“Hey, fucker, get your dirty shoes off my bed!” I say, throwing a wadded-up piece of paper at his face.
He catches it and smirks as he stands and sits down in one of my desk chairs instead. “Anything you say,Boss.”
We’ve spent more time together this past week than the entire two months Sloane and I have been living together, and it’s both reminded me how much I miss my friend and how much I want to throttle him.
Rolling my eyes, I pull up my emails to see if there's anything I can devote my mental energy to, but just like the other ten times in the past thirty minutes, nothing.
“Tell me again why that’s your bed,” Jack says, grabbing a handful of Sloane’s favorite gummy bears out of a container on my desk and popping one in his mouth.
“Sloane and I had a fight.”
“And she kicked you out of your own house?”
The insinuation that she’s just a visitor gets my attention, and I finally look up at him. “Ourhouse,” I growl out. “And no, she’s at her apartment.”
Jack throws his hands up in an act of innocence. “My bad, I guess you just lost my invite to the wedding.”
“Not married yet.”
Jack stares at me in confusion before bringing his hands to his face and rubbing his temples. “Look, brother, I’m just trying to figure out what's going on with you right now.”
Where to even fucking begin.
Letting out a deep breath, I decide to just go for it. I tell him all about how I became obsessed with her the moment I first saw her, how I stalked her like a psychopath, renovated my house, rearranged my entire life, how I fell madly in love, and how I offered the world to her on a silver platter. All for her to throw it back in my face the moment her parents stepped into the picture. “I’ve only known you for what, four months?”
He stands and walks over to the beverage cart in the corner of the room, pours two glasses of scotch, then sets one in front of me before taking his seat. “Well, she’s not wrong. Youhaveonly known her for four months. So are you going to get back together?”
“I want to…I love her. The past two months have been the happiest of mylife. And this past week…I don’t know what I’ll do when this fight is over and I’m not spending eight hours a day training.”
“Hmm,” he says, taking a swig of his drink, but I can tell he’s holding back.
“No, say what’s on your mind. Please.”
There is a melancholy expression in his eye as he leans forward in his seat and places his glass on my desk. “I’m going to be honest with you. I like Sloane a lot. I mean, sure, she’s young, but I think she’s good for you. That being said, it doesn’t mean that dating a twenty-year-old won’t be without its issues. You’re going to have to be the bigger person some of the time. But from everything you’ve told me, that doesn’t seem to be a deal breaker…so whatisthe problem?”
“Shehatesher parents. I mean, she loves them in a,they're my parents,kinda way, but they suffocate her. And she chose them over me.”
Jack shakes his head. “Do you remember what you were like ten years ago? I think you’re forgetting how much your own father’s opinion mattered…and you even had the rest of your family to lean on when he was being a dick. She doesn’t have anyone.”
“She has me…I’ve done everything I can over the past few months to show her that—”
“You’re an idiot.” He cuts me off. “Women talk through their emotions, dude. The only reason she would do that in front of you is because you’re the only person in her life who’s made her feel comfortable enough to speak her thoughts out loud.”
Well, fuck me.
“Why don’t you just ask her to marry you? I mean, you added her to the fucking deed to your house, so what’s a ring?” Jack continues. “It's obvious you want to eventually, and I’m sure that would make her feel more secure.”
WhyhaveI been waiting to ask her? I had a ring custom-ordered before she moved in. “Where did you get allthis knowledge about women from anyway? You’d have to actually talk to the women you fuck to learn something about them.”
I swear I see something like sadness flash across his eyes. “I don’t know, man. I just know that if I loved someone as much as you love Sloane, and there weren't a million things keeping us apart, I’d never let her go.”
He’s right. I can’t let her go. I’ve given her space this week, but after tomorrow’s fight, I’m getting her back. Whatever it takes.
Jack changes the subject, lighting the mood for what seems to be both of us.“Alright, now that we’ve cleared your love life up, tell me about New York.”
We’ll be renovating a building in a different part of the city than the club I visited, but even then, we’re planning to collaborate to avoid creating too much competition between us. That means we get to be a little more creative with our offerings than Rendezvous. And by we, I mean Jack. Hopefully, he’ll stop with all the “Boss” shit now that he’ll have his own club to run.
“Our real estate agent wanted to make sure there weren’t any better options before we moved forward with the spot we found online, but seeing it in person only solidified my opinion. You’re going toloveit. Everything about it screams to me, from the location to the layout to the price. It’s old enough to have a little character of its own, but not so old that we’ll have to jump through a million hoops for renovations.”
