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"Because the ex still has feelings for you."
"My friend."
"Whoever."
I shook my head. Ivy didn't want me. She had no interest in me. The only times she came on to me were when she thought she could break Winter and me up. Now that we were, Ivy had more interest in sticks. And I felt the same about her.
"She doesn't have feelings for me. I don't think she has feelings for anyone but herself."
"Oh, well then she was jealous that she had to share her sister with you. I mean, your friend," Lana added before Adam could correct her.
I knew all this. What I wanted to know was how to win Winter back. I made a winding motion with my hand.
Adam huffed. "So what should I do now?"
Lana drew back and looked first at Adam and then at me with astonishment. "How should I know?"
"But you're always giving us advice," I nearly shouted at her when she got up and walked out of the television room.
She turned, and I reared back at the pain in her eyes. "You can't make anyone love you. If she loves you, she'll eventually come and find you again. If she doesn't, then there's nothing you can do."
Bullshit.
I replayed the movie, and it ended in the same goddamned depressing way.
I found out where Tucker lived and started driving by the small two-bedroom house. It looked like a piece of shit and was in dire need of improvements. I wondered what they were doing in there. My anxiety levels fell from life threatening to a dull ache after I saw Tucker bring a girl home and then another. They weren’t having sex but I kept wondering what she was thinking, how she was coping.
Only Ivy seemed happy. I swear to God she hummed because she knew I was miserable that Winter was staying away. This was my punishment for not being open with Winter in the first place. If I’d confessed to everything that first night or even the night that I’d convinced Winter to come back to me, then we would have started out on the right foot. Ivy’s pregnancy announcement would have been something we would have both taken in stride. Winter said she believed me but that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t convinced of that. Deep down, I think Winter was scared that she wasn’t first in my heart, and I didn’t know what I could do to change her feelings.
Two weeks after the fallout, I decided to tackle the outdoor grill that had sat in disrepair for almost a year now at Woodlands. When we’d bought the place, the only thing that had been finished in the yard was the pool and the exterior of the pool house. The guys and I had dug up the yard, smoothed it out, laid sod, and put down brick pavers, but we’d never got around to fixing the outdoor kitchen.
Adam and I had gotten the brilliant idea to build an oven to cook pizzas, but we hadn't ever finished it. I had nothing better to do. The build downtown was going well. Henry had finally decided I was competent and told me I didn't need to be on site all the time. My girlfriend wouldn't talk to me, and I had no flips going on. I had decided to table them until the Riverside project was complete.
Basically I was sitting on my fat thumbs doing nothing.
I shook myself before I started to drown in my own self-pity.
"I always wondered why you stopped fixing that up." Noah handed me a cup of coffee and sat down in a patio chair.
"Wasn't the right time."
"Now is?"
"Yup." I flipped a brick a few times, slathered it with mud, and set it on the structure. I repeated the action in sil
ence. Noah didn't say another word. We listened to the birds chirping and a light breeze rustling the leaves in the woods. The emerging sunlight was at the front of the east-facing house, and the back of the house looked dark, the pool water calm. The breeze was blocked by the trees.
It was early, yet Noah was always moving. He had a hundred things going at one time, trying to juggle his emerging professional fighting career with his classes and his business. I wondered if he would keel over from a heart attack like my dad if he didn't slow down.
"You know the movie Love Actually?"
"Sure, best Christmas movie ever." I didn't mind admitting it. Adam and I watched it religiously every year, debating over the characters' actions. Did Mark, the videographer, violate the bro code for sharing the wedding video with his best friend's wife to declare his love? Yes, and we concluded that Mark made the video for the sole purpose of spanking his monkey. "Mark probably used a cum sock."
Noah spit out his coffee as he laughed. "Really? Not a tissue guy?"
"No way. He was clearly into mementos."
Noah set down his mug. "True or false, Karen should have left Henry."
