Page 83 of Change My Mind
“Friday.”
I imagined the way Eli’s jaw clenched and the flash of hurt in his eyes. I must have done, because it was there one second and gone the next.
Fifty-One
ELI
“Why are there always fish involved? Do men think fishing is cool? Sexy? Is it supposed to be thirst trappy?” Steffy asked as she thrust her phone in my face across the bar at Vivi’s—where I was waiting for dinner service to start—to show me yet another man holding an aggressively large fish in front of him.
“He is kind of hot, though,” I replied, which earned me an eye roll.
Steffy had become a friend over the last few weeks. She had come into Vivi’s to ask about us catering her Christmas party a few days after Addie’s birthday, and we’d clicked. We mostly talked about food, and she loved to rant about the politics of her office (I liked getting the gossip, too). She was trying to get me to go to a reformer Pilates class with her, and I somehow found myself helping her choose potential dates. She was easy to talk to and funny, and in an alternate universe, I probably would have saved her the trouble of swiping and asked her out myself.
But, as it was, we were just friends.
“But he is holding afish. He is either an outdoorsy person, which isn’t for me, or he is lying about being an outdoorsy person, which is worse.”
“How is that worse?”
Another eye roll. “Because then he is lying. Which is like the reddest of red flags. If he lies about being outdoorsy, then what’s to say that he isn’t lying about having a whole family that he is cheating on?”
“That—that is quite the jump, but I can understand your point. Why haven’t you swiped no yet?”
“Because you’re not wrong. He is hot…”
I huffed. “Steffy, you just said he is an outdoorsy person at best and a liar with a wife and three kids at worst.”
“I could come to like the outdoors. People change, do they not? I wouldn’t even have to be on this damn app ifyouwere an option. That would be the dream scenario.”
My eyebrows drew together. In all the time that Steffy and I had spent together, she had never suggested she was interested in me like that.
“Why am I not an option?” I asked mostly out of curiosity. She wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t an option because foolishly, I was hung up on someone else.
Steffy locked her phone, put it down on the bar and frowned.
“Because you’re dating my cousin?” she said slowly, like she wasn’t sure if she was presenting a fact or asking a question.
“Is that what you think?”
The idea that this was how people viewed Addie and me hurt more than I thought it would.
Because the reality was, Addie and I weren’t dating. And I couldn’t figure out why, because Addie was on a date right now. All the shit she’d said about not dating was just that—shit. She did date. She would date a co-worker no less. She just wouldn’t dateme.
I was good enough to live with and fuck. But I wasn’t good enough to make a more serious commitment to. Even though on some days, it felt like we were in a relationship.
“Sorry, but are you not? We all just assumed that you were because…well, because it just seemed like you were. Did you not disappear at her birthday party with her? Tabby and I assumed that was for a quick fuck, which I get. I, too, wouldn’t have been able to wait to get back home when you looked like that.” Steffy clapped her hand over her mouth, and her cheeks started to flush.
I laughed without humour.
“We’re not dating. We just live together. I mean, we’re friends. But yeah, we just live together.”
Steffy reached out and placed a hand on my forearm, squeezing it gently.
“You should tell her. How you feel, I mean,” she said gently.
Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. I would do that if I thought it wouldn’t cost me everything. The only thing worse than being in love with Addie was the idea of Addie not being in my life at all. And if I told her I was in love with her, she would cut me off for breaking her number one rule.
“There’s nothing to tell her. It will just make things awkward for no reason. It’s fine. I’m fine. She’s dating, and I’ll get there. Eventually.”
