Page 139 of Love Felt Like This

Griffin’s mouth straightens into a tense line once he’s finished. He looks off to the yellow diner walls, at anywhere but me. His jaw ticks, like he’s considering a thousand things and can’t settle on one word.

He hates me. He must.

“Beau hasn’t texted me in years,” I say.

“Why now?” Griffin asks.

I’ve had days to think about it, and I know why.

I know what I like.

Griffin. Griffin and his lap. Griffin and his Hey, baby.

When I don’t answer, Griffin shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He slowly nods. “Me.”

“Yeah.”

I can tell he’s angry by the little lines on his forehead, but they disappear as he watches me, like he’s analyzing my emotions and replacing his in real time to accommodate mine.

“Well…how are you feeling about it?” he asks.

My head pulls back.

He doesn’t hate me?

Beau never asked questions like that. If someone else texted me, it always triggered jealousy with Beau. Possession. It was flattering at the time. Now, it feels so childish.

“I don’t like it,” I confess.

“Me neither,” Griffin agrees matter-of-factly.

“I don’t know how to respond.”

“Do you even want to?”

I thought I’d feel like I was caught between a rock and a hard place whenever we crossed this bridge, but Beau’s boulder had tumbled out of my life so long ago. Now it’s only Griffin. There’s nothing difficult about this at all.

“No,” I answer.

Griffin tilts his head to the side. “Is it awful if I say I don’t want you to either?”

I smile despite myself. The diner’s jukebox with Billy Joel or Elton John or John Denver sounds like a mosaic of tinkling notes in my ear that dulls on the impact of Griffin’s words.

“What are you thinking?” he asks. His tone low and rough. Just like those hands.

This is getting complicated. Too complicated. A relationship—a friendship—born of falsehoods and business transactions.

What even are we?

Are we anything?

We’re friends. Griffin said that. That wasn’t an illusion. That was real.

We’re friends.

Griffin Patrick and B.

He chuckles, weak and pained. “C’mon, I can see the gears moving.”