My Best Friend's Ex

by Meghan Quinn

  And neither are my guys . . .

  Racer and Smalls both stride over to me, their tool-belts now in their hands, their hard hats under their arms, sweat coating their hair even though it’s still winter.

  “Please tell me you have Swiss Rolls today,” Racer calls out just as he sits next to me on the tailgate. Smalls steps on the tire and hoists his body over the side and sits on the ledge.

  I hold out a box of Oatmeal Creme Pies and shrug my shoulders. “Creamy pies, sorry.”

  “Even fucking better.” Racer grabs the box from me and rips it open only to toss a few pies in our direction. We can take down a box easily in one sitting, without even trying, and the best thing about it, we can get away with the calories because we burn five times as much during the day.

  With a mouthful of Oatmeal Pie, Racer says, “Saw Julius over here. Did he forget where he put his bottle cap remover?”

  It’s not a secret that Julius is known for one thing—getting drunk in his trailer—so Racer’s question is understandable. Also, Racer, Smalls, and I have been working together for years now, so we don’t beat around the bush about things.

  “Bitching about paying an electrician.” I pop an entire Oatmeal Pie in my mouth and chew.

  Smalls chuckles behind me, his broad frame shadowing me from the lights. This man is anything but small, more like Thor’s bigger brother. “Dickhead already forgot about Manny being on paternity leave? Sounds about right.”

  “It’s frightening that he owns the top construction company in the area when he’s so fucking clueless.”

  Racer opens a Mountain Dew, the crack of the can echoing through the night. Everyone else has gone home for the night but since we are the three bachelors of the company, we tend to stay later and hang out, or finish up any projects that might need a little extra in making the timeline we promised. We don’t mind because we have nothing pressing at home calling our names and we would rather hang out than sit alone at home like a bunch of dickheads.

  “Not for long,” Racer says, a wiggle to his brows.

  Fucking Racer. He’s convinced the three of us are going to break off and start our own construction business. We would be damn good at it, but stability is good for me right now; it’s the only fucking thing I have. After everything I lost just over a year ago, I’m not ready to venture out on our own yet. I’m comfortable with sticking to slaving for the man. Someone else can own the responsibility of running a business for now. I’m only twenty-four. My time will come.

  “Still caught up on starting our own thing?” I ask. “Dude, you realize how unrealistic that is, right?”

  “The fuck it is. We have the talent, the business skills, the contacts, and the men who would follow us in a heartbeat. You’re just scared.”

  “Damn right, I’m scared.” I lean back on the truck bed, my hands propping me up. “Julius might be a drunk, but he’s a nasty drunk. You don’t think he wouldn’t be out to get us if we left and started our own thing? He would bad-mouth us around town, never even giving us the chance to stand on our own two fucking feet.”

  And that’s the truth. I’ve known the man for a decade, I’ve seen the shade he throws people’s way when he doesn’t like them. I’ve seen him destroy other contractors, fucking with their job sites, paying off workers to mess up a project, paying city officials to earn bids. He has no moral compass and if I become his competition, there is no doubt in my mind he would set out to destroy me.

  But fuck . . . to have my own company with my two buddies? That would be living the dream.

  “I’m not giving up.” Racer opens another Oatmeal Pie. “One day. We’ll be sitting in our own pimped out trailer, looking over plans together, making our own goddamn decisions over electricians, and showering our employees with Little Debbie snacks. Hell, that curly headed broad, Debbie, will be our sponsor. Our company could be called Debbie’s Dicks.”

  “Orrrrrrr something else,” Smalls chimes in. “Something catchy like . . .” he pauses and then snaps his finger, “Tight Squeeze Construction.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask, slightly disgusted with the suggestion.

  “Three Erectors,” Racer says with a laugh.

  “Butt-Swell Builders.”

  “Log Jam.”

  “Proud Penises.”

  “Manufacturing Man-ginas.”

  Looking at Racer now, I deadpan, “Yes, let’s fucking call ourselves the Manufacturing Man-ginas and get a logo with three men wearing hard hats and sporting massive moose knuckles, because if that doesn’t say credible construction, I don’t know what does.” I shake my head at my idiot friends.

  They’re both silent for a second before Racer calls over to Smalls, “Hey, at least he’s considering the idea of us going off on our own.”

  For fuck’s sake.

  I hop off the tailgate of my truck and stretch my hands above my head. Turning to my friends, I say, “I’m going home, so get the fuck off my truck. I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

  They both scatter, chugging the rest of their Mountain Dews and then putting their cans in the recycling bag I keep in the back of my truck.

  “Think about it,” Racer calls out, backing up as he talks to me. “Man-ginas could be a good way to brand our company. Man-gina stress balls for prospective new customers, doesn’t get much better than that.”

  I hop in my truck without a response, shaking my head at my overenthusiastic friend. No way in fuck would I give away man-gina stress balls. No one wants that.

  The drive from the job site to my house is short, because I don’t live very far away. At times I wish I did. It’s not because I enjoy driving with my window down, feeling the winter air hit me in the face, but because I hate being at my house. Correction. I hate being at my house alone.

  I hate every second of its emptiness, of what it represents, of why I bought it in the first place. It’s a reminder of my past I wish I could forget. I wish I could let go.

  I turn right onto my street and pull into the driveway. When I cut the engine, I stare at the small Cape Cod with its brick chimney and mint-green vinyl siding. The windows are dark showing no sign of living inside because I don’t bother leaving a light on for myself—there’s no point. My routine is simple: I get home and head straight to my bedroom after I brush my teeth and take a leak. I don’t bother with dinner—not when I eat a box of Little Debbie snacks—I don’t hang out in the living room because there’s no furniture. The place is empty apart from my bedroom. It’s the only place in my house that doesn’t make me feel crippled with nausea.

  Sighing, I pull the keys from the ignition of my truck, stuff my wallet and phone in my pockets, and go to the side door of my house that connects to the kitchen. Knowing the place like the back of my hand, there is no need to flip on any lights as I navigate through the hollow walls toward the only bathroom between the two downstairs bedrooms.

  After ten hours on the job site, my body is screaming for a hot shower. I strip out of my dark green Henley and plaster-covered jeans and turn on the shower to a scalding temperature, glad to burn my skin like I do every night to try to rid of the crawling sensation I feel every time I walk into this godforsaken house.

  Leaning on the bathroom counter, I look in the mirror as the shower heats up. Battered and tired eyes stare back at me. I look older than my twenty-four years. I feel fucking older than my twenty-four years. With the life experiences I have under my belt, the disappointments, the losses I’ve lived through, I feel like I’m in my mid-thirties. What’s the phrase? Life sucks and then you die?

  Steam billows from the top of the shower. I step past the plain curtain and welcome the heat against my body. The water pelts me in the back, so hot it almost feels cold, just how I like it. I hiss between my teeth, letting the water run down my back to where it pools at my feet before draining away. If only it took my sorrow with it.

  Fourteen months ago, I bought this house for a very specific reason: to start a family with my pregna
nt girlfriend. I wanted to provide for her, to prove I could be the man she needed, convince her that I was the man she could rely on. The involved and caring father I knew I could be. I was happy, fucking ecstatic; my girl was pregnant with my baby. Yeah, we had our problems. Our relationship was off and on for a while, but I believed deep in my fucking soul that we were meant to be together, that we were made for one another.

  But the world had other plans.

  The day after I signed the papers for this house, I got the call. My girl had woken up to blood; blood fucking everywhere.

  Sadie miscarried. Lost our baby. I’d never felt such devastation in my life. Some might say I was too young to even realize the impact that had on my future, but fuck them. I’ve had to grow up pretty quickly in my life, and I’ve been adulting longer than some actual adults. I know what loss is, and that night, holding Sadie’s hand in the hospital while they told us we’d lost the baby, that was loss. That was devastation. Crippling.

  But nothing prepared me for the cataclysmic damage that would happen next. Nothing prepared me for seeing the girl of my dreams pull away mentally and physically. Nothing prepared me for the day I learned she was seeing someone else. And nothing prepared me for when Sadie moved on and began living her life with another fucking man.

  I didn’t just lose my baby. No, I lost my girl too. And fuck if I was ready for that.

  She said we were growing apart before we lost the baby, that our relationship was hanging on by a thread, but I refuse to acknowledge that. In my mind, there was always hope for Sadie and me, she just gave up. On us. On me.

  Now, I live in a house I despise, a house that reminds me of everything I came so close to having. Something I may never hold in my grasp.

  It’s like constantly coming home to a slideshow of devastation on replay. I fucking hate everything about this house. It represents loss. Darkness.

  On a heavy sigh, I finish washing my body, turn off the shower, and towel off. Silence greets me as I sit on my bed, my head in my hands, trying to ease the tension building in the pit of my stomach.

  So much fucking silence. Silence, a wife and baby should have smothered. Silence, a family—my family—would have filled, but is now possessed by a lonely, bitter fuck.

  Me.

  Tucker Jameson.

  I couldn’t despise myself more.

  Chapter Three

  EMMA

  “Three Old Fashioneds, heavy on the booze,” I call out to the bartender. I take a seat at the bar in The House of Reardon, a bar we frequent when we don’t want to be caught up in the college life in downtown Binghamton and just want a peaceful drink.

  “Three?” Logan asks. He strips off his jacket and hangs it on the back of his chair.

  “Adalyn is going to meet us here.”

  “I thought she had to babysit her niece tonight.”

  “Niece got the flu. Adalyn wanted nothing to do with that and I don’t blame her, especially since we already have to be around a disease pit on a daily basis.” I pull out my phone and start searching through my emails, hoping and praying for any kind of news on apartments.

  “Hey, guys.” Adalyn sits next to Logan just as the bartender sets down our glasses. Logan hands the man his card to open a tab. He always insists on paying for our drinks since he saves mad money on rent, but Adalyn and I never leave the bar without slipping cash in his pockets. He never mentions it so either he pretends we never pay him, or he is beyond clueless and thinks his pockets grow money.

  “Hey, Adalyn,” I mumble, not looking up from my phone. Rejection after rejection email hits me. “Ugh.” I black out my phone and rest it on the bar. “I’m never going to find a place. It’s official. I’m going to be homeless. Any luck on your end?” I ask Adalyn. We split up inquiries to help each other out with our workloads.

  Adalyn shakes her head, but there is something in her eyes that says otherwise. I’ve known Adalyn for a while now, so I know when she’s lying because she does this thing with her lips where she presses them up toward her nose. Rather odd quirk actually.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Adalyn takes a sip of her drink and then sets it back down on the bar. She holds her glass with both hands and stares at the liquid as she speaks. “I haven’t found anywhere for us to live.” She swallows hard. “But my sister offered me space in her basement for the rest of the semester.” Apology is written all over her face as she turns to me. “If there was more room, I would say you could stay with me, Emma, but the room is already the size of a closet and if it wasn’t free, I would turn her down so we could find a place together but . . . it’s free.”

  My hearts falls to the sticky floor of the bar. Great. Adalyn has a place to live and honestly, I can’t even be mad at her. If I had the same opportunity, I would be saying yes before I could even blink in surprise from the offer.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m going to help you find a place though, I promise.”

  “It’s okay.” I sigh and lean back in my chair. “You don’t need to apologize, Adalyn. That’s one hell of an opportunity. You can save so much money until we graduate. I would be mad at you if you didn’t take it.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Adalyn asks.

  “I’ll figure something out.” I take a sip of my Old Fashioned. Whenever I drink with my friends back home, I have one drink, often because I’m too concerned with making sure none of them accidentally trip and fall into the bonfire. When I’m with my college friends, I drink. And tonight, I plan on drinking, and drinking a lot.

  Logan nudges me with his shoulder. “The offer still stands to room with me.”

  “And shack up in your bunk with you?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time we shared.” This time he wiggles his eyebrows and a blush creeps over my cheeks.

  No, it wouldn’t be the first time. Ohhh, Emma and Logan sitting in a tree, right? No. Well, sort of, but no.

  We went out for drinks after our first year semester finals and ended up getting wasted, a little too wasted. Since his place is walking distance from the bars, we crashed in his bed, the top bunk. We made out for quite some time, fondled each other but then passed out due to intoxication. I woke up that morning with his flaccid penis in my hand and his bottom lip stuck to my nipple.

  Not my best night, or best morning for that matter. After an extremely awkward morning, we came to the conclusion such copious amounts of liquid should never be consumed together because we didn’t want to ruin the friendship we had. We’ve made out on different occasions after that—what can I say? He’s a great kisser—but never took it any further. Nothing is quite like waking up with a limp penis in hand to ruin any romantic vibes. This past year though, strictly platonic, just the way I like it with my Logan.

  Turning toward Logan, I say, “As much fun as it was sharing a tiny bed with you on top of crusty sheets—”

  “They were not fucking crusty. Retract that statement. I don’t want people thinking I’m some jizzing asshole who never changes his sheets. Fuck me if I don’t use fabric softener. I think it’s a waste of money.”

  A laugh pops out of me. He can be so damn sensitive sometimes. “Anyway, you have one bathroom between all six of you. It would never work.”

  “We can fit you in the shower schedule. How do you feel about midnight showers?”

  “Not favorable.” I laugh and take another sip of my drink, welcoming the burn of the alcohol down the back of my throat.

  “Hey, Emma,” Adalyn whispers, leaning forward and looking over my shoulder.

  “What?” I mimic her approach.

  She nods behind me. “That guy over there keeps staring at you.”

  Lifting up, both Logan and I say at the same time, “What guy?”

  “Don’t look . . . ugh,” Adalyn groans when we both turn to see who she’s talking about.

  Sitting in the corner of the bar, a short glass of what I know is whiskey in front of him, his shoulders slouched, but his ga
ze fixed on me, is the one and only hometown heartbreaker from where I grew up: Tucker Jameson.

  When we make eye contact, his head tilts to the side and he smirks. Right there, that look—a slight smolder in his eyes, the broad set of his shoulders, muscles in his chest no man his age should have, and the scruff that lines his strong jaw—that is the look that broke many hearts.

  Two years older than me, he was in a tumultuous relationship with one of my best friends, Sadie. For years they were on again, off again, pushing each other’s buttons until it all fell apart. It caused a ripple in our little inner circle as we were forced to choose sides. I was never a fan of their relationship, knowing the kind of strain it put on both of them, but once it was over, I focused my attention on my best friend. It took time and patience, but she needed to move on with her life.

  I can still see the hollow look in Sadie’s eyes after she lost the baby, after she dropped out of Cornell University to be a mom. Life as she knew it was flipped upside down and then taken away from her. Smilly, our other best friend, had to pick up the pieces and luckily, we didn’t have to glue her back together, Andrew, her boyfriend, did that.

  I grew up in a small town, a town where everyone knew everyone. There were ninety-five kids in my graduating class, so small is an understatement. But with a small town, comes strong bonds. To this day, four years after we went our separate ways from high school, we still get together during the summer and hang out, party, reminisce on all the good times, and create some new ones too. But this last year, Tucker was MIA and now that he’s only a few feet away, I can’t help but think about what he’s been doing all these months. Has he recovered from his relationship with Sadie?

  Guilt consumes me as the back of my neck starts to flame from my neglect. Should I have offered more support to Tucker?

  “Do you know him?” Logan asks, whispering next to my ear.