The Best Laid Plans(91)

The Wingman and the Cockblock. We’re like a depressing superhero duo of doom.

“I know you’re not a delicate flower,” he says, reaching out to me. He puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off. “Clearly. Come on, Collins, I just didn’t want you to get your heart broken.”

“My heart isn’t your problem,” I say, and my voice cracks, because of course I want it to be. “You should have let me get my heart broken. That’s just a part of life, isn’t it? You can’t keep me locked away in a tower like freaking Rapunzel!” He takes a step toward me and I take a step back, needing to get away from him before I do something stupid. “You’re not my brother or my boyfriend.”

“Keely, I didn’t mean . . . I just know these guys and I hear the way they talk and I didn’t want that for you. You deserve better. You deserve someone who loves you.” His voice is soft and kind and it kills me.

“Well, how am I supposed to find that if you won’t let anyone near me?”

“You found someone anyway, didn’t you?” he says. “Where’s your date?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. He could be standing right behind me at this point and I wouldn’t notice. My entire focus is on this conversation, on this fight. “Did you tell him to stay away too?”

“Of course he’s missing.” Andrew sighs. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Typical.”

“Why do you hate him?” I’m yelling now, and I can see that Abby has completely given up on her text, watching us with rapt attention.

“I don’t hate him,” he says, and then shakes his head, pulling his hands out of his pockets. “Actually, you know what, I do hate him. I have every right to. You used me to get with him. You fucking said his name while we were hooking up. You’re the hypocrite, Collins. You get mad at me for using girls, for hooking up with girls when it doesn’t mean anything, but you’re the master at using people. You didn’t even care about my feelings.”

“You never care about anyone’s feelings!” I say, throwing my hands into the air. “You’ve been sleeping with girls for years, throwing them away the second something better comes along.”

“No I haven’t!” he shouts.

“Are you kidding? You’ve—”

“I haven’t been sleeping with anyone!” He looks quickly behind him and then takes my arm and pulls me farther into the corner, out of earshot.

“What are you talking about?” I say, pulling my arm out of his grip.

“I haven’t . . .” He pauses, and his voice is so quiet I can barely hear him over the thumping of the music. “I haven’t slept . . . with anyone. Ever.”

“That’s not . . .” That’s not true, I want to say. But—he never slept with Cecilia, she said so herself, never slept with Sophie, because she’s waiting until marriage.

“You’re a virgin?” I ask, feeling as small as my voice.

“Yeah.”

It all makes sense now—why he’s been acting so cagey around me. It’s because, this whole time, he’s been scared I’ll find out the truth.

“You lied to me,” I say. “I thought . . . you let me believe you were some sort of expert. I never would have . . .”

“Come on, Collins, that’s not fair. What was I supposed to say? You came to me and you were so vulnerable and I just wanted to help you. I just felt bad—”

“You felt bad for me,” I say, the words hitting me like a punch to the gut. Could I be any more pathetic? “You could have told me the truth. I feel like such an idiot. I asked for your help, I wanted your advice, and you didn’t know anything either.”

“It’s not easy for guys to just . . . admit they don’t know anything. I never lied to you, I just didn’t correct you when you assumed—”

“You made it pretty easy to assume!” I think of all the times he’s told me about his hookups, how I never once asked for clarification on what the term meant; how convenient that must have been for him. Hooking up can mean so many different things: making out on a dance floor, a hand job at the movie theater, going almost all the way in someone’s bed but changing your mind.

“There are expectations when you’re a guy,” Andrew says. “There’s pressure. Guys talk shit. And you’ve always had these ideas about me—Party Andrew. Everybody has these ideas about me now, and I can’t just . . . I’m all fucking talk, okay? Is that what you want to hear? If people want to believe I’m some big player, I’m not going to correct anybody. You can’t just admit to other dudes that it hasn’t happened yet. That you want sex to be special. Nobody buys that.”

“But I’m not just anybody,” I say. “I’m somebody. I’m your most important somebody.”

I’m not though; I realize as soon as I say it. “So you haven’t slept with Danielle.” It’s a statement, not a question. He doesn’t answer, and I let the word hanging between us unsaid come to the surface: “Yet.”

He rubs the back of his neck and doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to.

“Why?” I ask.

“What?”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunities. Why did you let Chase get there first?”