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“What look?” Sam asked.
“The one that I had on my face when I realized Julie wasn’t just going to be a shits-and-giggles fling, and the one Jake had on his face when Grace handed him his balls at a softball game.”
“Hey!” Jake said in protest. “It wasn’t like—”
“It was,” Sam interrupted. “I was actually there, although I didn’t really know you then.”
“Oh yeah,” Jake mused. “I’d forgotten you were Riley’s plus-one at that game. So this isn’t really a new thing between you?”
“Well, the naked time is,” he said, figuring he might as well throw it all out there. “I just never remember sex making things so … complicated.”
“That’s because you don’t have ovaries,” Mitchell muttered as he moved to put away the glasses Jake had dried. “Sex is always complicated to women. To men it’s only complicated when shit’s about to get messy.”
“Messy?”
Jake and Mitchell exchanged a glance. “Important,” Mitchell clarified.
“Or one might say forever,” Jake muttered into his beer, not making eye contact.
Sam’s stomach clenched, and he didn’t know if it was in horror or hope. “Now hold on. We’ve only been a thing for two weeks. It’s mostly just sex.”
“Really? Then how is it that you’re at my apartment for his engagement party,” Mitchell asked with a gesture toward Jake.
“That’s not on me! You two are the ones out buying engagement rings and cohabiting—”
“Cohabiting? Grandma? Is that you?”
“You know what I mean. You two and your … love stuff will put ideas in women’s heads that will make life complicated for the rest of us.”
“Ideas in women’s head? Or yours?” Mitchell asked, cutting him with a level gaze and getting right to the heart of the matter.
Sam opened his mouth to retort, only to realize he had nothing to say. The truth was, this whole cozy-couple scene that the other two men had going on was oddly appealing, and nothing like the awkward dinners and epic fights over laundry he remembered with Hannah.
He was beginning to realize that just because he had a marriage under his belt didn’t necessarily mean that he knew a thing about relationships. Not the good kind.
This was new. And he didn’t like it.
“Shit. Shit. Now what?” he asked, more to himself than to the other guys.
Jake clapped him on the shoulder, pity in his eyes. “First up? You’ve got to realize there’s nothing you can do until you know what she wants.”
“So, I, like, what … talk to her?”
The other men’s silence said it all.
“Shit,” Sam muttered again.
“Exactly,” Jake and Mitchell said at the same time.
Chapter Seventeen
“So, what were you boys talking about?” Riley asked as she and Sam walked hand in hand toward the ice cream shop where they’d decided to stop for a second dessert. Her idea. Really, Julie should know by now that in Riley’s world, “a piece of delicious fruit” did not a dessert make.
“Guy stuff. What were you ladies talking about?”
“Girl stuff.”
“Ribbons and ponies?” he asked.
