Chapter Fifteen
“Are you going to tell me what the fuck happened last night?”
Ryan came awake slowly and painfully, aware at first only of a bright, hideous light shining in his eyes and an annoyed voice looming over him.
“What are you doing here?” he groaned, turning over, trying to take his sheets with him. The empty tequila bottle thumped to the floor from the bed.
Not his greatest plan, taking the bottle to bed. But Alex wouldn’t come, even if Ryan had wanted him anyway, and Wyatt . . . Ryan pushed the thought of him from his head, because that pain was even worse than the ache in his head.
“You are certifiably insane,” Eric retorted. “What the fuck happened? All I’m hearing last night is rumors you’re cheating on Wyatt, there are reports of you flirting with some waiter with angel wings on, and then you cancel the pictures?”
Ryan groaned again.
“Do you need me to go remind him that he signed a contract? That he is legally obligated to be your boyfriend until we tell him otherwise? Because I can do that.”
It was funny how everything seemed bad, until Eric waded into the middle of it and things suddenly became catastrophically terrible.
“Please do not do that,” Ryan said, all too aware he was begging. “And for the love of god, turn the fucking light off.”
“Did you have a fight?” Eric demanded. “Where is he?”
“In the cottage, I don’t know. I didn’t have a GPS tracker put on him.”
“He didn’t answer the door, and I realized I don’t have a key,” Eric said impatiently.
“A situation I’m incredibly jealous of right now,” Ryan moaned into the pillow. “Just leave me alone.”
“No,” Eric said. “We need to fix this problem you created last night. And fix it quick. The rumors are flying fast and loose, and I need something concrete to combat them. Do I need to remind you why we came up with this plan in the first place? This is not making you look great.”
“It’s not my fault,” Ryan said. He didn’t know if he was lying or not. Only that he wanted to make Eric stop.
“You’re the one with the high profile,” Eric countered. “So automatically, everything is your fault.”
“You’re fired.”
Eric ignored that which was probably better for everyone.
“Tonight you’re going to go out to dinner, and there are going to be photographers and you’re going to sit in the most public table in the whole fucking restaurant, and you are going to be the cutest couple LA has ever fucking seen.
I don’t care if you hate each other right now, you’re going to put all that aside and fix this. ”
It sounded hideous. The Temple thing had been so much more their speed, with the added bonus of a cute twist that it was the place they’d met.
A twist that Eric had made sure all the gossip columnists knew about.
And now that was all ruined because Wyatt had decided that Ryan’s determination to never give him a reason to cheat was stupid.
If anything, Ryan reasoned despite his pounding headache, that proved just how much he cared. Ryan had been about to propose that threesome for Wyatt. A completely selfless act if there ever was one.
The problem was, he wasn’t sure if it was the tacky taste of tequila poisoning his mouth or the bright light shining in through the window, it no longer made quite as much sense as it had the night before.
“Fine, we’ll go to the dinner,” Ryan said. He could admit he’d been at least partially wrong. He could go knock on Wyatt’s door and grovel, apologize for the stupid threesome idea, hope they could go back to where they’d been, and beg him to go to dinner.
He could do that.
He groaned into the pillow again.
Maybe.
“I think you need more of an intervention than I have the patience to give,” Eric said. And the worst part of that was Ryan knew exactly who he meant instead, and that was even worse than Eric.
And when something was even worse than Eric, it was a very serious problem.
“You look incredibly shitty,” Tabitha said when he opened the door.
It wasn’t entirely fair. He’d at least managed to drag himself out of bed, and into the shower, knowing she’d be coming and would expect brushed teeth and no tequila body odor at a bare minimum.
“I feel incredibly shitty,” Ryan retorted, shutting the door behind her.
“I should have known you’d fuck it up with him,” Tabitha muttered to herself as she made her way through the foyer and down the hall towards the kitchen.
Ryan stopped in the doorway when he realized where she was headed.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she chided him. “He’s not even here. He’s hiding too, I’m sure. Probably angry at you, and I’m sure it’s mostly, if not completely, deserved.”
“You’re my best friend, you’re supposed to take my side,” Ryan said petulantly, sliding onto one of the barstools and setting his aching head gently against the marble countertop.
“That’s not what best friends do,” Tabitha said briskly, opening the fridge. “They give you the unvarnished, ugly truth and help you deal with it. Thus, why I am here.”
“You’re here because Eric bribed you with the newest Gucci bag,” Ryan said. “I heard him on the phone.”
“I would have come anyway, darling. I didn’t want to waste a chance to get something out of that asshole.” She placed an ice pack against his forehead. “Wyatt’s not here so you might as well tell me everything that happened.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ryan said, his voice muffled by the countertop.
“But you should, and you’re going to. Otherwise how are you going to tell Wyatt that you have to go to dinner tonight?”
“Eric told you about that too, I assume,” Ryan groaned.
“If you are going to enact this charade,” Tabitha said, far more kindly than he probably deserved, “you need to actually put the effort in. It’s not all cute Instagram photos and rumors of you surfing together.
You dropped the fly ball last night, and threw an interception, to mix metaphors.
Time to fix it and show all those fans of yours that you’re actually very happy together. ”
“I’m not sure it can be fixed,” he admitted. The look on Wyatt’s face had been blank and devoid of anything, like he’d shut down and then shut it all away. Maybe Ryan couldn’t get it back. Maybe Wyatt didn’t want him to.
“I’m certain there will be some groveling involved,” Tabitha pointed out sternly, pulling out the barstool next to him and settling in. “Now, from the top please. I need to know how bad it is before we pick the appropriate groveling method.”
“He’s been . . . quiet since Napa,” Ryan said. “I thought maybe he’d changed his mind about us. The sex was still so good, though, so maybe it was nothing. Maybe I misjudged.”
“Did you ask him if he’d changed his mind?”
Ryan shook his head and almost instantly regretted it. “No,” he murmured.
“And did you ask him what was wrong?”
“No.” Ryan hesitated. “I was afraid it would feel too . . . boyfriend-y. That it would open up what we had to even more complexities. And I wanted to keep it simple.”
Ryan didn’t even have to look at Tabitha to know the look she was giving him was galling.
“It was stupid, okay? I should have asked. I wanted to ask.”
“That isn’t why I’m annoyed with you, and definitely not why he’s annoyed with you,” Tabitha said. “So, he was quiet, and you didn’t ask, and then you went to Temple, and decided to pick up a waiter dressed like an angel? I’m not following that logic.”
“I thought he was bored, okay? I thought he was bored of . . .” Ryan paused, because he didn’t want to say me and he definitely didn’t want to say our relationship. That was the whole problem. He’d gone into this very deliberately trying to avoid a relationship, but they’d ended up there anyway.
“Bored? Let me tell you, Wyatt Blake does not strike me as the kind of guy who sticks around when he’s bored.”
“Exactly,” Ryan said miserably.
“You thought he’d get bored and leave you? Really?” Tabitha’s incredulous voice didn’t help. “Wyatt is crazy about you.”
“It sounds stupid but I had an ex, well, you knew him actually. David. He cheated on me, at the end. And he told me that he’d been driven to do it because he was bored. You know how much that relationship ending hurt me, and since that point I’ve made sure to never let things get that far. Ever.”
“David cheated on you? That miserable small-dicked bastard,” Tabitha muttered. “You never told me.”
“It was fucking embarrassing,” Ryan admitted.
“I just can’t believe he had the balls to use that excuse and then you actually believed it,” Tabitha said.
“How was I supposed to know? I was bored too! I didn’t get why everyone was so hot to be in a relationship, because I was just as bored as he was.”
“Darling,” Tabitha said carefully, “I think that was because he was boring and you were not right for each other. Not everyone with a little hiccup in their relationship adds excitement via cheating.”
“I know that, of course I know that,” Ryan retorted.
“So that was what you were trying to do last night? Add in excitement so that Wyatt wouldn’t cheat on you and leave you because he was bored?”
“It sounds so stupid when you say it.”
“Well,” Tabitha hedged.
“He didn’t understand,” Ryan said. “He just said he wanted to stop playing games and kept demanding to know if I was enough for him.”
“Oh dear,” Tabitha said. “What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t want him to get bored! I wasn’t thinking about me, I could go on like this for . . . I don’t know, a long time probably. I’m not bored.”
Ryan realized what he’d said just as he said it.
“Oh fuck,” he groaned. “I’m in love with him, aren’t I?”
Tabitha put a reassuring arm around his shoulders. “It’s not that bad, I promise.”
“I was so worried he’d leave me that I actually drove him away.” Ryan slammed a fist on the counter. “I’m a fucking idiot.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s in love with you too, so maybe tone down the woe is me inevitability that he’s gone for good,” Tabitha said. “You can still fix this.”
“If I agree to make it official, probably,” Ryan admitted.