Chapter 31
Ethan
That guy is unbelievable.
Pacing up and down my room, I feel like punching a wall or better yet, his smug face, but that won’t fix anything.
Instead I keep on wearing a hole in the rug, stalking all the way down to the window then all the way back to the door.
I got home three hours ago but Mia still hasn’t come back.
I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing, but I do know who she’s doing it with, and I can’t fucking believe it.
What does she see in that stuck-up, pretentious asshole?
Sure, he plays guitar and he’s got the accent and that dumb floppy hair all the girls get wet for, but can’t she see what a total pretender he is?
If I hadn’t put my arm around her, he wouldn’t have dared touch her leg – her fucking thigh – right in front of me.
It’s not only because I hate him and like her so damn much, it’s more that I hate him for her.
Mia deserves someone who treats her like she walks on water.
Someone who will put her first and let her know how fucking special she is.
Oliver is not that guy, I’ve known dozens of boys like him before.
They pretend to be all deep and meaningful but it’s all a scam to get into a girl’s pants, and as soon as they get what they want, they move on to the next easy mark.
Before Bre, I hooked up with more than my fair share of women, but I was always honest with them.
If you’re not looking for a relationship, you don’t act like you are, and you don’t go for girls like Mia.
‘She’s not a fucking hook-up,’ I grunt as I slam my fist into my pillow.
Except she could be hooking up with him right now. She could be at his place, riding his tiny dick and—
‘Nope.’ I cover my face with my hands and let out an angry groan. ‘Not doing that. There’s no way. She wouldn’t.’
Hurling myself backwards onto my bed, I remember how she tensed up when he touched her.
The way she sat up straight, shoulders locked, that weird kind of constipated look on her face.
If she hadn’t agreed when the dipshit asked her out, I’d have knocked him out there and then.
My memory slips back a few seconds earlier, my hand curled around her ear, the scent of her shampoo and perfume making me dizzy, and I have to stretch my arms out along the wall to steady myself.
When my fingers brush against her skin, she gets goosebumps.
And she doesn’t seize up. She doesn’t pull away.
The security light outside Carpenter blasts my room with bright white light and I shoot over to the window to see who set it off.
It’s Mia.
And Oliver.
When he grabs hold of her shirt and pulls her towards him, I’m barely holding it together, and when their faces meet, I rear back, snatching my curtains shut like it’s the end of a play.
And scene. The end. But this is really happening, it’s not make-believe.
They’re making out, three floors down, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Mia doesn’t like me like that, and what happened last night will never happen again.
The rejection might not sting so much if it weren’t for the fact she’s throwing me over for this before photo from a protein powder commercial.
Risking my sanity, I sneak another look out the window but the light has gone out and everything is darkness.
I don’t know what’s worse, seeing them together or letting my imagination run loose.
Now I know the sound of Mia’s sighs, the things she whispers when she’s close, the taste of her skin, it’s all too easy to put together a mental picture I don’t want.
Not just a picture, an immersive theatrical experience, and if I don’t do something I’m going to lose my mind.
But what?
I grab my AirPods Max headphones and slip them over my ears.
Only, the noise cancellation is too good, and the silence fills with all the sounds I’d coaxed out of Mia on my mattress twenty-four hours earlier.
Ditching the headphones, I throw myself out of my room and into the kitchen.
Busy, I need to keep busy, to keep my mind occupied with something other than the thought of Mia and that jerk.
God knows I’m not going through the trauma of a Pot Noodle again and that only leaves me with one option, a tube of cookie dough I picked up at the store, just in case my birthday biscuit plan didn’t work out.
If I was at home, I’d eat it raw – if there was any left by the time Chris was done with it; the kid ate more cookies than the Cookie Monster, but tonight I’m pre-heating the oven, portioning out the pieces, measuring to make sure they are exactly two inches apart on the cookie sheet and placed on the middle shelf of the oven because every second I’m reading the instructions on the back of the package, I’m not thinking about what Mia might be doing.
Inside the oven glove on my right hand, my fingers curl into a fist.
Then I hear a door, the door of our flat, slam shut.
Outside, the security light goes on again and I rush to the window to see the douche pulling a pair of wired headphones from the pocket of his pretentious leather jacket as he saunters away.
The oven beeps and I prise myself away, fighting the urge to do something petty like tossing a stack of plates at him from the window.
I was pretty good at the discus throw in high school.
‘You’re baking?’
Mia stands in the kitchen looking confused and curious as adrenaline floods my system. Nothing hotter to a woman than startling a man into a heart attack while he’s baking cookies.
‘Yeah, for you to serve at my funeral. Are you trying to kill me?’
I look down at the incredibly macho oven glove and quickly yank it off my hand.
Mia smiles. I smile. Fuck. I don’t want to look at her lips, but I can’t help myself.
Are they more swollen than usual? It’s hard to say, maybe I’m seeing something I don’t want to see.
But even if something did happen between her and that clown, it didn’t last long.
Again, not a thought I want to dig into that deep.
‘Good night?’ I ask, arms folded, legs crossed as I lean against the kitchen counter. Like I care, like it matters to me.
‘The performance was beautiful.’ She picks up the empty cookie dough package and scans the back. ‘Did you have a good time?’
Great until you left with someone who looks like he took his mom to prom.
‘Yeah, Bryn’s crazy talented.’
She brushes her hair away and I swear I see a hickey on her neck. I’m so jealous, it’s seeping out of my pores.
‘You, uh, do anything fun after the show?’
‘Nothing crazy.’
Thanks, Mia, that’s nice and vague. I can’t decide what’s worse, knowing or trying to guess. But then I realize something. He’s the one who’s alone right now. Mia is here with me.
‘How come you didn’t go to Members with the others?’ she asks as I allow myself a smug moment.
‘I wasn’t in the mood,’ I tell her, waving in the general direction of the oven. ‘And since my biscuits were such a success, I figured I should put in more baking practice. You know, in case soccer doesn’t work out.’
Mia crosses the kitchen and bends over to peer inside the oven and so help me God, how am I not supposed to check out her ass in this situation? ‘You’ll be a viral sensation,’ she says as she straightens up and I avert my eyes fast.
I have nothing else to say. All the anger and frustration I felt minutes ago dissolves into something I can’t put into words because I’ve never felt it before.
There’s a gravitational pull in the middle of my chest, right where my heart should be, and it’s dragging me down, impossibly heavy and all-consuming.
I want her and I can’t have her. She’s right there in front of me and a million miles way.
Am I even in the friend zone? Am I even that close?
‘How long until the cookies are ready?’
I check the digital clock on the stove.
‘Ten minutes.’
She seems to contemplate my answer and what she might do next before she glides over to the fridge, pulling out a carton of milk, then taking two glasses out of the cupboard.
‘Do you really listen to classical music when you study?’ she asks as she takes a seat at the kitchen table.
The black hole in my chest collapses in on itself, like it was never there, and I feel a spark of possibility. She isn’t with him. She’s here, with me. That has to mean something. We might be in overtime but the game isn’t finished yet.
‘Yeah,’ I say with a grin. ‘I really do.’
She smiles back and it’s official. I’m even more cooked than the cookies.