Hayden blinked at me like he’d never seen another person before.
“Take it as a compliment?” he tried.
I laughed.
“We’re even,” I said, pouring coffee for him and loading up on the milk and sugar, like he’d asked. “I greeted you naked at the door, you stopped just short of calling me a kid.”
“Some people would bethrilledto come home to someone naked,” he said, curling both hands around the coffee mug as I pushed it over to him.
Right. Bad breakup.
Probably still single, if he was out here on his own.Andhis dad was encouraging me to take him out.
I could suddenly see exactly what Mr. Lewis meant about getting Hayden to set foot in a gay club. He didn’t seem the type.
But there was twenty-four hours with the Buick on the line, so Hayden was going to grind against some pretty local gay whether he liked it or not.
Meanwhile, Hayden was staring into his coffee like he wished he could dive into it and drown.
Probably because of the phone call I’d interrupted.
“Stop me if I’m prying,” I said, taking on the role of bartender from the other side of the counter. “But that was your ex, huh? On the phone.”
Hayden sighed. I knew I was taking a risk by acknowledging that I’d overheard, but like his dad said—he needed a friend.
Maybe we could be friends. I liked friends, and you could never have too many.
“He’s such an asshole,” Hayden said, which was a surprise. I’d expected to need some time to chip away at his outer shell, but apparently I’d arrived just at the moment when the dam was about to break. “Do you know what he wanted?”
“No,” I said, because I genuinely had no idea. “Tell me?”
“My couch. His couch.Ourcouch, whatever.” He paused, glancing up at me from under those ridiculous dark lashes.
“And it’s not about the couch, I don’t really care about the couch. I mean, it’s nice, it does the job of being a place to sit in the living room, but it’s not… it’s not about the couch.”
Couch didn’t sound like a real word to me anymore.
“I don’t hear from him for ayearand then when I do it’s so he can take one last thing from me?” Hayden eventually continued.
“Unbelievable,” I agreed, but I knew he wasn’t really talking to me anymore. He was justsayingthis, out loud, because it needed to be said.
I’d been there and done that, so I sympathized.
“You know, when we first moved in together, I used to rush home from working in a commercial kitchen in a fledgling business all day to make him dinner because that’s… that’s how I show love, and I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone. And then eventually I was making dinner at seven and holding it until nine and then eating alone because he wasworking late. And I let myself believe it and curled up in that stupid huge bed alone and sometimes I didn’t even know he was back until I heard the shower turn on in the morning.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I could hear the heartbreak in Hayden’s voice, but I’d never experienced anything like it.
“I was sitting on that fucking couch looking at wedding venues while he was texting his latest hookup,” Hayden added. “He was all I fuckinghadand my whole goddamn life revolved around him and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. And you know what he said to me when he left, what his parting shot was? That I’d never once told him I loved him, so how the hell was he supposed to know I’d care if he left?”
In that moment, I would have doneanythingto comfort him. I didn’t know this man, but I knew—and adored—his father, and I could see he was in pain.
If I could think of a way to stop it, I would have stopped it. Whatever he needed.
“He’s an asshole,” I said, instead of waving a magic wand and taking all the hurt away. “Like you said.”
“Yeah,” Hayden agreed. “But he’s not the one who went on a date last week and got abandoned ten minutes in.”
“He was an asshole, too,” I said, positive that was true without knowing anything else about the guy. “But he did probably save you wasting a couple of hours of your life trying to get to know someone who wasn’t worth your time.”
