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“Like you would have listened to me. Besides, you and Amber were a cliché in your own right. I was hoping that would work in our favour.”
“What do you mean we were a cliché in our own right?”
Lainey gestures to me, indicating I should look at myself. “You have the whole bad boy thing going on. Plus, you’re Duncan’s best friend.”
“You’ve lost me. What has me being Duncan’s best friend got to do with anything?”
“Well, that’s just another cliché found in romance novels. Girls are always falling in love with their brother’s best friend.”
“Unless she’s already in love with her best friend?”
“Exactly.”
I sit back, rubbing my chin. “You know, the first time I met Lucas, he was sitting with Amber on the couch in the Johnsons’ lounge room. I took one look at his rich boy clothes, saw the way Amber looked at him, and knew I could never compete with that.”
“But you still pursued her?”
It’s both a question and a statement, I assume, since Lainey already knows I did.
“Because she never started dating Lucas. Instead, she had a long run of losers. And I mean real losers. Dropkicks. The dregs of society. I didn’t understand why someone so beautiful and smart and perfect would date such douchebags, and neither did Duncan. He made some comment about his friends being better than the dickheads she brought home.”
“And you took it as encouragement?”
“Well, yeah. Not that Duncan saw it that way. He wasn’t thrilled when I told him I was going to ask Amber out.”
Lainey looks over at Duncan standing with Seb in front of the Green’s Law cast. “But he got over it.”
“We fought about it a lot at first. I had to show him I could clean up my act and quit sleeping around.”
“Which you did.”
Knowing I didn’t stand a chance with Amber any other way, I changed for her. I quit smoking. I gave up my dangerous job as a bodyguard to be with her because I knew she didn’t want to date someone who worked nights. I risked my friendship with my best mate. But all the changes I made weren’t enough because when it came down to a choice between Lucas and me, she chose him. Guys like me don’t get the girls of our dreams. If I’d realised this sooner and stayed away from Amber, I would have saved Duncan and me a lot of conflict, and I would have saved myself a lot of unnecessary pain.
“I did, yeah. And I also told Duncan I’d been in love with his sister since I was sixteen.”
“You have not seriously been in love with her since you were sixteen!” Lainey declares. “That’s eleven years.”
“Nearly twelve, and I’m sure I’ve told you that before.”
“If you have, I probably dismissed it. It’s a little hard to imagine a sixteen-year-old version of you in love.”
I smirk. “Well, maybe I was in lust with her back then. But it didn’t take long for me to see that she was smart, beautiful, kind, and adventurous. The best girl I’d ever met. She’s perfect.”
“Yes, she is,” Lainey says with a touch of bitterness.
“She was out of my league. Too good for me. Of course she was going to choose Lucas over me. I’m amazed we lasted a year.”
Lainey shakes her head. “You can’t take it personally or believe you’re lacking in some way because she’s with Lucas now. They have the best friend thing going on. No one can compete with that. It’s shared secrets, shared history, friendship, and compatibility. A potent and irresistible combination.”
I wish I could agree with her, but I can’t. If I wasn’t the no-hoper I always have been, Amber would have picked me. My dad always told me I was a useless piece of shit that no one could love. Turns out he was right.
“So, what are you going to do about your book?” I ask her.
“Is this your way of changing the subject?”
“I think I’ve done enough soul baring tonight, Lainey.”
Her gaze is warm as she rests her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Ben, for tonight. I needed this. I’m really glad you were here and that we could talk.”
