6 - Bash
6
Bash
I was having a great time with the new neighbor.
Aiden did most of the cooking in our house. He was a better chef than me by a long shot, and a billion times better than Dante, so it just made sense for him to make most of the meals. He actually enjoyed it, too.
But I still felt guilty about how often he cooked for us, so it was a delight when Jazz invited us over for pasta. It helped that the food was delicious, too.
Yet as good as the food was, the company was better. I liked this girl, despite the bathroom intrusion when we had first met. And not just because she was an attractive woman with a killer smile. She was fun, and didn’t take herself too seriously. It was also really chill of her to invite us over for a spur-of-the-moment dinner. Most people I knew needed days of notice before having guests over. I liked that it was all so casual, eating pasta and drinking wine. And beneath the casual company, I felt the spark of something. Maybe it wasn’t anything… but maybe it was.
Until my work call ruined the night.
I rushed home, turned on my laptop, and hopped on a Teams meeting. “Sebastian Harley here. Just catching up on all the emails, but it looks like they’re unhappy with the supply chain requirements we’ll have after the acquisition?”
The timing was really shitty, but I actually enjoyed this part of my job. I was at my best when I was rushing around, putting out fires. It focused me in a way that I rarely felt with my other job responsibilities. It made me feel sharp, like an athlete in his prime.
In the blink of an eye, half an hour had passed and Aiden was walking through the door. I raised a hand in greeting but didn’t say anything since I was focused on the data on my laptop screen.
“You got a second?” Aiden asked me.
“Aiden, I love you like a brother, but I have zero seconds to devote to you right now.”
“Jazz and I almost kissed.”
I removed my headset and leaned back in my chair. “Forget what I said. You now have my full, undivided attention.”
Aiden spent a few minutes describing how the rest of the evening had gone after I left. I hung on his every word, my work long forgotten.
And deep down I felt something close to jealousy. I pictured myself play-wrestling with Jazz, pinning her to the ground and hovering above her gorgeous body. If I had been in that position, would I have been able to stop myself?
I didn’t know.
“I can’t believe you played her in Bananagrams and she still wanted to kiss you. You usually destroy everyone so badly in that game that they refuse to talk to you for a few days.”
Aiden sat at the table where I was working and shook his head. “You don’t understand. She’s great at it. She won half the games we played, before we tied the last game.”
I blinked in surprise. Aiden never lost at word games like Bananagrams or Scrabble. It was his super power. He had to stop going to local tournaments because he always won. But if this woman was somehow a match for him…
“She’s our neighbor,” I said. “You can’t date her.”
“I know,” Aiden whined, resting his forehead down on the table. “You told me after the housewarming party.”
I had told him after the housewarming party. Sure, I was projecting my own desires onto him. Telling myself that I couldn’t date her because she was our neighbor. It was good advice.
“I kept thinking about it while I was over there,” Aiden said. “But knowing that I can’t go out with her makes me want to even more.”
“Don’t ruin this,” I said, poking the top of his head. “Our last neighbor sucked. We finally have someone who seems cool. If you guys hook up and make it awkward, then we’re stuck in a bad situation until one of us moves.”
“I know.”
“Don’t make it weird, dude!”
“I know!” he insisted. “I told you we didn’t kiss. I stopped myself.”
I sighed. This was typical for Aiden. Our prospects with Carmen had fallen through, so he was jumping on the next woman who he came across. Which was a mistake… even if they were perfect for each other.
There was a reason we were looking for women on that polyamorous dating site. All of us traveled way too much to hold down girlfriends. Our relationships always failed. If we found a woman who wanted to date all three of us, a woman willing to be shared by three men, then we could juggle who was with her depending on who was in town at any given time. It was the best possible scenario for the future.
Not to mention trying to recreate that hot night of passion from last year, when the three of us hooked up with the woman who was in town from New York…
“What about the dating site?” I asked. “Have you found any other prospective women?”
Aiden hesitated. I knew him well enough to know that was his tell. He was hiding something.
“I’ve messaged a few girls,” he said carefully, “but nobody has responded.”
I stared at my best friend. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
He furrowed his brow. “Of course.”
I waited. That’s something I had learned in my time negotiating store acquisitions: sometimes it was best to let a silence stretch. People hated quiet. The other person would eventually cave and say something. And I was certain Aiden was hiding something.
But Aiden just stared back at me.
I guess he didn’t want to share whatever he was hiding. That was fine. We all had our secrets. I just hoped this one didn’t bite us all in the ass.
“Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “Keep messaging people on the dating app. Eventually we’ll find the right person. Everything will work out.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because,” I replied, “it’s true!”
Aiden pushed back his chair and stood up. “It may be true for you, but most of us aren’t so lucky.”
He left the room, and I thought about what he’d said. Then I thought about Jazz. From my seat at the kitchen table, I could look out the window behind me and see across the fence to her house. The lights were on in her kitchen, but the blinds were drawn, and a shadow moved on the other side of them. A shadow that must have been Jazz. I wondered what she was doing. What did she think about the almost-kiss with Aiden?
Shaking it off, I put my headphones back on and went back to putting out fires.