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“I’m thinking of taking her to a hockey game. And before you say anything, she thinks my hockey obsession is adorable,” Tate said, waggling a finger at me.
I lifted my hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t going to say anything. I swear. Just promise me you’ll take her out to a proper dinner afterwards. I heard the hot dogs at the arena can kill you.”
“I promise I’ll take her somewhere good.” Tate clipped the top off his beer and took a swig. Then he gave me a quizzical look. “Anyway, what made you two stop by? Were you in the area?”
“Not exactly. We wanted to talk to you about Michaela.”
His lips tightened, ever so slightly. “Oh. What about her?”
“I’ve just noticed you being a bit weird around her lately,” I said. “I want to know why.”
Tate’s face was the picture of wide-eyed innocence now. “Can you give me an example? Because I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“When we went to that club last week. You kept shooting her dirty looks whenever she was looking down at her phone and probably wouldn’t catch you glaring at her,” I said. “She did notice it, though. She’s noticed it on other occasions too. I know because she came to me the other day and told me that she thinks you’ve been acting strangely. I really want to know why.”
Tate sighed and set his beer down on the coffee table. “Shit,” he muttered, shoulders slumping. “I was hoping you wouldn’t pick up on it. But I guess I should’ve learned by now that I’m not exactly subtle about my feelings.”
“No, you’re not.” I arched a brow. “Your feelings on any given matter are always written all over your face.”
He nervously licked his lips and averted his eyes. “You’re going to think I’m the shittiest friend ever,” he said. “But I swear, the only reason I didn’t tell you about this was because you’ve had so much bad stuff going on lately. I didn’t want to add to all that misery and make things even worse for you.”
“It’s fine. I understand. But please tell me. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
He looked up at me. “Are you sure? You’ve really had a lot of shit going on lately. I don’t want to push you over the edge.”
“I’ll be okay. I have support,” I replied, glancing at Paxton. He smiled and squeezed my hand again.
“All right.” Tate leaned forward and lifted his hands in the air. “Just promise you won’t shoot the messenger.”
“I promise.”
He leaned back again. “Okay, so… a few months ago, I was hanging out with Michaela. I wanted to check my account on a sports betting site, but my phone died. She didn’t have a compatible charger because she has an Android. So she offered me her phone,” he said. “I tried to log in to the site on her phone browser, but because I was trying to access my account from a different device, it did that annoying security thing where it asks to send you a code. Then you have to put the code into the site to confirm that it’s you trying to log in.”
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“So, I put Michaela’s number in and got the code texted to her phone. Then I went into her texts to find the code,” Tate went on. “I clicked ‘back’ after I got it. I was going to click it again to get out of the message folder entirely. And I swear, I would usually never look at someone’s texts. But I saw a name in the folder. Someone she’d been texting recently.”
“Who was it?” I asked, brows puckering.
“The name said…” Tate paused and lowered his voice. “Greg Holland.”
My brows shot up. “My dad?”
“Yes. So I clicked into the message thread.” He lifted a palm. “Like I said, I swear I would never usually do something like that. I felt like such a fucking snake. But I was curious.”
“I don’t blame you, man,” Paxton said. “I would’ve been curious too.”
“What did the messages say?” I asked.
Tate hesitated. “I couldn’t read many of them, because Michaela was sitting right next to me on the couch, so I could only scroll through for a second without her looking over and catching me. But… it seemed pretty clear from the few I glanced at that they’d hooked up. More than once.”
“Ugh.” I recoiled with disgust. “Michaela’s seriously been sleeping with my dad?”
“Yup.” Tate’s lips tightened. “She’s always had a thing for older men. That’s totally fine in most cases. But secretly hooking up with your best friend’s dad is all kinds of fucked up.”
“No shit. I can’t believe she’d do that behind my back,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “I can’t believe my dad, either! How could he hook up with one of my friends? It’s just so… so weird.” I shuddered. “Urgh, I don’t even want to think about it!”
“I honestly couldn’t believe it when I saw it either,” Tate replied. “So yeah, I’ve probably been acting a bit weird around her lately. Every time I see her texting someone, I wonder if it’s him.”
