Page 27 of Pugs & Kisses

A wareness and heat hovered in the air around them. It pressed against Evie’s skin like the humidity that usually blanketed this city.

Bryson’s words caused a cluster of sensations to stir deep within her belly, but it was the tone in which he’d spoken them that truly got to her. His deep, resonant voice set off sensations in a lower, more sensitive region.

“I—” Evie started, but words escaped her.

Bryson settled his elbows on the table again and clasped his hands together, agitatedly tapping his folded hands against his lips.

“I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, that I needed to give you space. But fuck it. I can’t pretend I don’t want more from you, Ev. I can’t keep pretending that I only want to be friends. I’m not that good of an actor.”

“Bryson, please don’t do this. I can’t…” Evie massaged the left side of her forehead, where an ache had immediately settled. “I can’t do this right now,” she finished.

“Just hear me out. When you came to my office and proposed working together for the sake of The Sanctuary, you said you wanted to leave the past in the past. You were talking about the way things ended that summer, right?”

She nodded.

“What about the rest of it, Ev? What about what happened before things ended? We spent an entire summer falling in—”

She cut him off. “It was just a little lighthearted flirting.”

“Bullshit,” Bryson said. “You were falling for me back then. I don’t care how much you try to deny it, Evie. I know you were.”

Should she continue to deny it?

Maybe while she was at it she could try to convince him that the sky was red and the ocean was orange. She had as much of a chance of doing the former as she did the latter.

“Okay, yes,” she said. She noticed her hands were trembling and tucked them in her lap, underneath the table.

“Yes, it was more than just flirting.” Her voice trembled as badly as her hands.

Evie took a breath and tried to inject humor.

“When was the last time you looked at pics from back then?” she said with a laugh. “Who could blame me?”

“Don’t do that,” Bryson said. “Don’t cheapen what happened between us. There was physical attraction on both our parts, but you know damn well it was more than just physical. I want you to admit it.”

“What’s the point in doing that now?”

“What’s the point in not?” he countered. “Why can’t you admit that you felt something for me back then?”

She glanced at him, then quickly looked away, afraid he would see the truth if he looked into her eyes.

“Ev?” he prompted.

“Bryson, don’t—”

“Why can’t you just admit it?”

“Fine!” She hadn’t mean to scream, but then again, she wanted to scream at him and never stop. It’s what he deserved for stirring up all these emotions she’d worked so hard to suppress over the years.

“Fine, you want me to admit that I had feelings for you?” she continued. “I had feelings for you. Real feelings. I tried not to act on them, but I guess I failed.”

It felt as if her entire body were on the verge of bursting. Evie counted her heartbeat at least a dozen times before Bryson finally spoke.

“Was that so hard?” he asked. There wasn’t a trace of smugness in his voice for getting her to admit how she’d felt. Instead, she heard sincere curiosity coming from him.

“Honestly, it was,” Evie said with a laugh that sounded hysterical even to her own ears. “Back then, those feelings scared me. I’d just broken up with Cameron. It felt as if things were moving too quickly.”

Which, ironically, was exactly how she felt right now.

But was it the same?

She was so different from the girl she’d been back then. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that Bryson wasn’t the same guy who’d walked away from her without a word?

“It’s not moving quickly enough for me,” he said. “I tried to pretend that I could just be your friend, but I can’t. I want more, Ev.”

Evie pressed her fingertips into her left temple and began massaging it again. This was the last conversation she’d expected to have when they’d sat down for dinner. But now that they were having it, maybe she could finally get answers to the question that had plagued her for the last eight years.

“And I can’t give you anything more without knowing why you left in the first place.”

There. She’d said it.

For so long she’d told herself it didn’t matter, but deep down she’d known that was a lie. Not knowing why Bryson left so abruptly had affected her life in ways she refused to acknowledge for the longest time.

Whenever Cameron brought up setting a date for the wedding, a nagging feeling would creep into her head, impeding her from taking that next step. This was the reason. Wondering why Bryson left. Wondering what she could have possibly done to send him running.

Wondering what could have been if he had stayed.

She was too much of a coward to ever put voice to that thought, but Evie knew in her heart it was true. Wondering what could have been with Bryson had made it impossible to marry Cameron.

She’d suppressed that question for so long, but now that he’d insisted they address it, she wanted answers.

“You want to clear the air, Bryson? Let’s do it. Tell me why you left without so much as a goodbye. Actually, no.” Evie held up her hands before he could speak. She was suddenly overcome by the fear of hearing an answer that she wasn’t sure she could handle. “Forget I said that. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does,” Bryson said.

“It doesn’t—”

“It’s what’s standing between us, Ev. I’ve owed you an explanation for years. Let me… let me finally give you one.”

There was a plea in both his eyes and voice that she couldn’t ignore, and she wondered if he had been seeking to unburden himself for as long as she had been seeking answers.

She sucked in a breath. The significance of this moment was not lost on her. She reached down and lifted Waffles onto the bench beside her. He immediately rested his head in her lap.

“Okay,” Evie said. “Why did you leave?”

He tapped his fingers against his lips.

“There were several reasons,” he started.

“I was approached by the surgical program at Tuskegee just as the summer was ending. I found out later that it was Doc who first contacted them. One of his college roommates was running the program at that time. Once they extended the offer, I couldn’t turn it down. ”

“That explains why you left LSU,” she said. “It doesn’t explain why you left me .”

“I know.” He ran both hands down his face.

The server chose that moment to return to their table.

“Can I clear any of this for you?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Evie said. “Can I get another coffee?”

“Of course. You too, sir?”

Bryson shook his head. “No thanks. I’m good.” He waited until the server had walked away before continuing. “I already alluded to why I thought things would never work between us,” he said. “It started that afternoon when I brought you home and saw the house you lived in.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Bryson.”

“To you,” he said. “But it made everything crystal clear to me. All I could see was this house that was so big everyone in my small hometown could probably fit inside of it. I sat in the driveway for several minutes after you went inside. I couldn’t stop staring at that house.

And the longer I stared, the more I came to realize that I would never fit into your world, Ev. ”

“So you decided to end things without asking me how I felt about how and where you fit into my world?”

“I already knew what you would say,” Bryson said. “You would have said that you didn’t see a problem with it.”

“Because there was no problem.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. How you saw things back then is not how the rest of the people in your life would have seen them. Your parents would have never stood for you being with a guy like me.”

“A standout student at one of the top veterinary schools in the South?”

“Who got there on a basketball scholarship,” he said.

“And you were already dating a standout student enrolled in that same veterinary program. The difference was that Cameron came from a wealthy family, while I came from a poor town on the bayou with parents who had to scrape together every penny just to provide what people in your world took for granted.”

“For your information, my father would have loved you,” she said. “He came from beginnings that were even more humble than yours. The fact that you’d come so far—he would have eaten that shit up.”

“It’s how I felt,” he said. “I didn’t say it was fair, but it is what it is.”

“I hate when people say ‘It is what it is,’ as if there’s no other way for things to be. It’s a lazy excuse.”

“I won’t argue with you, Ev. I told you before, I was messed up back then,” he said.

He paused for a moment, then said, “I almost reached out to you after I left. About a month after I got to Tuskegee.” He blew out a tired breath.

“But then I found out that you and Cameron were back together. It just confirmed what I’d already known. ”

“And what’s that, Bryson?”

“That you were meant to be in a relationship with someone like him. Someone with a background similar to yours, who could have brunch at the country club without eating his salad with the wrong fork—I know a salad fork these days, by the way. I learned a lot over these past eight years.”

Evie closed her eyes tight. An ache had formed in her throat; it made it difficult to swallow.

“I spent years wondering why you left the way you did, and now that I know, I honestly wish I didn’t,” Evie said. “It’s such a waste, Bryson. You made a decision for both of us. Did it ever occur to you that I should be the one to decide the kind of guy I want to be in a relationship with?”

“I don’t know what else to tell you, Ev.”

“Well, I asked,” Evie said. She’d been afraid she wouldn’t like the answer but never expected it would piss her off to the degree it had. It would have taken a simple conversation to put his worries to rest; all he’d had to do was come to her. Instead, he’d ghosted her.