Chapter 20
TWENTY
Alex
“I need you and the rest of the group to organize a get together for Saturday night,” I tell Kyle.
He blinks at me a few times. “We already have plans for Saturday night.”
“Good.” I nod in approval. “I’ll be there with Mona.”
Kyle blinks again. “Wait. No. Me and Zara have plans for Saturday night, not we as a group.”
“Why can’t you just do it on Friday night?” I suggest.
Kyle huffs in annoyance. “You’re gonna dictate now when I should take my girlfriend out on a date?”
I still don’t understand how this clown has a steady girlfriend, one who loves him passionately, and I just can’t get it together with Mona. What is it that he has? I can answer the question myself. Most likely not a damaged brain.
“We can all meet at Casey’s,” I suggest out usual bar when the guys get together.
“What the fuck, you’re high jacking my day and making me drive into the city for it, too?”
I shrug. “It’ll be easier that way.”
“For who?” Kyle opens his arms wide. “None of us live in the city but you.”
I rock back and forth in my chair, looking like I’m thinking about how to answer his question. In fact, my mind is going a mile a minute as I think about Mona and all these extra hours she’s been working. Why? She never showed any sign that she’s low on funds. Why is she suddenly working this much?
I realize with a start that I didn’t bother to ask if she’s working on Sunday, too. At this rate, I wouldn’t even be surprised. Pissed, yes, but not surprised.
“Hello?” Kyle waves a hand in front of my eyes. “Earth to Alex. What the fuck is going on, dude?”
I push his hand away and sigh. “I told Mona that we have a group get together this weekend, and I invited her to attend.”
Kyle’s eyes look like they are about to fall out of his head. “There is no group anything this weekend. I got plans with Zara. I don’t know what the others are doing.”
“I need help.”
The words drop like a massive boulder between us, leaving us to stare at each other across the crater it created. I understand the shock on Kyle’s face. I have never asked for help with anything personal, not when it came to women.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, though. And I am desperate for sure. I don’t know how I can not only get Mona back, but keep her forever, too. There has to be a way.
“Dude, not gonna lie, you’re scaring the crap out of me,” my friend declares. “Who are you even?”
I clear my throat a few times. “You said you’d help me get Mona back.”
He nods in agreement. “I did, but you forgot to mention that it would interfere with my own relationship.”
I roll my eyes at how dramatic he sounds.
“Nice,” he mumbles. “Like that’s gonna make me jump through hoops to convince Mona you’re not the prick she thinks you are.”
The smile disappears from my face as all the amusement I was feeling dies.
“I think she’s into pricks, though,” Kyle rushes to say when he notices my somber mood. “And I think we can definitely say you are her favorite prick.”
I leave forward and drop my head in my hands, making a mess of my hair.
“Can we please have a group dinner on Saturday night? That’s all I’m asking.”
“I don’t know what the others are doing, and…”
I cut him off. “Can you please find out?”
Kyle lets out a loud snort of amusement. “You’re the one who needs the favor. You should be the one calling everyone to ask if they’ll do it.”
I hate that he makes sense as much as I hate that he has his personal life together while mine is in shambles.
“If they don’t say no,” Kyle declares, “their women will definitely say no.”
Once again, he is correct. I can’t pull this off.
That’s okay, though. I can wait for Mona in front of her apartment, and if she shows up, I’ll just take her out to eat.
I’ll make reservations at the same place I took her to before.
Well, I never actually took her there, I just pretended to be someone else to get her out there.
I realize how messed up it all is as I run it down in my head.
“Ray’s down,” Kyle announces from the other side of my desk. When I look at him, I see that he’s staring at his phone.
“Really?”
He winces. “He has to talk to Hayden about it, though.”
I groan in my hands. I was such a prick to Hayden that I don’t know why she would go out of her way to help me.
“Cal and Evie said yes,” he continues.
I start feeling a little better about things. Maybe I can just take Mona out with Cal and Evie. It won’t be too weird, they’re both nice, I never had any incidents with either. In fact, I think Evie is awesome.
“Zara said yes, too.”
My eyes snap to Kyle’s. He’s shaking his head at me, a stupid grin on his face.
“She really is amazing, and I have no idea why she agreed to you ruining our date night.”
Just then, his cell dings in his hand.
“Hayden says yes, but only if we all go to their house.”
“But that’s far,” I protest. “Mona has to work on Saturday. I can’t ask her to take the train out there after a full day at work. And at night,” I add.
Kyle scratches at his head. “Well, you’d really be the biggest asshole if you asked her out, then made her take the train to the destination.”
“It’s not really a date,” I protest.
He blinks at me like a broken doll. “Then why the hell are we doing this? Just to feed her? Does she need food? Donations? What?”
I wince at that because it hits way too close to what I was thinking myself. I mean, this morning, she didn’t even have bread for a sandwich, for fuck’s sake.
“We’re just…” I run my hands through my hair again. “We’re trying to figure out where we are and what we’re doing.”
“So she wants you back then?” Kyle sounds a bit skeptical but not totally surprised.
The sigh I let out feels like it’s being ripped from my soul. “We haven’t talked about that yet. This is just a… friendly dinner event.”
“Friendly dinner event,” he laughs. “It sounds pompous and like you’re just trying to get her into bed.”
“No!” I stand from the desk only to pace my office back and forth. “I want it to be serious this time around. I know how I feel about her, and I know she feels the same about me…”
“Has she actually said that?” Kyle butts in.
I love you, she whispered in her sleep. These words are giving me too much hope. They also scare the shit out of me because I don’t see myself as being capable of being in a committed relationship.
I don’t respond to Kyle, just continue pacing. This seems to be my thing lately. I have lost focus of anything else, all my efforts concentrated on winning Mona back.
“Anything else I can help you with?” Kyle’s tone is teasing. “Should I plan our calendar for the foreseeable future around you trying to get Mona back?” He lets out a snort. “Without her knowledge.”
I freeze in my spot and frown at him. “What are you even saying?”
He shrugs and makes a funny face, once again reminding me of what a clown he is.
“I’m just saying that she’s not going to be an easy conquest this time. I just know it. You lost her trust, and there’s a good chance that you’re wasting our time.”
“Whose time?” I snap at him.
“Mine and Zara’s for one,” he snorts again. “Then there are the others. We all have lives that we’d rather not revolve around your sexy times.”
With both hands on my hips, I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling for a few moments. My first instinct is to tell Kyle that I don’t need anyone’s help. But then I remember that I did ask for a favor, at short notice to boot.
“She loves me.” I let out a long breath of air. “She just needs help with admitting it to herself, and to me.”
I drop my head back down when I don’t hear any reaction from Kyle. He has this puzzled look on his face, like he doesn’t know what to make of what I just said.
“Are you so convinced that she loves you?” He scratches at his head, still confused. “She’s made it pretty clear this time that she doesn’t want you back, right?”
I wince at that. “I wouldn’t say that…”
He points at me. “She blocked you!”
“True,” I agree. “But she still talks to me when we run into each other, and…”
Kyle jumps up from his chair, throwing his arms out. “You don’t just run into each other! You manipulate the situation so she’d give you the time of the day!”
Everything that he says makes sense. That’s all I’ve been doing from the moment I knew that I needed Mona back.
But the way I look at it, I am lying to her for a good cause.
And it’s not like I’ve been lying about everything, only about the Holidates account.
She would understand it once I explained everything.
Besides, we continue having the most amazing connection in bed, and that trumps everything else.
“Do you have a better idea on how I should deal with this?” I ask Kyle.
He seems to be a little deflated at first, but then, his eyes light up and he’s back to his old animated self.
“Tell her everything about your parents,” he starts.
I slash a hand through the air. “Done.”
“You told her about your parents?” He gives me an incredulous look. “I thought we were best buds. It took you years to tell me, but she knows?”
I roll my eyes at that. He’s way too dramatic, as always.
“Since you pride is wounded, I didn’t tell her everything,” I admit. “Only that my mother trapped my father with a baby.”
Kyle’s head bobs up and down. “So she doesn’t know that your father became obsessed with that, which in turn transformed you into the nutcase that you are today?”
I grab a piece of paper off the desk, ball it in my hand before launching it at his head.
“Easy there,” he laughs. “You could give my eyeball a papercut, and then I won’t be able to see well enough to draw. How am I going to make you money?”
I have a comeback at the ready, but then decide against it. My personal opinions on money are very well known by now.
Kyle gets distracted by his cell, buying me some more time to think.
This entire situation with Mona is killing me.
I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again.
At the same time, I also worry that she’s giving me a sense of false hope by allowing me into her apartment the last couple of times I showed up announced.
Then again, there was no way for me to announce myself.
I can’t believe that she still has me blocked.
She’s willing to fuck me but not to talk to me on the phone? That’s fucked up.
“Hayden says everyone should be there at seven o’clock, sharp, on Saturday,” Kyle interrupts my thoughts. “She’s planning a whole thing now.”
My eyes widen in distress. “I told Mona I’d pick her up at seven. No way we can be out of the city and at Ray’s by seven!”
“Why can’t you pick her up at six?”
It’s a fair question that I don’t know how to answer. I didn’t think of asking Mona how late she works on Saturday, if it’s a full day or half, or somewhere in between.
“I don’t know what time she gets off work,” I admit to my friend. “I just spit out a time when I’d be there, and I left it at that. I don’t even know if she’ll come downstairs.”
Kyle puts his hands up to stop me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa there, buddy. Are you saying that we’re all twisting into a pretzel to put this dinner party together so you can bring your woman, but you didn’t get confirmation that she’d actually be there?”
I want to laugh at how distraught he sounds at the idea. But I have a feeling that he’d flip me off and leave my office and the building without another word.
“I’ll come no matter what,” I tell him. I guess I’d have to show up now that they are organizing something just for me.
Kyle huffs in annoyance. “Who the fuck wants to see you? I thought all this was for Mona.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you guys knew her well enough to care.”
“And that is exactly the problem,” he yells back. “We never got to know her that well, and she never got to know us. One would think she was your side piece if they didn’t know you weren’t married.”
“I didn’t treat her like a side piece!” I am offended by the suggestion.
“You didn’t treat her like your main squeeze either,” he deadpans.
“I never mistreated her,” I argue.
Kyle waves me off. “No, but it was always weird. She was never part of the group, you know? We took everyone into the fold… Evie was easy, right? She was funny and cute, and she gave Cal so much shit.”
He chuckles as he speaks. I know this is not meant to make me feel bad about myself but rather to open my eyes about Mona and her role within the friend group.
“Hayden came along,” Kyle continues. “We all love her, right? And that’s after she got Ray arrested and everything.”
We both laugh at the reminder of that. Ray and Hayden’s relationship started on the wrong foot, and it stayed that way for a long time.
“But now we even hang out with Ray’s stepmother. How weird is that?”
“Weird,” I agree.
“And Zara…” A wide grin forms on his face. “I fuckin’ love her so much. I can’t wait to tell her how much.”
After that, the conversation pretty much turn to him and his love for Zara. He waxes poetic until I am close to throwing him out of the building.
“Signing up for the Holidates app was the best thing I ever did in my whole entire life.”
“The best, huh?” I shake my head at him.
“You don’t believe me.” He points a finger at me. “That’s because you’ve never been in love. Not real love,” he stops me when I open my mouth to say something.
“It’s not like I am jumping through all these hoops for Mona if I didn’t feel anything for her, asshole.”
“I’m not saying you don’t care,” he shrugs. “But you definitely got some issues that you should work on before pursing Mona all the way.”
I frown. “What kind of issues?”
“Mental,” he responds with absolutely no hesitation.
I never felt as inadequate as my friend makes me sound.
“Well, I’m glad she’s not around to listen to all this.” I try to make it sound like I’m joking, but his words cut me deep.
“Just saying it like I see it,” he shrugs again. “You say she loves you, and that, I believe. She came back to you so many times, it became embarrassing.”
I swallow against the hard lump that’s formed in the back of my throat. “But you don’t believe that I love her.”
“Do you?”
I’m scared to answer that. I don’t know how to.