02

He laughed and really, when Jake laughed, the world grew brighter. It just did. The light would catch the glints of gold in his dark blonde hair and make his green eyes sparkle.

« For a beautiful girl like you, any guy with a brain would wait, » he said. His hand ruffled my hair before he cupped my chin with it. « And if you still love me years from now, when you’re old enough and I still have a brain, will you still marry me in that big grand church ? »

Like an idiot, I happily nodded and went my merry way, dreaming of the day when I would become Mrs. Jake Hastings.

It was an illness I was going to suffer in the five years that followed, only to be culminated in one quiet devastation.

I was a very impatient seventeen-year-old the morning I decided to surprise Jake after his trip back from Los Angeles where he’d spent his twenty-sixth birthday. I knew work had him trapped there because he would normally have a small dinner with his parents on his birthday and then brunch with us the next day. I’d spent the night trying to call him but it kept going straight to his voicemail. I was already a day late in greeting him so I decided that there was no better way than to greet him first thing in the morning. Conveniently, it was going to be the same morning I decided to finally ask Jake straight up if he would date me now. I was turning eighteen in a couple months. I wanted to remind him of the fact because surely, eighteen would be old enough to pose no problem with Dad or Brandon. There would be nothing in his way now. I was going to give him my journal—the same one that contained a few hundred lovingly written entries from the last five years, each capturing a moment with him that I felt was special. He would have enough time to read it before my birthday and realize that yes, several years later, I still loved him and it was time he loved me back as promised.

I’d waited a solid five years, tolerated the boys at school who tried to get into my pants and dismissed stories I’d heard about him going out with other girls as nothing serious.

It was, finally, our time.

The driver took me to Jake’s condo after I told him I was dropping off my late birthday present. I dashed up the elevator and cheerfully greeted Sandros, the head of Jake’s small housekeeping staff, when he opened the door for me.

Usually, the old man was very cordial and friendly to me and my family when one or all of us would sometimes descend on Jake for a quick visit.

But that day, he was looking a little uneasy while telling me that Jake was still jet-lagged and resting. It was almost one in the afternoon so I thought he’d at least be up by now but I didn’t have the heart to disturb him. But I couldn’t leave just yet either. So I told Sandros I’d like a glass of water before I left. The moment the man disappeared into the kitchen, I bolted from the couch and tiptoed down the opposite hall to Jake’s bedroom. I wasn’t planning on waking him up but I wanted to leave my diary on his pillow so it would be the first thing he’d see after waking up. I also wanted to steal a moment just to watch him sleep—another memory to carry in my heart until the day came that I could just open my eyes and find him sleeping next to me.

I quietly opened the door. There was already quite a bit of light in the room that it wasn’t hard to locate Jake in the heap of sheets on the bed. I saw his bare foot sticking out, his rumpled hair over a light gray pillow, a muscular arm stretched across the billowy covers.

I smiled and stepped into the room—only to stop short at the rest of what I saw on the bed.

Long, reddish brown hair in tangles that still looked sexy around a pretty face, an elegant shoulder peeking from under the covers and a slim hand with French-tipped fingers lightly resting on Jake’s bare chest.

Jake was still sleeping, alright—sleeping with who I recognized as socialite-turned-model Gia Davis.

I wasn’t sure which one I hated more—the brutal truth as it hit me or my lack of control when tears spilled down my cheeks.

There was a reason I decided to be the smart one a long time ago—it protected me from the kind of pain I felt as I stood there, motionless for a long moment, the guy I’d loved and adored for years changing before my very eyes. The shining armor was gone and all the sweet, gentle words he’d told me all this time started to ring hollow in my ears as I recalled them.

I backed away and out of the door without making a noise to disturb the sleeping lovers. Not that I cared as I ran and ran until I nearly slammed into Sandros on my way out.

« Miss Tessa, are you okay ? » the man asked in alarm as he clasped me by the shoulders to keep me from staggering to my knees.

I nodded, gasping through a surge of tears, humiliated even more by what I was about to say next.

« Promise me, Sandros, that you won’t ever tell anyone I was here, » I pleaded with the man even as I swiped away at my tears with indignant anger. « Definitely not Jake. Promise me, okay ? »

The man murmured his reassurances and that was all I had time for. Still hugging my journal to my chest, I pushed my way through the main door and rushed to the private elevator. In the couple of minutes it took to get down to the main lobby, I’d dried my face and pulled myself together. I’d wasted five years of my life on Jake—I refused to waste another second when he deserved nothing of my time.

On my way back to the car waiting for me, I paused by the trash bin and without a second glance, tossed my diary into it.

It was an appropriate ending to what the whole thing finally seemed to be—a total waste.

But smart Tessa wasn’t fully back quite yet.

Feeling like I needed a physical purge to make room for her again, I took up an offer from Nate to go out for a movie and dinner. He was one of the guys who’d been hovering around me this year, very eager and very attentive. He was boyishly handsome, well-mannered for a high-school boy and funny enough to keep me awake in the three hours of our date even if most of our conversation was about his favorite cars. It felt like a balm on my wounded heart to have it wooed that I allowed myself to wonder just how much comfort I could find if I’d let Nate take things a little farther.

The answer was not a hell of a lot.

Having your first time at the back of a car, no matter how nice or expensive it was, with a guy who was too focused on his own pleasures to think of your own, was a pretty grim experience.

The fact that I did it as some kind of idiotic revenge on a man who didn’t even know what he’d reduced me to made it worse. It was one thing to waste your time on someone who didn’t love you and something else entirely to waste what could’ve been a special once-in-a-lifetime experience because you were pissed off about it.

Smart Tessa came back right around as my self-respect started to abandon me, grabbing hold of it just before it could slip from my hands completely.

And she never left again.

Tessa

When my heart sped up at the call display bearing his name, I told myself it was just old habit that was taking its sweet time to die.

It didn’t mean anything.

After almost two years, it shouldn’t mean anything—not anymore.

« How’s Bangkok ? » I tried to match my expression to my flippant tone as I inspected myself in the full-length mirror. The struggle was real when I heard his all-too-familiar voice infused with warmth and humor.