Chapter 32
HOT FRIES, COLD FEET
NOLAN
[image attached]
Thinking of you
A close-up of a greasy, glorious pile of fries!
I’m honored. Truly. Nothing says romance like sodium and fryer grease.
They’re hot, salty, and a little emotionally unavailable.
Felt accurate.
Are you flirting with me or describing yourself?
Why not both?
Daring. I like it.
The pool cue clacks against the cue ball, sending it gliding across green felt before it knocks into a stripe and drops it clean into the corner pocket. Still got it. Not that it matters.
The Brother’s pool hall is buzzing in that late-night New York way—neon-soaked, jukebox howling the Killers, and a tang of beer and fried something sticking to every surface.
I’m here early. Not for the beer. Not even for the game. Just... to think.
I line up another shot, not really trying, and sink a solid this time. Go figure. I chalk the cue again, slower now, stalling. My phone buzzes from the ledge next to my drink.
Dad.
I stare at the screen a beat too long before finally swiping to answer.
“Yeah?”
“Still alive, then,” comes his voice—dry, clipped, always one notch shy of accusation. The same tone he’s used for years. It’s a reflex he can’t unlearn.
I close my eyes for a beat. “Been busy.”
“Too busy for the man who raised you?”
The words are mechanical. He’s said them before. He says them every time and can’t remember.
“I’m sorry,” I say, deciding not to tell him we spoke last week. “I’ve got a big account I’m working on.”
There’s a pause, then the familiar click of him settling deeper into the past.
“So tell me,” he says, briskly, “what have you got lined up to win it?”
Pacing a straight line behind the table, my fingers trailing the worn edge. “We’ve got a solid pitch,” I say. “Clean campaign. Strategy’s tight.”
He exhales, unimpressed. “Substance doesn’t close. Leverage does.”
There it is. The old playbook. The only one he remembers how to open.
“You’ve got dirt on a few of the firms, don’t you?” he presses. “Use it.”
“No.”
“Then get some. You want power, Nolan? Play smarter. Not fairer.”
The old anger rises, bitter and too familiar, but I shove it down and brace a hand against the wall. “That’s not how I operate,” I say carefully.
A beat. A breath.
“That’s why you’ll lose.” He says it without heat, without even malice. Just cold certainty.
I clench my jaw. “I’d rather lose on integrity than win your way.”
Brittle silence hums between us. He doesn’t even hear me. He’s already slipped somewhere else, into some boardroom battle that ended decades ago.
“Spoken like someone who’s never had to choose between principle and survival,” he mutters at last.
“Spoken like someone who chose wrong. Over and over.”
The line goes quiet. I can hear his breath, faint and unsteady on the other side.
When he speaks again, his voice is cold as ever. “Don’t call me when it falls apart.”
Click.
The line goes dead.
I set my phone on the edge of the table, let out a breath then sink the cue ball without aiming and step back from the table.
A familiar voice cuts through the static in my chest.
“You planning on hustling strangers or just brooding over billiards like Batman?”
Rishi strolls up and nods at my drink. “You good?”
“Fine,” I lie.
He doesn’t buy it. Never does. Orders us two beers and drops onto a stool.
“You’ve been off lately,” he says, swiping a fry. I smile at that. “Even before the last team meeting. You’re phoning in. You don’t phone anything in. Not even your hair.”
I drag a hand through it. “I’m mulling over mistakes.”
He raises a brow. “What kind?”
“The Rorie Adams kind.”
He stills.
“She sent a thank-you email for this gift I got her. Cautious. Polite. I replied with corporate ice—ended before things got complicated.”
Rishi winces. “You hit her with a business-class breakup?”
“Yup.” I scrub a hand over my jaw. “It was stupid. I panicked. I read some viral post about lovebombing and got it in my head that I was doing too much. Being too much.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m pretending I don’t think about her every damn day. She didn’t even reply. And I don’t blame her.”
He watches me.
“She’s smart,” I add. “Scary smart. Funny as hell. Talented. Strategic. And she got under my skin so fast I still don’t know how she did it.”
“So go fix it.”
“I’m the one who bailed.”
“So un-bail.”
I say nothing.
“You tanked something that mattered,” he says finally. “But you’re not dead yet.”
I smirk faintly. “Just haunted.”
“You get poetic when you’re crumbling. So what now? Gonna write her a sonnet or some shit?”
“Not unless it includes the line ‘I’m an heart cautious idiot with access to a company credit card.’”
“Better than flowers.”
I shake my head, but there’s a twitch of a smile at the edge of my mouth.
Rishi asks, “So that’s it? End of the road?”
I hesitate. “…Maybe not.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And that’s because…?”
“There’s someone else,” I say, almost to myself. “Sort of.”
Rishi blinks. "Wait, what?"
I nod slowly. “Anonymous. Through text. It’s… been a thing.”
“Like a sexting thing?”
“Not gonna lie, sometimes I wish it was. But no. We’ve been talking for weeks. No names, no faces. Just thoughts. Observations. Fries.”
“Fries?”
“Don’t ask.” I line my stick up. Crack. Miss. “It’s... different. We’re friends. She’s cool.”
He watches me. “You caught feelings.”
“Not really. I don’t know. We connect. She’s this closed-door kind of woman—never gives too much away—but I trust her. More than I probably should.”
“How did this even start?”
“I deleted Chloe’s number after I caught her, then tried sending her an angry drunk text, messed up the last number, and fired off a message to the wrong person.”
He squints. “You have a secret pen pal and a fractured love story? Dude, this is some best-seller list shit.”
I sigh. “Yeah. And somehow, I’m the villain.”
“Self-awareness is step one.” Rishi lifts his glass. “You realize that’s a whole therapy session waiting to happen.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“You need to meet her. In person. Stop hiding behind the glow of your phone.”
“I don’t want to scare her off,” I mutter. “She gets cagey anytime we flirt too close. And right now, with the Cross event coming up? I don’t have the bandwidth to tank another connection. Not when I’m already spread thin. Plus…she’s not Rorie.”
Rishi lets out a low laugh. “So you’re emotionally in love with one woman and physically obsessed with another.”
“I’m not in love with her,” I sigh. “I just really like talking to her. I don’t want to ruin what we have, which is actual friendship. But Rorie…fuck, I should’ve never pulled back.”
“You still want her?”
I nod once.
“Then figure it out. Before someone else does.”
I give him a look, but it’s half-hearted. “You think this island trip is gonna kill me?”
“If Rorie’s there? Yeah. It’s gonna be your own personal hell.”
“She’ll be there.”
The cue ball spins to a stop. And so do I. Because somewhere between the silence, the sparks, and the mistake I can’t stop regretting, I already know.
It’s her.
It’s always been her.
Even when I tried to pretend it wasn’t.