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T H I R T Y F O U R
- Finn -
I bought her a new pair of underwear as promised…along with a matching bra I was dying to see her in. I even had it giftwrapped for Valentine’s Day before stashing it in my closet, where it had been sitting for a week while I struggled with buyer’s remorse.
Was I being foolish? I owed her a pair of underwear because of Otis’s thirst for destruction, but part of me feared the fancy set was too intimate a gift. After all, at the end of the day, she was a friend with benefits who was planning on having another man’s baby.
A sexy Valentine’s Day present might send the wrong message. Namely, that I wished things were different. Which I did. I could tell by the tight feeling I got in my chest every time she showed me the profile of another guy she was thinking of taking a chance on. Yet, at the same time, I could see how much she wanted this, and I knew if I wasn’t supportive, I’d lose her altogether.
Fortunately, I had two more weeks to ruminate on the lingerie situation, which was plenty of time to come up with a plan B.
“You alright?” Brian asked, squaring up to me on the opposite side of the bar. “You look like your dog just died.”
My eyes flicked up at him. “Fine.”
“You and Maeve have a fight or something?”
“No. Why?”
He shrugged. “Can’t think of anything else that would put you in such a bad mood.”
“I can think of lots of things,” I said. “My dog dying, for one. Or another weirdly vague phone call from Max.”
“How many is that now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking back. “Four or five. I even got a message from my mom asking me to call him.”
“Maybe you should,” he said. “Get it over with. What’s the worst he could say?”
I knew the answer to that. Had thought quite a lot about it, in fact. “I’m coming to visit.”
He laughed. “So everything’s fine with Maeve?”
“Yeah, fine. Better than fine, actually. That’s the problem.”
“Hold that thought,” he said, excusing himself to serve a guy who’d just arrived with his pregnant girlfriend. Her belly looked uncomfortably swollen under her thin sweater, and although she smiled as she accepted her Sprite on ice, I couldn’t help but think a pub was no place for a woman about to pop.
Brian returned with a fresh rack of glasses from the dishwasher, grabbed the towel from over his shoulder, and started drying them one at a time, his practiced hands making the job look easy. “You were saying?”
“I fucked up,” I said, taking a swig of my beer.
He raised his brows, inviting me to continue.
“She told me the first night we met why she was the last woman on Earth I should date, and I’m fucking dating her.”
“I thought you weren’t dating.”
“Technically, we’re not,” I said. “But we’re definitely seeing a lot of each other.” My mind played a montage of how she looked in my T-shirts, how she looked cuddling Otis, how she looked riding my cock. “Truth is, I don’t know what we’re doing. In the beginning, I figured I was a rebound.”
“And now?”
I sighed. “Now I’m sick with feelings I never wanted to have.”
“What’s wrong with catching feelings?”
“The feelings aren’t the problem,” I said. “The problem is that she can’t reciprocate them.”
“Why not?”
