“Bad pickup lines?” Charlie asks. “Now you must tell. I need to know everything.”
“Yes, Garrett, please enlighten us,” I say, trying my best to give a serious yet teasing look. “Please tell the table why you greeted me tonight asking if there was an airport nearby?”
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Garrett Dixon blushes.
If I wasn’t completely smitten with the man before, I absolutely am now.
“It’s actually this asshole’s fault,” Garrett says, pointing to Mark. “When we were growing up. I heard him say one to Jenny Damon. She was the prettiest girl on our street.”
“Translation: she was the first to get boobs,” Mark adds.
“Well, that too. I heard him use one on her, and then they were going out, or whatever version of that is when you’re in seventh grade. So I figured since it worked for my brother, why couldn’t it work for me? So I found the Playboy article that Mark got his from and tried one on a girl in my grade.”
“And did it work?” Charlie asks, completely invested in this story.
“It actually did. And it worked on every girl I asked out in high school. Little did I know, until my senior prom date told me, that the only reason she and the others were saying yes was that the lines were so terrible they felt bad for me. I countered back that they said yes, so my mission was accomplished.”
“So you realize they are horrible, yet you continue to use them?” I ask.
He looks over at me, a fire in his eyes that is burning me in my seat. “Worked on you, didn’t it?”
I immediately blush, because darn it, he’s right. It did, without a doubt, one hundred percent worked on me.
Garrett gives my leg a squeeze under the table before raising his wineglass.
“A toast,” Garrett says as our desserts are put in front of us, which I don’t know how I’m going to eat.
“A toast?” Mark mocks. “So formal.”
“Will you shut the fuck up and let me be serious for a second.”
Charlie swats Mark’s arm and raises her glass. “Yes, Garrett. What would you like to toast to?”
“I just want to say thank you to all of you. I know dinner and a few bottles of wine aren’t enough to show just how much you three have helped me since… well, since everything changed. I know I didn’t say much at the time, but I was scared as hell after my embolism. Knowing that Dad died because of a clot and I… it was a lot to have on my mind. You three are the reason I’m where I’m at today. And I just wanted to say thank you. For everything.”
I can feel the tears forming in the corners of my eyes, which isn’t helped by the fact that Charlie is full-on sobbing. She bolts from her seat and makes her way around the table, wrapping Garrett in a hug so tight that it makes me want to cry more.
“We love you. So much,” Charlie says, but when she stands up, her face immediately changes from sad to a death glare.
“Oh hell the fuck no!”
At Charlie’s words, all of our eyes snap to the direction she is looking.
Annika is at the bar, which we can see from our table through a clear partition. I know I only saw her once at the luncheon, but I recognize her profile instantly. She’s blatantly hanging on a man, her fake breasts are pressed so hard into him that I’m surprised they aren’t deflating.
By the way he’s looking at her, he doesn’t care. In fact, I’m pretty sure he likes it, considering he just accepted a kiss from her that was not appropriate for public viewing.
I turn to look back at Garrett, Mark, and Charlie and their faces are a mixture of anger, sadness, confusion, and a general sense of…
“What in the actual fuck?” Mark says the words I was thinking. “That fucking asshole!”
“Is that… is that Trevor?” Charlie asks.
Trevor. Isn’t Trevor his…
“Yup,” Garrett says, a harshness to his voice I’ve never heard. “That’s my business partner. Kissing my soon-to-be ex-wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Garrett
I don’t remember leaving the restaurant.
I don’t remember dropping Paige off at her house.
I don’t remember pulling into the office of Innovative.
Pure adrenaline is guiding me at this point. Ever since I saw Trevor and Annika together, all I could see was red. Lucky for me, Mark was smart enough to get me out of there before I could do anything stupid. I don’t even think they saw us.
My anger isn’t at her. Well, mostly. I knew if she hadn’t moved on before I asked her for the separation, it wouldn’t take her long to find someone else to sink her fake nails into. So seeing her with another man did not surprise me.
No, this feeling of anger is aimed at Trevor. The man was supposed to be my best friend. My business partner. The guy who helped me when I was at my lowest. The man who took me to the hospital so I didn’t die.
When did this start? I really, really want to believe that he and Annika didn’t start whatever they have going on until after the separation. Not that it makes it any better. How could a man start fucking his best friend’s wife before their marriage is even technically over? Or ever? Though I have a sinking feeling this goes back to way before I told Trevor that Annika and I were getting a divorce.
Which is why I’m at the office, booting up his computer, thanking the IT gods that I requested having an admin password to get into any computer in the system.
Trevor and I both have them. When we started the practice, it was a way to make sure that we could get into each other’s computer if we needed to help each other in terms of paperwork, charts, or anything else that could happen when you’re getting a business off the ground. I never thought I’d have to use it to find out how long my supposed best friend has been fucking my wife.
Ex-wife.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Receipts? Emails? Annika has an email address, but I never saw her check it. She only had it to sign up for online shopping sites. If someone couldn’t text her, then she couldn’t be bothered with communication.
Luckily, Trevor’s laptop is set up to receive his text messages.
I scroll through his texts and don’t see Annika’s name. But a name saved as “A” with a peach emoji does catch my eye. And like it happened yesterday, I remember a conversation I had with Trevor just a few months after I started dating Annika.
“Dude, your girl has a fucking amazing ass.”
“Don’t I know it. You should see it when I’m hitting it from behind.”
“Fuck. I gotta hand it to you. You win this round, bro.”
That was what Trevor said to me the night I introduced him to Annika. I never thought about that night, but now it’s coming back to me as if it happened an hour ago. I laughed at the time because Annika met us at a bar, and he drooled as he watched her walk to our table. He was pissed as hell when he found out she was off-limits. And the comments he made about her ass? It was par for the course for Trevor and me back then. I didn’t think anything of it.
Maybe I should have.
Over the years I thought he got over his attraction, especially after he was the one who said I shouldn’t marry Annika.