My Favorite Half-Night Stand(56)
Now he wants to meet her, and I don’t know how to be her with Reid.
I am so totally fucked.
Ed’s neighborhood is composed of row after row of little brown condos, each a carbon copy of the one next to it. Community bike racks sit on each corner; the same shrubs are planted in each yard. I’m sure it was intended to be aesthetically pleasing, but it’s a logistical nightmare. If I’m singing along to the radio, or not really paying attention, I find myself on a random street, wondering if I was supposed to turn at that tall, skinny tree, or the one before it.
Like now. I drive around the block twice before pulling up in front of his condo, where my engine ticks in the quiet. The drive from my place to his has done little to calm me. I sit in the car for a moment and wish I had a Time-Turner so I could tell Past Millie to not be a dumb-ass.
Glancing at my phone, I’m hit with another blow when I realize Reid hasn’t called or texted once since last night. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t answer; I’m not confident enough in my bullshitting skills at the moment to fake my way through any sort of normal conversation, even one done over text.
It’s almost noon, but Ed answers the door in his bathrobe, holding a game controller. I would usually give him some shit about this, but alas, I’m also in pajama pants and didn’t bother with a bra.
“You’re not the pizza guy,” he says around a bite of Pop-Tart.
I brush by him, heading deeper inside, where I can hear Alex shouting at the video game.
Instead of couches, Ed has a set of high-back reclining gamer chairs that sit opposite the largest, most expensive TV I have ever seen. Alex is sitting in one and pauses their FIFA match when he sees me. “Mills, you here to play?”
“I’m here to flail,” I say. “I’m busted, you guys. Reid wants to meet Catherine.”
“What, your message meltdown didn’t scare him off?” Alex is mocking me, but I can’t care.
“You guys were right. Emotions give him a total boner.” I toss him my phone and drop like a lump into a flimsy beanbag in the corner.
Ed steps up behind him, and they silently scan the latest message from Reid. I try not to watch them, to decode every one of Ed’s brow lifts and Alex’s muttered yikes. It’s hard not to feel naked as they peer down at the screen where my shortcomings are laid out so plainly.
Alex is the first to look up. “He sent this today?”
I chew on my fingernail. “Last night. While I was sleeping.”
“He wants to meet you—her,” Alex says. “Holy shit.”
Ed straightens, turning around to tug on his hair. “If I don’t say much it’s because I’m screaming inside.”
“Okay, this doesn’t have to be that big a deal.” Alex looks up at Ed, confused.
Sweet, breezy Alex.
But sweet, emotional Ed drops into a chair and wipes his palms on his robe-covered thighs. “It is a big deal, though, Alex, since these are our best friends, and one of them has been lying to another. Not to mention the tiny fact that both of us knew. We’re aiders and abettors.”
“Not helping.” I whimper and sink deeper into the cushion. The beads in Ed’s cheap beanbag choose this moment to shift underneath me, folding me in half and causing me to roll awkwardly to the floor. I land on my face with a groan. And remain there.
“Oh, that’s just sad.” Alex lasts about five seconds before bursting out laughing.
At least Ed takes pity on me. “Come on,” he says, and offers me a hand. “Let’s get you up.”
“Leave me,” I mumble from the floor. “This is where I belong.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?” Ed bends one knee to kneel near me, and I squeeze my eyes closed as I get an eyeful of vague dickness up his robe.
“You mean, I’m being too dramatic about Reid having feelings for a version of me who doesn’t exist? Or am I being too dramatic about the reality that he thinks I’m emotionally barren? I mean, let’s not forget I basically catfished my best friend.” I push to sit up. “Who does that? I didn’t even really know what that was a few months ago. I thought it was just a show on MTV.”
Ed, thankfully, moves to drag a milk crate across the floor to use as a seat. “Please take this the way it’s intended, because you know that I love you, but what did you expect to happen?”
When I whimper instead of answering, Alex has no problem hopping in: “This. This is what happens. Secrets are cancerous.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
He shrugs. “Someone’s got to be straight with you, and who else would do it?. We’re your only friends.”
“I have other friends,” I say, indignant.
“Who?” Ed asks, quickly adding, “Baristas don’t count.”
“What, you want names?” I try to laugh but it comes out wheezy. “I have lots of names. Like, all my friends at work. And my sister.”
“A sister we’ve never met, and who you never talk about,” Ed reminds me.
I open my mouth to argue, but there’s nothing but dead air.
“And all these friends at work,” Alex says, “why not introduce us to some of them for dating purposes?”
Again, I want to argue, but can’t. I have acquaintances at work, people I talk to on the way to faculty meetings, or at lunch. I have casual friends like Avery—okay, maybe she’s more frenemy, but others—who I see at the gym, or might run into somewhere, but I’ve never been great with girlfriends. At some point, every female friendship I’ve had has turned south somewhere, and I never knew how to fix it because I’d never learned how to fight. I always thought a fight meant the end. I may be older and wiser now about these things, but I’m still terrible at confrontation.