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I was just too stupid to see it.
I stared down at our joined hands and quickly pulled mine away, it would be too easy to get lost in him again, and I knew I didn’t deserve him. It was always so much easier being bitter, resentful, angry, than it was actually looking in the mirror and realizing that at the end of the day…
It wasn’t him.
It was me all along.
Chapter Five
Ace
I hated puzzles.
I found them to be absolutely ridiculous in real life, oh gold star, you sacrificed an abhorrent amount of time in order to get to the end of the puzzle and to what end? Self-validation? A self high five? What? At twenty-five you’re going to put it on your fridge and tell your guests and one goldfish that you finally figured out the other Kardashian sister’s name and now know the name of the last Pharaoh buried in that one tomb before it was discovered in the nineteen fifties?
Seriously though.
It was exactly the same with crossword puzzles and word searches. Congratulations, you can not only spell but know an unimaginable amount of random facts that nobody will ever care about unless you plan on living alone your entire life.
History, I could at least get on board with, but the puzzles always tossed in pop culture and things that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things—answers that would haunt you until you finally got them right only to realize you were wrong.
Maybe there was some weird past trauma with puzzles I wasn’t aware of. I mean, when I was in first grade, I did fail my first word search, but I’d been distracted by the cute girl sitting next to me with her pink eraser and unicorn pencil.
That’s on her, she’ll have to take that to judgement day—not me, no I was innocent in all of that, if anything she should feel guilty for having the pink eraser and daring to boast about unicorns when she knew I had a private fascination with horses.
Okay, so maybe there was past trauma. I’ll be man enough to admit that much.
“Okay.” Bri swayed next to me, then shook her head like she was trying to process what we were about to fail. “We’ve got this, all we have to do is just make it through the maze and into one of the hardest escape rooms known to mankind.”
“Simple.” I shuddered an exhale. Mazes, not her strong suit, puzzles, my Everest—yeah, things were definitely looking up for our team.
“Totally.” She started to jump up and down in place, making her pretty dark hair bounce across her shoulders like a shampoo commercial. I hated to admit that my eyes followed every movement as she continued to bounce. Why did she have to be so cute? I hated her. I would hate her, I would not find her adorable, and I would not keep staring at the way her eyes kept scanning the maze like we were about to be fed to the lions. “Doable.”
“Probably in our sleep.” I lied and started stretching for no damn good reason, why would I need to stretch to walk through a maze and solve a brain puzzle?
Have I mentioned I hate puzzles?
Shit.
“I hate them,” I grumbled under my breath.
“Max? The company? Trees? You’ll have to be specific.” She stood at the starting line, her toe right behind the white chalk like she was getting ready for a track and field championship.
I made a face. “Trees? Who hates trees?” I gave it a thought.
She sighed. “I know, actually bad example, I misspoke, trees are the best, they give us oxygen.”
“Wood!”
“Paper!” I added.
“Shelter!” she shouted.
“Maple.” I felt the need to say so I had the last word.
“Yup.” She stretched her arms across her body. “Not to mention, some are edible.”
I smirked down at my shoes. “Are we doing that thing where we’re distracting ourselves from the big thing with little mind numbing things so we don’t both pass out or run in the other direction?”
