Touché. “Are you implying I have more than one?”
Lauren shrugged and looked down at her nails. “I don’t think you came here to hear all the reasons I think you’re annoying.”
It was strange to be sitting next to her best friend like she had a million times over the last twenty-plus years but not be friends. It sucked, actually. “Did Aaron call you?”
“Yes,” she answered, giving nothing else.
“Did he tell you that Mitch was coming over here tonight to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you that I was coming over?”
“No. Did he know you were coming over as well?”
“Yes.” Bonnie waited to see if using Lauren’s short answers against her would get her attention.
She finally gave in and made eye contact. “Why did you want to come over with Mitch? To beg for my forgiveness and ask for my blessing? Because that is never going to happen. Let’s be clear about that.”
Bonnie pretended to slam her head against the steering wheel. Anything to stop this torture. “Do you even listen to anything I say? Do you hear yourself? It’s ridiculous. There is no me and Mitch. There never was. There never will be. He was your boyfriend. Your fiancé. Your ex. No matter what title you give him, it’s always preceded by the word Lauren’s.”
Speaking of the devil, Mitch pulled into Lauren’s driveway. The two women stayed in the car and watched silently as he got out and went to her front door.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Lauren finally said. The hurt in her voice was palpable.
Bonnie didn’t blame her. Nothing Mitch had to say was going to make Lauren feel any better about herself or the situation. He wasn’t here to tell her he’d made a mistake. He only wanted to remind her that he had left her for Bonnie.
Maybe if they knew how she felt about Aaron, all of this would be over. Of course, Bonnie wasn’t sure how Lauren would feel about Bonnie’s attraction to Aaron. She liked him. She knew he liked her. She really liked kissing him. He was funny and chivalrous and didn’t take himself too seriously. He had a desire to make the world a better place, not only for himself, but for others. She loved that.
“He was going to tell you that you shouldn’t blame me. At least, that’s what he told Aaron he was going to say. He wasn’t aware that I had taken the fall for his infatuation. Your wedding day was the first time he ever made me aware that he had any feelings for me. That is the God’s honest truth.”
Mitch stepped off the porch and peeked through the windows on the front of the house. He tried the doorbell one more time before giving up and going back to his car. Bonnie was glad she had parked on the street and not in the driveway. Mitch was oblivious to the two of them sitting right there.
“You were my best friend,” Lauren said, reaching for the door handle. “I just don’t know.”
Lauren got out of the car and jogged across the street back to her house. Bonnie let her head fall back against the headrest. What was there to know? She hadn’t done anything. Why couldn’t Lauren admit that she was wrong? That she was sorry she hadn’t believed her from the start? There was nothing left to say. If Lauren couldn’t believe the truth, Bonnie was done trying to feed it to her. They had been best friends, but were no more.
Bonnie drove to her dad’s, needing someone who loved her unconditionally to tell her it would all be okay. She found her dad sitting in his recliner chair in the living room when she got to his house. His feet were up and his TV was turned to the game-show channel, his favorite. She locked the front door behind her, and her heart rate was just about back to normal.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Maybe she didn’t look as calm as she thought she did. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“And I’m a ballroom dancer. What happened?”
“I talked to Lauren.”
He put the footrest down and leaned forward. “How did that go?”
“About as well as you would expect.”
“So, not well?” he guessed.
Bonnie wasn’t sure what it was about her that made him guess she was frazzled. She fixed her ponytail and pressed the back of her hand to her cheeks to see if they were warm. “She isn’t going to get over this. With Mitch back, it will probably only get worse. What do you think about you and me moving down to San Diego? Perfect weather. Plenty of real estate for me to sell. Lots of construction jobs for you to do.”
“We are not going to be run out of this town, Bon Bon. Lauren is going to come around. Trust me.”
She wanted him to trust her. She was beginning to worry it wasn’t going to get better. At some point, Bonnie might have to leave Blue Springs.
“YOU HAVE TO help me.” Mitch stood in Aaron’s kitchen with his hands in his hair. “What’s it going to take to get Lauren to forgive me?”
“Amnesia, a brain tumor that causes memory loss, divine intervention maybe,” Aaron suggested. Those were really the only ways Lauren would ever forgive and forget.
Mitch dropped his hands to his sides. “That is not helpful. You are my best friend. You have to help me.”
“I don’t have to help you do anything. You’re lucky I even invited you into my home. You crushed my sister by dumping her at the altar. You ruined my friend’s reputation at the same time, and you come back without asking me once what I’ve been up to while you’ve been gone.”
“So what have you been up to while I’ve been gone, Aaron?” he asked, taking a seat at the island.
“Well, thanks so much for asking, Mitchell. I have been super busy. I quit my job, bought a house to remodel and have been working nonstop
