Age 25:
From: [email protected]
I’ll tell you this. I’ve never in my life wished so badly that I could call you and convince you to meet with me. We’re almost at ten years. Let’s just get this done so I can know for sure you’re not a 32-year-old man catfishing me from your mom’s basement. Kidding. Of course.
I’m at a bar (not saying where. I know it’s against the rules) with my best friend and his siblings. They are so, so weird. I wish I was kidding when I say I am surrounded by the oddest people I have ever met—other than you, my dear.
I’m also slightly tipsy, and I just have to say that I love you so much. I am so grateful for you. I want to give you a big giant hug one day, okay?
Let’s hug it out, brother. I mean sister.
Let’s watch Shrek and eat ice cream sandwiches. Come see meee. Ten years, shmen years. We’re basically already there.
Bye bestie,
Shine
***
“Where are the strippers, bro?” was the very first thing Crew said when he walked into Romfuzzled.
I came in before it opened—since I have an in with the owner, you know—and spent all day prepping. I mean really, really prepping. Signs, balloon arches—which are incredibly difficult and painful to erect—and a box of T-shirts I made for all the guys (I went with Luke’s face pressed over Luke Skywalker’s from Return of the Jedi.) I know, I was killing it at the whole best man thing.
I’d already ordered everyone a Nathan-ator—Luke and I decided renaming the old fashioned was the right way to go since it was my drink of choice—and I’d forced everyone to show up early and don their Luke shirts.
Crew busted in late, of course, while the rest of us were waiting at the bar for him and Luke.
“There are no strippers. I already told you that.”
He groaned and pointed to his button-up. “I wore my best Hawaiian shirt for nothing?”
I took in the pink Hawaiian shirt covered in dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes wearing leis and cringed. “Uh, sorry, bud.”
He shrugged. “What a waste. I spent my whole day working to look this good just for you guys. And strippers.”
Liam, who was happily wearing his Luke shirt, threw back his drink. “I’m just glad to be off work long enough to be here.”
Beside him, Adam had the homemade shirt thrown over his shoulder.
He scanned us all and shook his head, arms crossed. “I don’t know why I even bothered coming.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, so I pulled it out. Instead of the warning text I expected from Layla that would let me know Luke was on his way, it was from Calla.
Calla: Sooo what do you guys have planned for tonight?
I had absolutely no business being this excited at the sight of her name on the screen. Especially when I was minutes away from surprising her brother with a party as his best man. I swore to myself there would be no more funny business. No more heart palpitations accompanying the sound of her name. No more long looks every time she walked past me in the apartment. And yet…
Me: Alcohol, Little Debbies, and debauchery.
Calla: Oh, is that right?
Me: Wild night at Romfuzzled, indeed.
Calla: I may have to sneak over to the bachelor side instead. All I planned was a bookstore crawl and bowling, but Little Debbies and debauchery sound so much more enticing.
Me: Come on over anytime, BG.
My intentions were good, I swear. Just a friendly night out with friends and their siblings. Friends, friends, friends, friends, friends.
Me: You guys should stop by after your bookstore crawl.
The sound of Luke’s Jeep shocked me back to reality. His tires on asphalt screeched in my head like he’d run over the tiny part of my brain that considered Calla Wells a candidate for the more I wanted out of life.
Pocketing my phone, I ran to the light switches and turned them all off.
“Everyone hide!” I whisper-yelled as Crew, Liam, and Tom all jumped the bar to duck under. Adam simply ambled around the other side, as if he was cooler than the other three. And let’s face it; he might be.
I tucked and rolled behind the bar and settled into a squat beside an assortment of liquor bottles and flavoring tucked into the opened cabinets just as a car door slammed in the lot.
“I think he’s coming up,” Crew said at full volume.
“Shh!” Liam and Tom and I whispered to him in sync.
He raised a defensive hand before pointing over at Adam, who was standing at his full height behind the bar. “Adam isn’t even crouching.”
Adam shrugged, his shirt still hanging off his shoulder. “He can’t see me till he comes inside anyway.”
When keys jangled outside the door, I bounced a little, preparing to jump up. A moment later, the old wooden door creaked open, and I nodded to the rest of the guys.
We all shot up in the air. Well, except for Jerry. It took him a minute to get up.
“Surprise!” we shouted. Even Adam joined in, although much less enthusiastically.
Luke staggered back a little, but caught himself quickly, his brows crooked in confusion. He scanned the bar, taking in the banner that read Let’s make pour decisions and the color-coordinating balloon arch. His lips pulled into a smile when he got to where we were standing, wearing matching shirts with his face on them.
Luke opened his mouth and then closed it, pointing his thumb out to the parking lot. “You know I own the place, right? And that you asked permission to throw a party here? And you realize all of your cars are in plain sight in the parking lot?”
I rummaged in a paper bag on the bar and pulled out a party horn emblazoned with RIP single life. With a deep breath in, I brought it to my lips and blew, making the most obnoxious noise I could. “Surprise?” I shrugged.
Luke moved a few steps closer, looking at our shirts in detail.
He pointed at my chest. “Please tell me I get one of those.”
***
A few drinks, four rounds of pool, and many terrible dance moves later, Luke and I were laughing so hard beer was coming out of my nose.
“Shut up. I did not,” I choked out.
Luke nodded ferociously. “You told me you were going to hit Layla with a box of paper clips if she ever got near the shredder again.”
“She kept stealing it from the neutral spot.” I snorted. “I thought you were going to kill me when I tried to yank it away from her. You were so pissed at just the thought of me going near her.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I was a little crazy about her back then, I guess.”
I quirked one brow at him. I didn’t have to voice my response to that.
Luke elbowed my arm with a laugh. “Shut up. You’ll be the same way when you meet the right girl.”
I stiffened at that, because in the back of my head, deep, deep in my subconscious, I felt like I’d already met the right girl. But if she was the right girl, why did the idea of dating her feel wrong?
Luke took a sip of his beer and leaned back in the booth. Crew and Liam had gone up to the bar when a group of young women stepped through the front door about twenty minutes ago, and Adam was standing at the jukebox with Tom.
Luke sighed. “What about the girl you were talking to for a while?”
Had I been talking to someone recently? It had been months since I’d been on a date, and the last few were setups. Friends wanting me to meet women they thought I might like. And I didn’t think I’d even mentioned them to Luke.
I scrunched my nose when I figured out who he meant. “Oh, Lily?”
Luke had caught me shooting off emails to Lily once or twice and laughing at her two-a.m. responses with memes and inside jokes that would’ve taken way too long to explain.
“Yeah. The one you were talking to so much when we were in Ocean City.” He tapped his finger against the perspiration on his glass.
“Nah. She’s just a really good friend. We’ve known each other forever.”
Luke looked like he wanted to argue, but instead, he just gave me a slow nod. “Hmm, okay. Anyway, you need to get out there. Go on a date. Seems like you’ve been lonely lately.”
Actually, I hadn’t been. Calla and I had been hanging out a ton this week. If I wasn’t at work or at lessons, then I was with her. Truth be told, I didn’t think I’d felt lonely since she moved in. But what was I supposed to say?
Don’t worry, your sister is keeping me company in our cozy apartment.
“Yeah, maybe.” My response was flat. Mostly because I was so unbelievably sick of dating. Sick of looking for a mediocre relationship that would last a few months, only to end up being ghosted or falling into a boring back and forth and never being interested in going further. These days, more than anything, I craved permanence.
But I craved it with the wrong person. Living together had made that all too clear. Leaving a cup of coffee for her each morning, finding her bobby pins scattered about. Her signed Yogi Bear mug with fake flowers in it on my coffee table. Yeah, it was all too easy to picture permanence with her. Except I valued my friendship with Luke so deeply that I was afraid to risk it.
A shrill whistle had me turning to the bar, where Crew and Liam were waving me over to the group of women they were chatting up.
A blonde in a tight miniskirt turned on her barstool to face me and smiled. Sarah. The mom who’d chatted me up at lessons recently. She raised a hand, and I dipped my chin at her before setting my glass down and turning to Luke.
“I’m gonna say hey to a friend real quick.”
He smirked up at me. “That was fast.”
I shrugged off his comment with a laugh—there was no use arguing, anyway—and meandered my way to the bar.
Liam patted my shoulder. “This young woman was telling us that you teach her son, what was it? Christopher?” He turned to Sarah for confirmation.
“Christian,” I answered before she could.
“Christian!” Liam continued. “You give her son guitar lessons, huh?” He gave me an exaggerated wink.
“Yep, every other Tuesday night.” I let out a chuckle and nodded to Sarah, who flashed a pretty smile at me.
It was absolutely infuriating that I didn’t find her more attractive. Objectively, she was cute. She had bright blond hair and a petite figure that could rock a stiletto, judging by the six-inch bedazzled heels on her feet, and yet…nothing. My heart didn’t kick up a single notch. Not like it did when Calla walked into a room wearing her stupid lemon-printed pajamas. For some absurd reason, a scene like that would have my heart doing somersaults like there was a Y2K celebration going off in my chest.
“How’s the little man doing?” I asked to be polite.
Sarah unlocked her phone and pulled up a picture of Christian passed out on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in his lap. “Didn’t hang very long with the babysitter. I guess I should’ve planned something more fun for him to do.”
I laughed. “Nah, kids love movie nights. I’m sure he had a blast.”
Sarah nodded. “They watched Shrek,so I’m sure he had a good time.”
Liam moved closer to where Crew and one of Sarah’s friends were sitting a couple of seats down. Crew was going on about one of his Lord Of The Rings theories, so I figured it was best to stay where I was.
I tapped my fingers on the bar. “Are you having a moms’ night out or something?”
Sarah chuckled. “Uh, not exactly. I’m the only mom. We’re celebrating my birthday, actually.”
I raised my hand. “Oh, happy birthday! This is the perfect place to celebrate. Have you by any chance tried the Nathan-ator?” With a flourish, I pointed to the menu on the bar top.
Sarah snickered. “Is that named after you?”
I nodded. “The one and only.”
Easy conversation continued from there. Easy yet boring, if I was being honest. Even as I begged my heart and God himself to allow me to feel something for the pretty girl next to me. Even a single, solitary goose bump would suffice. A fluttering in my chest or a half a belly flip. It didn’t matter how hard I wished for it; my body remained unmoved. Still. So utterly still.
Sarah sat up straighter, her pink blazer shifting across her shoulders. She peeked up at me from under her lashes and said, “I don’t really do this, and it’s probably too forward, but would you maybe want to go out sometime?”
No was the response that came to mind. But maybe a distraction was exactly what I needed to get my mind off Calla. Maybe sparks needed to be built up. They didn’t always come all at once, right? Sometimes chemistry took time.
“How about next weekend?” I asked.
I was livid with myself. I was a crappy roommate, a crappy guy, for even saying yes to a date when my heart lay at the feet of someone else. And I was an even crappier best man because of where my heart was. But I had to do something to set myself straight. One date. Just push through one dinner in hopes that it would electrocute my heart into action.
Sarah gave a full, grateful smile. “Yes, definitely! I’ll get someone to watch Christian.”
I responded with a polite nod. “Sounds good. How about I text you details?”
She bit her lip and dipped her chin demurely.
I thumbed over my shoulder to where Luke was still sitting. “I’m gonna go back to my friend. Best man stuff and whatnot. I’ll be in touch.”
Sarah smiled and gave a quick wave as I turned away.
Halfway back to where Luke sat with a dumb grin on his face and a thumbs-up, the hairs on my arms stood up.
Behind me, the front doors opened, and I turned at the sound. Calla, decked out in a sleek black dress that hugged her curvy waist and had a slit up to her mid-thigh, walked in. At the sight of her, my stomach jolted like I had been punched in the gut, and my chest tremored like I’d been shocked by an electrical outlet. I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of a stampede of elephants racing through my ears, but she was laughing at something Layla was saying, her head thrown back and her face glowing with joy.
My own face warmed, and my heart raced as she craned her neck and scanned the crowded bar like she was looking for someone.
When her eyes landed on me, she broke out into a wide grin. It was the prettiest smile I had ever seen. Then she popped up on her tiptoes and waved wildly at me.
With her attention focused on me, my body relaxed. Yes, she was done up and looking good enough to send me into cardiac arrest, but she was still my Calla. I laughed, shaking off the shame that had been strangling me all night.
Long ago, someone had told me that guilt correlated with what a person had done, while shame was a feeling related directly to how a person viewed themself. And right now, I was not just someone’s friend, a son, a worker, or a best man; I was Calla’s objective. How could I possibly be ashamed of who I was when a woman this special was searching an entire crowd of people just for me?
Maybe I would pack guilt and shame back on later, but right now, as Calla weaved her way toward me through the crowded bar, I was euphoric. Tonight, I’d soak in her attention. Leave the shame I’d shaken off in a pile on the floor.
When she got close, she spoke, but the bar was loud, so I leaned in. My lips grazed her ear, my words kissing the ends of her cheek.
“What were you saying?”
She put her hands on my forearms for support and popped up on her toes again. “I’m really, really, glad to see you!” she shouted. Judging by her excitement and sloppy tone, I ventured to guess she’d had a couple of drinks as well.
With a shake of my head and a laugh, I bit my lip. “Yeah, BG, me too.”
I turned to Luke, where Layla, Rachel, Marigold, and Mama B had squished into the circular booth surrounding him. He gave each a hug and kiss on the cheek and pulled Layla into his side.
When I faced Calla again, her attention was fixed on my shirt, and she smiled so brightly that the rest of the world looked dull in comparison.
She grabbed fistfuls of my Luke Skywalker shirt and yanked me down so we were eye to eye. I jerked forward as she turned and brought her lips to my ear.
In a sexy tone, she said, “I bought so many books tonight.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, my chest fluttering against her shoulder.
“Is that right?” I asked, unable to fight back a grin.
She nodded, her hair brushing against my cheek. “So. Many. Books.”
As the music died down between songs, I pulled back. “It sounds like you bought a lot of drinks too.”
I searched her face for signs that she was under the influence, but her eyes were clear, and she wasn’t swaying or faltering at all. She was smiling at me brightly. Like a kid who’d won a stuffed dolphin from the claw machine and was just waiting for the mechanism to release it.
Shaking her head, she shouted—louder than necessary, considering the music was transitioning. “Nope. I’m just on a book-buying high.”
I couldn’t hold my smile back. “I can’t wait to hear all about them.”
She nodded. “I got more blue aliens, and even a couple pirates.”
“Wow, really going all out, aren’t you?”
She glanced over my shoulder to where Luke and the rest of the girls were. “Yup. Didn’t hold back at all. Layla’s trunk is packed full. She let me drive here, which is surprising, considering someone”—she poked my side, her tiny pink nail digging into my rib—“has apparently been complaining about my driving skills.”
I shrugged and pulled away from her accusing finger. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She laughed and grabbed my wrist. “Come on. Let’s go sit with our friends.”
And who was I to argue with her?
