Page 101 of Mr. Brightside

Jake

Thepoundingonthedoor matches the pounding in my head. Jesus fucking Christ. If that’s one of my tenants, they’re about to regret waking up and choosing violence today because I’m fully prepared to match their rage.

I swing the door open, ready to tell them off. That’s what work orders are for. There’s no fucking reason for someone to be interrupting my drunken wallowing.

But when the door opens, it’s not a tenant on the other side.

My mouth gapes as I stare into the piercing gray-blue eyes of my best friend.

“Expecting someone else?” he taunts as he pushes past me.

“Bro… what the fuck? What are you doing here?”

He turns on his heel and gives me a pointed look. I don’t miss how he side-eyes my messy-ass kitchen before appraising my sorry, unkempt state.

“You told Cory you love him,” he declares matter-of-factly, as if that answers my question.

My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. What the fuck? How does he know that?

“How’d—”

He cuts me off before I can even formulate a question.

“Where do you think he is right now?”

Realization sweeps over me. I saw the airline charge on our account. But I figured he went somewhere warm, somewhere fun. Somewhere to get away from me.

“He’s in Virginia?” I run a hand down my face as things click into place.

“He’s wrecked, bro. He needed a friend.”

My gut twists at the reminder of how I hurt him.

“What did you do?” Rhett demands.

I narrow my eyes as I pick up on the judgment in his tone. This bossy fucker thinks he can just come in here and accuse me of fucking up? Never mind that he’s 100 percent right. This is all my fault. But I still have enough self-respect to get defensive. I’ve been itching for a fight all day. Looks like it came knocking at my door instead.

“I let him get too close.” I shrug, burying every real emotion trying to flare up inside me.

Rhett chuckles—he fucking laughs at me—shaking his head slightly in the process.

“No. No way,” he declares. “You don’t get to retreat into yourself and act like there hasn’t been some cosmological shift in your life because of that man. Own it, Jake. Stop pushing people away and pretending like you don’t deserve love.”

My heart clenches as my brain scrambles to recover. He’s not going to make this easy. I’ve been wallowing in my own bullshit for the last forty-eight hours. I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten anything except pizza rolls. I haven’t even gone into work because I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone mentioning his name.

He’s gone. I drove him away. And I was dead set on making myself pay for my transgressions with self-hatred and poor choices before Rhett showed up at my door.

Truth be told, I’m fucking tired. Tired of replaying the whole thing in my mind. Tired of wishing I’d done things differently. Last night, I lay awake for hours, honest to God Googling “what to do when you fuck up your marriage.”

After scouring the internet for most of the night, here’s what I learned: men are fucking stupid, and what happened between Cory and me isn’t as horrible as it could have been.

Except…

It really was. The hurt in his eyes. The resolve in his decision. I fucked up. Then he fucking ended it. I honestly didn’t even have time to process what was happening before he was out the door, the wedding ring he left behind mocking me from the kitchen island.

My hand immediately goes to the chain around my neck as I finger our rings through the fabric of my T-shirt.

“I feel like I should take your picture right now,” Rhett mocks.