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“You were the last person I expected to run into here,” she admitted and leaned against my dresser. “I’m not really sure what to say.”
I could feel the asshole part of me coming through the cracks in my chest. Ihatedthat Maci was standing in front of me in Bryson’s shirt. I had just made her come two nights ago. I guess if I wasn’t going to sleep with her, she had to find someone else to do it, right?
I shoved that selfish thought to the back of my head. I was man enough to know when I was out of line, and if it were any other girl, I would’ve said those words out loud. I had no filter when it came to hurting their feelings, but I would crumble if Maci fell apart in front of me. I couldn’t imagine hurting her.
It was my decision to stop things, and I didn’t want Bryson to know that this was the girl he had just told me to sleep with on Friday. Certain things were better left unsaid for everyone involved.
I made sure my voice was even before I responded. “There isn’t anything to say.”
“This isn’t gonna make things weird, is it?” she asked nervously. “Running into each other like this?”
I could read Maci without her having to say anything, and I felt uneasy at the thought of our friendship changing. I wanted to be around her too much to suddenly not have her in my life at all.
I leaned back onto my bed and put my arms behind my head. “Nothing has to be weird, Mace. We both hooked up with someone last night, and we wouldn’t have even known about it if you hadn’t picked out Kennedy in the bar.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Kennedy?”
“Yeah, Kennedy,” I repeated, and when her expression didn’t change, I understood why. “Bryson?”
She cocked her head to process the new information. She smacked me playfully, and I smiled sleepily at her, trying my best to convince her that this interaction wasn’t weird at all. That it didn’t kill me to see her in Bryson’s shirt instead of mine.
She squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll text you later.”
I nodded into my pillow and dragged my comforter up to my chest. She shut my door on her way out, but I still heard Bryson’s voice in the kitchen and her giggling at whatever he said.
Chapter19
Maci
November 2015
“Katie, I was mortified,”I exclaimed from our dining room table. “MORTIFIED.”
Katie laughed, trying to keep her knife steady while she listened to the recap of my morning run-in with Jaxon. She would look up at me in between chops and start laughing again.
There was never a dull moment in our apartment.
“It’s not funny!” I smiled and slumped into my chair. “Out of all fucking people, I had to sleep with one of his friends.”
“Please”—she slid the diced onions into the Instant Pot, added some minced garlic, and hit Sauté—“how were you supposed to know that he was talking about Bryson when he mentioned his friend, Kennedy? You guys will laugh about this when you tell the story at your wedding.”
I rolled my eyes, and she laughed. Katie was always a hopeless romantic in the end.
“He probably thinks I’m just another slut on campus,” I moaned and tried to get the image of Jaxon’s face when he saw me in his doorway out of my head.
We had almost slept together on Friday, and I was already recovering from a hookup with his roommate on Sunday morning. Jaxon and I had our fair share of conversations regarding our past. I knew that his body count was slowly inching toward the triple digits, and he knew that I could count my sexual history on one hand. Well, I guess it was two hands now.
Oh my god. And just like that, I was a two-handed woman.
But regardless of the many comments that slipped up in conversation and the playful back and forths we had about hookups, it didn’t make the situation any less weird. Talking about it was one thing, but seeingthe other person with someone else? That was another. I would have beendevastatedif this was the other way around.
Fortunately for me, his hookup had left using a beer bottle for her dramatic exit right before I left Bryson’s room. When I thought of how he spoke to her, it made the hair stand up on my freshly shaved legs. He sounded like someone I didn’t even know.
“You need to stop getting in your head. He was kicking a girl out when you found out he lived there. Why is it okay that he got to sleep with somebody else and you couldn’t?”
I sat taller in my seat, thankful for Queen Katie and her voice of reason.
Katie watched as I registered the double standard. “Tell me about Bryson.”
