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I dig a lawn chair out of the garage and sit with Carter, who the kids don’t want to play either with or against because they’ve decided they don't like him. So far, the game in my driveway looks like Cade taking slap shots at every opportunity and everyone else trying their best to make sure Meemee is having a good time. Every time something doesn’t go her way, she starts making that “I’m about to explode'' face again.
“Kids, huh?” Carter says. “What makes people want to pop those things out? Like, ‘yeah, I’d love to have a little tyrant rule my life for the next eighteen plus years! Sign me up!’” He shakes his head. “Honestly, they should start doing mental screenings before allowing people to procreate. Anybody who actually wants that must be mentally deficient.”
“They aren’t that bad,” I say.
Carter eyes me. “Poop on the walls, screaming matches, gross boyfriends trying to bonk your daughter? Sounds that bad to me.”
“I’m not saying I want kids. I don’t even want…” I trail off and shake my head. My eyes keep finding their way to Andi, who really is good with Meemee, even if the little terror is making it as hard as she can on Andi.
Seeing her be so good with the kids is doing weird things to me. Stupid things. Things I don’t remotely understand, so I’m going to just keep pretending I neither feel nor understand them. That strategy has been working pretty damn well with all kinds of shit lately, so why change it now?
“Okay,” Carter says slowly. “I know you go all Guantanamo Bay the moment we bring up you-know-who, but I’m just putting this out there because I want you to know it. When the time comes that you want to talk, you can talk about it. As much or as little as you want. I may be a jack-ass, but I’ll control myself if you need an ear. Or something like that,” he adds, clearly feeling awkward.
I stare forward, eyes following Andi. She’s laughing because Cade looks deadly serious and he’s trying to score a goal on her. I’m also noticing that Andi is handling the stick suspiciously well after our one brief lesson. I’ll have to ask Jake if she has played before and was only pretending to be bad to cheer me up. I can’t even be mad if she was.
“I don’t know,” I say after a while. “I think the easy thing is to keep my head down. The easy thing is to not go looking for… anyone. But this shoulder shit happened and now I’ve been stuck here, hardly able to do more than jog and lift weights. And I can try to avoid women as much as I want, but what happens when they fall into my lap?”
“Literally, in this case,” he says.
“Huh?”
“I mean I found you two like ten seconds after you met and her face was between your legs. Props, man. That’s impressive speed, but it’s also not a race, you know.”
“Shut up,” I laugh, shoving him.
Carter grins slowly, and I hate that I just said all that crap out loud to him. I’ve done such a good job of bottling it all up before now. Suddenly, Andi shows up and everything seems to want to leak out the moment I let my guard down. “It’s alright,” he says, dropping the humor from his tone. “Feeling the way you feel. It’s normal.”
I let a little tension out of my shoulders. I know the guys must be more worried about me than they’ve let on if even Carter isn’t giving me shit. “It’s frustrating,” I say, aware that I’m being vague.
Carter nods. “You know how I see it? The most important thing is to move forward. The past can hurt. The shit we leave behind looks pretty damn big in the rearview at first. But every day you move forward, the smaller it gets. Then one day you look back and the big pile of shit is nothing but a little turd on the horizon. And then it’s nothing. Just–” he raises his hand and spreads his fingertips out suddenly, making a poof sound. “Just gone.”
I grin. “So just keep moving forward until your past becomes a smaller and smaller turd in your rearview? That’s exactly the kind of life advice I would expect from you.”
He pats my back. “I’m glad I could live up to the hype.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
I feel a little lighter, though. Somewhat stupid or not, Carter has a point. Then again, he doesn’t know the insanity I just agreed to with Andi. Hell, I’m not entirely sure what we agreed to. In the moment, I’ll admit I was pretty much talking about sex. I thought we’d end that night after the scary movie in my bed. I wanted something uncomplicated. No strings. No feelings. I just needed an outlet for all the pent up attraction I feel.
Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough. Andi seems to be treating “casual” like a code word for dating but more slowly. It makes no damn sense, and I have no clue how to un-fuck the situation I’ve found myself in. Worse, I’m not entirely sure I want to get out of this.
Everybody cheers when Meemee scores a goal. She smiles big, then her eyes light up as she looks around. “Treat time?”
Andi deflates a little, then shrugs. “Okay. Okay. You get a treat.”
“And I get your number,” Cade says, leaning on his stick and doing what he probably thinks is a bad boy smile at Andi.
“And you do not,” Andi says. “Maybe I’m already spoken for.”
Jake goes completely stiff at that and Cade waves off her rejection in a carefree way that says he’ll try again later.
“What do you mean?” Jake says.
Andi looks up at him like she just remembered he’s there. “I just mean I ran away from my wedding. I haven’t actually talked to Landon, so that means I’m kind of technically still in a relationship, right?”
Jake’s gaze slides to me. The natural thing to do would be to look back at him and act normal. Instead, I raise my palms like he just pointed a gun at me.
Dammit. Way to look guilty, dumbass.
