Leah, the kids, and I walked back to the car.
“Well, you handled that one like a pro, Goober. Were you even going to talk to her? You could have at least asked her out to coffee? Asked for her phone number? You should have done something to make sure she wouldn’t walk out of your life again,” Leah said as she strapped Lily into the backseat.
“I think you just took care of that for me, didn’t you, Miss Meddler?”
She grinned. “That’s Mrs. Meddler, thank you very much, and you’ll thank me later.”
I wasn’t too sure about that. Having Mia back in my life sounded like a bad idea. The last time had left me in ruins. I wasn’t sure I could survive a second round.
Chapter Three
~Mia~
“So, that happened,” Liv said.
It was later in the afternoon, and we were sitting around her living room, sipping tea. She really had a thing for it. She had an entire cabinet devoted to the beverage. She probably kept some exotic tea company in business. The girl was kind of psycho when it came to the stuff.
No tea bags for hippie Liv.
She hated it when I called her that, so I had decided to make it my mission to do so as much as possible.
She considered herself evolved.
Whatever. When you had canisters of tea leaves, didn’t eat meat, and bought organic everything, the word hippie might fly out of my mouth on occasion.
“Yep. Sure did,” I answered from my seat on the couch.
I hadn’t moved in hours. I was just sitting there, like a pathetic wounded deer. I was drinking the mugs of tea Liv had brought in, eating the cookies she’d stuffed in my hand, and staring into space, like a zombie.
“You got anything stronger than tea?” I finally asked, having had my fill of tea for the next millennium.
“You mean, like, coffee?”
I looked up at my friend with pure shock and horror written all over my face. She was grinning from ear to ear and had her arms wrapped around her front, looking smug.
“You better be kidding,” I threatened.
“It got your attention at least. Of course I’ve got booze. Even hippies drink,” she said, emphasizing the word she so loathed.
“Why don’t I go make us some drinks, and you go order us a pizza? We’ll meet back here in five.”
I nodded and started looking up the phone number to the locally owned pizza shop down the street where we’d ordered from a few days ago. I ordered a large veggie pizza and cheesy bread, and then I waited. After a minute or so, I was bored. What did people do before smartphones? Stare at walls? I’d been doing that all day, and I was over it.
I picked back up my iPhone and did the one thing I’d sworn I would never do. I stalked Garrett on Facebook. In all the time I’d been gone, I had never looked him up—not on the Internet, Twitter, Instagram…nothing. I hadn’t wanted to know if he had a girlfriend or a wife. I hadn’t wanted to take the chance of possibly seeing wedding pictures or vacation photos with his kids. Not knowing had been the key to my survival.
But now, I knew, and like a dam bursting, I wanted to know everything. Did he go to college, like we’d planned? What does he do? How is his family? Is he happy?
My search turned out to be a bust when I found his profile was locked down tighter than Fort Knox. The only thing I could see was his profile picture, and that was enough to set my heart into double-time. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but he’d grown even more handsome since the last time I saw him. All those boyish features I remembered had been replaced with hard, lean muscle, broad shoulders, and a gaze that could set my panties on fire.
“I wondered how long it would take you,” Liv said, reentering the living room with two large drinks.
She handed me one, and I instantly took a sip, not caring in the least about what it was. As long as it was alcohol, it was my kind of drink tonight.
“Are you sure?” I said through tear-stained eyes. “We can wait. We don’t have to do this now. You know what everyone will say.”
He looked into my eyes, finding a path into my very soul with a single glance.
“I don’t want to wait, Mia. I’m ready now, and I don’t care what everyone will say. I know you’re the one, so why wait? We’ve already started our lives together. Now, we just have to make it official.”
“He was perfect,” I blurted out, staring at the picture of him still lighting up my screen. “He asked me to marry him.”
“What? When?”
“The day before graduation.”
“And you said…no?” she asked hesitantly.
I put down my phone, shutting off the screen and severing my view of Garrett and his many lickable features. “I said yes.”
“Oh. So, why did you—”
“Leave?”
She just nodded. It was one of those things I wasn’t ready to share yet.
“Mia—I mean, Amelia…fuck. I’m calling you Mia, okay? I can’t look at you and call you anything else. You’re just going to have to deal.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it? I figured you’d put up more of a fight than that, but okay. You know, if you’d changed your mind, you could have just told him. You were eighteen. Getting married is a huge deal at that age. Hell, it still is at our age. The idea scares the shit out of me. That’s why I’m planning on never going down that road. I’ll never let a guy get that close.”
I remembered the night Garrett had asked me.
We’d parked at the edge of the river, and we were lying on an old blanket that he always stored in his trunk. For hours, we’d been staring at the stars while talking about our new life. We were scared and excited. Everything was changing, but we were together, and we knew we could do anything if we had each other. We were so young and innocent, yet we were full of grown-up emotions we hadn’t been prepared for.
Right in the middle of our conversation about apartments, he said, “Stand up.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Just do it!” He grinned.
He bent down on one knee, and I giggled, thinking that was something men only did in movies. I knelt with him on the blanket. The frogs croaked, and the water rushed by as I held his hands. We both laughed and cried as he proposed.
He curled his fingers into my hair and kissed me softly until I said, “Yes.”
Then, he completely surprised me by pulling out a ring. I had thought the entire thing was spur-of-the-moment, but he had planned it, every single minute. He placed the ring on my finger. It was a delicate white gold band with a small diamond placed in the center.