Page 56 of Don't Puck His Best Friend
Me:I’m not looking to compete. I’m looking for something steady.
My thumb hovers over the send button for a long moment. Sending this feels like closing a door, officially choosing Cole over whatever confusing thing Liam and I have been doing. It feels like the right choice—the smart choice.
I am Cole’s girlfriend now, and this is the right thing to do.
I press send.
The typing bubble appears immediately, flashing for several seconds. Then it disappears. Nothing.
I wait a few minutes, checking my phone twice. Still nothing.
I wash my hands and get back to the table where Sirus is talking about hockey. Cole stands to let me back in the booth. I start eating my food and joining in the conversation, waiting for my phone to buzz.
An hour later, when Maddie and I are back at our dorm, I check my phone. Nothing.
That lack of response sits heavier in my chest than I want to admit. I tell myself it’s better this way—if Liam’s going to disappear the second I set boundaries, then he’s exactly the kind of guy I thought he was. The kind I shouldn’t want anyway.
But there’s a part of me that expected him to fight back, to try to convince me he was serious. The silence feels almost worse than rejection.
I throw myself into homework for the rest of the day, determined not to think about either Liam or Cole or the increasingly complicated mess I’ve made of my love life. But every time my phone buzzes with a notification, my heart does this stupid little skip, hoping it might be Liam.
It never is.
By evening, I’m curled up in bed with a book, trying to lose myself in someone else’s story instead of obsessing over my own. But my mind keeps drifting back to Liam’s last message,I want to keep seeing you.
The wrong guys always make it sound so right, don’t they? They know exactly which words to use, exactly how much vulnerability to show to keep you hooked. Cole would never play games like this—if he wanted to keep seeing me, he’d say so clearly and then follow through.
That should make the choice obvious. Cole is steady, reliable, genuinely interested in building something real. Liam is... complicated. Unpredictable. The kind of guy who makes you feel like you’re flying right up until he reminds you that you don’t have wings.
So why am I lying here thinking about the wrong one?
I toss my phone onto the nightstand and try to focus on my romance book I swore I would finish last week, but the words blur together on the page. Tomorrow I’ll text my boyfriend, maybe see if he wants to grab coffee or catch a movie. I’ll investin the thing that actually has potential for a future instead of wasting time on something that was probably doomed from the start.
But tonight, I can’t stop replaying those six words, wondering what would have happened if I’d said I wanted to keep seeing him too.
Wondering if I could be the girl that changes Liam, but I guess I won’t ever find out because I just said yes to Cole, and I meant it.
25
Catching Feelings
Cole
IimpulsivelyaskedHarperto be my girlfriend in the middle of lunch with our friends. And I don’t know if that was the most least romantic thing I could do or what, but guilt sits in my chest like maybe it didn’t seem serious enough. I need to talk to her, solidify what she agreed to. It felt real in the moment but as I wake up, I’m second-guessing what I did.
But it’s for a fraction of a moment because when I get out of bed, I’m telling Rex that she said yes. He’s wagging his tail, jumping around, feeling my energy.
Cole:Good morning, beautiful.
I pad down to the kitchen to find my roommate, Finn, in the kitchen.
“Cole,” he greets as I shove my phone in my pocket.
“Hey, man.”
“Did you say you have a girlfriend?”
Shit. I run a hand through my hair and laugh nervously.
