Page 45 of Fun Together (Make Romance #1)

Eli

It takes me two weeks of mild to moderate pestering, but I finally convince Andrew to meet up to talk.

Just like the first night I met him, we’re standing at the bottom of the ladder that leads to the roof of the elementary school.

“It seemed taller before, didn’t it?” he asks.

“Yeah, it did.” I place a foot on the first rung of the ladder, which has gotten much rustier than before, too. “Come on, let’s see if anything else has changed.”

“What if they have cameras now? If I get arrested because of you, that’ll be the final nail in the coffin, just so you know.”

“We won’t get arrested.” I don’t think we will, anyway. It’s a Sunday night at nine in the evening, and I don’t know what I was thinking come up here. It just seemed like a cool, full-circle thing. “We’ll just be quiet.”

We climb to the top and I shine the flashlight of my phone over the area. I see a pile of candy and Doritos wrappers. Guess we aren’t the only ones who hang out on roofs.

I look around a little more, not because I’m super interested in what I might see up here, but because I suddenly don’t know what to say.

He’s waiting for me, I’m sure. I know I need to fix this rift between us somehow.

How do I apologize for the thing that I could really use his advice on right now?

I know I was sleeping with your ex and I’m super sorry about not telling you, but also can you help me figure out what to do?

“Everything sucks and I fucked up,” I finally get up the nerve to say.

“You’re going to have to be more specific.” He kicks around an empty Mountain Dew can. “You mean the whole losing your job thing, or sneaking around with my ex-girlfriend thing?”

I knew he wouldn’t make it easy. Not that I deserve for it to be easy. “Both. But I didn’t really lose my job. Technically, I quit.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

I take it he’s talking about the job, which is the least contentious thing to talk about first. “You’re looking at the newest employee of Clean Fur Smell.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“I’m in the dog grooming business now.”

He almost huffs out a laugh. “Is this a permanent career change?”

At my softball game the other night, I talked more to Chris about how I lost my job. Lost is such a funny way to describe becoming unemployed. Like, you just misplaced it somewhere and need to retrace your steps in order to find it again.

We decided I’d start working next week. I figured, if he needs the help, why not spend time bathing puppies while I figure out my next move.

“No, just for the time being while I decide what I want to do with my life.” Because I will figure out something that works for me.

He takes a seat on the building’s ledge. “That’s good.”

It’s go time, Eli . Let’s really make this apology count.

I look down and kick my feet around. “I’m sorry,” I say. It’s simple, but it’s the truth. He’d appreciate some brute honesty from me. “I really didn’t mean for anything to shake out the way it did.”

He crosses his arms. “I overreacted the other night.”

“No, you didn’t. You had a very normal reaction.” Maybe an overreaction for the way he usually tempers his emotions, but he responded exactly the way I would expect someone in his shoes would have.

“It’s just hard.” He sighs and it’s weighted. “When things don’t go the way you think they’ll go.”

I sit down next to him. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”

“Are you two . . . together now?”

“That’s another part of my fuck up.”

“How so?”

“We don’t have to talk about that. If it’s weird.”

“It’s absolutely weird, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I could see how you two would be good together.”

I feel a shred of hope, like this is his way of saying he would be okay with Faye and I being together. It’s a hope I’m terrified to have, because having his blessing means nothing if Faye herself doesn’t want to be with me.

“Too bad I scared her away.”

“What do you mean?”

“She overheard you and I talking about her after the party.”

Andrew grimaces. “Oh no.”

“And then I told her I was falling in love with her.”

“That was quite the speech you gave, looking deep into her eyes the whole time.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Let me guess. That didn’t go over well?”

“I basically called her a liar and told her that I couldn’t be her friend anymore.” I can’t stand even thinking of that day and how shattered her face looked when I said this to her. “I think I just got scared of losing her and overcompensated by just . . . telling her every feeling I have.”

“Faye likes time to process. Hope might not be lost yet. She looks at you—” he picks at his cuticles. “In a way she never looked at me.”

My chest tightens. If he saw this too, that means I wasn’t imagining it, the softening of her gaze when she looks at me.

“I really am sorry.”

“I know. And by the looks of you right now, I think you’ve suffered enough as punishment.”

I look down at myself, at the ketchup-stained shirt I haven’t changed in days. I need to shave. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. “I look like shit, huh?”

“Take a shower. Eat a good meal. Go for a run. It’ll be okay.”

I chuckle at his pragmatic approach to solving heartbreak. Looking up at the clear night sky, I feel emotional, and grateful for the people in my life. “Hey, I never got a chance to ask, why did you come back early?”

“Let’s just say Amsterdam wasn’t for me.”

“You mean the city or the girl?”

“Both, I guess.”

I think about the selfie Faye showed me, of Andrew and Emma smiling at the camera. “You seemed to be having fun. What went wrong?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and I give him time. “Can I tell you something and you swear to God you won’t laugh?”

“Um . . . sure?”

He exhales heavily. “I think I’m bad at sex.”

I can’t help it, but I do bark out a laugh because it’s such an unexpected thing for him to say.

He gives me a look like, You said you wouldn’t laugh .

I try to ignore the specter of Faye in the corner of this conversation, considering what she told me about her lack of?—

Yeah, not going to go there. “Why do you think that?”

“Because Emma told me.”

“Wow.”

He lays his head back. “Yeah.”

“What did she say exactly? Maybe this is just some kind of misunderstanding.”

“We had just . . . you know . . .”

“Had sex?”

“Yeah. And before I even had a chance to put my boxers back on, she’s telling me that we got that out of our systems, and she doesn’t think we’re compatible.”

“Okay, but not compatible doesn’t mean you’re bad at sex.”

He shakes his head. “There’s more. I asked her what she meant by that since we have so much in common. And she said, ‘Andrew, you fuck me like you’re rushing through your to-do list.’”

“Oh no, you’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

“That’s brutal, but don’t read too much into it. And hey, some people might be into that. A man who knows how to get things done with efficiency.”

He snorts. “It’s hard not to read into it, though.” That would be a blow to the best of us, but someone like Andrew who hates being bad at something was probably on the way back from the Netherlands, reading She Comes First on the plane.

“Look on the bright side. You won’t have to have a long-distance relationship.”

He scoffs. “I think I might put a pause on any kind of relationship for a bit.” He stands up and brushes off the back of his pants and ending the conversation. “I really do hope things work out with you and Faye.”