Oscar rolled his eyes again. “What does it matter if you’re a horrible person? Your feelings are your feelings.”
“Yeah, but all the same I’d rather feel things that didn’t make me a horrible person.”
“I don’t think it makes us horrible people.” Mason reached for the chocolates box, settling it on his chest so he could pick through the wrappers for stragglers. “I’m really glad we didn’t get married, Dec, but man. Sometimes that idea I had for our future feels so close I can almost taste it, you know?”
“Me too.” I slouched lower on my side of the couch. “You don’t think we could have pulled it off? Not even if we worked really hard at it?”
I expected a quick answer—I expected a Hell no—but he continued his in-depth search of the chocolate wrappers and didn’t speak for a long moment.
“I’m not sure. Most of the time I know there’s no way. We would have drained each other and fought and eventually divorced in a fireball that destroyed the Motherfuckers and maybe ourselves. But sometimes?” He shook his head, at me or at the chocolates-less box, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think maybe we could have made it work. I think we always would have ended up more friends than deeply in love, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Best friends, hot sex, you’d cook, I’d clean. I guess it probably wouldn’t have worked out that way in real life.”
That probably lingered, echoed in my mind. Would we have done that? I couldn’t deny the appeal of it. Not having to worry about the rest of it, the romantic stuff, feeling the right things at the right time, dressing up (or not), trying to come up with dates and dinners and topics of conversation. But he was also right that we were better as friends than we’d ever been as fiancés or even boyfriends, and I wasn’t sure either of us really wanted a long-term committed friendship. Or, in a way, that’s...what we had now.
Mason definitely wanted the transcendent love affair, to be swept off his feet by someone. I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought about Sidney, all dressed up, having planned the most perfect date on earth...and how even with all that I still wasn’t able to completely feel it. How could I like them so much and fail so spectacularly at my own perfect date?
“To dying alone,” I said, and raised my glass of water.
“Dying alone!” my friends chorused.
We dragged Mase’s mattress out into the living room and crashed, the two of us on the mattress and Oscar reluctantly on the couch, having not packed his air mattress. It was a glum sort of sleepover that didn’t feel any better in the morning.
Six years ago I’d thought I wanted a wedding and a lifetime in bed with Mason. I could still remember imagining that, but for some reason, lying there listening to him snore, it was almost impossible to picture.
The problem was, when I tried to picture something else...my mind went blank. Like I had no future at all.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sunday was a blur. We eventually got up. We eventually ate food. We eventually parted ways. I took a long, exhausting nap, the kind of nap you wake up from feeling groggy and heavy, as if the minutes you spent fitfully sleeping had formed a scaly layer on your skin.
I took a shower. I couldn’t honestly remember if I’d taken one after getting back from Mason’s or not, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
It also didn’t help.
My phone had died sometime the day before, between videos and pictures and Instagramming and texting the mean things we couldn’t say out loud. (It was nice Mia was still friends with like all of her exes, but did she have to invite them to the wedding? Because as her friends, we were definitely not still friends with her exes.) When I finally plugged it in and turned it on, Sidney had messaged to say they hoped we were having fun.
Just seeing their name made my chest go tight like a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around me and was squeezing, little by little, until I started to break. I couldn’t keep doing this. Or I could, just like last time, and while it wouldn’t end the same way (I’d never leave Sidney at the altar because they didn’t actually want to stand at one), it would end badly, and I’d spend years wishing I’d gotten out sooner.
The choice was really obvious, but that didn’t make it easy. How did I phrase I am incompetent at relationships and you deserve better and if we keep trying to do this I’ll just fuck it up again since that’s 100% of my track record and also I’m sorry I ever thought I could do this because I can’t. And I couldn’t. I knew that now. They’d planned the perfect date and I’d felt crappy the whole time. The wedding had basically been one long exposure therapy session and I’d responded to it by first hiding in the bathroom, and then running away.
Sidney wanted intimacy and growth and change and all I could offer was, like, whipped cream and sex jokes. It was hopeless.
I looked at their perfectly normal, innocuous text again. Hope everyone is having fun! There was a smiley face.
I went back to bed.
* * *
Due to my epically fucked sleep schedule, getting up for work on Monday was dire. Less than a week until the Fling. Time was short. The fish bowl was...not exactly a hive of activity, but now that Jack and I were semi-friendly it was at least a pretty decent place to spend a work shift.
I was in early, with coffee. I’d brought enough emergency chocolate to share.
Jack didn’t show.
Around ten, when I was kind of starting to worry, Deb came in and closed the door. “Jack will be out today and possibly tomorrow. Do you need additional staff to cover his work?”
I just blinked at her. “Um.”
“I can reassign someone if you need me to.”
“Um.” My mind started running down our list. Until I realized this was what I had tools for and opened the spreadsheet. “Will he be back by Wednesday? I’d definitely need help for the set-up and clean-up stuff. I think the rest of this is manageable?” I ran my eye over it again. “I should be able to fit it all in as long as he comes back. At least, that makes more sense than me spending time trying to catch someone up for a day.”
She nodded. “Good. And I expect him back Wednesday at the latest.”
For an event on Friday, yikes. Still, I didn’t want to train anyone. “Okay. Is he... I mean, I know you’re not supposed to tell me anything, but is he all right?”
Small, not entirely reassuring smile. “He’s dealing with some outside issues. He has support, though.”
Oh right, because she knew him in the real world, not just the work world. “Well, if you talk to him, tell him...” Tell him what? We’d spent weeks being barely civil to each other. “Tell him if he doesn’t come back I’m making all the name cards Comic Sans.”