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“Probably.”
“You’re not supposed to tell me the truth, you’re supposed to lie to me.”
“What good will that do? You know when I’m lying.”
Tugging my hair at the roots, I do my best to fend off having a full-fledged meltdown.
“You can handle it,” he says. “What happened to my stinging scorpion? Be that man when you meet them, he’ll appreciate it.”
I want to stay here, wrapped in his giant arms a little longer. We’re friends. I think. Fantastic. My only maybe-friend is an arrogant hockey gorilla.
“Did you call Brittany?”
“No, and I’m not going to.” The card is gone. Ripped up and tossed in the trash bin.
“Logan.”
I break free of his arms. “I don’t need any friends. Especially If they’re just going to tell me what to do.”
“Will you tell me why?”
It’s so embarrassing and pathetic, I don’t want to say it out loud. At the same time, Rhett’s probably the only person I can admit something like this to because I don’t give a fuck what he thinks about me. “In case you haven’t noticed—though I don’t know how you could have missed it—I’m not people friendly. Even when I’ve begun friendships, they fail after some time and my heart gets broken.”
“So, you’ve decided never to try? Seems healthy.”
“Fuck off, Rhett.”
“There. That. Just work on your people skills a little and you’ll have friends banging down your door.” He laughs.
“I don’t want to. It’s never worth it.”
“It was a joke. You are prickly, but some people like prickly and you should be yourself.”
“Says the man hung up on a literal ray of sunshine. Part of this fake boyfriend thing means you live your life and I live mine. I’m leaving now.”
I ice-skater storm off, with the cool air whipping through my hair. He’s just as bad as everyone else, getting into my business. Mercy was so excited about my new potential friendship that he began planning a dinner and Jack started talking about how we’d add a flower on the wall for her. Lorelei added one for me on my birthday. Jack suggested it could live beside that one.
Somehow—the damn Meyer family group chat—word got around that I’d be making a new friend. There was a whole conversation about the poor girl until I shut it down. They made it so that even if I did want to call her, I could never bring her to meet my crazy family.
Huh. Maybe it’s not so bad to have a crazy family, but I’m still not subjecting anyone to them.
My new routines are still in place. After practice, we do breakfast. Then Merc and I work on cars together. I’m a tool boy. I fetch him tools while he does all the real work. If it’s something easier—like an oil change—I get to do more. He still doesn’t have a clue that I can fix cars and it’s the greatest prank of all time.
After cleaning the grease from my hands with a little Fast Orange, my phone buzzes on the counter where I left it. I expect that it’s Rhett. I ran out on him before he got to tell me the date and time I need to be ready to meet his parents.
“Okay, when am I going to have to subject myself to rich people's purgatory?” I mutter to myself.
It’s not Rhett and I have to squint at the words to understand them.
Scott Orser.
Did Scott Orser just text me?
He did and he wants to meet up and discuss working together.Be cool, Wescott. Just be cool.Unfortunately, I’m the least cool person alive.
Yeah, sure, man. Let’s meet.
That’s a cool text, right?
