Free The Big Rewind by Libby Cudmore Page A

sent a friend request to his fiancé too.
    Okay, so maybe I couldn’t date Jeremy—but I was starting to feel confident that I could reclaim my past, make right the wrongs that had taken love from me in the first place.

Chapter 13
NOT ABOUT LOVE
    E ven after work on Tuesday, Sid was carrying a fresh cup of coffee. It had only been a few days since I’d seen him, but he looked exhausted and jittery, like a junkie informant on prime time. He hadn’t shaved since brunch and his wrinkled blue dress shirt only made his eyes look more bloodshot. “Rough couple of nights?” I asked.
    I wasn’t expecting him to smile and I sure as hell wasn’t expecting him to reply, “Best nights of my life.”
    â€œYeah?” I asked. “Care to share?”
    Instead of answering, he produced a corkscrew from his jacket pocket and wrestled with a bottle of pinot noir while I lit the candles. “One of these days I’ll buy you a damn corkscrew,” he teased.
    â€œBut then you won’t have an excuse to come over anymore.”
    â€œI’m sure I could find one,” he said, handing me a glass of wine. “After all, we haven’t even started on Magnum, PI .”
    Normally Sid and I just ate frozen stuff from my Trader Joe’s pilgrimages. My kitchen was a joke; while all my peers were starting food blogs and writing recipes for making gluten-free vegan lasagna in the microwave, a real fancy night for me might involve putting bacon, eggs, and toast all on the same plate. But tonight I’d planned ahead and bought a chuck roast to braise inmy grandmother’s Crock-Pot. My mother had e-mailed me her secret barbecue sauce recipe, given to her by a North Carolina cousin who swore all three of her husbands had proposed after the first bite. I’d burned myself browning it and almost dropped it on the floor, but all that was forgotten as the whole apartment filled with the smell of late summer.
    I wasn’t expecting Sid to propose, but I felt bad about the last few times we’d gotten together—KitKat’s memorial, the incident at Egg School, all my snark about his stripper love interest—and if there was any way to a man’s heart, my mother’s cousin told me, it was through meat.
    â€œEverything smells delicious,” he said. “You couldn’t buy this scent at Whole Foods or Fairway.”
    â€œI slaved over the Crock-Pot all day,” I joked, holding up my glass for a toast. “Cheers, Sid.”
    â€œCheers, Jett.”
    I took a drink and mmm ’d in approval. I’d gone through a brief wine snob phase—like everyone did—when Sideways came out; Catch, Reese, and I would go for tastings because it was the cheapest way to get a drink, buy ten-dollar cabs and pinots and imagine we could taste notes of grass and strawberries. But now, thankfully, I just drank it like a normal person.
    Sid put on Duran Duran’s Rio while I plated our meals. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up KitKat’s tape from where I’d left it sitting on the end of the table, next to mail for my grandmother. “A mix tape?” He examined it like Indiana Jones. “Wow, I can’t even remember the last time I held one of these.”
    Panic. I hadn’t meant to leave it out, but I’d been caught, and if I was going to fess up to anyone, it would be Sid. After all, he was the only one who knew I’d found her body. “It was for KitKat,” I said, putting down our plates and taking my seat. “It ended up in my mailbox by mistake. . . . When I took it downstairs . . .” I took a long drink of wine, as though that could wash my memory clean.
    He squeezed my hand under the table. “Who made it for her?”
    â€œThat’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” I said after swallowing. “Call me crazy, but I cannot get over this weird feeling that something on that