Page 59 of Forever Then

Chapter Forty-Five

WORDS TRUER THAN TRUE

Connor

“You prick! I trusted you!” Drew shouts down at me as I clamor back to my feet. My fists clench at my sides as I crank my jaw to relieve some of the ache.

I know I broke the rules, but Gretchen needed me and I won’t apologize for it.

The moment she’d been fretting over for months, the strength it took for her to finally say the words out loud—I was so damn proud of her.

Then, like a bull in a china shop, Drew wrecked the entire thing, forever tainting what should have been a beautiful moment.

“Dude”—I put my hands back up in surrender—“calm down and let me explain.”

“Like hell I’m gonna calm down.”

“Drew! Stop!” Gretchen’s panicked voice rises above the cluster of onlookers conveniently slowing their strides to watch the two grown ass men throw punches on the sidewalk.

The restaurant door crashes into the brick wall behind it from the force of her exit.

Shoving strangers aside, she reaches the front of the small crowd and rushes toward me

“I’m fine, Fish,” I lie and she knows it.

“You don’t get to call her that anymore,” Drew spews.

Gretchen whirls around and shoves him with two hard palms to his chest. “Back off, Drew. This is none of your business!”

Undeterred, Drew continues his rampage like he doesn’t even see her. “I asked you to be there for her, not screw her!”

“Andrew!” Paul commands, voice cutting like a knife. “That’s enough, son.”

Drew laughs. “No, Dad. I’m not even close to finished.”

“Fisher,” I beg, “can we just talk?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” He steps closer as Kelly hauls Gretchen back, out of Drew’s path. “What’s it been, two months? That woman gave you two and a half years and you can’t even keep it in your pants for two months after you dump her?”

“I’ve already told you Lauren and I weren’t right for each other.” I fight every urge to shout, to engage him with the same aggression he’s giving me.

“That’s a load of bullshit! I was there pulling your pathetic, drunken ass off the floor, kicking girls out of your apartment. That girl was the best thing to ever happen to you and you went and fucked it up.”

I pin Drew with a stare, eyes furious. Gretchen, her parents—they’re hearing all of this. I want to reach for Gretchen’s hand, to tell her parents that Drew’s got it all wrong. But I can’t.

“And I’ll be damned,” he continues, “if I let you pull my sister into your mess.”

“Drew, let him explain. Please!” Gretchen’s attempt to mediate goes unacknowledged. He doesn’t look her way. He doesn’t even pretend to hear her. This is between him and me.

“Maybe you’re right, Connor. Maybe I’ve been wrong this whole time. Maybe it was never right with Lauren because you never actually changed. Maybe monogamy just doesn’t suit you,” he spits, lip curled in disgust .

“That is not true and you know it!” I retort, defensive now, my muscles stiff with anger.

“Do I? Where’s the evidence?” He throws his arms out, neck swiveling left and right in dramatic mockery. Gretchen drops her face into her hands.

“Where was your evidence before Reagan?” It’s a low blow, especially in front of his parents, but it’s my only defense.

A flicker of surprise crosses his gaze before he lets out another humorless laugh. “I suppose this is the part where you tell me that it’s different with Gretchen.” Drew’s brows shoot up. “That you didn’t mean for it to happen?” His eyes narrow. “That I can trust you?”

Disappointment coats his derision, that afternoon in his kitchen six years ago where I made him that exact promise flashing Exhibit A in the Case of Your Best Friend’s Betrayal in big bold letters across his face.

A thread tethered to a similar scene three years ago where I not only reiterated that promise, but I had every opportunity to prove I wasn’t that guy anymore…

and I failed. The strand of our friendship now rests under the weight of Drew’s judgment.

Every lie, every secret, every half-truth in between, pulling—fifteen years of friendship slowly ripping at the seams.

“What do you want me to say? You’re mad at me. Fine. Be mad. That wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. That’s on me, okay? I’m sorry.”

“I was here with my wife, fighting our way through something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, trusting you to be there for my sister. And I did. I trusted that you were looking out for her.”

“I was! I will always be there for her.”

“No. You were taking care of yourself!” he sneers. “Put a pretty girl, a bottle of tequila and a free hotel room in front of Connor Vining and you’ll jump at the opportunity.”

Gretchen stomps toward him. “What the hell, Drew?” Gretchen shouts. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Gretch, that guy”—he points an accusatory finger at me—“I don’t care what romantic bullshit nonsense he used on you, I know him better than you do.

At worst, you’re another one-night stand that he’ll forget about tomorrow.

At best, you’re a rebound that will land him back with Lauren once you move back to New York. ”

Is this the man he thinks I am? The man he thinks I still am?

Lauren wasn’t right for me, but I was faithful to her for our entire relationship, yet Drew thinks I’m still the kind of guy to have a one-night stand or treat his little sister as nothing more than a rebound.

I haven’t been that guy for years. But he won’t give me a chance to explain.

Gretchen’s pleas for Drew to stop ride the waves of her tears. Her posture sinks like all the fight in her has vanished. He doesn’t relent as he sidesteps past her and comes chest to chest with me once more.

“Tell me why,” he says as Gretchen returns to her parents, gesturing and whispering, begging for someone to listen.

It’s no use , I want to tell her. Don’t waste your breath. He’s never going to accept this.

“Why what?” I shrug.

“Why her?”

I stare at him. Tears sting the back of my eyes and my throat grows tight, but my emotion has no effect on Drew. Totally expressionless, he’s content to watch me drown while he stews in anger.

“Because you had her in a hotel room for five days and couldn’t keep your dick in your pants?”

“Stop it,” I seethe, jaw clenched. My heart pounds behind my sternum as I suppress the words that are right there. The words I need him to hear without me having to say them—not here, not now.

“Because you know she’s moving back to New York, so you thought you could enjoy some no-strings sex?”

“I would never treat her like that,” I plead. Please! Not now.

“Because she’s a rebound?”

“Because I love her!”

Drew stills as Gretchen jerks her head my direction, worried eyes fixed on me. The rush of adrenaline from uttering the words out loud does nothing to distract me from the guilt that instantly consumes me for this being the moment she hears them .

I drop my head as the first tear falls, a tiny splatter darkening the concrete at my feet. “Because I’m in love with her,” I breathe, words truer than true.

The sky is blue. Two plus two equals four. The earth is round. I’m in love with her.

For what seems like hours, everything goes blurry, sounds muffled. I see nothing. I hear nothing. Then, Gretchen is in front of me, hands on my cheeks, pulling my universe into focus. God, I love her.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. The pad of her thumb swipes a tear from my cheek as she opens her mouth to speak.

“The funny thing is,” Drew interrupts, “you actually think I’m going to believe that.”

Gretchen lets out a frustrated breath, expression murderous.

“It took you a year to say it the first time, and now you went and fell in love in a week? Please!” He rolls his eyes.

Gretchen spins and prowls up to her brother until she’s right in his face. “That is enough!”

“Drew, honey,” Kelly chimes in. “I think we need to table this and discuss it another time when you’re not so upset.”

“No, Mom! You and Dad deserve to know exactly who this guy is if he’s gonna stand here and say he’s ‘in love’ with your daughter.” He adds a mocking tone that cuts especially deep. “Goes for you, too, Gretch.” He fixes his attention back on me. “Does she even know the half of it?”

I could yell. I could defend myself. I could beg him not to say too much. I could plead with him to not use the lowest moments of my life to define who I am. But I can’t bring myself to stop him.

“I’m gonna take that as a no. And, hey, I’ll do you a solid because, you know, best friends and all, and I’ll skip over the frat house years.”

I could remind him that we lived in the same frat house, but I don’t.

“Hell, how about we just focus on those last few months before you met Lauren. ”

He stares daggers at me—an unflinching challenge in his gaze that dares me to stop him. But I don’t.

“I get back from my honeymoon and Casanova over here is all but AWOL. If he wasn’t drunk dialing me from the bar on a Tuesday night needing my help to get home, he was ghosting me. Lunch plans, workouts, dinner parties, didn’t matter.”

Hands hung low on my hips, eyes glued to the sidewalk, the shame of those few months rises to the surface. Drew’s begun with the better of the two halves and I’m certain he’s about to expose the worst one.

Still, I don’t stop him.

“There was one place I could almost always find him, though. His place, usually face down on his mattress, passed out, naked more often than not. Some days I’d get lucky and whatever girl he picked up at the bar the night before would already be gone.

Oh, but there were plenty of days I wasn’t so lucky. Isn’t that right?”

I’m a statue—concrete, void of life, motionless. The impact of every blunt force hit of the sledgehammer barely registers in my senses. The real pain lies in being powerless to stop it as pieces of me crumble and shatter to the floor.

“No, on those days, I’d have to carry his ass to the shower, clean his sheets and force him to go to work.

The worst days, though?” He pauses and I wonder if this hurts him even a shred as much as it hurts me.

Does he even care? “The worst were the days I had to kick the girls out. What was it, three, sometimes four, women a week?”

I wince.

“Wasn’t always one woman at a time either, was it?”

The tears are back and I paw at my face like a weak child.

This is it. The absolute worst version of myself on display.

All of the careless and reckless behavior I fell into after walking away from Gretchen on that balcony.

It doesn’t matter that she can connect the dots and know that this all happened after Drew’s wedding—that I was grieving her—because no explanation about the how or the why makes it any less true.

Nobody understands what it’s like to reach rock bottom where you don’t want to feel anything anymore until you find yourself there.

I was angry at myself, riddled with guilt and I missed Gretchen.

I missed her so fucking much. I had everything I wanted and then I threw it all away—destroyed it. I was lost and I handled it all wrong.

Here I am, having done it all over again. I’ve ruined everything.

I don’t have to look at Drew, Gretchen or their parents to imagine what I might find on their faces. Disgust. Disappointment. All the things I feel about myself when I remember that time of my life. A dark period I thought I had moved on from. I thought my friend recognized that, too.

Maybe we never truly escape our pasts. Gretchen’s forgiveness or not, I don’t know how we move forward after this. You can’t un-hear these types of things. What if she’s picturing all of it? No, I’ll never recover from that.

I once thought past sins were simply stains that would fade with time, but I was wrong. They’re permanent. Tattoos forever marring our skin, painting the picture by which the people we love the most judge our character.

Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I drop to a nearby bench. Elbows on my knees, my head falls into my hands.

“Fuck this! I can’t deal with this right now. Consider this my formal decline to your invitation to get drinks. Go ahead and pencil me in your calendar for the twenty-third of never.”

With that, he whips around and storms off, Gretchen crying after him, “Drew! Wait! Don’t do this!”

“Let him go, honey,” Paul says. “He needs to cool off.”

Feet shuffle on concrete, then Gretchen crouches down in front of me. The expression on her face confirms everything I already know and I look away to avoid the feeling. To delay what I now fear is inevitable.

“I think I should go after him…see if he’ll talk to me.”

It won’t work. I nod.

“I’ll come back to your place later.”

You promise? I nod.

“Connor. Will you please look at me? ”

I look up.

“I will come home later.”

I’m scared you won’t. I nod.

A second later, I’m forced to watch as Gretchen chases after her brother. Mr. and Mrs. Fisher say…something and pat me on the shoulder before they depart in the opposite direction.

Twenty feet might as well be twenty miles as my best friend’s frame fades into the crowd in the distance, the love of my life running after him.

I can’t help but think that, despite my best efforts to keep them, I’ve somehow managed to lose them both.