Chapter Fifteen
“YOUR ENERGY is fire,” Stacy declares over coffee the following week. Lewis is back at work and has only gotten a quarter of the way through his inbox. He definitely needs coffee to keep slogging through, and since he and Stacy coordinate their in-office days, he sent her the super secret bat signal that means make any excuse you have to and meet me for coffee in fifteen minutes .
It’s just the coffee cup emoji so it’s not that super secret.
Lewis sips at his peppermint mocha. “So I have acceptable maid-of-honor energy?”
“You always did, but now you’re like, chef’s kiss.” Stacy squeals. “Oh my god, was it so amazing? Don’t you just feel totally energized?”
When he first sat down with Stacy and she asked breathlessly, How was it? Lewis had to remind himself that he was supposed to have been getting his chakra scrubbed last week, not trekking through the wilderness with a hot man. “My energy has never been more gized,” he says.
“Hardy har har,” Stacy deadpans. “My dad has better jokes.”
“Your dad is hilarious. I aspire to be your dad.”
“Embarrassing.” Stacy gulps her coffee, then fans her open mouth. “Shit, it’s hot.”
Lewis takes the cup away from her. “Slow down. If you burn your tongue off, you won’t be able to say your vows to Alang.”
Waving a hand, she says, “I’ll hold up cards cue cards, Love, Actually style. That’s not really the most important thing I use my tongue for in this relationship—”
“Ew.” Lewis slides the cup back across the table. “Go ahead, burn your tongue off. I don’t want to hear this.”
Stacy laughs devilishly. “You’re such a prude.”
“I’m not a prude, I just don’t want to hear your BJ tricks. I have my own. I don’t need to know yours.”
Laughing again, Stacy takes another gulp of coffee. “Speaking of, did you see Tad again?”
“Maybe,” Lewis says cagily.
“You did!” She claps gleefully. “Let me see your hand.”
“What?” He balls his hands in his lap. “Why? You can’t read my chakra from my hands.”
“Gimme,” she orders.
Powerless as always to stand against the force of nature that is a caffeinated Stacy, he holds out his hands.
She grabs his left one. “You’re still wearing this ring?” Her face gets goopy. It’s the same face she makes during their yearly Sleepless in Seattle-While You Were Sleeping-You’ve Got Mail marathon, when each movie gets to its Happily Ever After. It’s a face Lewis is well acquainted with, since he always makes it too.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says, like he forgot.
Stacy knows him too well. “You’re seriously into him. Oh my god, did you bail on the retreat? Don’t lie to me, Lewis. Did you bail to spend more time with him?”
“Do you really think I would do that?” Lewis asks, which is a question, not a lie.
“Yes,” she informs him. “I 100 percent do, and while I’m totally mad you skipped the retreat, if you did it for true love, that did more for your chakra than the vortex could.”
“I never said I skipped it!” Lewis protests. Also not a lie. He didn’t say that.
She fixes him with an unblinking stare.
He returns it.
One of her eyebrows slowly creeps upward. She still doesn’t blink.
Lewis breaks first, because he always does. “Okay fine, I skipped the retreat and went camping with Tad.”
“Ha!” she crows. “I knew it! Also, lame , and I’m mad at you for not going, but”—she squeals—“oh my god, Lew! Are you two a thing now?”
“No,” Lewis says quickly. “No, I’m still on the Break.”
She looks exasperated. “But you hooked up while you were camping. Please tell me you made the most of sharing a tent.”
He shrugs but smiles. She squeals again. “Have you been seeing him since you got back?” she asks.
It’s taken everything Lewis has not to see Tad. They’ve been texting. Like. Kind of a lot. But Tad hasn’t suggested getting together. Maybe when he said he wanted to stay friends, he really meant he just wanted to be friends? But Lewis just… well. He thought maybe Tad was hoping they could be more than friends.
Which is actually really shitty of Lewis, since he’s the one who said they couldn’t be more than friends. He shouldn’t want Tad to have feelings for him, because if Tad does, then it means he’s going to feel lonely and sad and full of longing for something he can’t have.
Lewis doesn’t want Tad to feel the way he feels right now.
“No,” he finally answers, knowing it took too long and sounded too fraught.
“Oh, honey.”
“It’s fine! We had a… an arrangement. He gets it. It was casual, and now we’re going to be friends.”
His phone, which is on the table, trills with his text tone—which is an orchestral flourish from the scene where Aladdin and Jasmine first kiss. Yes, from the Disney movie, obviously. It’s Tad, responding to a text Lewis sent earlier, and he can’t keep the smile off his face.
“Is that him?” Stacy asks.
Lewis turns the phone face down. “Hm?”
She looks triumphant. “So you haven’t seen him in person, but you’re talking.”
“Just a little,” Lewis hedges. His phone trills again and it takes all his willpower not to look. They texted all weekend. Tad had to drive to Watertown to get the stuff he brought to Vegas from his brother (which made Lewis feel like an asshole; he never even thought about what happened to the suitcase Tad must have packed), and they even texted then. Voice to text, Tad repeatedly assured him.
Now that they’re both back at work, Lewis is trying to get used to more than five minutes going by between messages.
Stacy plants her elbows on the table and watches raptly as Lewis stares at his phone. “You can check it,” she says. “I love that I’m watching your love story unfold.”
“There’s no love story,” Lewis says. To prove it, he picks up the phone, doesn’t even read Tad’s latest couple texts, and sends back: Can we meet tomorrow to go over the divorce papers?
Putting the phone back on the table, Lewis says, “We’re taking care of divorce stuff. That’s why we’re texting.”
Not a lie, since he just sent a text about it. Who cares if it’s the first one?
“Lew,” she says.
“Stace,” he replies.
She huffs. “Why are you fighting this? You two are obviously meant to be.”
Meant to be. Right. Lewis used to believe in meant-to-be. He still believes in it—for other people. “I don’t think we are,” he says.
Not to be deterred, Stacy asks, “Then why did all this stuff happen?”
“Because we were drunk and horny?”
It’s like he didn’t say a word. “You don’t do hookups and you don’t wear jewelry.”
“That’s your incontrovertible proof?” Why is he still wearing the ring? He keeps almost taking it off, but as soon as he gets it up over his knuckle, he stops and slides it back down.
His phone trills with Tad’s response. Sure, want to come over to my place? I already printed all the stuff out
A slow warmth travels from Lewis’s chest to his stomach. It’s pretty romantic that Tad already got everything ready. He promised they could start this process right away because he saw how freaked Lewis had been by the drunken marriage.
“My incontrovertible proof is the look you have on your face right now,” Stacy says. She hates when he uses what she calls “lawyer words,” so the fact that she repeats “incontrovertible” without air quotes or an eye-roll is its own kind of proof. She really thinks there’s something between Tad and him. Something special.
Something meant-to-be, which Lewis can’t let himself believe again. The only thing any of his relationships were ever meant to be was over.
Stacy was right there with him, believing all those guys were the love of his life—until it was obvious they weren’t, and then she was there with ice cream cake and Laffy Taffy and her laptop loaded with rom-coms. She’s the best cheerleader you could ever ask for. She always has your back. She’s the most supportive person Lewis has ever known in his entire life.
But she’s not good at spotting a bad relationship. She so desperately wants Lewis to find The One, just like she did. He’s just tired. He can’t keep getting his heart broken.
“I can tell you like this guy,” she says gently, because he obviously looks like he’s about to have an anxiety attack. God knows she’s talked him down from plenty over the years.
“It doesn’t matter if I like him,” Lewis says. “I’m not dating right now. That’s the rule.”
She looks sad. “You made that rule.”
And if he can’t stick to his own rule, how pathetic is that?
He stands up and goes around the table to kiss her cheek. “I better head back. There’s a briefing this week on that recycling case and I have a bajillion emails about it to get through.”
“Kay.” Stacy blows him a kiss. “I love you. Call me when you land.”
As he heads back to his office, he texts Tad back: Your place sounds great. I’ll bring dinner