Love Fool (One Night Only Season 2: Hunter's Story)

Chapter Seven

I pedal faster, as though the splash of the rudder against the water will drown out Landon's voice after the fact and not call Deni's awareness to the person who just yelled my name.

"Hold up," Deni says.

There's resistance when I try to keep pedaling. It takes me a moment to realize her feet are planted firmly on the pedals, which forces me to let up on my breakneck, Tour-de-France-style speed.

"Sorry. I didn't realize how fast I was going." Okay, so I did. I was about to go faster, too, but I failed to consider that she would need to pedal as furiously as me and might not be up for it.

"Was one of those people who you didn't want to see at Adam's party, by any chance?" she asks.

I grimace. This is headed straight for the topic I want to avoid, but I brought it on myself.

"You're perceptive," I remark.

"I listen and pay attention." She studies me. Self-conscious barely describes how I feel with her eyes on me right now, even if they're hidden behind her sunglasses.

I turn my head away from her and stare directly ahead at the lake's surface. "It's actually both of the people I didn't want to see."

"A falling out?" she guesses.

"If that's what we're calling being knifed in the back by your best friend and cheated on by your ex these days, sure."

Why did I just go there? I could have said yes and left it at that. But no, I had to blurt out something that gives off bitter and unhealed victim vibes, and that's not how I want Deni to see me.

"I'm sorry."

She can't be as sorry as I am for letting that slip, but it's out there now, and I can't take it back. The most I can do is attempt to turn our conversation around before this becomes a sympathy-filled pity party.

I shrug, as if it's no big deal. "Don't be. I'm the one who should apologize. I invited you out here for something fun to do. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"I'm the one who asked, and venting can help," she counters. "Well, sort of."

"I guess."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I absolutely do not want to talk about it with the girl I have an ever-growing crush on, but I have to answer her with something. Whatever I say next can't sound closed off or dismissive of her offer to listen, because coming across as emotionally unavailable will make things worse. I think for a moment, and then reply.

"There isn't a lot to say. It's just one of those things where I thought I knew two people, and then it was like they both became different people."

"And you don't know if they were always that way, and if they were, you can't figure out what you liked or trusted about them in the first place?"

There's an edge to her voice. It tells me her response is less of an observation about my situation, and more of her speaking from experience.

"You say that as if you know." It's my turn to examine her.

"Not the part about being backstabbed by my best friend, but yeah, the ex part sounds familiar."

Wait. If she means what I think she means—that her ex cheated on her—then I've just learned two things. First, that her ex is the world's biggest fool. Second, this could mean she's single.

"Something recent?" I have to know if my suspicion about her dating status is correct.

"Something that happened a few days before I left L.A."