He’s lying. I see his smile when I go to the games he coaches. I never thought Nate would be good with teenagers, but he is.
“You know, there’s still room for you to come over tonight,” I say as I grab a fry. “I’m sure Quinn wouldn’t mind.”
“I still have a thing tonight,” he replies. “I’ll come over tomorrow, though.”
It’s so rare that he doesn’t join in on plans that I’ve been trying to figure out what could have come up. The best idea I have is that it’s a date. Nate usually doesn’t mention those to me.
As open as we are, some topics have become taboo over the years. He never asks me about anything intimate with Rob, and I do the same. I’ve met a few of the women he’s dated, but it’s only ever once, and they’re no longer in his life after a few weeks.
“Are you finally gonna tell me what it is?”
He shrugs. “I’m still in the planning stages. Do you know of any decent bars in Nashville?”
I frown. “You’re going to abar? Why?”
“I’m trying something new.”
Neither of us care for the party scene in the city. Rob does, so the only bars I know of are the ones he goes to.
“Rob has one he goes to a lot, but you wouldn’t be able to go to it tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Tonight’s his bachelor party.” I say it slowly. The bachelor party has been a point of contention between Nate and Rob for weeks. I hoped that Rob would invite Nate as some sort of olive branch for the stony relationship between them. After all, they’ll have to see more of each other after we’re married. But Rob insisted this was for his guy friends only.
I despise being in the middle of disagreements, but especially ones involving the two of them. Nate was the one who backed off once he saw how uncomfortable I was asI tried to mediate.
“Ah. That’s tonight. How could I forget? I’ll have to do it some other time then. What was the bar name?”
“Winners something. It’s on ...” I trail off when Nate immediately pulls out his phone and looks it up. “Are you planning something?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
I hum. “If you can’t do whatever you’re planning tonight, then you could come over.”
Now he pauses. “Sure, yeah. I’ll be late, though.”
The second he says it, I know exactly what he’s planning. “Nate. You arenotcrashing Rob’s bachelor party.”
My best friend freezes and he looks up at me slowly. “That’s ... not what I’m doing.”
“For some reason, I don’t believe you.”
“He won’t even know I’m there.”
“I seriously doubt that. Why are you even worried about this?” I shake my head. “It’s just a bachelor party. He’s drinking with some friends.”
Nate is quiet for a long moment. His mouth tugs downward into a frown, which looks wrong on his face. I know my best friend is capable of a lot of deep thought, but we keep things between us light for a reason.
“Bachelor parties are when a lot of things can go wrong. I understand he only wants his close friends there, but isn’t that a little suspicious?” The lower timbre of his voice urges me to think about it.
Rob and I have had a fair share of issues over the years. Nate knows about some of them, but not all. There have been times when Rob seems to forget I exist. Times when I caught him liking other women’s pictures on Instagram. And worse, times when I wondered if I should stay with him.
But he’s been on his best behavior since asking me to marry him. He gets distant sometimes, but I do the same.
Still, he wasadamantabout not inviting Nate.
“I can see why you would be worried.”
