His Best Friend's Sister in the Show Me State - Jessie Gussman Page 0,1

small town, and even if he didn’t know the person at his door, if they’d stopped in town to ask about him, locals would have been able to say exactly where he lived and that he’d be there.

Depending on who they’d talked to, they might have even been told there was no point going out before noon.

And they probably would have heard that they’d have to ring the doorbell until he stumbled to answer it.

Expect to wait a while.

Not everyone in town would say that, but there were a few.

He should feel more remorse about that than he did.

He’d worked hard not to feel anything.

As long as he had enough alcohol, he was successful.

His head felt like it was going to explode. His mouth was dry as a stack of hay in the desert. He really needed the restroom, but he was going to get rid of this person at his door because they’d annoyed him to the point of anger.

He could almost hear his mother saying, other people don’t make you angry, you are in charge of your own feelings.

But he shoved that aside. No one else believed that rubbish, and he wasn’t going to either. He could blame the entire rest of the world for his problems.

And he would.

He dragged himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the coffee table before standing with his knees slightly bent and one hand holding his aching head.

Marshaling up all the resolve that he possibly could, he put one unsteady foot in front of the other and made his way to the door, banging his knee on the end table and knocking the lamp to the floor with a sharp clatter that reverberated like gongs through his head.

He didn’t give a flip about the light. He never used it anyway. All he cared about was getting rid of whoever was at his door.

He finally made it to the door, fumbling with the lock and jerking the door at least three times before he managed to unlock it and yank it open.

He barely registered that there were two women and a young boy between them before he growled, “What do you want?”

Then his eyes seemed to focus, and he swayed, shock ripping through him.

The one woman looked familiar, but he wasn’t focused on her.

Because Athena’s golden eyes, filled with disgust and disdain, stared back at him, and he forgot about his headache, his dry mouth, and all of his other problems until he realized how terrible he must look and what she saw.

His eyes narrowed, and black meanness bubbled up inside of him.

She looked down on him, and while she was right and he just couldn’t justify himself, she also couldn’t possibly understand the pain and the memories.

Chapter 2

Athena’s heart beat hard and fast in her chest.

It grieved her to the very depths of her soul to see Preston looking the way he was.

Smelling the way he did.

She wrinkled her nose.

It was a lot easier to hide behind disdainful looks and a disgusted attitude than it was to let him know how seeing him like this made her feel. She wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake him like a dog, shake some sense into him.

She wanted to hold him, comfort him, and take the pain she knew he felt and carry it for him.

She wanted to take his hand and laugh and make him smile again.

But she couldn’t do any of those things.

He’d never noticed her, and the woman standing beside her was proof of that.

“Preston,” she said. She allowed snobbery to enter her voice, but she knew she couldn’t keep the caring out of her eyes. “Maybe you remember Joyce Oakley?”

He recognized the name. She saw the flickering in his eyes despite the two or three weeks’ worth of growth on his face. His unkempt hair hung in his eyes. The wrinkled shirt carried food stains and what she assumed were alcohol spots. Same for the pants he wore, and his socks didn’t match.

Not to mention he smelled like an unwashed brewery.

Still, his eyes squinted slightly, and he looked at the woman beside her.

“Joyce?” And then his eyes fell to the boy.

It took about five seconds.

Maybe if he weren’t hungover, it would have been faster.

But his eyes widened, and his mouth opened then closed and opened again.

If Athena weren’t so irritated with him and with herself for never being able to fall in love with someone else, she might have laughed at that. He looked like