“The wedding was two weeks ago, Derek.”
“Yeah, fourteen whole days, and not one date.”
“Am I crazy, or is that like… no time at all?” Archer asks, looking at me quizzically.
“For the serial dater, it’s longer than you think,” Garrett says, gesturing to me. “This guy is usually out every night.”
“Ew,” Quinn says and then slaps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“No, that’s pretty problematic,” April pipes in, and I look at my friends. The only two who haven’t commented are Nora, Enzo’s girlfriend and my other roommate, and Molly.
I stare at them in horror. “I’m not sleeping with someone every night!”
“Well, you understand our concern,” April replies, looking at me with worry. “Are you okay, Derek?”
I groan and hang my head. Most of the time, I love having a big family like this, where everyone is in each other’sbusiness whether we like it or not. But right now, I am not feeling like I love it. Not one bit.
“I’m fine,” I reply as calmly as I can manage.
This whole thing is getting away from me.
“Okay, walk me through this,” Quinn starts, and I see a little grin on her husband’s face. Nice to know he thought this shit was funny. “I bring my gorgeous, smart, funny friend to game night with the exclusive thought that, ‘Hey, Derek will totally woo her and sweep her off her feet and then date and marry her.’”
She pauses, and I balk for a moment.
“And instead of you doing all of that, you… offer to babysit her daughter.”
I let out a ragged breath. This conversation isn’t going to go my way at all, I can just feel it.
“She was saying that her sister said she needs to get out more,” I start, and before I can continue, Chris barks out a laugh.
He looks at me in apology. “Sorry, just, that was your opening.”
I frown and shake my head. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Oh yeah, she was definitely hinting,” Viv says, dipping a chip in some delicious concoction that Nora made.
“She was not hinting,” I deny, though I see now that it would have been a pretty good opening to asking her out.
“Anyway,” I start again. “She mentioned that her sister and parents watch her kid sometimes when she needs them.”
“Hint number two,” Garrett chimes in, with excessive agreement from the group. Fingers are even pointing at him to emphasize the point.
I nearly growl out my next point. “Anyway, I then said, if she needed help with her kid when she was busy, I could watch her. Because I’m great with kids.”
“I’ll agree with that point,” Quinn says, putting false happiness into her tone. I see what she’s doing. She feels bad and now is trying to make up for it by highlighting my finer points.
“Thank you,” I say anyway, knowing that she is already beating herself up.
“How did she seem when you offered that?” Nora asks her first question of the evening.
“She seemed fine,” I reply, then I can’t help the way my shoulders droop when confession spurs me on. “Okay, she seemed… disappointed.”
“Well, that’s that then,” Garrett says, getting up to get himself a beer. When he returns from the kitchen, he hasa hard seltzer in his other hand and hands it to a puzzled-looking Molly, who thanks him quietly. “You screwed that one up.”
“I didn’t…” I start and then groan. “I said I was done dating!”
“That’s usually when people meet their soulmates,” Viv states, shrugging as if this news was not devastating to me. “I have a friend who was doing some online dating. Well, she was sick of the weirdos on there and was going to delete her account when a new message from this guy popped up. She decided to give it one last shot and responded. They’ve been married now for ten years and have two kids together.”
