Chapter 3
Blake
A few weeks later
Wyatt and I are on mile three of our near-daily five-mile run with Loki. Which, today, is better described as thirty minutes and counting of Let’s fix Blake’s love life.
He knows how I feel about Darby, but he’s not useful in helping me get over it. The man fell head over heels in love with my sister, got married and had a baby in record time, and somehow thinks that qualifies him to be my personal romance coach.
He thinks Darby wants me as much as I want her. But I already know that’s not true. Because if she did, wouldn’t I see it? Wouldn’t there be something obvious—lingering looks, accidental touches?
No.
Whatever is going on with her, it’s grief and gratitude and maybe comfort. It’s not the same thing that has me imagining her in my T-shirt and nothing else or better yet, in my bed wearing nothing at all.
“I didn’t offer her my spare room just so I could jump her bones,” I say, breath puffing out in short bursts as we hit an incline.
“No one says ‘jump her bones’ anymore,” Wyatt replies. “What are you, eighty?”
“Really, dude?” I huff. “Is that the point here?”
He laughs, but the sound barely cuts through the low-grade panic buzzing in my chest. Because the second the words are out of my mouth, my brain supplies every other reason I did offer her the room—none of which are simple or clean.
Yeah, I wanted to help her. But I also hated the thought of her on that asshole’s couch.
I liked the idea of her stuff mixing with mine a little too much for it to be purely altruistic.
If this is what not jumping someone’s bones looks like, I’m already in trouble. “What do we say?” I ask, wincing. Because no way should Wyatt be hipper than me. He’s a dad now for fuck’s sake.
“Tap. Bang. Fuck.” He turns and jogs backward in front of me.
Show off.
“Nail. Boink.” He picks up the pace a bit.
Loki strains at his harness to join him.
“If she’d been with me, the word would be satisfied.
” He thumps his chest twice with his fists, then throws his arms up in the air in victory as he turns back to face front and increases his speed again. I dig in to catch up with him.
“You’re married. You can’t talk about sex with other women.”
“I was referring to my wife.”
“Aaah!” I cover my ears. “That’s gross. Your wife is my sister. I don’t need to know these things.” I swallow down the bile threatening to make its way up my throat.
We’re silent for a few hundred feet before I say anything more. “Fine, I didn’t offer my spare room so I could fuck her.”
“But you want to.”
“So bad,” I groan. The words scrape out of me, more confession than joke.
It’s not just about sex—though, obviously that too.
It’s the way she pads into the kitchen in the morning with sleep lines on her cheek and Loki glued to her side.
The way she rolls her eyes when I say something stupid but bites back a smile anyway.
I notice everything I’m not supposed to notice—how her laugh hits me right in the sternum, how her bare legs look when she tucks them under herself on the couch, how she says my name when she’s half-asleep and forgets to make it sound like a roommate thing.
I want all of it. Her. With me.
And that’s the problem. Wanting a stranger on a dating app is easy. Wanting the woman who lives down the hall and trusts your spare key more than she trusts her ex-boyfriend? That’s dangerous.
“Want me to ask Bristol if she thinks Darby would be open to some roommates-with-benefits action?”
“No,” I huff. “Brie will blow it way out of proportion, start naming our babies and shit.” The words are barely out before my brain does the thing I absolutely did not ask it to do: offers up an image of Darby in my kitchen, one hand on a rounded belly, my T-shirt (once again) stretched over her hips.
A highchair at the dining table with Loki curled up under it, enjoying a life of dropped Cheerios.
I don’t hate it.
At all.
What the fuck?
My feet falter for half a second on the pavement, and I have to focus on Loki not pulling me into a face plant to get my balance back.
I am not a guy who fantasizes about babies with anyone.
Not since Taylor. Not even with Taylor. And not with my little sister’s best friend who only recently escaped a dumpster fire of a relationship.
“Christ, I need to get laid,” I mutter.
“Not it,” Wyatt says.
“Thank God,” I shoot back.
Wyatt takes Loki’s leash from me and speeds up again because he’s a sadistic asshole, and it takes all my concentration to keep up with the two of them and not let either know it’s beginning to hurt to do so.
My lungs burn, my calves protest every step, sweat trickles down my spine in a way that’s more annoying than satisfying.
It’s not unlike how it feels inside my own head these days—always a half step behind, always pushing harder than I want to just to keep up with whatever version of “normal” everyone expects from me.
Date like nothing happened. Work like I’m not thinking about her down the hall.
Pretend I don’t notice the way Loki whines when Darby leaves the house without him.
We’re mostly silent for the remainder of the run, the slap of our shoes blend with the click of Loki’s nails on the pavement as the only conversation. It’s a relief, in a way. Physical pain is simple. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Feelings, on the other hand, just keep moving, even when you’re begging them to stop.
We hit the home stretch, shoes slap the pavement in a rhythm my body knows even when my brain is busy self-destructing.
“You’ll be there tomorrow, right?” Wyatt asks about our football-watching party while handing me back my dog’s leash.
The Sunday sports thing is our ritual—Wyatt, Bristol, and my nephew Nico toddling around like a tiny drunk person, with a rotating cast of friends and party hosts, plus way too much food.
“Yeah, why? You guys wanna carpool?” I ask, picturing the lot of us piling into my SUV: Wyatt and Bristol in the backseat bickering about refs, Nico squished between them in his car seat throwing puffs at my head, Darby in the passenger side—
I shut that down before it can go anywhere. Wyatt would never sit in the backseat anyway.
“No,” he says and then surprises me with a follow-up question. “Do you like Darby, or do you just want to fuck her?” He says it so casually I almost trip. Again. The question lands between us like a dropped weight.
An image of her face pops into my head—sleep-soft eyes, that little wrinkle between her brows when she’s concentrating, the way she smiles when Loki does something particularly silly—and a dumb grin breaks my face. “I like her.”
The thing is, if it were only about sex, this would be easier. Simpler. There’s a script for that. You flirt, you hook up, you either keep doing it or you don’t. No need to factor in longing glances and shared cereal and how she talks to my dog like he’s her whole heart.
“Then invite her to go with you tomorrow.”
“Like, a date?” I look at him quizzically. The word feels big in my mouth. Heavy. Dates are what I do with strangers whose last names I have to double-check in my phone, not the woman who knows what my hair looks like at six a.m.
“Or, you know, just a friendly get-together with a group of people to watch the game. Feel out the situation. It’s low pressure. Bristol will be there, and you can use Nico to run interference if you need it.”
I can already see it: Darby on the couch next to Bristol, Nico lounging in her lap, Loki sulking at our feet because no one’s slipped him any food, Wyatt shooting me pointed looks over the coffee table every time I offer to refill her drink.
It’s not a bad idea.
It’s also not nothing.
But it feels like I’m being called to task.
There’s an implied so what are you going to do about it?
baked into his suggestion. I’ve been sitting in this gray area with her—roommate, friend, person I fantasize about while pretending I’m still casually dating—and Wyatt is gently (okay, not gently) nudging me toward choosing a lane.
He must see the hesitation on my face because he says, “You know you haven’t lost your mojo, right?”
“Dude,” I protest because he’s wrong.
He must be wrong.
And I’m sure the women I’ve dated recently would back me up on this. My “mojo” checked out sometime after the breakup with Taylor and never fully moved back in.
“You just went through a rough patch, man. You’re out of it. Stronger for it.”
I snort, but I don’t argue.
Not out loud.
Inside, it’s a different story.
The “rough patch” he’s referring to is two years of doubting every choice I make, of wondering if I missed the signs or if I’m the problem. Stronger isn’t the word I’d use. Cautious. Tired. Braced for impact.
I wait to see if he’ll say anything else, not wanting to admit to him or myself that I kind of need to hear this. Compliments about my work I can handle. Praise for my code, my game mechanics, fine. Someone telling me I’m still worth wanting as a person—that hits a different, more exposed place.
“You’re a good-looking guy,” he says. “You’re physically fit, financially stable—”
I scoff, more out of reflex than anything. “I’m not going out with you.”
“I’m not done,” Wyatt continues. “You’re funny, charming, open to commitment—”
A laugh bursts out of me, sharp and disbelieving. “Shut the fuck up.”
The guy he’s describing doesn’t exist. Not anymore.
That guy believed in forever, he bought a ring and let someone else’s timeline steamroll his.
Wyatt doesn’t even know everything Taylor said to me when we finally broke up.
Noone does. You don’t share those kinds of things with people you want to still respect you after.
“You don’t believe me, but you’ll see.” He claps his hands and jumps in place like he’s on a pogo stick because he’s an overcaffeinated golden retriever in dad form. “You’re a catch, my friend!” He turns and heads in the direction of his house before calling back to me, “Now own it!”
I slow to a jog, then to a walk as I watch him jog away. Loki pants happily beside me. The morning air is cool against my overheated skin, the sweat on my neck starting to dry. Wyatt’s words hang there, absurd and sincere and a little bit painful.
A Catch.
Good-looking.
Open to commitment.
Taylor’s voice tries to cut through that: no one else will put up with you / I never had an orgasm with you, it was all fake / you’re lucky I stayed this long / you’re only as good as your next paycheck.
I shove it down and try, just for a second, to see myself the way he does instead of the way she trained me to.
I turn us toward home feeling…not fixed, exactly, but pumped up enough to fake it. I can do this. I can ask a woman I already like to go watch a game she may already be going to with me and our friends without detonating my entire life.
Yes, Darby is emotionally fragile, and I don’t want to take advantage of that. The last thing I want is to become another story she tells about a guy who used her when she was at her lowest. But we are friends, and there’s nothing wrong with two friends going to a party.
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I picture walking out of my room after my shower, finding her on the back patio with Loki and her coffee, and trying to ask, “Hey, want to come tomorrow?” without sounding like I’m actually asking, “Hey, want to risk both our hearts and your lease?”