Cherry Popper Read online

  “None of your business,” she replied tartly.

  I hid a smile. She was so prim and proper. “So, what are you up to while you’re here?” I asked.

  Mia sat rigidly on the passenger seat with her arms crossed over her chest and the corners of her mouth tilted down. She turned and looked at me with a surprised expression, as though she’d never had to make conversation with anyone in her life. She was probably used to being driven around in the city by her chauffeur.

  Well, I hated to break it her, but I wasn’t anyone’s chauffeur.

  “Attending Julie’s wedding,” she replied, rubbing her hand over her face absently.

  “And then you’re back to the city?” Jesus, I could have bitten my tongue out. Why the fuck couldn’t I mind my own business?

  She opened her mouth, then furrowed her brow, and fell silent for a few seconds. “You know, I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that.” She sounded genuinely lost for a moment.

  If I hadn’t known better, I might have felt sorry for her, but I did know better. She was a spoiled little rich girl having an existential crisis in her twenties, because what else do you do when you have everything you could possibly want?

  I arrived outside her parent’s place, one of the fanciest houses in town. Actually, more a mansion than a house. Someone must have been monitoring the entrance as the wrought iron gates opened slowly. No way would I be going in there. I jumped out and hauled her bags to the ground.

  She sat there staring straight ahead, as though she didn’t want to go in and face them.

  I walked around to the passenger door. “Unless you want to help me fix up your car, you better get moving, Princess,” I nudged.

  She blinked as though realizing where we actually were. “Right, right.” She opened the door, then paused and glanced back over at me. “Thanks, Jesse.” She nodded. “For the lift and sorting my car out. I really appreciate it.” With that, she grabbed her bags and started dragging them up to the house.

  I found myself unable to move. I just stood and watched her make her way up the drive. Then I shook my head, got into my truck, and kicked the ignition. What the fuck was I doing, staring at her like a horny teenager? Just because I had a thing for her in high school didn’t mean that I still had to be drooling over her like a stray dog. I headed back to the shop. Time to put her out of my head. As soon as I was done with her car, I would be done with her.

  And I was more than all right with that.

  Chapter 7

  Mia

  “You did what?”

  My mother was standing there, hands planted on her hips, glaring down at me like I had just strolled into the house and slapped her around the head.

  I sighed, clasped my hands in front of me on the breakfast bar, and repeated what I’d said, “I left Mark because he was cheating on me.”

  My mother’s mouth dropped open, but she couldn’t give up on her dream. “When was this? How long ago?”

  “Uh, earlier today?” I replied. The city felt so far away, the apartment a million miles away from where I was right now. I wondered if he had cleaned the cake. Maybe he was stress-eating the smashed bits right now, knowing that the party I had organized for him was going to kick off soon, and then he would have to explain why I wasn’t there. No, nope, no. I refused to think about him. He didn’t deserve anymore of my time.

  “Christ.” My mother tossed her hands in the air. “Just like that? It’s over?”

  “Trust me, he made it pretty unequivocal,” I assured her. I wanted to tell her what I’d walked in and seen, but I knew that she either wouldn’t believe me or would be mad at me for telling her. She was a prude, through and through, and even the notion of Mark fucking one of my friends in such a visceral way would set her off again.

  She paused for a moment and then came to sit down next to me. She covered my hand with hers.

  I felt surprised at the show of tenderness; if I had to come up with five words to describe my mother, I was pretty sure ‘tender’ wouldn’t have been high up there, but I guess she was trying her best.

  “I can’t believe that,” she shook her head.

  My father was elsewhere, reading in his study, where he had vanished to after he found out that I’d broken up with Mark. He just needed some time to process the information.

  Frankly, I felt glad there wasn’t another person I had to deflect commentary from about the break-up. “I can,” I replied, and I almost sniggered at the ridiculousness of it. “He was a jerk, Mom. Always has been. It’s that simple.”

  “Still…” She shook her head once more, like she was trying to rattle free the thought of Mark being a jerk. “He always seemed like such a good man. So well-suited to you.”

  Well-suited to what you wanted for me, I filled in the blanks in my head, but said nothing. She was trying, and I had to at least appreciate that.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked in a bewildered voice. “Have you told everyone?”

  “Not yet, but I think I’m going to leave that up to him to do,” I replied. “I don’t want to have to think about him again.”

  “What about the wedding arrangements? Who will cancel those?”

  “Let him sort that out since it’s his fault and he can damn well refund Dad for the deposit money too.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath and exhaled it, something she’d probably learned in one of her yoga classes. They were specially set up for the time-rich ladies of this town.

  I stared at her. “You okay?”

  She nodded slowly. “And what are you going to do after that?”

  “I guess I’ll just move my stuff out of the apartment and find my own place?” I shrugged. “I mean, I could freelance. I don’t have to worry about sticking to my job. I can go wherever I want.”

  “You could come back here,” she said quickly.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this place on a long-term basis. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was move back here. Not that I loathed the place or anything, but it always felt limited and limiting, like the town boundaries were clamping me in. “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Not much for me here, after all.”

  “But there are lots of eligible men here,” she reminded me. She probably had a list as long as my arm of the guys that I could already have been married to if I had just swallowed my pride and married someone from my high school graduating class.

  For some weird reason, my mind flashed back to Jesse and I hurriedly shoved him out of my thoughts. He had nothing to do with this conversation. I didn’t even know why I was giving him space in my brain. “Yeah, okay, but it’s all a bit early,” I said softly. I didn’t want to get into the same argument with her right now. This was her way of supporting me and I should just take a step back and appreciate the fact that she hadn’t found some way to blame me for the break-up.

  She squeezed my hand, got up, and started to pace.

  I could see her matchmaking abilities clicking into high gear, as she ran through the names of every one of the sons of her friends who was still single right now. “Mom, you really don’t need to worry about setting me up with anyone new,” I tried to stop her. “I’m not looking for a relationship. I think I need a break from men, get my head together a little—”

  “It’s such a shame things didn’t work out with you and Stan.” She sighed.

  I fell silent and blinked for a moment, trying to place the name. “Stan? Julie’s Stan?” I blurted when I figured it out. I shook my head in disbelief. “Mom, he’s getting married to one of my friends. Now’s not the time—”

  “I know, I know.” She waved her hand. “But he was crazy about you.”

  “And I kind of hated him,” I reminded her. “There was nothing there between us to work out. He liked me, I never liked him, and that was years ago anyways. He’s moved on and so have I. I’m going to be at his wedding in a few days’ time, so I think you might have left things a lit
tle late for me to pick up where we left off.”

  “He’s such a nice man, though,” she went on, as though she hadn’t heard a word that had come out of my mouth. “He would never have done something like this to you.”

  “Well, I’ll make sure to pass that along to Julie when I see her tonight.”

  “She’s not good enough for him.” She sniffed.

  “Well, that’s not for you to decide,” I replied firmly, getting to my feet. “I’m off. I need to take a shower.”

  My phone rang and my mother whirled her head around, her eyes wide and full of curiosity.

  I was positive she expected it to be Mark. I fished my phone out of my purse and looked at it. “Talk of the devil,” I muttered as I clicked accept.

  Chapter 8

  Mia

  “You’re already in town!” Julie screamed into my ear.

  “How did you know?”

  “Shana told me.”

  “Right.” Of course. I forgot how fast news traveled in Cold Creek.

  “Oh my God, I’m so excited. This means you can make it to my bachelorette party tonight?”

  “Umm…well…Actually.”

  But she didn’t even hear anything I had to say. “So, we’ll see you at about eight at Tom’s Dive. All the girls will be there. It’ll be such fun.”

  I crinkled my nose. “Tom’s Dive?” When did Julie ever go to a crappy bar like Tom’s Dive?

  “I want to let my hair down where no one knows us.”

  That made sense, but I really didn’t feel like getting drunk with a bunch of my old friends tonight. I had wounds to tend to. They were shallow, but they still needed licking. “The thing is—”

  “I know,” she cut me off. “You have no car. I’ll get Ella to pick you at about quarter to eight. She can drop you off on the way home.”

  “Okay, see you there,” I agreed with a sigh. She hung up and I met my mother’s eyes. “I guess I need to get ready for Julie’s bachelorette party.”

  “Yes, it’s a good idea for you to go out.” Mom waved her hand at me absently. “I should go and see how your father is feeling.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I made my way out of the room and started toward the stairs.

  “Oh, and Mia?” she called after me.

  I closed my eyes and came to a halt. This was the bit I’d been waiting for ever since I arrived. I turned around, prepared for the worst. “Yeah?”

  “You did the right thing,” she went on brusquely. “Well done for getting out of there.”

  I smiled slowly. Maybe I had remembered my mother wrong. Maybe things weren’t going to be as bad as I had thought. “Thanks, Mom.” I headed up to my room and straight to the shower.

  As the warm water cascaded over my body, I realized that a night out with the girls might actually do me some good. I hadn’t seen most of them in years, but perhaps going out with people who weren’t going to watch me with sad, pitying eyes all evening would be helpful.

  I dressed, blew out my hair, and went full-out with my makeup. Mark always hated it when I got really dressed up like this, saying that I looked like a hooker, but right now, I wanted to do everything I could to spite him even if he wasn’t here to see it. I rolled over what my mother had said in my mind, about Stan. He had always come across to me as the kind of guy who oozed a kind of sad desperation around any woman he was remotely interested in. The way he chased me back in the day had been more than a little pathetic. He wanted to give me a ring on our second date, but maybe he had changed and turned into someone actually worthy of a catch like Julie. True, she was very competitive, always scoring points with me, but she was smart, funny and cool, so I couldn’t see her settling for anything second best.

  Out of the shower, I pulled off my ring, and dumped it amongst my makeup on the dressing table. God only knew how much he dropped on it. He never told me, despite the fact that I’d told him a dozen times that I didn’t want him to spend a silly amount of cash on the ring because then I would be always terrified of losing it. Just another example of how he had never really paid a lot of attention to a word that came out of my mouth.

  My parents were out in the garden when I slipped out and got into Ella’s car. Ella kept house for Julie’s family. She was a kind cheerful woman who kept up a light conversation all the way to the Tom’s Dive.

  “Have a great time,” she said, before driving away.

  Flicking back my hair, I opened the door to the bar. I found the girls were already in a corner booth and were waiting patiently for me to get there.

  “Mia!” Julie draped in a cheap nylon veil and clearly, a drink deep already, leapt to her feet shrieking my name as soon as she spotted me.

  “Julie.” I opened my arms.

  She practically leapt into them, giving me a big hug. Anyone looking at us would have thought we were the greatest friends in the world.

  The funny thing was, even though we had been friends all the way through high school, I didn’t know for sure how Julie really felt about me. Scratch the surface and what was underneath might have been resentment and jealously. My family was richer than hers and though she always had a better figure than me and was classically beautiful, she always seemed secretly jealous.

  The familiar scent of her expensive perfume enveloped me in a cloud as she drew away and let out a tinkle of laughter. “Look at you. You look amazing. Where did you get that dress? It’s so cute.”

  I shrugged. “I think I got it in a sale.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “I’ll have to come up to the city and go shopping with you one day. I bet you know all the best shops.”

  I grinned. “Yes, I do, and I could totally take you around.”

  She flicked her long blonde hair back. “That’s decided then. We’ll talk about it later. Come and join us.” She took my hand and led me back to the table.

  It was crowded with a half-dozen of the girls I’d been to high school with. All of them greeted me as I took my seat. Shana, Kayla, Nina, Mary-Jane, Michelle, and a few others.

  I settled into my seat and leaned back, letting out a long sigh of relief. “Man, it feels good to be back here.” I smiled at them. “Are we ready for the next round?”

  “We totally are.” Kayla tipped the rest of her drink down her throat, before getting to her feet. “Come on, I’ll help you get them back from the bar. I know what everyone’s drinking.”

  “Lead the way,” I said with a laugh. I followed her up to the bar and peered at the surface to see if the sticky patch that had always been there was still sitting next to the beer taps, and sure enough, it was. Some things never changed. Maybe that was a good thing. Because everything I’d gone chasing in the city hadn’t exactly turned out too well for me.

  We picked up our drinks and joined the group back at the table. Before I knew it, we were all shrieking with laughter as we recounted some over-the-top story of something that had happened in high school. I didn’t mention the break-up to them, but eventually, Julie had zeroed in on the lack of ring on my finger earlier on and could no longer hold it in.

  “No ring?” She grabbed my hand tipsily and held it up. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Mark and I are over.” I waved my hand airily and marveled at the fact that it had all happened only a few hours ago and yet he felt like the distant past. “I’ll tell you the story later.”

  Julie paused, and for a second, I thought she was going to freak out about what I’d just told her, but instead, she dropped my hand and lifted her drink. “To the newly-single Mia,” she toasted, and everyone tapped their drinks together. She leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear. “I never liked that asshole anyway.”

  I burst out laughing. “Trust me, you’re not going to like him any more when I tell you what happened.”

  “I’ll get that story out of you before you leave,” she muttered, and squeezed my shoulder as the conversation turned back to other things.

  I appreciated the fact that she wasn’t about to make me drag t
he sorry story out in front of everyone. I also didn’t want to draw attention away from her as the focus of the night, so I was happy to let it slide for the time being.

  “Oh my God, you have to be kidding me,” Nina exclaimed suddenly, and pointed toward the door.

  All of us turned. Oh! My God, indeed. I felt my stomach drop and loop when I saw that Jesse had walked into the bar. He’d cleaned himself up from when I’d seen him earlier in the day, and I had to admit that he looked – he looked pretty damn good. Button-down shirt, jeans, hair styled so it spiked over in the front. I bit my lip, took a sip of my drink and averted my eyes, hoping that he hadn’t caught me looking. He’d been such a jerk to me earlier in the day, and I had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of knowing I had been thinking about him.

  “Oh, fuck.” Julie rolled her eyes and turned her back to him. “That dick. Great.”

  “Hey, what’s wrong with Jesse?” Nina cocked her head at the bride-to-be. “I think he’s kind of yummy.”

  I was glad that my back was to him, because I was pretty sure I could feel his presence, pulsing through the air and making my skin tingle.

  “That’s because you never really knew him in high school,” Julie denounced with a shiver of disgust.

  Nina frowned. “He had a nickname back then, didn’t he?”

  “Cherry popper,” I blurted out, then felt my neck go hot with embarrassment.

  “That’s right,” Nina said with a slow smile. “I remember now. He had that big black bike. They wanted to crown him Prom King, but they couldn’t find him, because he was doing some girl in the garden.”

  “Exactly,” Julie pounced. “He’s the biggest jerk on two legs. That man has slept with so many women he’s probably crawling with STDs.”