Page 24 of Charming my Best Friend

Chapter 8: Aiden

I was enjoying the calm after the storm of Chelsea leaving, but I would’ve been enjoying it more if Lucy would answer my damn text.

I slid a few slices of leftover pizza onto a plate and made my way over to the couch, trying to figure out why I felt like shit.

Sure, Chelsea was gone, and she’d been my biggest problem for a while, but as I let my mind wander to the women I’d dated before her, I couldn’t help but feel that a disturbing pattern had emerged.

They were all models, as Lucy had been all too happy to point out, but that wasn’t the only thing they had in common. Each one of them had been extremely vain. Now I realize their jobs demanded that, but surely there were attractive women out there that weren’t insufferably shallow about their appearance and how other people looked.

The other thing that was grating on me was that they all had a sense of entitlement that rubbed me the wrong way. Of course, I hadn’t realized that when I first started dating any of them, but as I got to know them, it was obvious that they believed things should be handed to them just because.

And I was sick of my generosity being taken advantage of.

Worst of all, I couldn’t get the nasty shit Chelsea said out of my head. Was I really too nice? Did I make it easy to cheat? Had my other girlfriends cheated on me without my knowing?

I put my empty plate down on the coffee table and took a deep breath. I didn’t want to be a jealous guy. I knew that jealousy was a slippery slope, that it fed on itself. And I knew from experience that dating someone who was jealous was exhausting.

A few years ago, I went out with a girl who was so suspicious it made me feel like I was constantly being punished for things I didn’t do. It made me feel like I might as well give her a reason to freak out if she was going to anyway.

But I would never cheat. Not after I saw what it did to my Mom when my Dad strayed back when Claire and I were in high school. It nearly tore the family apart. We never talked about it then. Instead, we just watched this crack in the ground get bigger and bigger under our family.

Fortunately, my parents got their act together. It wasn’t until years later that anyone even mentioned it, and even then, it was only ever my Mom when she’d had a few drinks.

She never bitched to Claire about it, though, cause Claire was Daddy’s little girl and refused to indulge her drunken rants. So it was always me, but I figured if she needed to express her pain to someone, I was doing the whole family a favor by making sure it was me she opened up to instead of anyone else.

Meanwhile, my Dad had never breathed a word about it to me, and I couldn’t help but think he was sort of a prick for that. In my opinion, he owed us all an apology, but the important thing was that they got through it somehow.

Even though it took longer for my Mom than anyone.

A second later, the phone rang on the table. I hoped it was Lucy, but when I picked it up, I saw it was my Mom. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to her, but I doubted that would change anytime soon so I answered it.

“Hi Mom. I was just thinking about you.”

“Aren’t you sweet?”

“What’s up?”

“I’m just calling to make sure you and Chelsea are still on for dinner next weekend.”

I sighed. What was it about my Mother that made her able to sense when I had news, especially news I was in no hurry to tell her? “Chelsea can’t come.”

“Why not? Is she okay?” My Mother asked, as if only illness or tragedy would keep someone from one of her dinner parties.

“We broke up.”

“What?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cause it just happened last night.”

“I thought things were going so well.”

“They weren’t.”

“What happened?”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. It was too much of a complicated mess and the last thing I needed was her insisting she knew how I felt. “I just don’t love her anymore.”

“Is she okay?”

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