“I know we’d typically call Cole, but this meeting could do without him,” Parker said as I served them both.
I agreed. Cole’s advice would be as unsympathetic and uncomplicated as my dating life was before Mae came back home.
“What do you got?” Mason asked.
“It’s bad,” I warned him.
“Worse than having the hots for your new employee? And being the first to break our pact?” he asked.
Fair point.
“I checked my phone at least five times since Parker left to see if Mae texted me back after I clocked her ex a minute after he walked into the bar.”
“Ooo,” Parker grimaced. “That’s bad.”
“Agreed,” Mason said. “You have a few hundred dollars to spare for the pot?” Mason laughed at his own joke.
“I will if I buy the bar.”
“Or take the trust fund you’re sitting on,” Parker tossed.
“Not a fucking chance. There are more strings attached to that goddamned thing than a puppet show, and I’m nobody’s entertainment.”
“So give it a go.”
Mason really was so black and white that he thought it was good advice.
“Give it a go?”
“Yeah, give it a go. You took a pact. We broke it. You can too.”
Was he serious? I looked at Parker, asking the silent question, but he just shrugged his shoulders.
“You honestly think the only thing standing in my way is a pact I took with you dickheads almost ten years ago?”
He shrugged, took a swig of his drink and apparently had nothing else to say.
“Alright.” Parker sat up straighter, as if getting serious. “Whatisstanding in your way of telling Mae how you feel?”
Dear lord, give me strength. I would have been better off getting advice from Jules or her Maine friend. Or my little sister. Maybe should have hit up my mechanic before he left.
“We’re listening,” Mason said, unhelpfully.
“Let’s start with the fact that Mae and I are friends, and that’s all she sees me as.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Parker’s hand circled the back of his neck, the way he did when something didn’t sit right. “What else?”
“Besides not having Mae’s will or consent to date her?” I quipped.
“Yeah, besides that.” Mason was in investigative mode now. You could take the cop out of the city, but you couldn’t take the badge out of the man.
“I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”
“Duly noted,” Parker said. “What else?”
