“No,” I said. “But I'm not sure how long it'll be until she's put me in the friend zone.”
Max looked at me, as if he was appraising a car and seeing if it was a decent buy or not. “Do you really think she will? She's introduced you to her daughter, you've spent a ton of time with Rose and she's not going to have done that if she wasn't serious about you.”
“So why want to slow things down? If she was sure enough to have let me get to know her daughter, then she must be pretty confident that it was serious, or am I just being a complete fuckwit?” I was leaving myself wide open here for Max to make some insult.
He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Are you sure you've not said something stupid, you know, broadcast the idea, made some comment about not being ready to, I don't know, settle down or learn how to use a baby seat or something?”
“I really don't think I have.” It was my honest answer. I'd spent the last few evenings going through almost every conversation that I’d had with Georgia, trying to work out exactly what I’d said or what I’d done that’d made her want to stop things from getting any bigger any quicker between us. And I couldn't come up with anything. There had been the whole thing with Cassie, but even there I could safely say I'd not done anything that I thought would jeopardise what was happening between me and her.
“Then it might be that she's just not as into you as what you thought she was. I'm not saying that to be harsh, Seph, she just might not be in the same place as you are right now.” Max looked sympathetic, his expression was sad, and that made me feel even worse.
“What do I do? Do I let myself get friend-zoned? Do I make some grand romantic gesture? Or do I back away quietly and we just become friends and colleagues? This is fucking shit, Max.” I leaned my head back against the headboard, glad that I wasn't in my own bed because that would make me feel even worse.
“Maybe you've just got to give it time. Not everything’s straight-forward, especially not women. For all you know she'll be sat there at home now, wishing to god she’d not said anything, and she wants things back to how they were before. She’ll probably do a complete three-sixty before the end of next week.” Max got off the bed and stood up. “I need to get going. I know Victoria can manage absolutely fine without me, she's doing amazing with Lucy, but I just want to get back home to be with them, you know?”
I did. I understood it more than what he realised. “I think our days of late-night poker and falling asleep on sofas are pretty much behind us now.”
He nodded, and then yawned. I pitied Vic. “Eli’ll be in father club this time next year, I’d put money on it.”
“Lucky Eli.”
Max's grin was wry. “Is that what you want, Seph? A family? You look at us with our sleepless nights and everlasting changes of nappies, spotting baby sick on our shirts just before we’re about to go in to a meeting?”
I laughed because the sick thing had happened that week. Max had just been about to go into a meeting with a client, one who brought an awful lot of business, when he sniffed, made a face, and realised that he was wearing some of Lucy's breakfast. Stale, regurgitated breast milk did not smell that good.
It’d been one of the highlights of my week.
“Yeah. I think it's probably the most important thing to me to have a family of my own. Not that it was hard with Georgia because it was like a ready-made family already, but Rose was hardly a problem.Ishardly a problem.” Because it wasn't over yet. We hadn't split up. Slowing things down was not the same as splitting up, I had to remember that.
I got out of the bed, needing to get a glass of water before I went to sleep, and potentially see there was any of that crispy beef left.
Max headed towards the door, the sounds of the others filtering through towards the guest bedroom.
“It'll work out,” he said. “If it's meant to be, it'll happen. And when I've seen you with Georgia and Rose, you've looked the part.”
“The part of what?” I expected some form of sarcastic reply, or insulting at the very least.
“The right part for them.”
He pulled me into a hug that I wasn't expected, a forceful one that probably would have killed somebody smaller than me. I hugged him back, aware that this didn't normally happen between us. I was putting it down to Max’s maternal hormones running wild.
“I hope you don't hold Victoria like that. You're like some form of Black Widow spider, crushing its prey.”
Max stepped back and grinned, only slightly evilly. “I could tell you exactly what Victoria likes, but then I'd have to kill you.”
“Nah,” I said, definitely not stopping the equally evil grin that was now on my face. “I’d forget what you said. A bit like I forgot that time when I saw your phone and she sent you a tit pic.”
Max’s face altered from concerned and full of brotherly affection to murderous. I slapped him on his back a couple of times, really not remembering that picture. “It's alright bro, I never told a soul.”
He ignored me, and walked out of the room, leaving me to get a glass of water and to try and stop thinking about the one person I wanted to be with.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Georgia
Baby Tomas was clearly going to take after his dad in terms of height and build. I don't think I'd ever seen a baby quite as stocky and as sturdy as Payton’s new baby boy. But as much as I could see his father in him, he was the spitting image of his Uncle Seph. This shouldn't have been too much of a surprise given the fact that Payton and Seph were twins, but Tomas had Seph’s eyes rather than Payton’s and an expression that reminded me of Seph when he was plotting something.
“He's gorgeous,” I said to Payton, holding the baby to me. His eyes were open and he was gazing up at me, a little smile on his face that made him look just adorable, even though it was probably because he had wind.
