Let her come to you.
Mitch liked to think he was a patient man, but at this point, he was starting to wonder if Lexie was toying with him. Was she drawing out this limbo they were in longer than necessary as some sort of retribution for the way he had left her last year? No. Lexie couldn’t possibly be that vindictive, could she? Mitch didn’t like to think so, but so much had changed in the last year that he honestly didn’t know anymore.
Maybe it really was time to step back and let her come to him.
“What happened when you left anyway?” Nate asked as he reached their group and caught the tail end of his and Brent’s conversation. “I was in Detroit when you got traded, and spent the evening with my brother and some of your other…friends. Everyone was distraught, almost like you had died.”
Mitch took his hat off and ran a hand anxiously through his hair, dampening the strands. He didn’t want to get into this. Not here, not now, not ever, and especially not with Nate Jean.
“It’s an incredibly long story not worth repeating,” Brent said, coming to his rescue. “We’ve forgiven him. That’s all you need to know.”
Nate raised his hands in surrender and swam away to where some girls were organizing a water volleyball game.
“I’m sorry about my brother,” Brent said to Mitch in a low voice when the three others had abandoned them. “He’s always been a shit-stirrer.”
“It’s okay,” Mitch said. “I was a coward. Being reminded of that every now and then is good for me. Keeps me humble.”
He gave Brent a wobbly smile, and his friend let the matter drop.
When they arrived back in Detroit on Monday, Mitch had every intention of playing it cool with Lexie until the wedding.
Once that weekend rolled around, and Brent and Berkley were married, all bets were off.
So it surprised him when his phone rang that evening, the screen flashing Lexie’s name.
“Hey you,” he said when he answered.
“Hey,” she said, and they sat in silence for several long, tense moments.
“It’s weird that you’re calling me,” he finally said.
“I agree, it is,” she said with a laugh. “But well…I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you want to maybe grab dinner with me tomorrow? I’m going out of town on Wednesday but…I wanted to see you before I left,” she added in a rush.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
Mitch’s heart fluttered. “I don’t need to think about it, Lexie. For you, the answer is always yes.”
He could practically hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Tomorrow, then. Does six work?”
“Six is perfect,” he said. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
“I’ll pick you up,” she said. “You’re back in your old place, right?”
“Sure am.” It turned out that hanging onto his condo when he moved to LA had been a good idea, not only so his mother could use it in case she ever found herself stranded in the city during bad weather, but also because he didn’t have to hunt for a place to live when he moved back.
“Perfect. See you tomorrow, Mitch,” Lexie said and hung up.
Mitch wished he could snap his fingers and make the intervening hours disappear, but he couldn’t, so he had to find ways to keep himself busy. That included staying up late binge-watching Outer Banks on Netflix because he was too wired to sleep, running errands he had been putting off for days and even weeks, and cleaning his condo top to bottom—something he had never done before but found incredibly cathartic nonetheless.
Tuesday afternoon, an hour before Lexie was supposed to pick him up, Gabe called him, and Mitch answered in a hurry, genuinely glad for the distraction.
“Mitchell,” Gabe said when Mitch answered. “I haven’t heard from you in weeks so I’m doing a wellness check.”
