The Girl Who Wrote The Dating Manual

chapter fourteen

            “I don’t know!” I cried back, shakily running a hand through my hair and mussing it up. “Okay? I. Don’t. Know. Everything just spun out of control quicker than I could grasp it.”

            She opened her mouth to retort, but was cut off when Jamie reappeared, his shirt and hair sticking to him. Rain glistened on his bare skin, and raindrops splattered off of his lashes and cheeks like tears.

            He let out a heavy breath and shook his head. “I—I couldn’t find Chance,” he stammered out, panicked. “I don’t know where he went.”

            “I do,” Ava answered, tearing her eyes away from me to fix her brother with an angry stare akin to the one I’d received.

            “Wait, you do? Where is he?” I asked, turning to look at her with wide eyes. “Tell me.”

            “Oh, no,” Ava replied, walking over to the floral ashtray to grab her car keys and wallet from inside of it. “You’ve done enough. Both of you have done enough. I’m going to go get Chance. I’ll be back soon. And, for the love of God, let’s not have a repeat of earlier, okay?”

            She disappeared outside the front door before I could formulate a reply, and I winced as she slammed it shut behind her so hard the whole house quaked with the vibrations. I jumped as my stomach flipped, and looked down at the ground.

            “We screwed up,” Jamie muttered, staring at the door longingly as if he wished to chase Ava out into the rain.

            “Yeah,” I murmured. “We did.”

            “What are we going to do?” he asked.

            I bit into my lip and swallowed past a lump in my throat. I felt the overwhelming urge to cry in shame, but suppressed it. That would achieve nothing. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “All I know is that we just made the biggest mistake ever.”

            “I’m sorry,” Jamie admitted in a low voice. “I shouldn’t have—what I did—it was inappropriate. I just lost my head.”

            “It’s okay,” I told him, even though this situation was far from okay. “I mean, we were both drunk, and people do stupid things when they’re drunk.”

            “I wasn’t that drunk,” Jamie said, turning to glare out the window. I followed his gaze in time to see a large, dark gray cloud cover the luminescent moon. I could still see the heavy rain, and hoped Ava and Chance were safe and dry. The idea of driving in the wet weather frightened me. “And it didn’t happen because of alcohol.”

            I frowned, trying to make sense of his jumbled words. “What?”

            He sighed. “Candice, I didn’t kiss you because I was drunk. I kissed you because… I wanted to.”