the memory of who Jake had been to her intact and unvarnished. That memory had gotten her through so many bad times in her life that she honestly didn’t know if she could face the rest of life without having it to hold on to.
If they had it out, who knew what can of worms she would be opening. What if he hated her for what she’d done all those years ago? Or worse, what if he really didn’t care at all? Tessa knew that it probably wasn’t the healthiest or most mature thing to think that his not caring would be worse than hating her, but that is how she truly felt.
Her biggest fear was to find out that their one year together didn’t mean anything to him. As ridiculous as it was, that would devastate her.
“So where are you living now?” Amy asked.
“San Diego,” Tessa replied.
“Do you like it there?”
“It’s beautiful, and you can’t beat the weather,” Tessa spouted. It was her go-to answer whenever anyone asked her about San Diego. But the truth was the constant seventy-degree weather was kind of boring. She liked seasons and she missed snow.
She remembered the first time it had snowed the year she lived in Hope Falls. Jake had known that she had been waiting, like a kid for Christmas. So the first snow that year, he’d come over to Adeline’s and woken her up at five a.m.
If she closed her eyes, she could still feel his hand brushing against the side of her face as he’d whispered softly, “Wake up, beautiful. I have something to show you.” She’d thought it was a dream when he’d picked her up in his arms—not unlike he had earlier today—and carried her down the stairs. She’d only really woken up when he’d set her down and helped her into her coat, boots, and gloves.
Then they’d gone outside and played in the snow. Afterward, they snuggled under a huge throw blanket on the porch swing, sipping hot chocolate Gran had made them, and watched the sunrise while it snowed. It was one of the best memories of her life.
Jake had talked about their future. Getting married. Having kids. The same things he always had said when he’d hold her in his arms and promise her forever.
Honestly, a small, totally selfish part of her had been happy when he’d told her that he wasn’t married and didn’t have kids. Which she could fully admit was not only ironic but also insanely hypocritical since the reason she’d done what she had was so that he could be happy and have a family.
Gravel rumbled under the tires as they pulled into JT’s parking lot. Tessa’s head was spinning and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the two glasses of wine she’d had back at Amanda’s. Nope. Most likely it had to do with a certain brown-eyed, sinfully sexy, heartbreakingly hot man-of-her-dreams-slash-soul-mate.
She needed to stop thinking about him. Distraction. That was the name of the game from here on out. Looking around, she saw that the parking lot was just as crowded, if not more than it had been last night.
Holy cow!
She’d only been in town for twenty-four hours. How was that even possible? It felt like it had been a full week at least.
As she shut the car door, Tessa immediately put her hands in her jacket pockets as her body shivered from the cold.
“Looks like we beat the other girls here,” Amy observed as the two girls hurried across the parking lot as quickly as they could to get to the heated comfort inside.
As they stepped inside the dim bar, the level of noise was much higher than Tessa had remembered it being last night. But in all fairness, she had been mainly concentrating on not peeing her pants and then in just a little bit (a lot!) of shock at seeing Jake, so it could have been this loud.
Even over all the white noise of people laughing, talking, and playing pool and darts, Tessa clearly heard their song playing. She was trying to figure out if she was having stress-induced delusions or if by some crazy coincidence the song was actually playing as she followed Amy over to a table that was brimming with testosterone and ridiculously good-looking men, only two of whom Tessa knew. She was both relieved and disappointed that Jake wasn’t one of them.
She said ‘hi’ to the guys she knew—Eric and Justin, both of whom had odd expressions on their faces. She thought maybe she’d spilled wine on herself or something, but when she looked down, she didn’t seem to have any stains that she could see. Then Amy introduced her to Karina’s fiancé Ryan, Lauren’s fiancé Ben, Sam’s fiancé Luke, and finally her fiancé Matt. Matt was the only one Tessa didn’t recognize at all since she’d seen Ryan on YouTube video’s with Karina and Ben on the TV show ad with Lauren. She’d actually owned a Gatorade poster of Luke as a teenager when he’d won his first gold medal.