by Sara Ney
“Work?”
“Sure.” Let’s go with that. “The partners are breathing down my neck about a development.”
More like a social development.
“I thought you weren’t on that development at work anymore. You said you were promoted.”
Crap.
I didn’t think these numbskulls listened when I spoke. “It’s a new one. A new, um, development.”
A development currently known as: self-destruction of my love life and ruining the best possible relationship I’ll ever have for a vacation timeshare I’ll never use and a beat-up ATV I have no storage for.
Awesome, Brooks.
Just. Awesome.
Blaine nods knowingly. “Ah.”
Clearing my throat, I occupy my hands by shoveling in a handful of nuts then washing them down with bourbon. “What do you two have going on besides work?”
Phillip is all smiles. “Can’t complain. Finally got the temp in human resources to give me a blow job in the supply closet.”
Blaine’s brows shoot up. “Dude, that is such a violation of company policy on so many levels.”
“I know—before she’d blow me, she made me sign a document about not suing her for sexual harassment and confirming it was consensual.”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on—she made you sign something? You didn’t make her sign?”
Phillip considers this. “Um, no. She’s the one in a position of authority, duh.”
“But she was blowing you in the supply closet.”
“Exactly.”
“But…”
“And it was her idea.”
We all sit back, oohing and aahing. “Oh, well that makes more sense.”
“Was she on her knees?” Blaine asks.
Phillip stares. “No, she was in a desk chair.” He pauses. “Yes she was kneeling, dumbass.”
“I don’t know! I’ve never been blown anywhere besides the bedroom. Give me a break—I was curious.”
Phillip’s hand goes up. “You’ve never been blown anywhere besides the bedroom?”
Blaine’s cheeks turn pink. “You have to remember, I don’t necessarily date women who are hellions in the sack, okay? They’re all pretty…vanilla.”
“Bambi is vanilla? Even girls who are vanilla get down on their knees from time to time.”
Visions of Abbott fill my head, of the time I got down on my knees, in my living room, to eat her out, her hand holding on to the couch for support.
“Anything other than blow jobs?” I turn toward Blaine. “Speaking of which—have you spoken to Bambi lately?”
He averts his eyes, suddenly very curious about the menu that’s been sitting in the center of our table the entire time we’ve been here. “No.”
“You fucking liar,” Phillip accuses. “Is she messaging you?”
“I mean…” He squirms in his chair, uncomfortable. “Yeah? She was pretty devastated when I dumped her—obviously she’s going to message me.” He hurries to say it, as though emphasizing that he’s not at fault for her contacting him, passing any blame lest Phillip and I accuse him of losing the bet by reentering his relationship.
Which would make my life so much easier—both of my friends losing along with me—so I can go groveling back to Abbott and continue living my life with her in it.
“You need to block her stalker ass,” Phillip says, after much consideration.
“Meh,” I disagree. “He’s right—she wasn’t expecting to get dumped, and it’s not like he gave her any closure.”
I never believed closure was important until Abbott ghosted me, all the unanswered questions driving me to distraction. If we’re friends, how could she dump me like that?
I understand why she’s pissed, and why she’s carefully avoiding me, but fuck—it’s starting to hurt the one goddamn feeling I have left inside me.
24
Abbott
“Does your ex-boyfriend happen to have a friend named Brooks?”
I’m standing in the doorway of the office Bambi shares with her co-workers, seizing the opportunity to have a word in private. Everyone else is at lunch.
I don’t bother using Brooks’ full name, because what are the odds there is more than one Brooks in this entire city? Bambi either knows him or she doesn’t.
She spins in her desk chair. “Yes.” Leans in, taking off her computer glasses and staring down her nose at me. “Why?”
My lips purse.
So. Brooks and Blaine.
Friends with a pact, choosing themselves over the women they love.
And love me he does—by now I know that bastard better than he knows himself.
Brooks Bennett loves me but broke it off with me, and I want to know why. What are his friends holding over him? For what reason are they all breaking up with their girlfriends?
It makes no sense.
Bambi silently watches the wheels in my head turning. “Why?” she repeats.
“’Cause, I…” I swallow. “I’m friends with him, and he…” I can’t get the words out without becoming emotional. Wow, this sucks, and we weren’t even in a romantic relationship, although we actually were and didn’t realize it.
Didn’t call it one. But a rose by any other name…
“He’s the douche who broke up Blaine and me.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“He and I were really good friends—”
“Fuck buddies?” Bambi crudely blurts out. “Friends with benefits?”
“No.” After all, we’ve only had sex once, so we can’t be considered fuck buddies yet.
But the reality is, I allowed myself to become that girl, the one so desperate for attention and affection from a guy that I blinded myself to what he’d been telling me all along.
He didn’t want a girlfriend. He didn’t want a relationship. He just liked hanging out and occasionally having sex with me, while eating me out of house and home and squatting on my couch.
I pushed and pushed and pushed him until I drove him away.
Bambi must be watching the play of emotions running across my face, and I feel a warm hand on my forearm. “I’m sorry, Abbott.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Sorry your boyfriend dumped you to try to win the same bet.
Bambi hands me a tissue. “Do you think you’d take him back if he came groveling?”
My laugh is slightly cynical. “He’s not going to come groveling back—we weren’t a couple.” I sniffle. “Would you take your ex back if he reached out?”
She hesitates, pressing a few random keys on her computer keyboard to buy herself some time before answering. “I think so. I really miss him.” Then she hurries to add, “I know he dumped me for a foolish reason, and that tells me maybe he didn’t like me the way I like him? But we’ve been talking more lately, and I think we’re closer friends now that we aren’t dating.”
This development surprises me. I would have thought Bambi Warner was the type of girl who plotted revenge on an ex to destroy him—not the type who texted them every day to mend and repair their relationship.
Maybe there is more to her than I originally thought, guilt assailing me for judging her.
“What started the whole thing with these guys, you think?” I gleaned no actual answers from Brooks, only vague statements about how he can’t do this and he can’t do that and I can’t wear his smoking jacket and blah blah blah.
“I actually have no idea, but I’m sure this is a Brooks Bennett brainchild. He wasn’t the same after his girlfriend broke up with him.”
“He had a girlfriend?”
“Yeah, they weren’t together long, but he really loved her, from what Blaine has told me. She randomly dumped him out of the blue, and, well—he’s been a turd ever since.”
“What was she like?”
“I’ve only seen pictures, didn’t actually meet her, but I think she was blonde. Cute. Blaine said she was sweet most of the time but a total bitch if she didn’t know you.”
My nod of understanding is slow. “I can see that.”
Bambi pulls open her desk drawer and retrieves a bag of cheese-flavored rice cakes. “Guys love a girl with a little bit of bite—at least they do in the beginning.” She rips open the bag and sticks her hand inside. “God, I love these dumb things.”
She munches down on a rice cake, chewing thoughtfully.
“I’m not sure what to do about Brooks. We’re not dating so I’m in this weird place.”
“But you want to be dating him, yeah?”
I only pause because I am not sure if I want to be so open with Bambi, this woman I’m not that close to. The last thing I want is her learning all this personal information about me before she and I find a place of neutrality, a place where I’m comfortable calling her a friend.
Screw it.
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know much about what those three have going on that they’re not telling us, but as far as Blaine is concerned? He isn’t willing to give up whatever bounty they’ve got on the table, so it must be good.”
My stomach drops at the same time my heart sinks.
Bambi takes another bite of her rice cake, waving it around in the air as she thinks out loud. “I mean, think about it. You’re incredible—smart, beautiful, rich. Any guy would be a fool not to want to date you. So what is it that’s holding him back?” She squints, looking out the window for answers. “What the heck do those guys have going on?”
Wait.
Bambi thinks I’m incredible and smart?
My mind reels from this information, forgetting the fact that we’re theorizing about our man troubles and focusing on Bambi’s compliments.
I open my mouth to tell her they have a club and the club has rules, but then I close it.
Brooks didn’t tell me that little tidbit so I could share it with anyone who will listen—he told me by accident, and it’s not my secret to tell, even if Bambi does have a vested interest in knowing it.
25
Brooks
“I forfeit.” I remove my beloved smoking jacket, fold it in half, and gently lay it in the center of the table. “Here.”
Both guys are looking at me like I’m a stranger who just sat down and began eating their food at the dinner table.
Like I’m nuts.
“Forfeit what?” This from Blaine. “What are you giving us your jacket for?”
“The bet.”
“Hold on—back up. What do you mean, you forfeit?”
“I’m out. You guys win, I lose.”
“I don’t get it. How could you lose when you’re not seeing anyone?”
“I’m not seeing anyone and I’m not dating anyone. Not technically.” But I was, sort of, in a roundabout way; I just failed to mention it to my best friends, and now she fucking hates my guts, so it hardly matters.
“Then why are you telling us this?”
“Because I want her back.” Even though I didn’t actually have her, I’m not willing to let Abbott out of my life. Running into her in the lobby of our building won’t be enough. Bumping into her in the hallway in front of our apartments won’t be enough.
“I love her.” The confession is strangled, the words the truest I’ve said in weeks.
“Who?” Phillip asks as Blaine says, “I’m confused,” at the same time.
“Abbott.”
Blank stares all around.
“My neighbor?”
More blank stares.
Then, “Phew. I thought you were going to tell me you were in love with my sister.” Phillip laughs.
Blaine hits him. “Don’t be an idiot—your sister is horrible. No one is in love with her.”
“Shut up, asshole. My sister is awesome. She did a favor for your sorry ass—show some respect.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Looks like everyone in the Bastard Bachelor Society is a wee bit testy tonight, not just me. I put my hands in the air so Blaine and Phillip will calm the fuck down, waiting while they simmer.
It’s Phillip who finally calms us down, circling back around to the topic at hand: Abbott.
“You met your neighbor and his name is Abbott?”
“Her. She. Abbott is a female—I said I love her, not him.”
Blaine winks. “No judgments.”
Why does everything with my friends have to be so damn complicated? If they would just listen and focus, we wouldn’t have to go round and round with the same shit over and over. Jesus Christ, it’s exhausting.
I sit silently, waiting for them both to zip their lips so I can get a word in edgewise. Wait several minutes longer while they derail, wanting to know why I never invite them over when my apartment building is totally sweet. Why I never have them over when I have an awesome television and a liquor store nearby so we’d never run out of beer during a football game.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
Finally, “So you’re in love? When the hell did this happen?”
“More importantly, why are we just hearing about it?”
“I didn’t think it would matter. We were just supposed to be friends.”
Phillip wrinkles up his nose. “Since when have you ever had friends who are girls?”
Since never.
“So you’re in love with your neighbor? That’s…different.”
I sigh, already exhausted from having to explain. “She lives in my building and one day we met in front of the elevators.” I have a moment of déjà vu, the memory of Abbott racing to the elevator car and pounding on the close button so she wouldn’t have to ride up with me. “She didn’t want me to ride up with her, which I thought was weird.”
I never did ask her about that day and what her problem with me was.
I hope I get the chance to find out.
“Then,” I go on, “one morning I was jogging and took the stairs up to my apartment, and when I blew through the door from the stairwell, she was standing in the hallway in front of her door, holding a steaming hot bag of takeout.”
“At least it wasn’t a steaming hot bag of shit,” Phillip jokes.
Blaine smacks his arm. “Would you shut the fuck up and listen?”
I wait for them to stop bickering before continuing. “Anyway, she had this food and wound up inviting me in for breakfast—”
“Is breakfast the new word for sex?” Phillip interrupts, clearly a few drinks in.
“No.” I can’t not roll my eyes. “Breakfast is the word for breakfast. Would you be quiet?” He closes his mouth. “After that, she and I just…started hanging out a lot. Almost every day.”
“She must be hot, eh?”
It comes as no surprise that they’d want to know, but it does come as a surprise that Abbott is not, in fact, hot. She’s better than that.
“I wouldn’t call her hot. I would say she’s more…” How do I describe her without sounding like a lovesick chump? “Pretty. She’s really girly and not at all fussy, except maybe for work. Abbott loves to eat and chill and she’s funny in a cute kind of way. Like, not so much ha ha funny as adorable funny.”
“Say funny one more time,” Blaine deadpans.
“She’s fucking funny, okay? Quit riding my nuts.”
Phillip is quick to stick up for me. “Yeah bro, you’re taking the wind out of his sails.”
“I should be riding his nuts,” Blaine argues. “Our boy here didn’t even try to win this bet, and he’s the one who came up with the idea in the first place. What kind of bullshit is that?”
Of course—he’s right. I gave it a good effort for a solid week, tops, then warred with myself through most of the rest, putting in a half-assed attempt to keep my distance from Abbott once we got to know each other better.
Then, once we became friends…forget about it.
“Have you slept with her?” This from Blaine, who leans forward in his chair, insatiably interested in my answer.
I hesitate a hair too long.
“Oh dang! You did sleep with her!”
&nbs
p; Silently, I stew, no one to blame for this but myself.
“Well.” Phillip, the voice of reason, crosses his legs and studies me from his spot. “I hope she’s worth it.”
A sinking hole bears down in the pit of my stomach. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t just lose your heart—you lost your ass.” Phillip smirks.
“Good one.” Blaine puts his palm in the air so they can high-five.
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “Guys, come on.”
“What do you mean, ‘Guys come on’?” Now Phillip crosses his arms, prepared to be a hard-ass. “A bet is a bet, and you, sir, lost.”
“I understand that, but what are we going to do about the season tickets and shit?”
Blaine speaks slowly as if I’m a child just learning how to speak English. “You. Forfeit.”
Is it me, or has this room gotten unbearably hot? “Yeah, but…I was assuming you’d take pity on me since I’m sacrificing everything I have for love, not some hook-up.”
“Ha!” Phillip smirks. “Nope.”
“Yeah. Wrong.” Blaine’s chuckle into his glass is equally as amused. “You know how much I love the Jags, and you know how broke I am. I now have a fighting chance to win those season tickets.”
Phillip chimes in. “Don’t worry though—we’ll bring you to one or two games.”
“No need to thank us.” Blaine laughs, putting his hands up in a gesture meant to portray his humility.
“You two really are bastards.”
I can’t fucking believe these two. I really can’t. They have no sympathy for me, and while we haven’t been friends our entire lives, I love them like brothers. I would think they’d make an exception for me since I had my damn heart broken by Kayla, but no. They’re going to be dicks about this whole thing.
“What if we say fuck it and dissolve the club?” I’m grasping at straws.
“It’s a society, not a club,” Phillip smartly corrects me.
“Are you insane?” Blaine’s eyes are bugging. “No. I broke up with my girlfriend for this. I thought she was going to stab me in the thigh with a spork when we talked about it.”