Chapter 41
Forty-One
ELI
Ihad quickly come to love working for people who strongly encouraged a work-life balance, but as someone who had experienced the opposite for the past decade, I was still finding it hard to get used to having actual free time.
Today, I sent Addie off with her breakfast, did the big shop, two loads of washing and built another chest of drawers for Addie to replace the space that had been occupied for weeks with an open suitcase overflowing with clothes.
I had no idea if she would use it, but at least now there was a chance she wasn’t going to hurt herself climbing over her suitcase every morning to get out of bed.
That had taken up most of my day, and now I was lying on the sofa, questioning whether buying and building a chest of drawers for your flatmate and the woman you have semi-regular sex with was a bit much.
Not that we’d had sex since she had given me one of the best orgasms of my life and kissed me on the forehead goodnight.
Before I could get too deep into my overthinking, there was a knock on the front door. I checked the bowl where we both kept our keys, and Addie’s weren’t in there, so I had no idea who could be knocking on the door in the late afternoon.
I opened it to find Jesse on the other side.
“Hey, Addie isn’t here right now,” I said on autopilot.
He seemed surprised at how I had greeted him, but he shook it off quickly. “I know. I’m not here to see her. I went by the restaurant, and Xander said it was your day off, so I came here. I’m here for you.”
I frowned. Despite what Addie insisted, I still didn’t believe that her friends were going to openly let me enter their ranks. So I had no idea why one of them would specifically want to see me. “Okay. Why?”
Jesse smiled and rested a hand on my bicep, giving it a gentle squeeze before he headed to the kitchen.
“Because I woke up this morning, and realised that there had been a massive oversight and we had failed to extend an invitation to you. And because of the extremely late notice, I figured it was best if we had this conversation in person.”
I closed the door and followed him. “An invitation to what?”
“Addie’s birthday party. Tonight,” he replied sheepishly as he leaned against a counter.
I paused in the doorway of the kitchen. “Her what?”
Addie hadn’t mentioned anything about a birthday party.
In fact, she hadn’t even mentioned that her birthday was coming up.
I knew it was towards the end of August, but I guess I never thought to ask for a specific date, and it had slipped me by that we were basically in September now.
Addie rarely gave information about herself freely.
You had to ask explicitly if you wanted to know anything. She was raised by a lawyer, after all.
Still, I thought there might be signs that it was imminent. There had been nothing.
“That’s today?”
Jesse, rightfully, looked confused. “Yes. It’s today.”
“Her thirtieth birthday is today?” I knew I sounded like a broken record.
But this morning, I had given her toast for breakfast, like I always did.
If I had known what today was, I would have made her…
literally anything else. I wouldn’t have even done anything more to acknowledge it if she didn’t want me to.
But her thirtieth birthday deserved a breakfast more special than crunchy peanut butter with a sprinkle of sea salt on top.
Jesse blew out a slow breath through pursed lips. “Fuck, when Clo said Addie hated birthdays, I thought she was being hyperbolic. I didn’t think she meant that you have to be blood to know her date of birth.”
“She hates them?”
Jesse hummed. “Clo says she hates being the centre of attention, and that is basically all a birthday is—people insisting on paying you attention. She does, however, have allowances for milestone birthdays. Xander wanted it to be a full surprise, but, well, the Henrys reminded him that there was no way anybody was getting Addie to any kind of location without a valid reason. So she knows about it, although I am unclear if we are still pretending that it’s a surprise.
I cannot see it going over well that a bunch of people are going to jump out and shout ‘surprise’ at her.
But we shall see. I do think that she would want you there. ”
“It’s probably best that I don’t.”
“And why is that?” Jesse asked gently.
I didn’t have a good enough reason other than my feelings being slightly hurt that Addie wasn’t the one inviting me to her birthday party herself.
“I have to work lunch tomorrow,” I said. A lie. I was doing dinner, but Jesse didn’t know that.
Jesse ran a hand along the back of his neck and gave me a look that let me know he knew I was lying.
Fuck.
“Xander mentioned that you weren’t working until dinner tomorrow.”
“We’ve been having sex,” I blurted out instead of trying to find another excuse. Jesse blinked slowly. I felt heat rise up the back of my neck as the silence stretched between us. He definitely didn’t need to know that.
“Relevance?” Jesse eventually said.
“There isn’t any, really. Forget I even mentioned it.
” Although I didn’t want him to forget about it.
I’d brushed off the idea of telling someone about Addie’s and my…
arrangement, but now that I’d said it out loud, I realised that I needed to talk to somebody about it.
Someone neutral. Someone who might be able to remind me that it was stupid to develop actual feelings for your fuck buddy. Especially when they told you not to.
Thankfully, Jesse didn’t let it go.
“Is it a situationship that has ended badly?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s still ongoing as far as I know.”
Jesse nodded as he moved to the freezer and immediately pulled out a bottle of vodka like he was expecting it to be there. Addie kept her vodka in the freezer because ‘there is literally nothing worse than a lukewarm martini, Eli’ and mixing with ice wasn’t enough.
I couldn’t say I disagreed with her.
That didn’t explain how Jesse knew it was in there.
“Clo does the same thing,” he explained. “Glasses?”
I walked over to the cupboard and pulled out two shot glasses. Jesse poured vodka into both. We clinked them together and knocked them back.
“You want to start at the beginning?” Jesse asked once we set them back down.
“Addie and I have been friends with benefits since earlier in the summer. But we haven’t used those benefits for a couple of weeks now.”
“Okay, but you’re still friends, right? That hasn’t changed? She hasn’t iced you out or anything?”
“No. Nothing has changed in terms of the way we interact with each other. We’re still friends.”
Jesse started tracing the rim of his shot glass with his finger. “But?”
“I think I am in over my head.”
Jesse laughed. It was a deep, scratchy sound. “Yeah, the Henry sisters have a way of making you feel that way sometimes. Why are you in over your head?”
“Oh, you know, a tale as old as time. Girl thinks boy is the worst person to ever exist, and boy thinks girl is the highlight of his day. It never goes beyond arguing about Poe and white whales, but it also kind of feels like everything.”
His finger stopped tracing. “Clo used the word nemesis.”
I smiled. “I think I overheard her call me the bane of her existence once.”
“Did you know before adding a physical component to your friendship that your teenage crush on her hadn’t gone anywhere?”
I huffed. “Yes. But crushes come and go all the time.”
“They do. But some don’t.”
“I’m not in love with her,” I said defensively. It wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t. Falling maybe. But I hadn’t got there.
Yet.
Jesse rolled his lips like he was trying to bite back a smile. “I never said that you were. Do you want advice, or did you just need someone to talk to?”
“Is your advice going to be something other than ‘just talk to her’ and something about feelings?” Jesse shook his head. “Then just saying it out loud is enough. Talking to her isn’t going to work.”
Another low rumble of a hum. “Okay, well, I am here if you want to talk. Or hang out. Or whatever. And I will be the one you walk in with at this party.”
“I really don’t think she is going to want me there.”
“If it’s because she didn’t tell you today was her birthday, I wouldn’t read much into it. She hasn’t actively acknowledged it since she turned eighteen. If the people in charge of this party weren’t family, then no one would know. She would want you there.”
“I made her fucking toast this morning.”
Jesse narrowed his eyes, his face bemused. “Does she hate toast?”
“No. I think she would live off toast if she didn’t like cooking. But I always make her toast in the mornings. It’s so mundane. I could have made her pancakes or something.”
“Right…”
“What?”
“You said didn’t want advice, so I’ve got nothing further to say on that. Make her pancakes tomorrow when she’s hungover. And stop pouting that she didn’t tell you. I promise it is not you.”
“I’ll come,” I said quietly.
Jesse smiled broadly and clapped one of my shoulders. The touch felt familiar and comforting. I had missed casual touches between friends. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d experienced it.
“That’s what I like to hear. Put on some fancy-ish clothes, and then we can get going.”
I looked Jesse up and down. He was wearing a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. He noticed me looking at him and tipped his head in the direction of the living room. It was then that I noticed a garment bag draped over our sofa that belonged to neither me nor Addie.
“Did you sneak that in?” I asked.
“No, you were just overthinking when you opened the door and didn’t notice I was holding it.
I shoved him playfully, both of us laughing.