“I thought you’d never ask.”
I lead her toward the dance floor, which is just an open area on the patio lined with lights and flowers, and we slowly begin to move.
“You’re good at this,” she tells me.
“My Grams made me take lessons when I was a kid. She said any decent man would be able to sweep a woman off her feet in a dance. I always pushed back, never wanted to go, but I learned over the years that it comes in handy.”
“You use your dancing prowess on other girls often?” She arches her brow with the question.
“Not often, but it’s come in clutch a time or two, yes.”
She giggles, “Well, remind me to thank her one day.” Her eyes immediately widen and she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume you’d even want to properly introduce me to her.”
I pull her in closer to stop her talking. “Sawyer. Stop. It’s okay.” I chuckle. “You’ve met my Grams already, right?”
“Not because you wanted me to. It was an accidental meeting.”
“I would gladly take you to see her again, and I’ll gladly introduce you to her again when you are ready.”
“Where did you come from?”
“What do you mean?”
“How are you so... perfect? You’re an anomaly to me, Isaac. I’ve never met a man like you before.”
“I hope that’s a good thing.”
“It is.”
Her high heels even out our height enough so I only have to dip just a little to let our lips touch.
We kiss softly as we dance through three more songs. It’s like no one else is even in the room when she is in my arms. All that matters is what is right in front of me, and that’s her.
***
“Have something to tell us?” Caleb and Finn corner me by the bar when Sawyer excuses herself to the bathroom.
“Uh... what are you talking about?”
“We are talking about the fact we’ve never seen you with anyone the way you’re with Sawyer. You seem so... content,” Finn says with a wave of his arm. “Old Isaac would have already had a bridesmaid in a coat closet somewhere.”
I rub my chin and chuckle. “Old Isaac is tired. New Isaac would much rather put his energy into the stunner on his arm.”
“Did you see Isabelle is here?”
“What? Where?” I turn around and glance over at the bar and out on the dance floor.
As if she had heard us mention her name, Isabelle appears at my side.
“Hi, Isaac,” she says softly. “I’m glad to see you’re alive.”
“On that note,” Caleb announces, “Finn, let’s go see if we can find... well... anything other than this.”
The two of them disappear back into the crowd, leaving me with a very despondent looking Isabelle.
“I forgot you were going to be here,” I tell her honestly, because at the end of the day, I probably would have made sure not to rub Sawyer in her face.
“Well, we did all go to school together, Isaac. Christopher is my friend too.”
“I know that, Bells. It just slipped my mind you’d be here.”
“You haven’t been returning my texts or my calls. Though, I can see now why that’s the case. She’s very pretty.”
Guilt eats at me. Isabelle and I were never official, we never would have been, but I do consider her a friend, and I know how she feels about me. Ignoring her was a dick move of the highest degree.
“She is,” I agree apologetically, because there is nothing else I can say that will make her feel any better.
“You know, you could have just told me, Isaac. Telling me to my face would have been better than ghosting me completely.”
Isabelle started off as the easiest casual fling. It was fun, it was hot, and then I could feel something shift a few months ago, and it was a shift I didn’t reciprocate. I should have broken it off with her then, but I’m an asshole who was more worried about continuing our arrangement than protecting her feelings.
“Listen, this isn’t the place for this conversation, but it needs to happen. It should have happened sooner, and I’m sorry it didn’t. You deserved better than that.”
“You’re right, I did, and I’m so hurt by your lack of respect in that way. That’s not the Isaac I know.”
“I have always been fond of you, Isabelle, but I think we both know it would have never worked.”
“I don’t know that. You just weren’t willing to try.”
“I just don’t see you in that way, Bells.” It’s brutal, it’s honest, but it’s real.
“But I was good enough to fuck?”
“We talked about this before we even started sleeping together, Bells. You’re my friend and I didn’t want that to change.”
She looks down at her feet then back up to me with a glistening of tears in her eyes.
She shrugs then swipes them away before they can fall down her face. “I should have known better, really. You’ve never been the type to commit, and you made it clear what you wanted when we first started. I guess the romantic in me thought I’d be different.”
“I don’t want you to take this as it meaning anything negative about you, Bells. Can you promise me that?”
“No, but I’ll try. I only want good things for you, you know?”
“And I want the same for you, and I still want to be friends.”
“To be fair, Isaac, friends is something I’ll have to think about. You understand, don’t you?” She reaches out and wipes something from my suit.
“I do, and you know I’m always here for you, right?”
“I know,” she pushes up on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek. “She’s very lucky.”
Chapter 16
Sawyer
I’ve never been a jealous person. It’s just not a feeling I have felt often in my life, and for that I’ll be forever grateful because if what I’m feeling right now is jealousy, I never want to experience it again.
It feels like there is a one-hundred-pound weight on my chest and my skin is prickling in awareness when I see him standing with
