Chapter Sixteen
Blake
“Haven’t I told you enough?”
“Nope,” Kylie said, raising her hand to signal to the server she needed another beer. “Because it doesn’t make sense to me yet.”
I sighed and looked at Jason. “Can’t you do something about your wife?”
“You know that I cannot,” he said. “And I don’t want to. Your idiocy is giving me life.”
“My idiocy ?” I repeated. “Care to explain how my friendship with this person is idiocy ?”
Because my brothers showed up early, my plan for giving Iz a quiet ride home had been tossed aside, and the four of us ended up piling into Jason’s old truck. They’d talked Izzy into going to our game first, which she seemed to have fun at, and then they convinced her to join us for wings.
They’d been fairly chill all night, but in the five minutes that Izzy had been standing by the door, taking a phone call, I’d been subjected to a speed round of interrogation.
Kylie had forced me to divulge every tiny detail of my strange new friendship.
The way we met, the way we’d come to be friends, the way we were very intentionally carving a path that would never lead to romance because it was against the rules.
“It’s obvious you have chemistry and you’re her boss,” Jason said matter-of-factly, grabbing a chip from the towering nachos in the center of the table. “So your stupid rules and plans are idiocy. All it’s going to take is a single moment, and everything will change.”
“No, it won’t,” I said, irritated. “We aren’t animals, for God’s sake. We can control our behavior and our environment.”
“Oh, really?” he countered with his eyebrows up, looking at me skeptically.
“Really,” I said defensively. Of course we can control them—we have to. “And you’ve got crumbs in your beard.”
“Really?” he said, lifting his chin and not wiping away the disgusting specks in his beard.
“Oh, really ?” AJ teased from the other end of the table, grinning while lifting a taco to his mouth.
“You’re really fucking annoying,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “Really.”
“Okay, but hear me out,” Jason said, holding up a hand. “Things with Skye were great until secrets and scheming came into play, right? I know in this particular scenario you and Izzy are scheming together instead of her behind your back, but fucking around with the truth is always a mess.”
He gave me a look, that look, the one that said everything.
“Always,” AJ added in agreement, nodding.
And they weren’t wrong.
We’d grown up with a father who played fast and loose with the truth, all the time. My parents divorced right after I was born, and I couldn’t remember a time in my life when he wasn’t hustling reality. He lied about why he couldn’t pick us up on his scheduled day, he lied about why he couldn’t come up with his child support payments, he lied about promised vacations that never happened, and he lied about the slew of girlfriends who came in and out of our lives.
He fibbed about little things, and he lied about enormously important things; the man was an equal-opportunity liar.
But our mom was always rock solid.
She’d never bad-mouthed him, but as soon as we were old enough to see his dishonesty for ourselves, she quietly used his behavior as a life lesson for all of us.
She taught us that nothing was as important as trust.
Which was part of what made it so incredibly ironic when he showed up out of the blue last year and tried making a play for the insurance money left behind when she died, but that was another thing entirely.
“Well, the part I don’t understand is why you aren’t just doing what you want.” Kylie shrugged and said, “You’re consenting adults, and your employer isn’t your mommy, right? Just date on the down-low; no one has to know.”
“Nope,” AJ said, shaking his head. “Terrible way to start a relationship.”
“Not the move,” Jason agreed. “At all.”
“That’s just too unethical, Ky,” I added, knowing I could never do something that I wouldn’t tolerate from another Ellis employee. “I can’t.”
“Well, those ethics aren’t going to snuggle up with you at night, Blakey,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I reached for my beer, not enjoying the way that comment made me feel. It sounded an awful lot like what Skye said the night I called off the engagement.
You see it as this strong moral fiber, Blake, but it’s just control—do it my way or it’s over. Honestly, you’re just as controlling as you said your dad was. He controlled the narrative with lies, but you control the narrative with your inability to forgive. Have fun sleeping with that rigid unforgiveness for the rest of your life. Alone.
“Shhh,” AJ said as Izzy started walking toward the table. “Here she comes.”
Her eyes met mine as she came around the table and took the seat beside me, and something about the way she smiled at me made me want to pull her chair a bit closer.
Instead, I looked at my brothers and said, “Hurry up and finish because I’ve got an early flight in the morning.”