Change of Heart (12 page)

All I know is that I have to get him the hell out of here as soon as possible. Like real soon, too, since I have to leave by 11:45 if I expect to make it to my twelve o’clock appointment on time, and it’s already 11:00. Kate left early to take one of her finals, and I feel a smidgen of guilt for proceeding with the take-home tests since I’m back, but I’ll worry about that later since I don’t have a class scheduled today anyway.

I give myself a quick pep talk—chock full of “be strong” and “you can do it”—and stand from my seat to go wake Decker. I spin around from the table and jump a good foot in the air.

“Damn it, Decker! Can’t you wear a bell or something?” I yell, holding my hand to my chest in the hope of slowing down my racing heart.

“Do you always talk to yourself?” he asks, casually stepping around me and walking over to the coffee pot. I must give him a confused look, because he proceeds to explain. “Yesterday, you were talking to your purse, or your keys, I’m not really sure which.” He shakes his head at the apparent oddity that is me. Whatever. “Then just now it sounds like you were trying to amp yourself up for something.”

“First of all, if I was talking to my purse or my keys then I would be talking to an inanimate object, not to myself.” I watch as he takes a mug off the rack hanging on the wall and pours himself a cup of coffee like he lives here. It both irks me and makes me feel warm inside. I kind of like having him in my California home.

Stop that line of thinking right now, Casey!

“Admitting to talking to inanimate objects doesn’t really help your case, you know?”

I growl—yes growl—at him as he sits down at the table and picks up the newspaper Kate must have grabbed from the doorstep this morning. “Make yourself at home, Decker!” I shout, rather immaturely, before stomping off to my room. I swear I hear him chuckle from behind me. I’ve never wanted to hit him so bad in my life. Ugh. One minute he makes me feel warm and tingly all over and the next he just chaps my ass with his arrogance.

I go into my bathroom and proceed with my morning routine. Ignoring, for now, the Decker-sized elephant in my kitchen. He’s not going to go away easily. Not that I didn’t assume this before, but he’s making it clear now.

I undress and slip into the shower, doing a light scrub of my hair and body since I had a thorough cleaning when I got home yesterday and haven’t done much since except sleep and eat. My shampoo is citrus scented and my body wash is apple, so it’s quite the pick-me-up and just what I need. By the time I’m done, I feel rejuvenated.

I dry myself off and dress in a simple outfit of skinny jeans and a dark pink tank top. I slip on my flip flops and head back out to the kitchen. I don’t bother with makeup—not anymore—but I do grab my lip gloss out of my purse that’s resting on the small table in the entryway. Applying it to my lips, I look towards the kitchen.

“You need to go,” I tell him. “I’ve got places to be.” I cross my arms over my chest and cock my hip to the side, tapping my foot like I mean business.

Decker laughs at my display. “Whatever you say, sunshine.” He gets up from the table and puts his now empty coffee mug in the dishwasher. “Will you drop me off somewhere?”

“The airport?” I ask, hopefully.

He sighs and looks disappointed. “No, not the airport. A hotel. Preferably an extended stay.” He pointedly looks at me, daring me to argue. Just as I suspected, he’s not going anywhere, and he wants me to know it.

“Fine. But hurry up or I’m going to be late.” I stomp over to the couch and sit down, picking up a magazine to leaf through while I wait for him to get dressed. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him stand there for a moment, then leave the kitchen. I know he feels dejected by the blatant fact that I don’t want him here, but I can’t let myself care about that. I can’t look into his eyes—those same eyes that were so sad when I tried to send him away fifteen years ago—they’ll break me down.

He emerges from the hallway a few minutes later, his duffel bag hanging over his shoulder by the long strap. He’s just so handsome, even in a plain white t-shirt and holey jeans. He’ll make a girl very happy one day. It just won’t be me. It can never be me.

“Let’s go,” I say. I rise from the couch and grab my bag off the table. “There’s an extended stay right down the street.”

He silently follows me out the door and down the steps. As we approach the car and I unlock the door, he finally speaks. “Thanks, Casey.”

I look at him over the roof of the car, the sunlight providing the perfect backdrop for this beautiful man. Decker. My best friend. “You’re welcome.” I’d smile, but I can’t. If I did, the tears I’m trying so desperately to hold in would come out.

***

“Everything looks good, Casey,” Dr. Smythe says as he finishes his exam. “You’re blood pressure is a little high, though.”

“Isn’t that to be expected? I mean considering what’s been going on?”

“Yes, it’s not uncommon for blood pressure to rise in stressful situations. But I’d like to run a few tests just in case.” He jots some notes down on his tablet. “I’ll send Rebecca in to draw blood.”

“Okay.” He exits the room and I sit on the exam table, kicking my legs back and forth in front of me like a child would.

After a few minutes alone with only my thoughts, I realize I can’t stop thinking about Decker. I’d dropped him off at the extended stay before heading to my appointment. I’d felt like a complete asshole—still do—for leaving him there. It had seemed like a nice enough place, frequented by out-of-town business folk and visitors to the university, but it wasn’t a home. How could I just leave my best friend there when I clearly had room for him at my place?

I shake the thoughts out of my head. He can’t stay at my place, I remind myself. He needs to go back home. He can’t stay here forever anyway, he has a year left at the University of South Carolina and he needs to finish his studies. He needs to think about his future. His future that doesn’t—can’t—include me.

My thoughts are interrupted as Rebecca—Becky, as I like to call her—enters the room with her little vampire cart. She’s about four years older than I am, with black hair cut into a severe bob and dark brown eyes. She’s absolutely gorgeous and of Asian descent, though I’m not sure of the exact ethnicity as I’ve never been bold enough to ask about her heritage. She’s a phlebotomist—and a damn good one at that—I can never feel her sticks.

“We’ve got five to fill today,” she says, waving the little vials in front of my face.

“Yay,” I say with absolutely no enthusiasm.

She smirks at me. “Lean back,” she says, and I listen. She ties off my arm with the pinchy rubber band, gives me a stress ball to squeeze, and proceeds to do her thing. I’m feeling kind of sleepy, still exhausted from my trip, so I close my eyes.

Chapter Eighteen

Decker

It’s been about four hours since Casey dropped me off and I’m currently laying on the firm hotel bed wondering what she’s doing. If you’d asked me on the flight here what I thought I’d be doing on my second day in California, this is definitely not what I would have said. Not that I’d expected Casey to welcome me with open arms or anything, not with the way we left things back home, but I guess part of me had hoped she’d at least offer me her couch. I know, not the brightest tool in the box, or however that saying goes.

Earlier, I’d had lunch at a little café about a block away from the hotel. Their chicken salad was good, but not as good as my momma makes it. California is so different from home. Yeah, I’ve only been to this one part and most of my time has been spent inside Casey’s apartment and the hotel, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s not the same. Charleston is smaller, older. Casey always loved the quaintness of our Holy City; I’m not sure how she makes it out here. Especially on her own. I’m already home sick, and I’ve only been here one day.

I roll over to my side and grab my cell phone from the nightstand. I look through my notifications and social media. Aside from a few hilarious cat videos, nothing excites me. I briefly entertain the thought of booking my return flight, but immediately shake that thought out of my head. I’m not giving up. Something tells me Casey needs me. She needs me to not give up on her, whether she realizes it or not.

Tapping around my phone, I find her name in my contacts. I snuck a picture of her when she was home last week and assigned that to her profile. It’s of one of her more peaceful moments, taken while she was sleeping. The early morning light coming in through the sheer white curtains of her bedroom gave her soft skin a beautiful glow. She’d looked like an angel—my angel—and I hadn’t been able to resist capturing the moment.

Should I call her? Text her? She probably would have reached out to me if she wanted to talk…

I sigh and roll onto my back. Is this what women go through when they exchange numbers with a guy? Because I’m starting to feel like a total douche for tossing girls’ numbers all three years at college.

Screw it.

Me:
Hey.

Yeah, that was smooth. Took me five minutes to decide if I wanted to text “hey.”

I wait for her response. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes.

“What the hell am I doing?” I ask myself. Great, now I’m the one talking to myself.

I roll over and get off the bed. After slipping on my sneakers, I make sure I’ve got my wallet and my key card and head out of the room. I’m on the ground floor, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s easy to get in and out. Bad because I get all the street noise.

The drive over here with Casey earlier was short, so I think that by using the map on my iPhone, I’ll be able to navigate back to her place on foot. If she’s not going to answer me, I’m going to go to her. Simple as that. I’m nothing if not persistent.

As I walk, for the first time since my flight landed, I am thankful I’m in California. The less than ten minute drive turned out to be an hour walk. If I’d done that in South Carolina, I’d have gotten heat stroke—and I’m an athlete, or was one anyway. It was ninety degrees when I’d left yesterday. But here in Cali, I’m barely breaking a sweat.

The two long flights of stairs going up to the third floor are still a bear, though. I don’t think it matters what kind of shape you’re in. How these girls do this daily, I can’t tell you. I’d have moved to a ground floor unit. There are very few stairs in my life back home and the steps in the lecture halls are nothing like this concrete hell.

I make it to their apartment door and knock, embarrassed at my loss of breath. I need to get back into cardio. I’d seen Casey’s car in the lot when I got here, so I know she’s home. I hear movement on the other side of the door, and after a moment, a wide-eyed Kate answers the door.

“Hey, Decker. What are you doing here?” she asks, pleasantly enough even though she has the door opened only wide enough to fit her head through.

“I came to see Casey, is she busy?”

“Um, no. She’s not busy,” Kate answers reluctantly, still not opening the door any wider.

“Can I see her?” I ask.

Kate lets out a small sigh. “She’s resting.”

“Resting? Is she not feeling well?” I step a little closer, ready to go to Casey’s aid.

Kate looks over her shoulder quickly, then quietly slips out the door so she’s standing in the breezeway with me. “She’ll be mad that I told you this,” she starts, and I don’t speak because I get the impression she’ll stop talking to me if I do. “But she fainted at the doctor’s office today.”

“She
what
?” I raise my voice, causing Kate to take a step back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I say at a normal volume. “Is she okay?”

Kate looks like she wants to say more, but instead simply nods. “She was having some routine bloodwork. Said it’s probably just due to exhaustion and poor diet.”

I shake my head, I knew she didn’t look well when she showed up here yesterday. Hell, she didn’t look well when she was home either. “Can I see her?” I ask Kate, with my best puppy dog begging eyes.

She rolls her eyes at the obvious ruse to get what I want. “Come on in,” she says, opening the door quietly and holding her index finger up to her mouth, letting me know to be quiet. “She’s probably still asleep,” she whispers. “Just go on back, but don’t piss her off.”

I give her a look, “Right. Have you met her? Apparently my breathing pisses her off lately.”

Kate looks at me thoughtfully, “I don’t know, Decker. You may be just what we need.” Then she turns around and walks off into the kitchen. I have
no
idea how to take what she just said, so I shake it off and walk down the hall to Casey’s room.

I saw the door last night and this morning, but I hadn’t actually seen inside her room. She didn’t invite me in, and, hell, she’ll probably get pissed that I’m coming in now, but she’ll just have to get over it. I don’t like that she’s not well, and I want to see her with my own two eyes. The door is open a crack, so I slowly push it the rest of the way, praying the hinge doesn’t squeak—it doesn’t.

The first thing I see when I open the door is my girl. She’s resting on her side, curled up in a ball on her bed, facing the wall. Her bed surprises me. It’s so…fluffy. Her blankets and pillows are all white, and the pillows are everywhere. They’re all along the light-colored wooden headboard and around Casey. Some have even spilled off onto the floor. Casey was always into simple things growing up, so to see her lying on this…this cloud…is just weird. But damn, at least she looks comfortable.

I take a moment to take in the rest of the room before she wakes and kicks me out. The walls are a light blue which really emphasizes her cloud bed. There isn’t anything hanging on the walls, but she does have a photo collage frame on her nightstand. I carefully pick it up, since I’m now standing way too close to her sleeping form. The collage makes me smile; it holds photos of her with her parents, her with Kate, and her with me.