What He Really Feels (He Feels Trilogy) (8 page)

I was ready to move to San Diego.

Except San Diego was further away from her. Not “her” as in Julianne. “Her” as in Gorgeous, the woman who whirled into my life with a dance and left me with the conflicting feelings of hope versus being completely shattered.

When we had moved my bed, we found a sparkly silver earring under the pillow.

I recognized it as hers.

It was like a little souvenir of my night with her, and that earring flooded me with strange emotions that I wasn’t used to. Why hadn’t I gotten her name? Why hadn’t I figured out some way to get her number?

We packed quickly, and Mike and Bill left around 3:00. We made plans to meet back at my place at 9:30, and then we’d cab it over to Mahogany.

I headed to my parents’ house, excited as always to see my nephews and glad for the distraction my family would surely provide.

My parents’ house was huge; my dad had essentially built a design empire with his company, Miller Designs, and he loved to spoil my mom with the dividends. They had seven thousand square feet to themselves with plenty of fancy upgrades, but the best part of their entire house was their backyard. It looked out over the mountains, and they had an enormous pool complete with waterfalls and rocks surrounded by palm trees. It was the perfect oasis for relaxation, and I always felt like I was on vacation in their backyard. It was one of my favorite places in the world.

As I made my way around the side of the house, through the side gate and to the back
yard, I found my three- and five-year-old nephews wearing floaties and jumping from the ledge into the deep end of the water. My sister lounged in the shallow end on one of the built-in seating areas in the pool while my brother-in-law, Wes, caught the boys as they jumped in. My dad was starting the grill, and my mom was in the kitchen making potato salad.

“Uncle Travis!” Jackson – the five-year-old – yelled when he saw me. I threw my towel and my t-shirt on a nearby lounge chair as he came running over to me, hugging my leg and soaking me in the process, making me glad I wore my swim trunks over instead of something nicer.

The air temperature was a chilly seventy-two in early February, but my parents’ pool was heated. I dove into the deep end, sending a deluge of water over Wes and Parker, and then Jackson jumped in behind me.

I laughed at my nephew whose main goal became splashing Uncle Trav.

“Hey Trav,” my sister said from the shallow end.

“What’s up,
Lizzy?”

“Just missing my baby brother.”

“I liked your e-card.”

“I hated yours.”

I chuckled and lifted Parker above my shoulders. He squealed as I prepared to throw him into the water, and then I let him fly.

He came back up. “Again!” he yelled, so I did what he wanted, and then his brother swam up so I could throw him in, too. These boys knew how to give me a workout.

Parker climbed up on my shoulders. I headed over toward Wes, who had Jackson up on his shoulders, and we played an intense round of chicken in the water.

My mom emerged from the house a few minutes later. “Hey, T,” she yelled to me.

“Hey, Ma,” I yelled back.

“We need to talk,” she said.

Those words were ominous, and it just was not something a man ever wanted to hear from his mother.

My sister shot me a look that said, “Better you than me.”

“I’ll be back, boys,” I said.

“Wait!” Jackson yelled. “Throw us in first.”

I swam over to the side of the pool and lifted myself out gracefully, and the boys rolled themselves out in their best imitation of me. I threw them each back into the water from the side as they giggled in that way only little kids can, and then I grabbed my towel and headed over to my mom.

“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing the towel through my hair to dry it.

“Are you okay, T?”

I glanced over at her and then wrapped the towel around my waist and sat in a cushy chair.
“Been better. Been worse,” I answered honestly. Shit, I’d been better the night before when I’d started dancing with Gorgeous, and I’d been worse when she had first left my place that morning. And neither of those events had anything to do with what my mom was asking me.

I was on a goddamn roller coaster.

“Pam is upset,” she blurted, referring to her best friend who also happened to be Julianne’s mother.

“God, not this.
Please. Anything but this.”

“She said Jules texted you about Jamie and the baby and you didn’t answer her.”

“Are you seriously asking me about my texting habits?”

“No. I’m seriously telling you that I don’t want you to act like a child. Our families have been friends for years.”

I was silent for a moment, trying to find the best tact to answer her. I was done defending Julianne to my family; that was for sure. Now that I’d backed away from the situation for a minute, now that I’d been with someone else, someone who made my heart beat faster in my chest, someone who allowed me to see past my hurt and anger, I realized an awful lot about the situation that I’d been blinded to because of the pain that Julianne had caused me. “Do you realize what she did to me, Mom?”

“I know the basics. You really hurt her when you went to talk to Nick.”

“Why are you defending her? Shouldn’t you be on my side?”

“T, I taught you to be the bigger man, not to rub your misery in someone else’s face.”

“She had it coming, mother.”

“You didn’t need to be the one to tell him. What happened between you and Julianne
was between you two. It was up to her to tell him the details.”

“Mom, I don’t want to discuss this with you.”

“You need to see her before you leave town.”

“No, I don’t. She’s the reason I’m leaving. And she doesn’t deserve that closure.”

She sighed. “I was afraid of that. She really hurt you, didn’t she?” She said it like a statement, not a question.

“Why don’t you ask Pam?” I said icily.

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

I sighed in frustration. “Sorry.”

“Have you thought about the closure that
you
might need?” she asked.

“I’m good, Mom.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m going to San Diego, I’m starting over, and I’m going to be fine.”

She looked at me with a mixture of pity and sympathy, and it nearly killed me to see that look on her face.

“Mom, stop. Please.”

She blinked and the look was gone. “Okay. I love you, T.”

“I love you, too.”

“Go play with your nephews. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

I grinned and headed back to the boys, glad to be done with that conversation but at the same time grateful for the loving and supportive family I had been born into.

My dad grilled steaks, and we had potato salad, broccoli and cheese casserole, and Caesar salad to go with it. It was a fantastic meal capped off with a homemade cheesecake my sister had brought, and I was in heaven. I was really going to miss these Saturday dinners, but more, I was going to miss the time with my family. I vowed to drive into town once in awhile to spend time with them. It was only a six hour drive, and it would be well worth it.

“We’re going to head to the hospital to see Jamie and meet Hadley. Want to come?” my sister asked me while Wes took care of changing the kids out of their swimsuits and into clothes after dessert. We were standing at the kitchen sink doing the dishes after dinner while my parents relaxed out on the patio. It was our deal; they provided us a meal, and we picked up after it. It was only fair.

My sister scrubbed while I either placed the dishes in the dishwasher or hand dried them.

I shook my head.
“No, thanks.”

“You sure?” she asked.

“I’ve got plans tonight. But send my best to Jamie and Brandon. Text me pictures. I’m just not ready to deal with the Beckers at the moment.”

She nodded. “You’re okay, though?”

“Yeah. I had a good night last night.”

She glanced up at me.
“New girl?”

“Don’t be nosy. It’s not becoming.”

“Fuck you.”

“
Ew. Not with my sister.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“No.”

She splashed some dishwater at me.

“I hate you,” I said.

“I hate you more.”

This was more like it, the normal banter between my sister and me.

“I met a girl last night. We had some fun. There’s not much else to tell.”

“Trav, this is huge.”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you. It’s not huge. It’s not some big deal. It was a one-night thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because you seem more content today. I haven’t seen you like this since…” She paused, thinking. She handed me another dish. “God, maybe since high school when you and Jules were actually dating.”

Funny that I seemed more content to both my sister and to Bill when the pain on the inside of letting go of the woman from the night before stabbed at me in a consistent dull ache.

“I didn’t even get her name.”

“God, you are the mother of all douche bags.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“You had sex with a girl whose name you didn’t know?
Sounds like it was ‘like that’ to me.”

“A, I don’t want to be discussing my sex life with my sister. And B, you weren’t there.”

“Thank God for that.”

“It was…” I didn’t know how to define what had happened between us. “It was good. It helped me see beyond Jules.”

“That’s a start.”

“Yeah, it is. And I wanted to see her again, but I’m leaving for San Diego tomorrow. What good would it do?”

“Maybe a lot of good, Trav.”

“Yeah.
Maybe.” The best I could hope for was that she’d be at Mahogany that night.

We finished the dishes and my family left after a tearful goodbye. I had to promise my mother (again) that I’d text her every day if I couldn’t call. I hugged my nephews tightly, nearly tearing up a bit at saying goodbye to them. Wes and I hugged man-style, pounding each other on the back, and my sister kissed my cheek. And then my dad came in for a hug, and I almost lost it. Despite the fact that he was my boss, he was also a great friend to me, and I knew I was going to miss our random lunches at Denny’s and our man-to-man talks.

I still had a few hours to kill before my last big night out on the town, and I needed to burn some energy.

I jumped back into the water and swam laps. I sliced my arms powerfully through the water, kicking along until my lungs burned and my arms felt like jelly. It was the best workout I’d had in awhile besides all of the sex the night before, and I idly wondered as I drove home what had given me that burst of energy. Usually after marathon nights of sex, I was wiped the next day or two, but something about my night with the mystery woman had renewed and energized many aspects of my life.

When I got home, I took a long, hot shower, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman I’d showered with in that very spot that very morning. I thought about her hands on my body, the way her eyes looked up at me as she was down on her knees before me, the way she kissed me.

I was devastated by the loss.

I clung to the hope that she’d be at Mahogany that night, but deep down I knew she wouldn’t be. She didn’t want something with strings, yet I felt them tied inextricably around my heart. No matter how hard she’d fight me, if we were to see each other again, there was no way we’d be able to deny that there was more to it than sex. And so, because of our conversation and the way she had left my place earlier that day, I had a feeling she wouldn’t put herself in a place where she had the potential of running into me.

But I still had hope.

We arrived at Mahogany a little after 10:00, having finished the beer in my fridge before we left so I didn’t have to take it to California. I quickly scanned the room when we entered, but I didn’t see her. While I would never forget any tiny detail about her beautiful face, I had no recollection of what her friends looked like, so trying to track her down through them was a dead end. Mike and Bill remembered what they looked like, and Bill had filled Mike in on the details of my night, but they didn’t see her friends there, either.

We settled into a table in a corner and the waitress kept the beers coming. I was subdued for my last night in town. I thought I’d be in the mood to party it up, go out with a bang, but I felt like I’d rather be anywhere else than the bar where I had met the woman I’d never see again. The same bar where Jules had first kissed Nick and the same bar where I’d kissed Brooke at midnight only a little over a month earlier. So much had changed in that time, and more changes were imminent as I thought about the truck parked outside my apartment building with all of my belongings on it.