The Reluctant Romantics

Chapter Two: The Education of the Heartbroken

A/N: Hi everyone! Thanks for keeping track of the newest post to Jake and Tessa's story. I thought writing this story was going to be super-easy. I knew what happened in a general sense; I just have to build details into it. The fact that so much is known about it already actually presented the tougher challenge of having to create scenes and story lines that exist in a plot and timeline that have been designed for a different story. It's tough but it's been fun looking back into the little nooks and crannies of TMMM to find places for Jake and Tessa where I could tell their story.

Hope you enjoy!

*Dedicated to LDCrichton because she's an awesome human being and writes the kind of books I want to read nonstop. Make sure to check her out if you haven't already and show her some love!

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Jake

I should really turn around and go to her.

I didn't like the look of hurt on her face. She deserved to have a smile permanently stay there, lighting up the world around her.

Leave it, Jake. Let her sort it out with him. They're going to be married in a week, after all.

I didn't quite know how to describe how I was feeling about all of this tonight.

I was still reeling, I guess, and for a number of reasons.

When I left a couple weeks ago for Bangkok, Brandon was still dating Simone. She seemed like a good match for him—gorgeous, polished manners, financially independent. She was always the kind of woman I thought Brandon would eventually end up with when he was ready to settle down. For all his appreciation of attractive women and convenient relationships, he was the marrying, family-guy kind. He was too much like his father and he doted on his family like no one I knew. And then I came home to what I thought was a prank invite to his engagement party. I went there ready to pull him aside and maybe shake him a little because this was, frankly, a little insane. I'd known the guy for twenty-nine years. He'd never demonstrated this kind of impulsive streak before so clearly, something else was at play here.

Oh, it's something else, alright.

Brandon was just plain besotted with his fiancée. He couldn't stop gazing at her, couldn't stop touching her as if he needed the constant contact. I knew he cared a lot about Simone but how he was with Charlotte was at an entirely different level, no matter how he tried to play it down and pretend it was nothing unusual.

And looking at Charlotte, I could see all the things about her that didn't match Brandon's preferences but despite all that, she seemed perfect—just absolutely perfect—for him.

No, she wasn't a classic beauty like Simone or Anna. Her combined features made for a pretty enough face to an objective eye. What caught you off guard and made you look a second time though was this sense of brightness that just seemed to flow from her—in her sparkling green-eyes that seemed laughing half the time, the impish tilt of her mouth as if she were holding back from saying something mischievous, and her impatient energy as if she needed to be doing something other than stand there and be pretty and polite. She was a stark contrast to the poised, elegant females in Brandon's history but her playfulness and sense of humor seemed to be the perfect antidote to my friend's often too-serious view in life.

And that was probably why I didn't vocalize a single protest even when I'd come to this party armed with a hundred of them.

I was sold—until my bonehead friend thought it was a brilliant idea to invite Simone to the party. Worse, he danced with her. I tried to talk him out of it before Charlotte could spot him but he was adamant that it was harmless. He should've seen the hurt on Charlotte's face and he'd know just how harmless it was.