So I said nothing.
Georgia stayed my friend after that.
Mostly.
We studied. We got dinner. We went to movies. Sometimes she still kissed me, but softer now, like she was kissing a door she knew might never open all the way. Sometimes I kissed her back and tried to become the man who could choose easy.
I wanted to.
That was another ugly truth.
I wanted to want Georgia enough.
She would have been good for me. A clean life. Sunday dinners. Study groups. Her mother sending me home with leftovers. Her father asking if I could look at a loose cabinet door. A woman who smelled like vanilla lotion and printer paper, who would smile when I walked in and never make me feel like fate had dragged me into a burning desert.
Georgia was not second best.
She was not some cheap replacement.
She was good.
She was warm.
She deserved a man whose heart didn’t flinch every time a motorcycle ride took him north toward Malibu.
That man wasn’t me.
A year passed like that.
Classes.
Runs.
Georgia.
Nate’s jokes.
Callum’s quiet approval.
Destiny’s name never spoken and always there.
Then one Friday night, I was in Santa Monica with Nate, sitting at a corner table at Coastal Thai, pretending I had driven up because the food was worth the ride.
It was worth the ride.
That was the problem with a good lie. The best ones had truth baked into them.
Coastal Thai was my favorite place on that stretch of town. Tiny dining room, warm lights, chili oil that could make a grown man reassess his life, and pad see ew good enough that Nate had stopped making fun of me after the first bite.
Mostly.
He still knew.
Nate always knew.
He sat across from me, twirling noodles around his fork with an expression far too innocent to be trusted.
“So,” he said.
