24. Jules #2
I sit back against my chair and cross my arms. “Why do you have to be stubborn? Allison was sweet, nice, she’s stunningly gorgeous. Where are you going to find a woman like her who might want to put up with you?”
Drew stares at me across the table, his eyes dark behind his glasses. It doesn’t help that it’s dark in the pub, with lots of yellow, ambient lights strung along the walls. He leans back against his chair, crossing his arms to mirror my pose.
“I’m sure I’ll find her,” he says cryptically.
“Not if you keep rejecting perfectly wonderful women,” I say.
“What was wrong with your date?” he asks.
“He’s not over his ex.”
“If he was, would you have liked to continue seeing him?”
I think about Colin and his perfect hair and perfect clothes.
Even if I can ignore that he doesn’t understand the podcast and would probably judge my writing career, do I want to date him?
We shook hands when we met outside the pub and I felt absolutely nothing. No excitement, no spark of electricity.
“Maybe the part of you that’s supposed to be interested in dating is dead,” Drew says softly.
“Ugh, Drew, I don’t want to think that,” I whine.
The server drops off our food and I reach for a piece of bread, smearing butter on it. I immediately feel ten times better with the first bite. The mushrooms smell delicious and my stomach growls.
I look at Drew with interest.
“Is that part dead for you?” I tilt my head in question.
He raises a shoulder in a shrug, biting into a piece of bread. “Feels like it.”
“Oh.”
He echoes my sentiment and puts a helping of mushrooms on my plate. They’re cinnamon-y and a little crunchy because of the pangritata.
We eat in silence for a while, but my mind is swirling with questions. I pick up my glass of water and take a sip as I watch him over the rim. Drew doesn’t look it bothers him that another one of his dates failed. In fact, he’s proving that he could care less about dating in the first place.
“Do you ever worry you’re going to end up alone?” I ask, putting my glass back on the table.
Drew’s eyes meet mine and hold steady. “Yeah, sometimes. But I’m not going to let the fear of being alone rush me into a relationship that doesn’t fulfill me.”
I hate it when he makes sense.
“How will you know if you don’t even try?” I ask.
He shrugs lightly. “I’ll know. Trying doesn’t seem to be helping, either.”
“If we keep trying, there’s a possibility.”
“The only thing these possibilities have made me realize that I don’t want to do this,” Drew says. “Not this way. I hate coming to pubs. I don’t like meeting new people, especially when they’re trying to be the best versions of themselves.”
He picks up his glass and takes a sip of water before pointing around the room.
“I mean, look around you. How many of these people are on first dates and how many do you think are actually going to last past a few months? I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.
But I don’t want to date the best version of someone.
I need to know if their mess aligns perfectly with my mess because I want to make sure they won’t disappear when things don’t always work out. ”
He nods at the food on the table. “Finish up. We’ll get ice cream on the way home.”
Two days later, I’m still thinking about what he said and how it makes perfect sense. Like I said, I really hate it when he’s right.
“Easy there, you don’t want to smack it that hard,” he says from behind me. A shiver chases down my back, all the small hairs on my body standing up. I soften my smacking and he hums in approval, the sound reverberating through me.
It’s backsplash day.
Yesterday, we removed all the old backsplash in the kitchen and sanded everything. Today, we’re installing the new backsplash and my job is to use the mallet so the tile sticks to the grout.
I know he’s stepped away when the air shifts around me and I can finally breathe.
The usual fear I feel when someone--a man--steps so close into my personal space isn’t present when Drew does it.
It could be that my mind and body are just accustomed to having him around and have become attuned to him.
Which is worrying for a whole other reason.
I turn around to face him. He’s standing at the counter, cutting a new box of backsplash.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say.
“I always worry when you say that because the result is never good.”
I make a face at him. “I’ve been thinking that you’re right. The social experiment might be a fail.”
Drew looks up at me in surprise, raising his eyebrows. “No more dates?”
I shake my head. “Not for a while. I need to figure out exactly what I want before I try again.”
“That’s a good idea,” he agrees with a nod. He points at the tiles on the counter. “These are broken. I’ll get the other boxes.”
He walks into the garage and comes back a few minutes later, carrying six boxes of backsplash, muscles bulging under his t-shirt.
I can carry a maximum of two boxes of those tiles and I didn’t think someone would be capable of carrying more than that.
Of course, I failed to account for an athlete who probably lifts 250 pounds and above.
Drew looks at me, frowning slightly. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh, yep. Just a little hot.”
The window above the sink is open because the weather is beautiful and there’s a nice, post rain cool breeze.
Drew reaches up, gripping his left shoulder and rolling it back. He winces slightly and I wonder if he even realizes that he does that a lot.
“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” I ask. “I mean, I know you injured it but I thought it got better.”
“It is better,” he says. “Just a little stiff sometimes.”
“Then why did you wince like you’re in pain?”
He grabs the box cutter, cutting through the boxes, his jaw clenching hard. “I’m not in pain.”
I know he’s lying and I also know pushing him isn’t going to get me anywhere. It’s not like he’s going to listen to me, we’re not even friends.
We’re just two people who live together on friendly terms and that’s all we’ll ever be.
As Drew starts laying out the tiles, I look at him curiously. There’s no reason why that’s all we have to be, is there?
“Drew, can I ask you something?”
“I’m sure I can’t stop you even if I wanted to,” he says with a soft smile.
“Why do you hate me?” I ask. “I mean, did I do something? Because I can’t remember.”
He doesn’t reply for a few minutes and I watch him lay out the tiles on the counter. He has a whole system going.
Once one box is empty, he breaks it down and looks at me. His eyes are a clear green behind his glasses.
“Sometimes, two people just don’t get along for a lot of reasons,” he says. “You and I have always been too different and one, or both of us, have refused to see past those differences.”
He shrugs. “Sometimes it felt like you took my place in Lavinia’s life, but I grew out of that once we reached middle school. Did I ever do anything?”
I shake my head. “Not that I can remember. Other than constantly fighting with me.”
Drew nods once, accepting my truth.
“If I look back now, I think childish jealousy became indifference and by the time we could have become friends, we’d settled into being enemies,” he says.
He layers grout on the wall and presses the tile on it. Once he moves, I step in and tap the mallet around the edges to keep it in place. We work in companionable silence for a while and I cast surreptitious glances his way.
I can’t stop thinking how kind he’s been during this whole mess. He’s put up with my nonsense, he’s protected me, he’s even gone on double dates with me when he didn’t want to.
“What you’re saying is, we can be friends if we want to be,” I say.
Drew glances over his shoulder, his eyes meet mine briefly. “If we want to be.”
“So you don’t hate me anymore?” I confirm.
He smirks. “Kind of hard to hate someone who’s relying on me for shelter.”
I roll my eyes, even though I can’t stop a smile from stretching across my face.
“I could have gone to a hotel,” I tell him.
“Sure, sure.”
I bite the corner of my mouth to keep my smile from spreading. It’s a relief to have this out in the open and knowing neither one of us did the other intentional harm. He’s right in a way. We’re just two different people and maybe it wasn’t possible for us to be friends before.
Maybe it still isn’t.
For now, a truce is enough.