Matt comes around the table and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Why did she lie to me? Or not tell me? Do you know how stupid I look right now?”
“You always look stupid.” He shoves my shoulder before letting it go. “You just need to talk to her.”
“And say what?” I fight back the urge to get angry again. “She’s always saying how people just want shit from her. I didn’t ask her for anything, and she couldn’t even tell me who she really is.” I snort. “She wants something real. I was a hell of a lot more real than her.”
Matt sighs. “I can’t argue that logic. Hey, look at that. You’re being logical. I’m standing here watching the transformation of Penn Etling. What a day.”
I give him a menacing look, to which he laughs.
“Maybe she figured you’d just think of her like one of your harem.”
“I don’t have a harem,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Maybe she thought it was pointless to rehash that night because you two weren’t going to have anything real together, anyway. You don’t do that kind of thing, and you’ve made sure everyone knows it. Or maybe that night meant something to her, too, and she didn’t want you to make a mockery out of it.”
I shake my head because he doesn’t get it. She wasn’t afraid to make a connection with me because we already had. We fucking connected. I know that because it’s gone now, and I feel the loss in the middle of my fucking chest.
“This is exactly why you’re better off not to care,” I tell him. “Do people do this all the time? Do they care about people and spend their energy constantly trying to make things right?”
He laughs. “Yes and no. This kind of thing is unique, though. Most people remember who they sleep with.”
I fire him a warning glare. He ignores it.
“You do this all the time, anyway,” he says. “Who snuck pizza into the hospital for me when I was on a liquids-only diet after I fell and was starving? You. And who went to Lorene’s and fixed her step without being asked? You. And who unclogged the gutters at the café last fall because the guy they hired to do it didn’t show? You.” He shrugs. “You already spend your energy making sure people are okay. This time, it just happens to be a woman you aren’t actively fucking.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course it’s not. It never is. Things always look easier on paper. But you just have to make a choice about how you want to handle it and go be a man and do it.”
I slow blink. “Does that mean you aren’t just going to tell me what to do?”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
I balk. “But you always make my adult decisions for me.”
“And I’ve been waiting for the day to arrive to put that back on you. Lucky for me, today is that day.”
Maybe it’s lucky for him, but it’s shitty for me because I don’t know what to do.
My spirits fall as I realize there is no easy answer, and if there were, Matt wouldn’t give it to me, anyway. This is the shit I don’t want in my life. I avoid it at all costs. Yet here I am, giving a fuck, and I can’t turn it off.
“Can I get a rain check?” I ask.
“Ha.”
He studies me as if he isn’t sure I can handle this task. I can’t. I try to get that point across as strongly as I can, but when he smiles, I know I’ve failed.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “I’ll give you a road map. Will that help?”
“Will it end with a solution?”
“Yes.”
“Then it will help. Gimme.”
He takes another bottle of beer out of the fridge and opens it. “Option one: go fuck Alexis. Perfect way to nuke this entire situation. Avery will never talk to you again.”
I wince. Not an option.
“Option two: admit you can live without her but want to be on decent terms. Go home. Finish painting or whatever you’re doing that has you covered in white paint. In a day or two, someone will hit you up and you’ll go do Penn things with them and your life will be back to normal. You’ll see her at work, and you’ll be the old you.”
I don’t want to be the old me. Not really. The old me didn’t have Avery.
“Option three: decide you can’t live without Avery in your life. Go to Harper’s and hear her out. Consider that maybe this was complicated for her, too, and that you want to give her the benefit of the doubt just like I did the night you wrecked my truck.”
“I didn’t wreck it. A deer did.”
“Anyway,” he says, “if you take option three, you’ll have to suck up any embarrassment or fragile-male-ego syndrome you might have. Approach this option with the understanding that maybe she’s not feeling too great about this either.”
For the first time since I left my house, enough adrenaline has emptied out of my veins for me to think back clearly.
There were tears in her eyes. Was she crying? Did I make her cry?
Fuck.
My stomach feels heavy and rotten as I picture her pretty face twisted up. I run my hands down my face as I wonder if she’ll even talk to me now.
“Now the choice is yours, but I have to go to Dane’s. They’re home and Neely is down with the stomach flu, so he needs help getting the car unpacked.”
We head to the door. Matt follows me to the driveway. I start to climb into my truck when I stop.
“Hey, Matt,” I say as he approaches his vehicle.
“Yeah?”
“Not to be all girlie, but thank you.”
“It’s called having class, not being a girl, you idiot,” he says. “And you’re welcome.”
“You could’ve just said you’re welcome.”
“Bye.”
I turn on the engine and grip the steering wheel. My gaze lands on the dice tattoo on my arm. My stomach flip-flops. I’ve looked at this ink a million times since I got it, and it always brings me a certain feeling. That’s different today, and I hate it.
I can’t do this forever. I have to figure it out.
Sitting in the driveway, waving at Matt as he backs out beside me, I think about everything he said. There’s really only one option.
Jerking the truck into reverse, I pull out onto the road.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AVERY
I tried.”
My reflection is blurred by the steam from my shower. I wipe it off again, but it just steams right back up, kind of like my eyes have done for the last hour. I blink them clear, and they fill right back up.
Crying makes me mad. I hate it. I’m so good at not doing it. It goes with the territory of having your feelings continually hurt—you learn to not cry. The fact that I’m crying now, or on the verge of it, is really freaking annoying.
I give my teeth a quick brush before heading into the hall. Harper is watching television in the living room, some show about a hot veterinarian who rescues animals in destitute conditions. I wonder vaguely if there’s an equally hot people doctor who rescues humans who are stuck in the same routines over and over.
Maybe I tried too hard, I think as I head into my bedroom. Maybe my attempt at being real with Penn scared the crap out of him.