Every Other Weekend(49)

“I appreciate that.”

I inclined my head. “The way I see it, we have three options. One—we quit being friends. I object to this option for several reasons. First...” I held up a finger. “Shelly. If I’m forced to endure her company for extended periods of time, it will result in her death and my incarceration.” I held up another finger. “Second, Shelly.” Another finger. “Third, I refuse to quit being your friend on the grounds that I find you infinitely more tolerable than anyone else I know. Also, Shelly. Fourth—”

“I’ll stipulate that option one is a no go. What’s option two?”

“Oh, okay. Option two—I meet Erica. We become best friends and I slowly but surely break you down in her eyes until she can’t stand the sight of you and she moves on.”

“Interesting, go on.”

“Option three is that you break up with her in a completely non-recoverable way, like saying, ‘Welcome to Dumpville, baby. Population, you.’ Or something along those lines. Here, I made you a list.” I handed him the folded sheet of paper from my pocket.

He silently skimmed it.

“I’m especially proud of number five.” I leaned over and pointed.

“That’s...that’s... I would never say that to a girl. Also, I’m judging you a lot for coming up with it.”

“It gets the job done.”

“Yeah, but I’m not doing it.” He gave me the paper back. “Or rather, I don’t need to do it. She’s not my girlfriend anymore.”

I couldn’t keep a smile from spreading across my face. After we’d played my little game, I had planned on talking to him realistically about the girlfriend situation. I was going to calmly and rationally persuade him that the single life—with me—was infinitely more fulfilling than the dating life with anyone else.

But I didn’t have to.

He’d broken up with her. Already. On his own, without any long-drawn-out discussions with me. I grinned at him. “You broke up with her? When?”

He blushed. “This morning. And I wasn’t exactly the one who did the breaking.” He rotated his jaw a little. “But I would have,” he added. “I mean, I was going to. Before I saw you again.”

I swallowed and had a slightly hard time of it. So what if she’d dumped him and not the other way around? Adam no longer had a girlfriend, which was all I’d wanted. I pulled my braid over my shoulder and fiddled with the elastic. “Adam, it’s fine. You don’t have to—”

“I’m not! That’s the truth.” He reached to still my hand but stopped just shy of touching me. “She, uh... I guess she saw us in the parking lot after we ditched.”

For the first time since I’d met him, my face was the one that went red. All we’d done was hug—maybe for a touch too long, but nothing more. Though if she’d seen the way I bit back a smile when he released me... Yeah, it couldn’t have been a good feeling.

And that sucked. She was a girl I didn’t know, one I’d resented from the moment I’d learned she existed, but she deserved better than what I’d done to her, what Adam and I had been doing together.

We’d never crossed the big lines, but we hadn’t stayed away from them either.

Adam was frowning at his hands.

“Are you upset?”

“No,” he said. “I hurt her, and I’ll never feel good about that, especially since I should have broken up with her weeks ago. Really, I should never have gotten together with her in the first place.”

I had complicated reactions to that statement. He was referring to me when he said he shouldn’t have gotten together with her. I couldn’t deny that even if I tried. But it was scary to suddenly feel like he might be looking at me without any reason to hold back. It made my hands clammy and my breath feel as if it would soon start coming out in panicky gasps. It wouldn’t be good for me to be anything more than his friend, and I would only disappoint him if he tried to make us into something more.

I had to remind him that friends were all we could be.

“I mean, I liked Erica,” Adam said, still staring at his hands. “But I realized that you were right. If she had some guy that she spent this much time with, it would be weird.”

“Or if I had a boyfriend.”

Adam’s head snapped up. “Don’t tell me you do now? I just broke up with a girl I’ve wanted since middle school because of you—your friendship.”

“No,” I said, “I turned all the boys down. They were crushed, of course, but they always are.”

Adam let out a sigh. “Okay, good.”

“So now we can be friends and it doesn’t have to be weird?”

He didn’t answer right away, and for a moment it looked like he was about to say one thing but then changed his mind. “Right. It doesn’t have to be weird.”

“Great.”

“Yep.”

Then it was my turn to pause. I scrunched up my face. “Except it’s weird, right?”

“Oh yeah,” he said.

We both sighed, and I leaned back on the steps until my butt fell asleep. It was weird, coming to a place in our friendship where we had both objected to the other having a significant other while at the same time not wanting to be that significant other ourselves. “You’re still my friend, even it’s it weird,” I told Adam. As long as he didn’t expect more, we’d get past weird.