Chapter 13 Now #3
“Or,” he continues, hesitating, “on her birthday, when you brought that cake, and Grace was convinced you hired someone because you couldn’t have possibly baked something edible.”
Heat rises in my chest at the memory. “God, I forgot about that.”
“And that time she suggested you should be ‘grateful’ Cole stuck around while you were buried in revisions and grading final exams?”
I stare down into my glass. “Okay, stop, I get it.”
He softens, holding up a hand. “Sorry. My point is you deserved better. They didn’t always make you feel like they were in your corner.”
I hesitate before replying, shifting on the cushions. “But I wasn’t always the best friend either, was I? Like when Elizabeth got engaged. Sav and Grace weren’t wrong—I made it about me. I was jealous, and I didn’t handle it well.”
Lucas tilts his head, considering. “True. But we were all kind of a mess back then. We were in our early twenties, still figuring ourselves out. It doesn’t excuse it, but maybe we just didn’t know how to be there for each other the way we do now.”
I let out a breath, nodding. The knot in my stomach loosens, just a little. “Yeah. Maybe it wasn’t all them.”
Silence hangs between us until I break it.
“Were they right though?” I ask quietly. “Was I just pretending things were perfect?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His thumb traces the rim of his glass like he’s deciding how much truth I can handle. Then he says carefully, “I think maybe you were trying to believe something was perfect because you needed it to be. Doesn’t mean it was your fault.”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes, because as much as I want to defend myself, a small part of me knows he’s right.
I did need it to be perfect. I needed Cole to be the answer, the guarantee that my life could follow the beats of the romances I wrote.
So every time things felt off, I treated it like a plot twist instead of a warning.
Eventually, Lucas downs the last of his wine and leans back with a sigh. “All right. You want your phone back, or should I make you wait until morning?”
“Phone, please. I need to crash out in private.”
He grins but doesn’t move. Instead, he plucks the remote off the coffee table. “Or we could watch something awful and mock it until you forget your problems.”
“Awful like what?”
“John Tucker Must Die? It’s classic trash cinema.”
I gasp, clutching my wineglass like he just insulted my firstborn. “Excuse you. That is not trash. That is a cultural landmark. Brittany Snow, Sophia Bush, Ashanti? Don’t even get me started on Penn Badgley’s shaggy hair era.”
Lucas raises an eyebrow. “A movie where the most iconic scene is the basketball court thong reveal?”
“Exactly,” I shoot back. “A thong that went down in history.”
He groans. “God, you’re impossible.”
“And you have no taste,” I say, grabbing the remote out of his hand. “Prepare to be educated.”
Minutes later, the movie is playing, and Lucas starts providing a sarcastic play-by-play. “Wait—explain to me how a high school kid is taking three different girls to a high-end restaurant with white tablecloths. Was he running a pyramid scheme?”
I throw a piece of popcorn at him. “It’s called suspension of disbelief. Ever heard of it?”
When the thong reveal comes on the screen, I’m laughing before it even happens, and Lucas is shaking his head like he can’t believe he agreed to this.
But then he laughs too, quietly at first, then harder when I start quoting lines under my breath.
By the time the movie ends, Winston is asleep between us, Lucas has stolen the rest of my wine, and my cheeks hurt from smiling.
“All that,” Lucas says, “and she doesn’t even end up with him? She ends up with the brother?”
I shrug, cheeks still warm from laughing. “Yeah, but that’s the whole point. It wasn’t about John. Sometimes the win is realizing you deserve better. Sometimes choosing yourself is the ending.”
Lucas leans back, considering me like he’s weighing whether to tease or to tell the truth. Finally, he smiles, softer than usual. “You know for someone who claims to always be spiraling, you actually give really good advice. Maybe you should try taking it.”
I laugh, but it sticks in my throat. Because I know he’s right.
Lucas sets his empty wineglass on the coffee table and stands. Winston immediately trails him to the door, nails clicking against the vinyl flooring.
“Sometimes I wonder if he loves you more than me,” I say, half a joke, half a truth.
Lucas bends to scratch behind Winston’s ears one last time. “Can you blame him? I’m the fun uncle.”
“Debatable.”
He grins, hand already on the knob. “Later, Ains.”
The door clicks shut behind him, and the silence creeps back in like it owns the place.
I sit there for a while, the glow of my phone lighting up the coffee table, the video still climbing in views.
But my mind’s already drifting to our old duplex and a table too small for the number of people crammed around it.
To the first Friendsgiving I spent with Cole.
If tonight’s meet-cute was a fail, maybe it’s time to go back to the only pages I’ve written that still make sense.