Page 53 of Still Love You

CHAPTER TWELVE

Silas

"Seriously, what is wrong with you?" I say into the phone when Trent finally answers.

"What? What's wrong?" he yells back. I can barely hear him with the lawnmower noise in the background. I couldn't reach him last night so I called him on my break this morning. He's at the golf course.

"What's wrong?" I yell so he can hear. "You brought a girl to my house. Without even calling."

"Tess wouldn't shut up about you. She asked if we could stop by your house quick to see if you'd want to go out." A mower goes by him. "Just a minute. I have to move so I can hear." The mowing noise dies out and then he says, "Okay, go ahead."

I check to see that Carl isn't around. He's not, but I still lower my voice. "I just freaking told you I had sex with Willow. So why the hell would I be interested in going out with Tess?"

"You need to move on, man. Just because Willow had sex with you doesn't mean she wants you back. What did she say after I left last night? Was she pissed about Tess?"

"Yeah, she was pissed. She was also jealous."

"Which is why Willow told Tess she's your girlfriend. But after we left I bet Willow went back to saying you two are just friends."

I don't want to acknowledge that he's right so I don't.

"I'm right, aren't I? You see what I mean? She's using you, bro. For sex. Friendship. Running her errands. Driving her places. Who the hell knows? All I know is she's using you and it's wrong."

"She's not using me. She just needs time to think about our relationship."

"What's there to think about? She either wants to be with you or she doesn't. It's not that freaking hard."

"You know how Willow is. Everything in her life has to be neat and orderly and planned out. She can't handle change. Me showing up here threw her for a loop. She wasn't prepared for it. She needs time to figure it out."

"Well, while she's figuring it out, you need to be out with Tess, getting your needs met."

"I'm not going out with Tess. And my needs are being met."

"You and Willow had sex again?"

"We came pretty damn close, but we stopped before it got to that point."

After Trent left last night, Willow and I went up to my room to watch TV but we both knew we had no intention of doing that. As soon as we got there, we started kissing and touching, and right before I was about to break my no-touching-below-the-waist rule, she got out of my bed and said she needed to go home. So she did, and I took a long, very cold shower.

"So she teased you, then cut you off," Trent says. "That's fucking bullshit."

"We had an agreement. We said we wouldn't do it, so we didn't."

"Why not? What's the big deal? You guys have probably done it like a million times."

"When we were dating. But things are different now. I'm not going to sit here and explain it to you. This is between Willow and me."

"So you're just going to spend your whole summer waiting for Willow to make up her mind about you? And you're not even going to get sex? What the hell?"

"Right now I just want to spend time with her and we'll go from there. And I'm not interested in dating someone else, so stop bringing girls over to my house."

"She's gonna break your heart, bro."

"Then when she does you can get me drunk and fix me up with Tess. But until then, stay out of it. I have to get back to work."

"You didn't even ask me what happened last night."

"Fine. What happened last night?"