Page 11 of Ex's & Oh's (The Lucky Girls 1)

She was the type of girl everyone wanted on their arm. The girl who didn't realize how fucking spectacular she was. Hell, if only I'd had the balls back then...

“Drinking sounds like exactly what I need,” I finally say.

Marc laughs. “Hard looking back at the past, huh?”

“Fuck off,” I say with a chuckle because he’s right, and I won’t admit it.

The past is filled with a lot of mistakes and missed opportunities that I regret. But I don’t regret the choices I made and the direction I took, so the rest doesn’t matter. We all have to give up certain things. I gave up the girl of my dreams because dating my best friend’s ex was against the bro-code, and I’m loyal to my friends. Noah gave up football because sometimes, we don't hit it big and we have to accept that Fate can be a bitch sometimes.

The only person who's always had it all fall into his lap is Marc. If I didn't love the guy as much as I did, I would have hated him for it.

“You’re giving me a lot of shit for someone who’s getting married soon,” I say. “Aren’t you nervous?”

He shakes his head. “Stacey’s The One, man. Nothing to be nervous about. I know what I’m getting myself into, and it’s exactly where I want to be.”

“You’re pathetic,” I said.

“Hey, fuck you,” Marc says. But we laugh, and we leave my hotel room together to find Tom so we can go out drinking.

I won’t admit that a small part of me wants what Marc found. I’m a macho man, and macho men don’t give a shit about being lonely. I want someone, but I'm not willing to risk the bullshit that comes with it. My life now is perfect. I have everything I want, and no one to tell me what to do with it. It's enough. It's always been enough. It's just because Marc is getting married that I'm thinking about shit like this at all.

All I need is a couple of glasses of whiskey and I’ll be ready to hammer? my fists on my chest again.

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