This was just what I needed. My crazy-ass friends whose lives were just as messy as mine. Everything would be okay. I just had to start opening my eyes and being more aware. Maybe then I could figure out if Titus and I could make a relationship work.
12
Amelia
“We haven’t seen you in forever. I’m making my chili and corn bread and you will be here at my dinner table tonight.”
When Mom got bossy, you just answered with “yes, ma’am” if you knew what was good for you. Which was how I found myself driving over to my parents’ house that night after napping away the two glasses of wine at the apple orchard. My brain had been sorting through memory after memory of Titus and me growing up, trying to see if I’d missed more clues to his true feelings.
I had to admit, seen through the lens of infatuation, everything he’d done for me over the years could have been from a place of love. And I wasn’t talking about the friendly kind of love. Like “love, marriage, and a baby carriage” kind of love. With lots and lots of sex, because I wasn’t doing that marriage thing without lots of guaranteed horizontal times.
And that thought just sent my whole body up in flames again, thinking of how good Titus felt last night. How every kiss had felt familiar and yet brand new. A place of comfort, yet exhilarating at the same time. I should be majorly freaking out after kissing my best friend, and believe me, I was having a hard time keeping my brain from spinning out of control, but it was only a mild disorienting freak-out. A three on a scale of ten where ten meant weeks of drunkenness ending in a new tattoo on my face and one being a simple shoulder shrug.
I pulled up in front of the house I’d grown up in, seeing the tree in the front yard I’d climbed with Titus over the years. He’d helped me carve my initials into the trunk so far off the ground my sisters couldn’t deface it.
My older sister’s cruiser was parked at the curb. She was a cop in a neighboring town, but apparently she’d gotten the mom guilt call for dinner too. I parked behind her and climbed out of the car, coaching myself to get my head off Titus and focus on my family. Thinking about Titus just led me to remember how his rough hands had cupped my breasts so carefully. If I didn’t get my thoughts in order, I’d spend the whole night with damp undies and a flaming face. My sisters would eat me alive in that state.
I threw open the door without a knock because I’d grown up there and therefore had the right to come and go as I pleased, no matter what my parents had to say about it. Was it really home if you couldn’t just barge in whenever you pleased?
“Amelia!” Esme and Izzy shouted at the same time, rushing over to hug me in a twin sandwich.
“Hey, girls. I didn’t know you’d be here too.” The two of them had finally moved out of the house into their own place last summer.
Esme rolled her eyes and whispered, “Mom is experiencing a midlife crisis, apparently. Vee is making plans to move out and having her last daughter leave the house is sending her into a downward spiral of emotion.”
Izzy shushed her. “You don’t know that. Stop with the psychobabble. Maybe she just wanted us all home because she loves us.”
“You shut up,” Esme countered, resorting to preschool comebacks whenever we all got together.
I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s our sparkling personalities she misses.”
I left the twins to bicker and moved into the living room, taking off my jacket and freezing when I spotted a familiar blond head sitting in the chair I usually occupied.
Titus.
My jacket fell to the ground and I scrambled to pick it up. Well, shit. There went my panties. The man looked good in his dark jeans and black boots, the kind he didn’t work in. My best friend had no right to be so freaking hot.
“T! What are you doing here?” I laid the jacket across the couch back and headed over to give him a hug. That was totally normal. Right? Oh, shit. Now I was questioning everything. See? This is why just friends shouldn’t make out in trucks in the dark.
Titus stood and hugged me, then offered me the chair, which I took gratefully when my knees decided to give out at the slightest touch of Titus’s hard body against mine.
“Hope you don’t mind. Your mom invited me for dinner.” He rubbed the back of his neck, disturbing the hair that had grown long there.
I smiled at him and then glared at the back of my mother’s head through the doorway to the kitchen. She kept whistling and studiously ignored me. That little troublemaker. She’d set me up on purpose. As I watched her cooking, Yedda came out of the hall bathroom.
“Oh, hello, Amelia.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling as she took in Titus standing right next to my chair. “She sure is pretty, isn’t she, Titus?”
“Oh, for crap’s sake,” I grumbled. Yedda, the town’s unofficial matchmaker. Of course. She must have said something to my mom and they teamed up to instigate a love match that was none of their business.
Vee came down the stairs and sneezed three times in a row, halting conversation. The girl did always love to make an entrance.
“Wow, sorry about that. Must be allergic to all the handsome in the room.” She smiled and winked at Titus.
Anger, the kind that made my skin break out into hives, flared high. Why did she have to flirt with every male in the room? Clearly, she was simply allergic to the inch of cat hair covering Yedda’s entire person. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Titus’s hand, logic no longer running the show
