I looked straight at him.
“I want you to teach me to be single.”
2
Andy “player” Jacobs
I would havenever imagined I would see the day Dan fucking James would come to me for help. For anything. Not a pencil in an exam (he would have rather used his own blood than ask me for one), not a glass of water in the desert, not for shelter during a snowstorm.
And yet here I was, sitting before him for the first time in two years, and not only was Dan willing to come to me in his time of need, healsowanted me to help him with something else.
Something different entirely.
I want you to teach me to be single.
He had said that with a straight face, even if he was twitching, almost fidgeting, but not quite. It was the most nervous I'd ever seen him be, since usually, his twitching in my presence had more to do with how much I irritated him than actual nervousness. He did it whenIdid my favorite thing, pressing his buttons, which never failed to make him look adorably scrunchy in a way that told me he was thinking of drowning me.
In any case, he’d said it, and now I stared at him, at his dark hair, curlier and longer at the top, at the shirt that framed him perfectly, at the inches of skin his rolled sleeves were showing —a sight that was so stupidly mouthwatering to me, it should be outlawed—and at the baby-blue eyes that tugged at somethinginside me despite their animosity, and wondered how I was supposed to interpret his statement.
Because he had asked me. For help. With beingsingle.
And I fucking hoped this was a joke, because my mind was already getting bad,badideas, and that was the last thing that I needed.
“Teach you to be single?” I asked, watching closely every single one of the twitches in his expression.
Dan shifted in his seat, like he was considering leaving, but I sure as fuck was not going to let him move his ass from where he was until he clarified.
“I'm not asking you for anything weird, just, going out and that sort of thing. You're supposed to be an expert in the subject, aren't you?” he asked, throwing it out like an accusation.
Ah. Sonotwhat my dirty mind had been considering. Which was good. Great, in fact. I wasn’t disappointed at all.
It wasn’t like I’d thought he was basically asking: ‘Will you fuck me three ways to Sunday, Andy?’, which, obviously, Dan would never ask.
Because he was straight.
He also hated me.
Not to mention, I knew better than to ever entertain the thought of hooking up with him.
Even if now that the idea was in my mind, my blood thrummed with it.
Even if I wanted to see where Dan would go in this so-called crisis of his, but the smarter part of me was keeping that part in check.
It was keeping that part in check the same way it had done ever since I had seen, for the first time, a very grumpy boyfriend coming to defend the girl that I'd been somewhat flirting with, and instantly thought,I chose the wrong one to flirt with.
Then it hit me in the face how blatantly straight Dan was, not to mention that he decided then and there to hate my guts on pure principle.
His determination would be admirable if not for the fact that it was to my detriment, but in any case, I wasn't going to submit to my baser instincts now.
That encounter had been four years ago.
And now here we were.
Me still being the ‘player’ he thought me to be.
Him still being the definition of a walking-talking wet dream that couldn’t stand me but still needed me to come to his rescue.
He still visibly wanted very badly to leave, but for some reason, probably stubbornness, he was keeping himself on the seat.