Delaney James seems to have it all-a successful husband, a stylish Manhattan townhouse, and a thriving career in fashion journalism-until it all falls apart. Her husband leaves her, shattering the perfect life she once knew. Heartbroken and desperat...
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Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I watch Delaney and Jo rush out of the bar and I know, without a doubt in my mind, they're leaving because of me. My first instinct is to follow her and make sure she's okay. It's what I would have done when she was mine. Then again, I never spoke to her the way I have been when we were together, and I never caused her to run out of the room in tears. On the rare occasion we did fight, I'd buy her flowers and a tub of her favorite ice cream, and she'd forget why she was mad at me. But I don't think either of those options would help me right now. Not after the way I've been treating her.
It's taking every ounce of willpower I have not to chase after her, but I'm not Delaney's boyfriend anymore. She's no longer my responsibility. She has a new, perfectly pressed, rich husband to take care of her now. I bet she's on the phone with him at this very moment telling him what a dick I am and how much she hates me. I wouldn't blame her if she was. But it should be me she's on the phone with – not him. I should be the one comforting her when she's hurt or upset, but I lost the opportunity to be that guy for her a long time ago, and it's nobody's fault but my own.
God, why am I such a fucking asshole?
I plop down on a stool at a high-top table in the back of the bar where my friends Wyatt and Mitchell are already seated. Tension sets in my shoulders. A heavy feeling – one that settled in the moment my father told me Delaney was back – churns in the pit of my stomach. My beer sits frosty in my hand, and I watch as beads of condensation roll down the amber glass bottle and dissolve into the cocktail napkin underneath it. I pick it up and hold it to my lips, but I don't take a sip. I don't even want it. Alcohol was my preferred form of therapy when I got home from St. Louis, but it doesn't do what it used to for me anymore.
Pool balls clink against each other from the corner of the room, and a group of drunk twenty-somethings celebrate loudly around the dart board next to us, but my friends are quiet. Uncharacteristically quiet.
I don't need to look up to know they're staring at me, but when I do, I'm proven right.
"What?" I ask, annoyed. I'm disgusted with myself for the way I treated Delaney yesterday and tonight, so I'm not exactly in the mood for an interrogation. "Is there something you would like to share with the rest of the group, or am I supposed to read your fucking minds?"
"No, it's just...you're such a dick," Mitchell says, chuckling to himself. "What'd that girl ever do to you besides worship the ground you walk on?"
I roll my eyes and take a sip of my beer. "We're not talking about her."
"He's right, bro. That was harsh," Wyatt agrees. "I remember a time not so long ago when Delaney James was your whole world. So much pussy was thrown at you in high school, yet she was all you saw. You thought that girl hung the fucking moon and stars. Now she's finally back in South Grove, and you're treating her like absolute shit. I don't get it."
