Page 80 of Conquering Conner

Forty-one

Henley

“How’s Conner doing?” It’s later and Tess is here to hang and pass out candy, although the mountain of candy wrappers she’s accumulated says she seems to be working on a one-for-you-three-for-me system.

She looks up from the black plastic bucket full of candy she’s picking her way through to give me a shrug. “How would I know?” She finds one she wants and snags it from the bowl. “You see him more than I do these days.”

“That’s not true,” I say, even though it is. Conner and I are practically joined at the hip these days. Weeks of hanging out and not so much as a kiss on the cheek. While I’ve been worn down to a pile of nothing more than a jangling nerves and hormones, Conner seems fine. Like he’s perfectly happy with the way things are.

Like I said, almost exactly like it was before.

Tess rolls her eyes at me and tosses the candy bucket onto the coffee table. “Well, for the forty-five minutes a day that you guys aren’t together, he seems fine.” She cocks her head, eye narrowed slightly. “Better than fine, actually.”

“So he’s not showing any of his usual signs that he’s…” I don’t know what to call it. How to say it without feel like an asshole.

“Gone shithouse crazy?” Tess apparently doesn’t care if she’s an asshole or not. “Nope.”

Other than the occasional pint, Conner still isn’t drinking and other than his almost constant pissing contest with Declan, there haven’t been any fights. That only leaves one thing.

“You guys must be fucking like rabbits,” Tess says around the candy she’s got stuffed in her mouth. Sometimes, I swear she’s psychic.

“Actually, we aren’t.” I say, reaching for the candy bowl. It’s late, almost ten o’clock. We got our last trick-or-treater over an hour ago. “We decided to be just friends.”

Tess laughs so hard I start to think she’s really choking. When she realizes she’s the only one laughing, it tapers off until she’s just sitting there, staring at me, red-faced with tears streaming down her face. “Wait a minute…” she wipes her face, smudging chocolate across her cheek. “He was telling the truth? You guys aren’t banging?”

“Nope,” I say, trying not to let the fact that Conner told Tess about us bother me. “Not for a while now.” I find a Mr. Goodbar at the bottom of the bowl and hand it to her. They’re her favorite.

She takes it with a mumbled thanks, still looking at me. Finally, she shrugs. “There’s got to be a reasonable explanation.”

Of course there’s a reasonable explanation. While Conner and I spend a lot of time together, we aren’t together twenty-four hours a day. Unlike him, I have to sleep sometime and there are a lot of places to go looking for what he needs in the middle of the night. I smile at her and shake my head. “I’m sure there is and whatever it is, it’s none of my business.”

Things are over between us. Conner and I are friends, which means he can fuck whoever he wants.

Tess gives me another long look, her hazel eyes narrowed on my face like she’s trying to figure out just how full of shit I really am. Finally she stands. “Come on,” she says, cocking her head at the door. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” I look down at myself. I’m wearing yoga pants and a Red Sox jersey. I’m not exactly fit for public viewing.

“We’re going to Gilroy’s,” she says, reaching down to pull me out of my seat.

“You said you didn’t want to go.” Even though it’s Tuesday night, every Gilroy is behind the bar, including Declan. For some reason, she’s been avoiding him more than usual.

“Well, I changed my mind.” She pulls on my arm again, dragging me toward my bedroom. “It happens on occasion.”

“We don’t have costumes.” I’m making excuses because I don’t really want to go. I don’t want to watch other women hit on Conner all night and I really don’t want to watch him respond.

“Easily remedied.” She lets go of my hand as soon as we cross the threshold of my bedroom. “Do you trust me?” she says, opening my closet to rifle through its contents.

I let out a loud bark of laughter because that’s what she used to say to me when we were kids, right before she talked me into something crazy.

“As much as I ever did,” I tell her, sinking down to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“That’s what I like to hear, O’Connell.” She grins at me. “That’s what I like to hear.”

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