Chapter 2 #3
“I always have faith in you, Bumble,” he says softly, with just a bit of a smirk to his lips. He loves calling me that, I have no idea why. I think it’s because he thinks it bothers me, but honestly, I find it really cute.
“See, if you were my boyfriend, I’d have nothing to worry about,” I tell him.
Then I immediately clamp my lips together.
God, I have to stop saying the stupidest shit!
“I mean, look at you,” I go on awkwardly.
“I’m having a hard go and you’re picking me up, taking me out for my favorite food and to my favorite bookstore.
You’d be perfect. If you were my boyfriend.
But, of course, you’re not. Because you’re my friend. ”
Bumbling. Bumbling fool. The nickname is apt.
Laz doesn’t say anything. He steals a glance at me, studying my face.
I shrink down in my seat and pull my hair over my eyes and nose, obscuring them from view.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m thinking.”
A few moments go past and then I straighten up, getting it together. This is Laz we’re talking about. Who cares if I just said he’d be the perfect boyfriend? He knows we’re just friends. He knows I didn’t mean anything by it.
“The thing is,” he begins to say, choosing his words carefully, “you know I would be a horrible boyfriend.”
“I was just joking.”
“I know. But honestly, I would be. We’re great together because we’re friends and nothing more.”
Shit. As much as I know that’s true and it shouldn’t be any other way, for some reason that really stings. I grimace, trying to hide it from him.
“I mean, I can’t seem to keep a girl around for longer than five months. All my relationships crash and burn and I’m the one at fault. I’m the one breaking up with them. So, we both kind of suck at this whole dating and love thing.”
“That’s for sure.” I don’t know where he’s going with this but it’s enough that my heart is starting to race. I start playing with my hair in order to calm down. Who needs a fidget spinner when you have a plethora of split ends?
“Maybe there’s something we could do to…help each other.”
I look at him sharply. “Help each other? Like be each other’s wingman, wingwoman…wingperson?”
He considers that with a tilt of his head, the sun catching the ebony strands of his thick hair and making them gleam. “Yeah. That could be part of it. Maybe at the end of it all.”
“At the end of what?”
He shrugs with one shoulder, wrist draped casually over the top of the steering wheel. He glances at me over his aviator shades. “Maybe we could date each other.”
I swallow hard.
Whoa.
Whoa.
I was not expecting that.
“Are you high? Did you smoke up with Scooby before you left the house?”
“No,” he says plainly. “I didn’t. I’m serious.”
“You just said that you would be a horrible boyfriend.”
“That’s true. But I don’t want to be. And I don’t mean that we would actually date each other. We would just pretend to date each other.”
I shake my head, trying to find the words to convey my confusion. “But…what? That makes no sense.”
“It does, trust me.”
“I ain’t trusting nothing from you right now. You’re crazy.”
He exhales. “Let’s get a burger in you and I’ll explain. You have low-blood sugar and are borderline hangry, so nothing will make sense until you eat.”
My stomach growls at the thought and I narrow my eyes at him. Sometimes I hate how well he knows me.
It’s not long before we’re sitting at the bar at the busy Umami Burger restaurant and I’m shoving their namesake dish down my throat when Laz starts at it again.
“Feeling better?” he asks, stealing a French fry and dipping it in wasabi aioli.
I swat his hand away. “Get your own fries.”
“Can’t. I’m watching my figure.”
I growl at him. Laz has the metabolism of a horse.
He also works out a lot, so he’s incredibly ripped and in shape.
Not that I often see it since he’s usually in layers except for in the most sweltering heat waves.
It’s probably for the best. It’s hard to be friends with someone when you’re already aware of how attractive they are.
Luckily I’ve trained myself to not look at him in that way.
“So, let me start again,” he says, adjusting himself on his seat so that he’s facing me, his long legs and shit-kicker boots hooked on the bottom rung of my stool. “What if the two of us dated each other? Just for a little while. Just as a test.”
“A test?” I ask, trying not to choke on the burger.
“Yeah. We go on some dates. Definitely at least three. And see what we’re doing wrong.”
“Who says I’m doing anything wrong?” I glare at him. “I thought we agreed that it’s their problem, not mine.”
“Even so, wouldn’t you want to learn?”
“But it would be your opinion.”
“And don’t you trust my opinion?”
I do. He’s got the experience that I don’t have.
“So, this whole thing would be about teaching me how to be a better date?”
“Kind of.”
“What about you? Like you’re so perfect.”
“I’m not. I know.” He chews on his lip for a moment. “Maybe then after the third date, we start getting into a relationship.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, putting the burger down and wiping my lips with the napkin. “Relationship?”
“A fake one.”
“How is that going to help?”
He runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. “I don’t know. I’m spitballing.”
“Maybe you ought to think this all through before you start spitballing. I mean, we’re friends and this…this seems like it’s going to get really complicated, really fast. I need a beer.” I wave at the bartender and order one.
“We’ll have rules in place so it doesn’t.”
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I blurt out.
He winces. “Not that it was an option, but ouch.”
“Sorry.” And I don’t know why I said that. It’s something I wouldn’t dare let myself entertain for a second.
The bartender slides me the beer, eyeing the both of us like we’re the most interesting customers he’s had all day.
I slam back half the beer, let out a burp I immediately cover with my hand, and then give Laz a sheepish look.
“Please don’t tell me you’re burping on your dates,” he says, grinning.
“I hope not,” I tell him. God, what if I am?
“This is what I mean,” he goes on. “We’ll go out on dates, pretend to be different people…or we’ll be strangers to each other. And we’ll see what happens.”
“Yeah, but while you’re judging and schooling me on whatever I’m doing wrong, what will I be doing?”
“You get to judge me,” he says. “Maybe there are problems I’m not even seeing, problems that might come up later.”
“And then later, what, it turns into a relationship? How does that even work if it’s not real? What’s the difference between that and, well, the fact that we’re friends?”
“I wouldn’t see anyone else. Neither would you.”
“I guess that’s fair.” I can’t even fathom dating anyone for real right now anyway.
“And we wouldn’t act like friends around each other either,” he adds.
“There you go with the sex thing again.”
“Or maybe we’ll just go on dates for a few weeks and that’s it. I don’t know. But it can’t hurt.”
“Are you kidding me?” I finish the rest of the beer and push it away.
“It can hurt everything, Laz. You’re one of my best friends.
I don’t want to mess that up. I don’t want to lose you, this, what we have.
I appreciate your concern for me and yourself, and obviously I don’t want to keep failing at this love game but…
it’s not worth risking our friendship for. Is it?”
He nods, exhaling through his nose as he looks away. His shoulders slump slightly. “Yeah. You’re right, Bumble.” He brings his gaze back to me, looks me dead in the eye. “Forget I said anything.”
But I can’t forget it. Now that he’s brought it up, it’s like it’s already altered the dynamic between us.
After the burger we go to the bookstore across the street, and though we lapse back into our usual ways on the surface—Laz spending his time flipping through biographies and sifting through poetry books, me in both the historical romance and horticulture sections—I know that something has changed.
It’s the idea of dating Laz.
Just that little seed of something, tossed into the dirt of my brain.
I know he said it would be fake.
I know that we wouldn’t be dating each other for any other reason than to maybe learn something about ourselves and how we are in relationships.
I know all that.
But even so, I can’t help but look at him differently. Not with new eyes, just with a new filter.
I’m terrified I might change my mind.