Repair Me (Kin #1)(35)
Author: Jennifer Foor

For the next few days my mother kept me busy. We went shopping and visited my brother and his family. It felt like a holiday instead of just being a normal day of the week. My dad even re-painted my room in a soothing blue that my mom felt was more adult than the purple color it had been for years.

I managed to sign up late for several of the classes that I’d been enrolled in at my other school. The calls from Mack finally stopped, but the silence was just as bad. Sometimes I would stare at my phone, anxiously waiting for it to ring.

Except it never did.

The only calls I got were from my friends, especially Lacey. After apologizing for letting Mack stay with them at the beach, she’d been trying as hard as she could to make it up to me. Over the past few months she’d been seeing this guy that I’d never met. She said he was a lifeguard when she met him a few years back, but now he was working at some detail shop for custom cars. On occasion, he would take her to fancy car shows and she even had her picture taken with a few famous people at those events. Lacey was beautiful and classy. She wanted things and did whatever she had to do to get them.

When her boyfriend was in town, she spent every second with him, and even drove back to the beach to see him on the weekends. I was glad she was happy, but longed to have what she did. I wanted to answer the phone with a smile on my face, because I knew the person I loved was on the other line. I wanted to smile when I saw my boyfriend pulling up to take me out. Being alone was terrible and I was tired of pretending that I was going to be fine. I needed to move on with my life. Being young was a gift and I needed to feel like myself again, before the “week from Hell” happened.

When I told Lacey about my new predicament, she insisted I should go out with her and her new beau. She swore he wouldn’t mind. So I got dolled up and we met him in the city, about halfway between where they both lived. Lacey ran up and threw her arms around the guy like he’d just come off of tour overseas. They kissed and got caught up in each other, forgetting that I was standing there, looking like the third wheel that I didn’t want to be.

Finally Lacey turned around and pulled her man by the hand over to where I was standing. “Sky, this is my boyfriend, Shayne. Shayne, this is my best friend, Sky.”

Something about this guy was so familiar, but I couldn’t place where I would have met him before. He smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“Have we met before?”

When he spoke, his southern drawl caught me off guard. “I reckon it’s possible. I’ve met a lot of people workin’ at the beach.”

His voice reminded me of Ford’s immediately, but this guy looked nothing like him. He had messy blonde hair and light blue eyes. Even though he wasn’t a lifeguard anymore, his skin was dark and sun-kissed. “Yeah, maybe I’ve seen you around.”

I tried not to stare, except for the rest of the night I found myself wondering why this guy seemed so familiar to me. When Lacey stepped away to use the ladies room, he approached me. “I got this cousin I think you might want to meet, if you’re interested.”

I smiled and felt weird that he was trying to set me up instead of Lacey. She hadn’t mentioned him having a cousin and I surely didn’t want to be set up with someone that wasn’t my type. “Thanks. I’m not into guys anymore.”

“That’s a real shame, because I’m pretty certain that you two would really hit it off.”

“Like I said before, I’m not into guys.”

I have no idea why I told him that, but he didn’t ask me another question for the rest of the night. It made me feel uncomfortable, so I kept to myself. As we were driving home, Lacey gave me a hard time about it. “What is your problem? Why would you tell him you were a lesbian?”

“I didn’t. I just said I wasn’t into guys.”

“Same difference.”

“Whatever! I’m not meeting some stranger. Don’t you think I’ve had enough bad luck with guys?”

She started laughing. “Actually, I think that once you slept with a strange guy you met on the road, all rules are off.”

“Screw you!” I laughed with her, realizing what she was saying made sense. “Just because it happened once, doesn’t mean it will ever happen again.”

“You know what I think?” I hated when she asked me that.

“I don’t want to know.”

“I think that you’re still hung up on that Chevy guy.”

“Ford.” As if I hadn’t told her about him a zillion times.

“Who cares what his name is? You still want to see him again. Admit it!” Sometimes, I wondered why I told her anything. She obviously knew how to pluck my nerves.

“So what if I do? It’s not like I’ll ever see him again. He has a girlfriend, remember?”

“That didn’t matter to you before.”

I rolled down the window to get some air. “It did matter. He said they weren’t together. She saw me leave with him twice. I obviously didn’t affect them getting back in bed together.”

“You’re telling me that if you saw him again, you wouldn’t want to get back in his bed? I know you better than that, girlfriend, and I can tell you are still hung up on him. You moved back home and practically gave up a top-notch education. You can tell the whole world that it was because of Mack, but I know the real truth. I know that those couple days you spent with that Ford guy left you lost and confused. You haven’t been the same and you know it.”

She messed with the radio and turned a song up before I could answer. The problem with being friends for so long gave her the right to tell me how she felt, whenever she found it necessary.

I leaned over and turned down the song. “You’re right. I can’t stop thinking about him. What am I supposed to do? I’ve tried everything.”

“Go out with Shayne’s cousin. He may not be as hot, or as good in bed, but he’s the distraction that you need. There’s other fish in the sea, Sky. You’re the worst rebounder ever!”

“I know!” I shook my head. “Fine! I’ll go out on one double date with you, but if this guy turns out to be some creep, I’m going to kick your ass the whole way home.”

She started laughing. “Deal!”

Ford

I’d had a shitty couple of weeks, dealing with my mother being in rehab and my father fawning over his decision to let her back in his life. With my uncle and cousin stopping by frequently, life had gotten too chaotic to even consider looking up Sky. I was sure I could find her on the internet, or even poke around on her campus, but with nothing to offer her; I knew she was better off. Maybe her thinking that I was with Ashley was the best thing for her.