Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) (37 page)

“No, I can’t,” John said.

“John, what is
wrong
with you?” Suse said. “My best
friend can’t get over you, you can’t get over her, and you
really want to keep pretending she doesn’t matter to you
and marry someone you can’t stand?”

“You don’t know anything about me and Sasha.”

“I know you haven’t looked any happier than Denise
has since the two of you broke up,” Suse said.

“Well, she’s impossible. She’s the one who pushed me
away.”

“It wasn’t easy for her—”

“For
her
? I was almost disowned!”

“John, think how she felt. She never thought you’d
choose her over your family. She doesn’t trust easily and
she has trouble letting people in. Whatever. We all have
flaws. But she had all that stuff with the Tau Gammas
going on and everything. You could have tried to see it
from her side a little more,” Suse said.

John was quiet again.

Astoria burst back into the room and stormed over to
where her phone lay on the bed. She shouted down at it,
“You have no idea what she’s even been through, do you?
You know who Joe is?”

“Who?” John had obviously never heard of Joe.

“
Astoria, no. Denise wouldn’t want us—” Suse
started.

Astoria shushed her impatiently. “No. He needs to hear this. And he will.”

“Hear what?” John spoke up.

Astoria flopped down on the bed next to the phone.
“Joe was Denise’s boyfriend in college. Her first and only
boyfriend before your lame—”

“Astoria! What did we talk about?”

“Okay, Suse. Calm down. Anyway, she met Joe in her
last year of undergrad at a party. She was really in love with this guy. And he treated her right and said all the
right things for a while. Then, one day, somebody new
caught his eye and he was gone. Just like that. No expla
nation. Just a text message saying he didn’t want to see
her anymore. He wouldn’t answer her calls, emails, texts,
anything.

“Denise thought she would never be able to love
anyone again. She had gotten it in her head in those few
months they were together that he was the only one for her. He told her some stupid lie about wanting to marry
her and she believed it. She just knew that they would get
married after graduation and she had already started
planning her life around him.

“When he left her, it destroyed her. I mean, com
pletely destroyed her. It even broke her body down. She
was so sick that the doctor almost misdiagnosed her with
mono. She lay in bed for weeks, missing most of her
classes. Her GPA plummeted. She shut everyone out. She
lost most of her friends from undergrad that year because
o
f it. And after that, she convinced herself that if he could
say all those things and not mean them—if he could
seem that sincere and be lying the whole time—that it
was impossible to find true love.

“Just thought you should know all of that. Since
you’re so ready to blame her for everything,” Astoria said.

I was furious when I first heard that Astoria had told
him about Joe, but ironically, Joe probably helped bring
us back together. Joe was a part of the darkest days of my
past. Losing your first love is never easy. But when you’re
stressed out anyway in your last year of school and not
knowing where your life is headed, and you’re emotion
ally fragile to begin with, it can be devastating.

“You shouldn’t have done that. Denise wouldn’t have
wanted him to find out like that,” Suse hissed.

“He needed to hear it,” Astoria said firmly.

Unable to argue with that, Suse turned her attention back to the phone. “John?”

Suse thought he’d hung up when he said, “Suse?”
“Yeah?”

“I know. I know we both messed up. And I do want
to try to make this work. I want that more than anything.
What I’m really afraid of is she won’t give me another
chance. I’ve already screwed up so much with her,” John’s
voice cracked. “Especially considering what Astoria just
said.”

“John, she ran away from home over you. This thing
between you two is not beyond repair. You still have her
heart. You just have to be more careful with it. Really. If
you break it again, I’ll break your neck,” Suse said.

J
ohn laughed. “Suse . . . I really hope you’re not
wrong about this.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m going to buy my ticket tonight. Don’t tell her
I’m coming, okay?”

“Are you kidding? So she can run away again?”
“I thought you said this is what she wants.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that yet,” Suse said with
a sly grin. John laughed again. Suse heard the clicking of
a keyboard in the background from John’s end. He asked
for the hotel’s address and she gave it to him.

“Okay, I’m looking up flights right now. See you
tomorrow, Suse.”

“All right. Bye.” Suse hit the “end” button on her
phone, feeling pretty pleased with herself.

“So you talked him into it.” Astoria looked shocked
out of her mind.

Suse shrugged. “Yeah, with your help. As unbeliev
able as that is. Denise may kill you for what you just did.”

“Whatever. He’s coming. That’s the important thing.”

“Just don’t break them up again. I can’t keep going
through this.” Suse stood up and pulled her travel bag
onto the bed.

“I didn’t break them up before. Stop saying that.”

“Just kidding,” Suse said, walking toward the bath
room with her bag. “Sort of,” she muttered under her
breath.

“I heard that!” Astoria called after her.

Suse laughed as a flip-flop went sailing past her head,
way to her left.

JOHN ARCHER

I think I had a small heart attack when I opened the
door and John was standing on the other side.

“You’re being really stupid. How could you blow off
your job like that?” Not the greeting I had expected. And
it automatically put me on the defensive, of course.

“You’re engaged to someone you don’t love. I’m
stupid?” I snapped.

“You gonna let me in?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I said, crossing my arms over
my chest. Inside, I’d never been happier to see someone in
my life. But I didn’t move. Because inside, I was also furious.

“Why did you do this?” John asked.

“That’s not any of your business,” I said shortly. I
started to close the door. He pushed it open and pushed
me backward into the room. He shut the door behind
him and went into the living area of my suite. He sat on
the sofa and looked up at me as if he was waiting for me
to come over and sit. I stayed exactly where I was. He’d
already pushed his way into the room. He wasn’t going to
command me around it, too.

I stared at him angrily, at a loss for words. Where did
he get off? Where had he even come from?

“
How’d you know I was here?” I asked, still making
no moves.

“How do you think?” he asked in a tone matching
mine in nastiness. “How many people know you’re here,
Denise?”

I rolled my eyes. “Astoria and Suse.”

“You have some nosy friends. But that’s a good thing
this time.”

“So I guess they talked you into coming here to talk
me out of dropping out of school and talk me into
coming back. Which is pointless,” I said, biting my lip,
tears threatening to fall. So many emotions were flooding
through me for him at that moment. And almost all of
them involved running over to him and jumping into his
arms and pretending none of the last few months had happened. But there was just so much hurt inside of me.

“I’m not here to save the day,” he said quietly. I
couldn’t look into those eyes. I looked over the top of his head. I hated him. I loved him. I never wanted to see him
again, but I’d die if he ever left that suite. “I’m here for
you and only you. I love you. And I’m not leaving
without you.”

“What are you talking about? You stop it right now.
Your mom and Sasha are picking out china patterns. I’ve
been down this road with you too many times, and I’m
sick of it. You’re not doing this to me again. I refuse to let
you.” I pounded my thigh with my fist for emphasis.
“You told me love wasn’t enough. Remember?” And I
couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. My whole body shook. I turned away from him. I was sobbing so hard I
c
ould barely breathe. But when I could catch my breath
between sobs, all I could do was scream.

“I was wrong,” he said quietly. I could hear him
walking toward me. I ran out onto the balcony. But
before I could get the door shut, he was out there, too.
And blocking my way back inside. Nowhere to hide.
“Love is enough. It’s all that matters.”

I sank down to the cement floor of the balcony and
hugged my knees to my chest. I rested my head against my knees. I was still sobbing—only a little quieter.

“Do you—know how much it hurt—to hear you
were marrying her? Do you— know how much it hurt— to lose you? Do you
know
—how much it
hurt
—to try to
hate you? Do you know how much it hurt to think I
would never see you again?” I said, almost over my sobs. I burst into fresh tears after I got my last word out.

“I’m never going to hurt you again,” he said solemnly.
I shrank from his touch, forcing myself as far into the corner I was sitting in as I could manage.

“You’re right. Because you’re not going to get the
chance,” I said.

John sighed, lowering himself to the floor of the bal
cony and sitting right in front of me.

I put my head back down on my knees.

“I messed up big time. Huge. I could make a lot of
excuses you don’t want to hear. But they’re all true. I was
scared. Okay, I’m a punk. But this is hard for me. It’s
taken a lot of adjusting. And trying to figure out what I
really wanted. And I mean, you just made it so easy for me. When you picked that fight, I took the loser’s way
out. But I’m not taking it out again,” John said softly.

I still wouldn’t look at him. “I bet you didn’t even call
the engagement off yet.”

“I just got here. I’ll do it right now. Right here in
front of you if you want,” John said.

I looked up. He had his phone in his hand.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. “I’m tired
of being hurt. Please stop,” I said.

“Denise, all I want is you.”

“You’re engaged.”

“I want you. Whatever you want. I’d get engaged to
you today. I’d marry you right now. This is Vegas. There’s
probably a wedding chapel in the lobby,” John said.

I laughed reluctantly.

John smiled, looking a little relieved. “Can I at least
hug you?” John asked. I didn’t say anything. John stood
up. He took my hands in his and pulled me to my feet.

It was all over. His touch. Those perfectly green eyes.
I couldn’t stop him from pulling me to him and I didn’t
want to. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed
his shoulders. He felt like John. He smelled like John.

It all came rushing back in on me so quickly that I
would have lost my footing if he hadn’t been holding me
so tightly. He was really holding me. I felt his phone
vibrate against his thigh. He took it out with one hand, still holding me with the other arm. He groaned. I knew
he was rolling his eyes even though I kept my face tightly
pressed into his T-shirt.