Their future.
After we ate, I lied and told Lucas I had an upcoming exam to cram for. Dejected, I spent the rest of the night curled up in bed, lost in the pages of Jane Austen’sPersuasion.Turns out Anne Elliot’s my spirit animal. I too am in love with someone who shall never be mine…
I’d probably readthat blog entry five times, heart beating—slamming—against my ears, chest, and head, disbelief rendering me downright stupid.
Macy was in love withme, the newly engaged asshat.
Wedged between a boulder and a hard place, I had to act fast. As a quarterback for the Bruins, making decisions on the fly happened to be par for the course. Something practiced and learned each second the palms of my hands cradled the pigskin.
So, what did I decide to do?
Leave.
Keep my distance from Macy until I could sort shit out.
Albert Einstein once said, a clever person solves a problem, but a wise person avoids it. At the time, I thought it wise to steer clear. Protect her feelings. Safeguard the unbreakable walls of our forever-long friendship. Pretend my eyes never absorbed a single word of those confessions and erect hours of breathing space between us while the dust settled.
Did it end up being the right decision?
Yes.
No.
Maybe?
2
Iblamed my bitches.
Sage and Chloe.
The so-called besties.
Seriously. If those two hadn’t convinced me a girls’ night out with them was better therapy than staying home binge-watching the first season ofDead To Me, the epic fuckstorm of consequences that followed would not have rained down on my sorry-ass life.
Throat dry as the Sahara, I dialed Sage knowing at 5 a.m., Chloe’d be no use. The Sleeping Goddess kept her phone set to do-not-disturb mode until 9 a.m.
Sage answered on the first ring, and all I could hear was her breathe out a long, seemingly annoyed exhale.
“Are you awake?” I smacked myself on the forehead, a self-scolding for asking such a lame question. Of course, she wasn’t awake. We—Sage, Chloe, and I—were all out drinking until 2 a.m. the night before—a deed they’d leveraged to make me forget the guy of my fantasies who intended to live his ever-after with someone who obviously wasn’t me.
“First of all,” Sage hissed. “Why the F-word are you calling me at the butt crack of dawn to ask if I’m awake? Second of all, why the H-word are you even whispering?”
She was on a potty-mouth cleanse, which meant her usual cuss-like-a-sailor flytrap had been reduced to spitting out what she called “partial placeholders,” hence her fluid use of “F-word” and“H-word”in place of fuck and hell.
“I don’t want him to hear me,” I whisper-shouted.
“Him,who? Wait. A. Minute,” Sage gasped. “Did you get snatched by that Uber driver last night? Chucked into the trunk of his ruby-red Fiat? See? I told Chloe we shouldn’t have let you hop in his car. Dude seemed to be a bit on the cray-cray side. Crossed-eyed. Wicked grin. Missing teeth. Pretty sure he looked one hundred percent, serial killer.”
Sadly, I couldn’t even recall catching an Uber, everything was still a blur.
“No, I didn’t get snatched by the Uber guy,” I explained. “You know my walls are thin. I’m whispering because I don’t want Lucas to hear me.”
“Lucas? Who the S-word cares ifhehears you? Punch him in the fucking balls for getting engaged and being all Bird Box blindfolded when it comes to how you feel about him. Darn it!” she growled. “I said the F-word.”
Hand over mouth, I failed at suppressing the giggle that wiggled free. For every spoken cuss word, Sage had to perform a series of squats.
Movements, along with grunts, were heard from her end of the call as she presumably counted down each knee bend. “My butt is going to look so fabulously badass from all these freaking lower-body enhancers.”
