I usually eat like a starved caveman but tonight, I push my chicken and quinoa around the plate.
“Pace, you need to eat right.”
I force down the food through a rising feeling of fullness or nausea or something that might be heartbreak.
When Aaron leaves, I lie on the sofa watchingGilmore Girlsalone, until I turn that off, too, and stare into the darkness.
At some point, I fall asleep because I’m woken by the sound of my front door banging closed.
I spring up from the sofa and see Sas, holding a box of brightly colored donuts.
“Good morning, handsome,” she says, but that usual spark that’s caused me to call her firecracker since she was a girl, when only her dad was my agent, long before she started working for him at the agency, is missing. “I brought donuts and if you won’t help me out, I’ll eat them all and make myself ill. Be a good friend?”
“Did Aaron send you?” I ask, rubbing knuckles into my eyes.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” she says, ignoring the question.
I follow her to the kitchen and sit on a stool on the opposite side of the island from her.
She puts two donuts on a plate in front of me.
“Are you here on behalf of the agency or as a friend?” I ask as she finishes making us coffees and sets them down next to the donuts.
“Both. But friend first. Always friends first.”
I nod. “Thanks for this.”
“So, Annie is miserable, and you look even worse.”
“I fucked up and it’s killing me, Sas.”
“She likes you.”
My eyes widen, shooting up to her. “She told you that?”
“I can tell.”
I nod. “Shedid.”
“You like her, too, then?”
I shake my head. “No.” Looking right at her, I tell her truthfully, “I’m way past like.”
She takes a supernatural-sized bite of rainbow-sprinkled donut and, uncommonly for Sas, she doesn’t say anything. Colton is rubbing off on her.
“Let’s say, if she could forgive me for ruining Nelson’s birthday, get past our age gap, get through the whole Colton trying to kill me window, dare to have another relationship with an athlete in the limelight, what about Auston and Nelson? I love that kid. What if Auston wants them back?”
Sas takes her coffee in two hands and sips, watching me over the rim. “I’m pretty sure after the way Annie gave him what for last night, he’s very clear that Annie doesnotwant him back.”
I bite my lip. “She did?”
“Big time.”
“That’s my girl.”
“As for your age, Pace, you’re the youngest thirty-four-year-old I know. Annie’s older and wiser than her years and doesn’t need a boy. She needs a man. A good one. A grounded and dependable one.”
“And Quinn? You really think he’s going let me make a move on his sister?”
