Page 66 of Courting Clemson

I tilted my head to the side and looked at him. “Clemson. You know her name is Clemson.”

“Yeah, I know her name. But right now, you look like a little boy who lost his favorite stuffed animal, so I’m not feeling gracious toward Clemson.”

I chuckled at the way he enunciated her name, and just that bit of support from a friend thawed my mood a bit.

“We had a fight. Well, a disagreement. Shit… I don’t know what to call it. She ended up leaving, and I feel like a dick now, but on the other hand, I don’t. I don’t know, man. I’m so fucking confused.” I rubbed the tension in my forehead after dumping all that information.

“Is it over? Was it that bad?”

“I don’t think so. She said she would call me tomorrow and wanted to leave before one of us said something we’d regret.”

“But,” he began and then waited while the waitress set our beers between us on the banged-up wood table. Once she was gone, he picked right up where he’d left off. “You look like that may have already happened. What did you say to her? What was the fight about?”

“You know this thing we have tomorrow night? She was going to go with me, and I was so excited to take her and show off my girl, you know? I don’t know, maybe that sounds stupid. But after so many years of being the man in the room without a date, I was excited to take her. Plus, I mean, look at her. I’d be the envy of every dude in the room. Who doesn’t want to feel like that, right?”

My friend nodded along while he took a big gulp of his beer. I did the same and set the glass down on the cardboard coaster closest to me.

“Okay, so what happened? She’s not going now because of the fight?” Liam refocused the conversation.

“No, she’s not going, which is what caused the fight,” I clarified. “I was so let down when she told me she couldn’t go, I sat there stewing about it while we watched TV, just getting more and more pissed off. Until, finally, I just opened my stupid mouth and let her know how I felt.”

“Did you yell? I mean, that doesn’t seem like you, at all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you yell.” He studied me while he spoke. “Oh, except that one time someone broke the copier and didn’t tell anyone.”

In my defense, I added, “Yes, and we found out in the middle of a huge proposal, when we couldn’t print a single thing on the machine. I was livid because it made us look like a bunch of clowns.”

He held his hands up between us like he was ready to defend himself physically. “I get it, dude. I do.”

“No,” I finally said. “I didn’t yell. At least I don’t think I did. You know how that goes when you’re in the middle of a spat. You can’t even remember who said what by the time it’s done. You’re just really pissed off.” I shook my head with the admission, feeling embarrassed and all-around bad about starting the argument with her in the first place.

“Okay, so it’s probably not as bad as you’re thinking.”

I gave him a skeptical raise of my brows.

“Where did you leave things?”

With a sigh, I explained, “I told you. She said she’d call me tomorrow. Then she left.”

“I’m sorry, man. I know you really like her. I’m sure you guys will work through it. You can’t let one little disagreement get in the way of something good.”

I studied him for a few minutes.

“What? Why are you just staring at me?”

“You’ve changed so much since you’ve been with Mikala. It’s great to see you happy.”

A big grin spread across his lips. “Yeah, she’s great. Definitely makes me want to be the best version of myself. For her, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that. Trust me, I do.”

Without asking, the waitress brought us another round of drinks, so we got into some work conversation and even talked about Liam’s family a bit. I’d been friends with the man for years and didn’t know he had two younger brothers. One had just started college this year, and the other was in his senior year of high school.

“Do they ask you for advice?” I asked him. “Like with girls and shit?”

“Sometimes. I think before I started seeing Mick, they thought I was just a screw-off.”

“You kind of were. Not at work, of course, but everything else? They may have been on to something,” I said, half teasing, half truth spilling.

We finished our drinks and agreed that we’d had enough. At the door of the bar, he asked me the question I’d been dreading.

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