“Beck.” Law snaps me out of my inner monologue. “You were miles away.”
“Sorry, I tend to do that when I’m thinking of the vacation, and no, nothing else has happened. That’s my problem.”
“You know we love Stevie. Hell, Jenny would probably divorce me and marry her if she could, but are you sure she is who you want?”
We enjoyed barbecues and casual brunches at Law and Jenny’s a few times over the summer, and the girls have become firm friends. I spoke to Law after we returned from France, and I poured my heart out to my childhood best friend, so he already knows how I feel. “She is. Stevie is all I see.”
“I just worry you’re setting yourself up for major heartache. What happens if Garrick wakes? Do you think he’ll want her spending time with you? And how would you cope with her falling back into his arms?”
Pinpricks stab my heart like a thousand knives embedding in the organ. “It would kill me, and I’m long beyond worrying about heartache. I can’t help how I feel, Law. It’s not like I wanted to fall in love with a girl who is already in love with another man.”
“It’s an impossible situation.”
“It is.” I pull at the restrictive tie around my neck, loosening it and the top button of my shirt, because it suddenly feels like I can’t breathe. “I can’t do anything about my feelings. I can’t say anything for fear I’ll scare her away and lose her forever. Having her in my life as a close friend is better than not having her in my life at all. And even if I wasn’t afraid of that, how could I ever make a move on her when her boyfriend is lying in a coma? It’d be the very definition of selfish to try to steal a girl from a guy who can’t fight to hold on to her.”
“I feel for you, man. I really do. It’s a shit situation.” He leans back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the arm while he looks off into space.
“What do I do, Law? It feels like I’m slowly dying inside. Being around her and not touching her, not getting to be with her the way I want to, is the ultimate torture. I have to talk myself off a ledge every time I’m with her, and the devil on my shoulder is taunting me to just grab her and kiss her and see where the chips fall.”
“That would be one way of forcing the issue,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his jaw. “Or you accept she’s not available right now, and you remain friends until the timing is right. In the meantime, you date other women.” He sits upright, leaning his elbows on the table. “Or just go out and get laid regularly to ease the stress of the situation.” He shrugs, and a hint of a grin lands on his lips. “Who knows, maybe you’ll make her jealous and it’ll force her hand? You could even stage a scene and have her show up when you’re on a date with another woman. If that wouldn’t make her confront her feelings, I don’t know what would.”
Red-hot rage surges up my throat, and I dig my fingers into the arms of my chair as I glare at my buddy. “That’s your advice? I tell you I’m completely in love with Stevie and pining for her, and you suggest I date other women? Fuck other women? And torment her by making sure she not only knows it but stage it so she sees? Did I get that right?” I stand abruptly, knocking my chair to the ground.
“When you say it like that, it does sound bad.” Law at least has the decency to look ashamed.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I snap, snatching a few bills from my wallet and tossing them on the table. “This isn’t high school or college, and we’re not teenagers anymore. Or at least I’m not.” My hands ball into fists at my side. “I would never hurt Stevie by playing games. And why the fuck would I date or fuck any other woman when the thought of it makes me want to puke?”
I yank my tie off completely and shove it in my pocket as I glare at my best friend. For once in his life, he looks defenseless. “Imagine I had given you this advice when you thought you’d lost Jenny to her ex during senior year of college. Could you have dated and fucked other women when you were so fucking in love with her and terrified you would never get to keep her?”
He stands, shoving his hands in his pockets, looking remorseful, but it does little to quell the storm raging inside me. “Beck, I—”
“Forget it, Law. I’ll know better next time than to come to you for help.” With those parting words, I storm out of the room and hightail it out of the club.
I still haven’t calmed down by the time I return to the office. Sight of the building I have grown to hate does little to ease my temper. Lulu takes one look at the expression on my face when I get out of the elevator and cowers behind her desk, leaving me to stew in this mess alone.
I am pacing the floor of my office, dragging my hand back and forth across my head, for once wishing I had longer hair so I could pull on it, when the door opens without invitation, and Sarah swans into the room.
My sister chose to do year two of her MBA online so she could join the business early.
I want to run screaming from this place, and she’s champing at the bit to get her feet under the table.
Dad didn’t object as long as she pulls her weight and doesn’t fall behind with the Harvard program. He insisted all three of us attended Cornell as undergraduates and Harvard for our postgraduate studies. Her office is right beside mine, and it’s been fun spending more time together. I have missed her these past few years.
Sarah takes one look at my agitated state and frowns, kicking the door shut with her foot and advancing toward my desk holding a bottle of Macallan and two glasses. “Sit your ass down, big brother. You’re making my head spin with all that pacing.”
“I think I’m going insane,” I mumble, still wearing a path in the carpet.
“Loveisinsanity,” she says, setting the bottle and glasses down on my desk and walking toward me. “It gets the best of all of us at some point in our lives, or so I’ve been told.” She pulls at my wrists, tugging my hands down by my side. “Beck, stop.” She clasps my face in her hands. “You’re going to give yourself an ulcer.” Sarah wraps me in an awkward hug, and she must be really worried about me because we don’t do this. She runs a hand up and down my back as I just kind of fall against her, wallowing in self-pity.
At some point, my anger transformed to depression and frustration and a feeling of utter helplessness.
“Please tell me you feel better because this feels so unnatural.”
A chuckle breaks through my melancholy as I break our uncomfortable embrace. “Thank god you gave up the idea of studying psychology,” I tease.
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t need to be a hugger to be a psychologist.”
“No, but you need to be able to offer comfort, and that was pathetic even if I appreciate the gesture.”
