“He’s touching her. Of course he’s touching her.”
“Don’t assume.”
“Because I’ve been wrong up until now?” I snapped.
Lex didn’t answer, and I still couldn’t bring myself to look. Looking felt like the final straw, a betrayal. I’d said I trusted her, so at least by using Lex I was keeping my promise. Sort of.
“So, Superman, what’s the next move?” Lex asked after a few seconds of silence.
My phone buzzed.
It was a text from Blake.
Frowning, I opened it up and felt my entire body tense.
Blake: Dinner is over. Ordering dessert, then I’ll be home. Don’t worry.
“Lex?” I grimaced at the phone, rage pumping through my system as I contemplated slamming the phone against the dash. “Have they eaten yet?”
“I see bread on the table . . . but no main dish. Wait, hold on.” He was silent again, and then continued, “The waiter stopped by, but David waved him off.”
Nodding, I fired a text back to Blake.
Ian: Is the food good? What did you order?
I got a response right away.
Blake: Food’s great. I got chicken pad Thai.
“Lex . . .” I seriously needed to leave before I barged into the restaurant and raised hell. “Are you sure they haven’t eaten?”
“Almost positive. Why does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t.” Except she was lying to me about something small. Which meant if something big took place . . .
Why tell me what she ordered and say it’s good if she hadn’t even eaten yet? Why make up a lie? Why the hell was I being so paranoid?
“We should go,” I said. It wasn’t like I could confront her now, and it was just food after all.
“Yeah,” Lex said, quickly putting the car into drive and tossing the binoculars in the backseat. “Great idea.”
“Whoa, suddenly in a hurry?” I laughed as Lex turned the car around so that my window was facing the restaurant.
It was a glance.
One freaking glance.
That I would regret for the rest of my life.
Blake.
David.
Kissing.
I held up my phone, unable to stop myself from taking a picture of the lip-lock, thinking at any minute she was going to push him away, slap him, stand up, and leave.
She didn’t.
I snapped the photo.
And when Lex peeled out of the parking lot, I hit the final nail in our relationship coffin. Hey, look at that—we made it to three weeks.
Apparently, our matchmaking program needed a bit more work.
I clicked “Send” with the caption Hope you enjoyed dessert.
“Lex,” I mumbled once we got back to the house. “Get me drunk. Now.”
He stared at me, his face unreadable, which wasn’t like Lex. We’d been friends for years, and he’d never, in all our time hanging out, looked at me like that, not even when I was injured and in the hospital.
For the first time in my adult life, my best friend looked at me with pity.
It sucked.
“We don’t have enough to get you drunk, that’s the bad news,” Lex announced once we were back at the house and I was staring down at the countertop, my mind a blur of anger and disappointment and, if I was being completely honest, a lot of sadness.
The sadness I refused to deal with.
Because dealing with sadness meant mourning, and that was stupid. Why would I mourn something that I barely even had?
But anger? I could completely work with that. How the hell did someone like me get in this position? Granted, we were doomed to fail. Fine, I got that part, but why lead me on?
“How’s it feel?” Lex poured me a glass of whiskey and sat across from me in the barstool.
“Um, getting my heart broken? Gee, I don’t know, Lex. It kinda tickles, like a feather getting stuck up my ass. What the hell, man, are you serious right now?”
“I mean, being on the other side.” He looked honest-to-God curious. “The one who gets rejected even though clearly he’s a better choice.”
“Oh, please. You saw the numbers.”
“Right. The numbers. Don’t tell me you really believe that shit. Yeah, we based our company on it, fine. And yes, for the most part it works. But it never takes into account chemistry. You get that, right? A computer can’t do that.”
“And the day it can . . .”
“Right, we’re screwed, because robots will be taking over the world. Lucky for you, I’ll be heading up the takeover, so I’ll save you a spot on the mother ship.” He rolled his eyes. “Seriously, I can’t believe I’m having a chick-talk with you, but there is no mathematic equation for chemistry. At all. You can’t force it, and you can’t predict it. She and David may look good on paper, but does he turn her on? Do his smiles make her want to die inside? His kiss—is it panty-melting? Isn’t that what chicks say?”
I held a hand up like a stop sign. “I think we need more alcohol if you’re going to use words like ‘panty-melting,’ Lex.”
“Pretend I’m a chick.”
“I’d rather not. Since I hate all women right now, I’m bound to do something stupid, like kiss you in hormonal confusion, then try to slam this bottle over your head in rage.”
“First off, don’t kiss me—it will ruin our friendship.” He held up one finger, then another. “Second, we’re both into girls, so I think it goes without saying that the experimental stage passed around the same time we went through English 101.” Another finger flipped up. “And third, if you hit me over the head with a bottle or even a pillow, I’ll probably take you down like I did in the sixth grade when you told Amanda that all the metal in my mouth made it so that aliens could see me from space.”