Chapter 8
eight
Tate
November
Coffee?” Fletcher stands on the opposite side of the door, an apologetic look on his face.
I grab the iced coffee out of the drink carrier and then slam the door shut, stifling a laugh as I do.
“I deserved that.”
I open the door back up and motion for him to come in, “You actually deserve worse. You’re lucky I don’t kick you in the nuts.”
“I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t even think about it. I just went with it, and by the time I realized what an asshole I was, leaving you alone at the party, you were already gone.”
He shuts the door behind him, sets the drink carrier on the kitchen counter, and pulls out his hot coffee.
“Yeah, because I didn’t want to sit on the couch all night and look like a complete loser while my best friend was getting laid.”
“I was not getting laid. We didn’t even kiss,” he argues. “We just talked.”
“Somehow, that’s worse. Luckily, the best person I know saw how pathetic I looked and offered to drive me home.”
“Yeah, he made me feel quite bad about the whole thing.” He scratches the back of his head.
“Good.” I cross my arms. “I told him to make you feel super guilty the next time he saw you, so he did his job.”
I honestly don’t think I was mad at Fletcher for flirting with another girl last night. It’s not like he hasn’t had girlfriends in the years I’ve known him. It was just kind of a douchey thing to do when there was no one else for me to hang out with.
“Am I forgiven?” His eyes soften as he sets his cup down and steps toward me. “Please?”
“You’ll be forgiven after you order us some pizza and wings and watch my favorite movies with me all day.”
“Oh, actually, I have plans with Becca. I was just stopping by to bring you coffee.”
“Oh.”
Now, I might be a little mad. You mean to tell me you couldn’t even hang out with your best friend for a couple of hours after you ditched her last night?
A smirk grows on his face.
“I’m just kidding. I’m all yours.” He laughs, and I grab a pillow off my couch and chuck it at him hard enough for him to stumble back.
“That wasn’t funny. You’re already on thin ice.”
“I’m a hockey player; I’m used to ice.”
“And I’m used to your shitty jokes.” I flip him off. “If I weren’t, you’d be finding yourself a new best friend right about now.”
I drop down onto my couch, kicking my feet up onto the coffee table and turning on the TV.
“I’m gonna assume we’re good now.”
Fletcher grabs his coffee and sits down next to me.
“Uh, uh.” I wave my finger in his face. “I told you, we won’t be good until I have a couple of pizzas and wings sitting in front of me while we watch my favorite movies all day. I was thinking we start with Crazy, Stupid, Love; it’s an absolute classic.”
“Fine, get it started, I’m gonna go order our food. Two large pizzas and a large order of wings.”
“The swe—”
“Sweet chili wings, I know.” He shakes his head. “And one pizza with sausage, mushroom, and onion, well done, and the other one a BBQ chicken pizza. Not my first rodeo, T.”
“Okay.” I hold my hands up, leaning back slightly as he heads into the kitchen to get the phone number. “Don’t forget th—”
“The red pepper flakes and extra packets of parmesan.”
“You know me well.”
“Too well.” He winks, grabbing the menu out of the takeout drawer. “Hi, I’d like to place an order for delivery, please.”
He leans against the counter, and I grin at him as he orders.
Things are perfect the way they are. They always have been. Why would either of us risk changing them?
He’s my best friend.
That’s enough.
It has to be.
So,” I toss my remaining slice back into the box, “do you like Becca?”
Fletcher swallows his bite, washing it down with root beer, and then shrugs.
“She was really cool, but I don’t think either of us was interested in that way.”
“I don’t know; you seemed really into each other when I saw you guys talking.”
“I guess. We talked about her brother and how he made it to the NHL. We talked about her back injury that almost ended her career in gymnastics. And apparently, I talked a lot about you.”
I suppress a smile. “What?”
“She told me that you somehow made your way into every single story. But it’s hard not to include you in stories since—”
“I’m always around.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.” He gives me a gentle shove. “That makes it sound like you’re a thorn in my side or something. You’re in most of my stories because I want you in them.”
My body feels numb.
I know I’m his best friend. I know most of his stories probably include the guys as well, even Brinley. Still, after what happened last night, it's reassuring to know that most of their conversations involved me.
“Well,” I shake out my hands, sitting up higher, “I tend to just leave you out of my stories. Even if you’re in them.”
“Haha.” He rolls his eyes. “Honestly, though, I really think you’d like Becca. I also feel like she’d fit right into the group.”
“You sure you don’t like her?” I raise an eyebrow, and he shakes his head.
“I told you, she’s cool.”
I turn toward the TV because I honestly don’t know what else to say. I don’t know what I’m looking for from him. I don’t know what I want him to say.
I don’t expect him to turn toward me and say, 'Of course, I don’t want her; I want you,' but I know that won’t happen.
“You know what’s crazy?” he asks.
“Hmm?” My eyes stay on the TV even though the only thing that’s on it is the rolling credits.
“I realized last night that you and I are always in relationships at the same time. Isn’t that weird?”
I guess I’ve never thought about it. I’ve only really been in two relationships, and I feel like Fletcher’s been in more than that.
However, in high school, whenever Fletcher was with a girl, I would typically block it out.
It was a little harder for me then. That was at the height of my feelings for him.
“That’s not true. You’ve dated like thirty girls.”
“Okay, first of all,” he twists his body toward me completely, “I’ve been in two serious relationships. Second of all… okay, I don’t have a second of all but—”
“Two relationships?” I scoff. “There was Maddie, Phoebe, Ester, Kendall—”
“You’re making me sound like Zeke,” he argues. “I’m talking about real relationships, Tate. I’m not saying I’ve only kissed two girls; if we’re listing girls I’ve kissed, your name should be on that list.”
I feel a fire shoot straight to the tips of my ears, and my chest shrinks, squeezing all the air out of my lungs.
We don’t really talk about that night. Not since the day after it happened. The only time it comes up is when the guys, or sometimes the girls, are giving us shit about it.
“Fine, who do you count as your real relationships then?”
“I dated Ester from sophomore year to junior year, and then I dated Maddie during our freshman year of college. Sure, I’ve kissed other girls, but those were like one-time things at parties.”
Just like our kiss.
Our only kiss.
“They didn’t mean anything. And it’s not like they were hookups. It was a kiss.”
I don’t think he means to do it, lump our kiss in with what he’s saying right now, and it shouldn’t hurt the way it does… it was years ago. I’ve kissed other guys since then. I’ve dated since then.
But that kiss was never just a kiss to me, and it never will be.
“And you were dating Lucas at the same time I was with Ester.”
Lucas— my first official boyfriend. And a guy I only dated because Fletcher was too busy with Ester to even care about me at that point. He didn’t mean to ice me out, but with his hockey schedule and a new relationship, it was hard for him not to.
It didn’t take Lucas long to catch on to that.
He didn’t seem to care, though, because after that, he started dating Casey Hill, who was the exact opposite of me in every way. She was the daughter my parents wished I were.
And even though I was never fully into Lucas in that way, it still hurt when he started dating her right after we broke up.
“I don’t even know if you could say Lucas was my boyfriend. We dated for what, four months?”
“You labeled your relationship.” He laughs. “I’d say it was pretty real.”
“I’d put it more under the summer fling category. We started dating in June after sophomore year and were broken up by homecoming in October.”
“Shit, you’re right. He went to the homecoming dance with Casey Hill. I forgot about that. He was a douche, anyway; I mean, breaking up with you three days before the dance?”
“Luckily, I had a best friend who had my back.” I poke his arm, and he grins.
I don’t bother adding that our breakup probably wouldn’t have happened when it did if Fletcher and Ester hadn’t broken up a week prior.
“And they stayed together all of high school. They might actually still be together, so it all worked out in the end.”
“Back to my point, neither of us dated someone after that, and then you met Ryan during freshman orientation and started dating him, and by the end of the first semester, I was with Maddie.”
“Ah, Ryan. The reason I will never date someone in my major again.”
“He wasn’t that bad,” Fletcher argues. “He got along with the guys pretty well.”
“He wrote me a song for Valentine’s Day.”
“And?”
“Sang it to another girl two weeks later to ask her out. We didn’t even technically break up. He said he needed space—”
“He did… permanently.” He cackles, and it takes everything in me not to punch him in the gut.
I don’t know if I thought Ryan and I would last longer. He was the first person I ever slept with, but I knew from the beginning it wasn’t a forever type of love. I just didn’t expect us to break up so quickly. I was rooting for it to last at least a year.
The following year, he tried to sleep with Brinley, and I knew the breakup happened for a reason.
“Why are we talking about this?” I pull my legs up to my chest. “I don’t think making me relive my past relationships is going to help your screw-up from last night.”
“I don’t know. Last night, after I found out you went home, I had all this time to think, and one of the things I thought about was how we’re always in a relationship at the same time. I thought it was weird.”
“Maybe if you didn’t completely forget about me when you started dating Ester, I wouldn’t have found Lucas in the first place.”
“Are you saying you were jealous, Tatum Lewis?” he teases, wiggling his eyebrows.
“No.” I lie. “I’m saying, like last night, you completely abandoned me when you started dating Ester. You’re lucky I haven’t pulled a Brinley and iced you out completely.”
“Fair.”
“Now, it’s time to get back to our movie marathon.”
I mindlessly choose our next movie, not necessarily because I want to watch another one, but because I’m hoping it ends this conversation.
“I thought you didn’t like this movie?” I freeze, glance at Fletch, and then look back at the TV.
“No harm in giving it another try, right?” I sigh, sinking into the couch as we sit through one of the worst rom-coms I’ve ever seen.
Fuck my life.