Free How Forever Feels by Laura Drewry Page B

really bad at it, and I’m…well…”
    “Let me guess: It’s complicated.”
    Maya’s blue eyes twinkled. “How did you guess?”
    “Just a hunch.” He managed to grin back at her for a second, but then had to look away. Those eyes were just too…
too Maya
…for him to keep looking into them right then. “So what’s the problem? What’s making everything so complicated?”
    She laughed, but it wasn’t genuine enough to fool him for a second.
    “Well, let’s see. For starters, it turned out that what I thought was forever actually wasn’t, so I’m a little gun-shy now when it comes to things like who I can trust.”
    “Oh. Right.”
Brilliant response, moron
. “Well, if it means anything to you at this point, Will’s really sorry for what he did, and I know Stella feels awful about it.”
    “It doesn’t, but thank you.” If anyone deserved to get a dig in right there, it was Maya, but she didn’t. Instead, she stooped over to grab a stick, and instead of throwing it for Pete right away, she stared down at it for a second. “Can I ask you something?”
    Second only to the phrase “we need to talk,” that had to be the most feared question ever, not just because it was so vague, but because you couldn’t ever really say no to it.
    “Yeah.”
    She took a deep breath, threw the stick, then turned to face Jack, her eyes filled with a wretched mix of dread, desperation, and misery. “Did you really not know about Stella?”
    “About Stella? No—not until Will sent me pictures of what you did to the house when you left.”
    And just like that, Snip’s expression softened and the dread vanished.
    It was true. He hadn’t known about Stella, and even though he was plenty pissed off when he found out, he wasn’t totally surprised, either, not after what happened at Will’s bachelor party. How many times had he wanted to tell Maya the truth about that night, and how many times had he chickened out because it would be like throwing Will under the bus? Not only that: Jack didn’t want to be the one to hurt her, to make her look the way she’d looked at him a second ago.
    And what good would it do to tell her now? It wasn’t like she could hate Will any more than she already did, and it wasn’t like she could divorce him all over again, so it would serve no good purpose for anyone.
    Best to just leave it in the past with everything else.
    Exhaling slowly, she started walking again, but Jack took a second to catch his breath before following. Scooping up the stick Pete dropped, he hurled it as far as he could into the trees.
    “So tell me about these setups Jayne arranges,” he said. “They can’t be any worse than the chick in the catsuit.”
    “No, you win on that one. I’ve never had a catsuit.” Snorting softly, Maya rolled her eyes and sidestepped a low-hanging branch. “The first time she did it was at one of her New Year’s parties. Brad Something-or-Other. He was okay, but I wasn’t even divorced yet and he wasn’t any more interested in me than I was in him. That didn’t stop Jayne, though, and once Ellie hooked up with Brett—”
    “I met him the other day.”
    Maya’s smile slowly crept back. “He’s good people, that one—best thing that ever happened to Ellie.”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “He’s right. Anyway, when they got together, it left me as the only single one in the group, so Jayne’s been after me constantly.”
    “She didn’t seem the pushy sort to me.”
    “She’s not usually, but this…
ugh
…She’s starting to drive me crazy.”
    “Can’t be that bad,” he said. “When was the last one?”
    “Couple weeks ago.” Snip’s cheeks flushed a little when she looked up at him. “Tomorrow’s a whole ‘nother adventure.”
    “Tomorrow? Who’s the lucky guy?”
    “The guy who runs the bike shop. And I know it’s horrible for me to even say it, but the only thing I’m looking forward to about the whole night is the baked stuffed potato