“Correct me if I’m wrong here, but weren’t you the one to turn up at her house?”
“And, besides…a nerd…?”
“That’s what she was.”
“She was intelligent and amazing.”
“See? You like her.”
“Enough bullshit, Tyler. I’m thirty-eight, not sixteen.”
Nearly thirty-nine, a little voice cries in my head. But, like I said earlier: that’s just an insignificant detail.
“Just because you’re thirty-eight you can’t like a woman?”
“It was just sex.”
“So you don’t think about her?”
Her hair splayed out over the sheet, her eyes closed in pleasure. Her mouth is swollen from my kisses, her porcelain skin glowing in the dimness of the room.
“No.”
“Well, in that case…” He gets up. “You wouldn’t mind if I asked her out?”
“W-what?”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“You want to ask her out?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you saying you like her?”
“Yeah.”
I open my mouth to speak, but something spreads through my chest, preventing me from drawing breath.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
I don’t know if he’s bluffing or not, so I decide to play along. “Not at all. As long as you don’t mind the fact that she slept with me first.”
He smiles mischievously at me. He knows I’m playing.
“Not at all. I don’t care about people’s past. All I care about is the present, and, eventually, the future.”
“Good,” I respond flatly.
“Perfect,” he says, confident.
“When do you want to ask her out?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
What a dickhead.And a good friend.
“In that case, I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.”
