“No problem, Li. I’m glad I helped,” Nick replied, ruffling her dark chocolate hair and hugging her tightly. “I’ll miss you lots.”
“I’ll miss you, too.” She watched as he got into the car and she waved goodbye to him and BJ.
He watched wistfully in his mirror as Lila got smaller and smaller. Finally, BJ distracted him. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“You fell in love with her. No use in trying to hide it, Nick. But she either doesn’t know or she doesn’t love you back because you don’t look happy.”
He laughed bitterly. “Am I really that obvious? Gosh.”
“Sorry to tell you, but yeah, you are. So are you going to explain to me what happened or do you not wanna talk about it?”
He sighed. “You’re gonna end up coaxing it out of me, so I may as well tell you now. She broke up with her boyfriend of a year while I was there – rather, he cheated on her – and I ended up comforting her. I ended up falling in love with her somehow. We went to a party last night. We had a few drinks and after she told off her ex’s new girlfriend and called her a slut to her face, we went out on the beach. This was before I realized I loved her. Well, her ex was watching us, and we decided we’d make him jealous, so we started making out. It kept going from there, and we went back to my hotel room…” he trailed off.
“You slept with her.”
“Yeah, I did. I told her I loved her and she said she loved me, too. This morning, I asked if it was just a one-night stand or what, and she said yeah, it was. She said we were drunk and we didn’t know what we were doing. I left it at that, and that’s pretty much it.”
“Mmmhmm, and you never told her you loved her when you were sober?” BJ inquired.
“No, I didn’t. It was obvious she didn’t want our friendship to develop into something else, so I left it alone.”
“Are you sure she didn’t want it? You were probably nervous and you could have purposely overlooked that to avoid the risk of being wrong and finding out she didn’t love you.”
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t. She was very quick to say it was nothing serious.”
“I saw how she looked when we were leaving, Nick. There was a definite possibility that she has feelings for you. Strong feelings.”
“I really don’t think so, Beej.”
“Okay, whatever,” she replied skeptically.
“Besides, I’m going on tour after next month, and I’m gonna be gone for four months. In that time, she’ll find a new boyfriend and she’ll be…she’ll be happy without me.”
“I’m sure she would be a lot happier with you,” she muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
As she watched BJ and Nick drive away, Lila buried her face in the borrowed tee-shirt and inhaled deeply. It smelled like him. God, she was going to miss having him around, but he had things to do, and so did she. She couldn’t help but think she should have told him how she felt, but it was a little late now. Oh, well. It probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway. The only thing that would come of it was awkwardness.
It was amazing how much happened in the span of a week. Nick showed up, she broke up with Josh, Josh found a new girlfriend, she realized she had feelings for Nick, she told off Josh’s new girlfriend, and she had a one-night stand with Nick. Now she ended the week feeling depressed and alone.