Page 38 of Courting Clemson

“Luke?” She gave me a confused glare like I was holding out on her. “Who the hell is that?”

I rolled my eyes. She was so forgetful for a young person. Either that or she didn’t pay attention to anything going on that didn’t directly involve her.

“The cutie from the beach?” I said, reminding her that she’d already met him.

“Oh, yeah. Him…”

I knew the girl well enough to know what was going on in that head of hers. She just thought of something she didn’t want to voice out loud in fear of pulling a dangling thread on a sweater only to have the whole thing unravel.

“Out with it!” I ordered playfully. I meant the words, though.

“What are you going to do with him…and…all of this?” She swirled her hand in a circular motion in front of the screen.

“I haven’t figured that out yet. I know the right thing to do is to be upfront with him from the get-go. Then no one gets hurt when the truth comes out later.”

She looked skeptical. “Mmmm, I don’t know, Clem. Do you think he’d be understanding about it? Would any guy?”

I got where her mind was, but I wanted to hold out hope all of this would just work itself out.

Now who is being naïve?

With a shrug, I said, “I think I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. You know? I’ve got enough to manage here with this.” Now I made the same hand gesture toward the computer.

“But you like him?” she asked in a completely different tone of voice. The other stuff had been all business, and now I heard the genuine interest of a friend. “Luke, I mean,” she clarified.

I nodded with a slow smile. “He’s super nice. Such a good guy through and through. At least he seems to be.”

I shrugged again. I had to learn to trust my instincts with him as much as I would rely on them with this whole sugar-dating scene.

I typed out a quick message to Luke.

Always great hearing from you. I always smile when I read your texts.

I’m glad. You make me smile too. A lot. Want to have dinner later this week? Or a movie maybe?

Hmmm, let me see how my schedule shapes up. Not that I’m squeezing you in. Please don’t get the wrong impression. Like I said, I have a lot on my plate right now. Mostly it feels like juggling chainsaws. You know?

All right. That’s better than a straight-up no, right? I’ll take it. Have a great day, pretty girl.

You’re so sweet. You too!

Grace was reading over my shoulder the whole time, and when I put my phone down, she just stared at me.

“What?” I asked a bit defensively.

My friend gave a slow smile. “Shit. You weren’t kidding. He’s a sweetheart. Few and far between these days.” She pointed at the screen where the messages were. “Girl, don’t fuck that up.”

I clicked back into the sugar-dating website to use their chat client from my keyboard rather than typing on my phone. There were times I was convinced I was meant to have been born in a different generation. I didn’t like social media, hated typing on a cell phone, and would rather stay in with a good book than go out clubbing with friends from school. Mostly, I felt much older than my years—in fact, a lot of my female peers teased me similarly—but it was just who I was.

“You don’t have to sit here with me all morning,” I said to Grace. “I mean, if you have things you need to do.”

I hoped she didn’t feel like I was trying to get rid of her, but…really, maybe I was. Now that it came to messaging these men back, I felt like I needed some privacy.

“Nope,” she chirped. “I’ve got nothing going on. Consider me your virtual wingwoman.”

She said it so proudly, I felt bad about trying to ditch her.

“Okay. I think I’m going to message this one first.” I pointed to one of the profiles on my screen. The man’s name was Jonathan, fifty-four years old, worked in finance. From his pictures, he was decent-looking. Not necessarily a head-turner, but not unattractive by any means.

---