“Yeah, it has to be. The math checks out. Thirty-three pros versus zero cons.”
I sat on my bed that night, staring out the window, trying so hard to figure out why I felt this way. I looked at the notebook, counting and recounting the list, knowing Krista was right, so I didn’t understand why I just couldn’t agree with this math. I had all this data, right in front of me, and I had the perfect guy, already in my life. And I didn’t want it.
So when I told Krista the next night that I broke up with Michael, she wasn’t able to understand it either. I wasn’t sure if she was so upset because she cared about me and wanted the best for me or because I hadn’t listened to her. Maybe my changing — going against the math and her advice — had shaken her to the core, disrupting a perfectly planned life she’d envisioned full of going on double dates, spending long weekends at the lake house, creating new traditions at the holidays, planning weddings together, raising our families in the same neighborhood. After all, if Michael was my husband, then he would be her perfect brother-in-law, rounding out our beautiful family photos.
“Just explain it to me so I can understand,” Krista said, scowling.
I shook my head. “It’s not easy to explain.”
I said the same thing to my parents, leaving them puzzled, confused, angry, and disappointed. Because sometimes things that should be the simplest to explain just aren’t.
Why I broke up with the perfect person.
Why I was sleeping around with a guy like Dean.
But it should’ve been easy to explain who Michael was to Dean.
Except he wouldn’t let me.
“Hey, I don’t really have time to talk right now,” Dean said when I called him driving home from my internship. “Plus, it’s like 6 p.m., and you’re driving, and those two things mean we aren’t going to have phone sex, so, yeah … Rule 6.”
“Rule 6,” I repeated. We’d never called Rule 6 on each other.
“Yep,” he said easily. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Wait, are we still on for Friday?”
He paused for three seconds. “Yeah, if you feel like coming by, we can hook up at my place. But yeah, since I’m making the time for that, I kind of have to dedicate extra time to other stuff throughout the week. So I probably won’t be super available. Just a heads up.”
“A heads up,” I repeated.
He laughed. “Yeah, that means I’m giving you the courtesy of telling you something in advance so you won’t be totally caught off guard. Hey, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you Friday.”
I hung up, shaking my head. It was clear without him saying it that Rule 2 — we can both do whatever with whoever, no permission or discussions needed — was still highly in effect.
That fact was even clearer on Friday when, after we’d hooked up and he’d moved to the couch while I stayed in bed, my phone buzzed. I dug around in the twisted bedsheets to find it, glancing at Dean who was focused on whatever he was doing, not paying attention.
I sighed — deciding I was going to break the rule anyway and just explain that Michael was no one, this was all a misunderstanding — as I picked up my phone, glancing at the screen.
I did a double-take, confused, realizing I wasn’t holding my phone. That I didn’t know anyone named Abbi.
I read the message exactly three times, holding my breath.
Still on for tomorrow? Dinner on me this time!
I hastily locked the screen and tossed it back under the covers, feeling the heat rise in my face.
I’d experienced jealousy enough in my life to know what it felt like. But never like this. Never about a guy. Especially about a guy I was specifically not supposed to care about, reminding myself the other part of Rule 2 — no jealousy — a rule I’d agreed to.
I stood, pulling on the rest of my clothes, my hands shaking.
“You work tomorrow, right?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“Yeah, in the morning,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me. “Which means you can’t stay late.”
“I wasn’t asking to stay late,” I said, unable to stop myself from snapping at him. “I was actually saying that because I should probably just go now. I’d hate for you to be really tired tomorrow.”
He stood. “Okay, whatever you want to do.”
I shook my head, trying hard not to take out my anger on him. It wasn’t his fault. We’d agreed to this beforehand. I wasn’t allowed to be this upset. There was no logical reason I should be this upset.
“Do you want me to go now?” I asked, having never been this direct.
He shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
“Of course not,” I said, rolling my eyes and grabbing my purse from the kitchen island.
I wondered if he had kissed her, picking her up on the island, just like he’d kissed me before. I wondered if she had stayed over here. Or if she got to go out in public with him, on dates, not caring what her sister or her parents thought, and he’d easily hold her hand or put his arm around her, pulling her close.
I wondered if he liked her more than he liked me.
“You know,” I said, turning around after I placed my hand on the door and realized he wasn’t going to stop me, wasn’t going to come up with an amendment to get me to stay, “it doesn’t make you chill because you make other people decide for you. Not having a plan is the same as not choosing.”
Dean looked at me, not seeming very chill.
In fact, he looked annoyed.
“Right, so I guess letting other people just tell you what to do and what you want is the best way to go then.”
He reached around me and opened the door for me.
I stepped out, halfway down the stairs, trying hard to bury this feeling, knowing jealousy brought out the worst in me. It was irrational to be this upset. But that didn’t stop my body from reacting, my heart pounding, my face flushed, short-circuiting my rational brain.
I stopped, turning back to look at him. “What do you mean, other people just tell me what I want?”
“An iced caramel latte?” he said, rolling his eyes. “What a joke.”
“Rule 2, Dean,” I snapped, feeling like a hypocrite.
“Yeah, I know the rule, Skylar,” he snapped right back as I stepped to the ground. I turned, completely shocked he hadn’t called me Skye, but he’d already shut the door.
★☽★★☽
“Wow. I’ve never even seen this place before,” Krista said, her tone somewhere between surprised and skeptical.
I looked at her, deadpan, and she smiled brightly.
“But I’m super excited to try it. Something new, that could be fun,” she said, opening the thick wooden door. “You first.”
I stepped inside the local coffee shop that was exactly five minutes from campus and five minutes from our apartment. Having never been here before, Krista and I stood close to the door, taking in the rough brick walls, the industrial concrete floors, a wall in the far corner covered in ivy, live edge tables, and brightly colored metal chairs that somehow looked modern and vintage at the same time. In the middle of the shop was a square white bar where baristas in cool outfits poured coffee into hand-thrown clay mugs and, behind them, a metal spiral staircase, leading to an upstairs I knew we wouldn’t venture far enough to check out.
“How’d you hear about this place?” Krista asked.
“Um, just, like, around school,” I answered vaguely. “I overheard some people talking about it.”
She kind of laughed. I knew she felt out of place here, especially since there was no menu behind the baristas because there wasn’t even really a defined place that marked the beginning of a line.
“In your photography class?” she teased. “I’m just kidding, don’t roll your eyes so hard.”
If I was being truthful, I’d heard about this place from Dean. It was one of the many things we’d talked about when we’d stayed up all night at my apartment on his
birthday. He’d asked me if I’d ever been to Ivy & Roast as if I knew what that was, unable to believe I’d never noticed the nondescript brick building covered in ivy behind the laundromat and my salon. In his opinion, it was one of the only places in town to get actual good coffee.
After we ordered — reading off a clipboard a barista with bright green hair and trendy glasses handed us as she wrote down our order on a sticky note — we sat down closest to the ivy wall. Krista reached in her purse, pulling out a small brown bag.
I hesitated, still not sure exactly why I was here, or, more importantly, why she’d agreed to bring me.
I’d been apprehensive when she’d knocked on my bedroom door early this morning, asking if I felt like getting coffee, I could choose any place, her treat. We still hadn’t talked about game night, too stubborn and polite to acknowledge that night hadn’t gone how either of us had wanted. Instead we’d successfully avoided each other until I made things worse when I’d come home from Dean’s, still shaken from the idea that some girl named Abbi existed.
“Are you okay?” she’d asked, looking up from the couch where she and Kyle had been reading, as I tried not to slam the front door.
“I’m fine,” I’d said, avoiding her gaze.
“Whoa, wait,” she’d said, standing. “Skylar, what’s wrong?”
“Like you even care.”
I’d pushed past her, feeling like I was a child all over again, acting like a moody brat, slamming my bedroom door, giving her the silent treatment when she’d knocked on my door that night.
So I was surprised we ended up here eight hours later.
She handed me the paper bag, and I took it, peering inside.
“A chocolate donut,” I said, feeling the chip on my shoulder melt.
“I wasn’t sure what coffee shop you’d choose, so I wanted to make sure I had this to give you, just in case.” She paused and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear, adjusting her purse on her lap, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know if you remember this since it’s such a little thing, but when you got stitches on your knee…”
I laughed, nodding. “Yeah, I remember that fall pretty clearly.”
She kind of smiled at me. “Yeah, but I’m talking about after. In the doctor’s office. You were so upset, and nothing I said would help. You wouldn’t stop crying no matter what I said or did. And Dad snapped at me to stop because I was just making things worse,” she said, letting out a little breath. “And then he made me wait in the waiting room alone, and you went to get stitches without me because he said that my being so upset was making you more upset.”
I nodded, not recalling this part. All I could remember was the fall, how much it had hurt, how she and Dad had been so mad at me.
She sat her purse on the floor, shifting in her chair. “And that just made things way worse. I was all alone, no idea if you were okay or not. I kept telling myself if I had just paid attention more in that moment when we were racing,” I bit my lip, not wanting to tell her that it hadn’t been a race I even knew was happening, “then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so hurt.”
She looked around the coffee shop again, probably wondering why it was taking so long for us to get our drinks. Dean had warned me about this. Since they didn’t serve drip coffee, I’d probably hate it, because every order would take 10 times longer than I’d want to wait, he’d teased.
Krista looked back at me and took a deep breath. “So anyway, Mom showed up, saw how upset I was, and got me a chocolate donut from the vending machine while we waited.”
I laughed. “But you hate chocolate.”
Krista rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know, it’s like Mom got us mixed up or something because she was so frazzled. So, finally, you came out, and the first thing I did was hug you and give you the donut, thinking somehow that would make things better,” she said with a small laugh.
I smiled, remembering that moment. It was a faded memory, something I hadn’t thought about in maybe a decade. She’d hugged me hard, squeezing really tight, distracting me from my aching knee, saying she would never let go, that she would never let me get hurt like that again.
I looked at her now, so pretty and anxious in this strange place, carrying a weight on her shoulders I hadn’t really noticed. I looked back at the donut, feeling even guiltier than before.
“Krista, I want to apolog—”
“No, Skylar, don’t say sorry. I’m saying sorry,” she said with a laugh. “You’re much better at words and saying what you feel, so if you apologize, you’ll just one-up my apology,” she teased.
She paused as a barista sat down our coffees, a black Chemex coffee for me, a caramel latte for her.
“Look, here is what I know, for a fact. For a fact, I should not have invited Michael to game night. That was, like, a terrible decision on my part. Seeing you two together…” She shook her head, and I looked down at my coffee, embarrassed.
“I’m not criticizing you, Skylar,” she said quickly. “I don’t know if it’s because time has passed so I have a different perspective or because you two are different than you used to be, but…” She paused to think of the right words.
“Michael and I are bad for each other,” I finished for her.
She nodded, looking at me like she hadn’t seen me in a while, her brows slightly furrowed, focused.
“Yeah, I think you’re right. So here is the other fact I know,” she said, smiling as I took a bite of the donut. “I haven’t really been paying attention to you since I got engaged. I know I’ve been in my own head, in my own world, obsessed with my own plans, and I won’t pretend that I know what’s going on in your life.”
I nodded. Looking at my sister now, I could see glimmers of the person who knew me best, who I knew best. But that person was also buried under wedding stress, work stress, her own relationship, her own world, her own thoughts, her own memories, things I’d never know and never feel. Because, no matter how many times our parents tried to tell us otherwise, we really weren’t the same person. And I knew as she looked at me, she saw the same.
“But whatever you’ve been doing, you need to keep doing it. Lindy’s mentioned some Brad guy?”
I looked away, choosing not to respond, focusing on the donut in front of me. I loved Krista, and I knew this sort of vulnerability was definitely out of her comfort zone. But as much as this moment meant to me, I also knew that I wouldn’t be getting a chocolate donut if she knew anything about Dean. She wasn’t ready for a surprise like that.
“I don’t know, but for a fact, whatever, whoever, you’ve been busy with for the past eight months,” she paused and smiled, “…just let me know when you want to talk about it, okay? Even if I’m pacing the living room or scrambling to write on sticky notes. I’m here.”
I smiled and stood, coming over to hug her, startling her.
She laughed and playfully pushed me away. “Stop, people are staring and probably think we’re weirder than they are.”
“No one is staring at us,” I said, laughing and sitting back down. “Okay, apology accepted. Now, please, update me on what I missed in this week of the Krista Plans A Wedding saga.”
She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, her ring catching the light so beautifully, and leaned forward, excited to share the latest news before asking me about my internship. After we’d caught up over coffee, and I’d finished my donut, I felt so much better, smoothed over by my perfect sister.
She glanced at her watch and made a face. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Brunch with Kyle’s parents,” she said with an eye roll.
She stood and picked up her mug, looking for a bin to put it in.
“I can take care of that,” I said, standing but not grabbing my things. “I’m going to stay here for a while longer, if that’s okay?”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I need to do a couple things, and I kind of like it here. It’s cool. I feel like I can think better in here.”
She looked ar
ound skeptically and smiled at me. “Well, if you’re sure. I’ll see you at home later, sis. Love you,” she said, giving me a quick hug before she ducked her head and walked out, waving over her shoulder at me.
I took a breath, knowing what I wanted to do, and pulled out my phone.
Any chance you could take your break in 15 or 20 minutes? Maybe I could bring you coffee for a change?
Sorry, I switched shifts with Roe. Funny you mentioned coffee though — I’m actually already drinking good coffee.
I paused, not sure if he was brushing me off or just being casual.
Before I could respond, he texted me again.
I’m willing to share … Assuming you’re home. I’m at Ivy & Roast.
I looked around, confused. He was definitely not here. I would have noticed him immediately.
I quickly Googled to see if they had two locations equally close to my apartment, but they didn’t. I hastily cleared my table, feeling like texting him was a mistake. He was clearly lying, maybe covering up that he was already with Abbi or just avoiding me in general.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my purse, ready to get out of here. As I looked up to glance at my watch, I saw the stairs, something I’d overlooked that had been in front of me the whole time. I rolled my eyes again, this time at myself.
The upstairs was different than downstairs, smaller, more compact, and cozier. It was like I’d stumbled into someone’s cool attic with a vintage floral rug, a wooden cathedral ceiling, wooden chairs and tables, and a massive leather couch taking up an entire wall.
I saw him before he saw me.
He was sitting at a table alone near a stained glass window, the sunlight streaming through, casting an array of colors onto his already vibrant skin. He was looking at his laptop, his head propped up by his sleeved arm, his bejeweled fingers twisted in his hair, a cup of coffee in front of him. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was surrounded by paintings on the walls and other cool-looking people, but, in this moment, he didn’t look strange or bizarre. He just looked like Dean.
He looked up, surprised, as I walked up to him.
“Did I really lose track of time that quickly?” he said, glancing at his phone on the table. “I just texted you back.”
A Guy Like Him Page 25
