Right Place, Wrong Time

10. What the Heart Wants

The morning with Julia was as frosty as the conditions outside, a chill that the heat blasting into Lauren's car couldn't thaw. She could feel her friend's eyes on her, but didn't acknowledge it, paying undue attention to her driving.

"You were flirting with Joey again last night," Julia said. There wasn't even accusation in her voice anymore, just weariness.

"I wasn't flirting," Lauren mumbled.

"Looked a hell of a lot like flirting to me."

"I wasn't." Lauren flicked on her windscreen wipers to clear the light dusting of snow that had settled there.

"Pull over."

"What?"

Julia folded her arms resolutely. "Pull over."

"I'm not pulling over."

"Lauren, pull this car over or I swear to god I'm walking the rest of the way."

Lauren sighed heavily but did as Julia asked. When she was parked, she twisted in her seat to face her, expecting anger on Julia's face. Instead, she saw sympathy.

"How many times are we going to have this conversation, Lauren?"

"I know," she said quietly. Julia kept trying to help her, and Lauren kept resisting, and it repeatedly came back to the same issue. Lauren was hurting everyone, herself included.

The problem was that she didn't know how to explain it. She really wasn't meaning to flirt — if she didn't love Darren romantically then she at least loved him as a friend, and she didn't want to do that to him. She just felt drawn to Joey, in some way that her heart made sense of but her brain didn't. She felt good around him, herself but different. A little brighter. And maybe that did manifest as flirting, but how could she resist something that felt so natural, so right?

"You think I'm leading Darren on?" she asked, after Julia stayed quiet.

"Actually, I think you're leading yourself on."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You can tell yourself you weren't, but you were flirting last night. And you wouldn't be doing that if you were really happy with Darren."

She sighed. "So you think I'm a terrible person?"

Julia pulled her into an embrace. "Of course I don't think that. I think you need to figure out what you really want— who you really want, that's all. And quickly."

"Yeah," Lauren admitted quietly.

She had been so sure she had no romantic feelings towards Joey, but Julia often hit the nail on the head regarding Lauren's feelings before she herself had even picked up the hammer. And the more time she spent with him, the more she knew that what she had with Darren wasn't what she wanted long term, regardless of whether Joey was the one for her.

She put her hand back on the gearstick and, when Julia made no move to stop her, pulled back out onto the road. They closed in on the airport in silence.

"I have been thinking about it," Lauren said softly. "Breaking up with Darren, I mean."

Julia sat up straighter. "Really?"

Ahead of them, a light turned red, and Lauren slowed to a stop, wishing she could have sailed through and not felt like she had to look at Julia.

"I do like him," she said slowly. "But... he doesn't make me feel the way Joey does."

"And how does Joey make you feel?"

Lauren let out a long sigh, feeling the corners of her lips twitch involuntarily into a smile, and was unsurprised to hear Julia's squeal of excitement next to her.