“It means that, like, designers dress you for your pregame fit, right? I buy clothes at Target and wear them repeatedly foryears. You drive a Porsche, and I drive a Honda with over a hundred thousand miles on it. You had a professional decorate your apartment, and I recently moved back into the childhood bedroom of my father’s three-bedroom, one-car-garage house where a poster of a boy band still hangs on my wall.”
“Which boy band?”
“One Direction,” she said quietly, but her eyebrows were raised like she was daring me to comment.
“Okay, but none of that matters,” I said, slightly miffed that she’d think I cared about that shit.
“I know it doesn’t,” she said, “but the idea of going to a restaurant and having cameras there is the stuff of nightmares to me. So thank you so much and, um, you know, maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime if I am ever sexually harassed by another NFL mascot.” She gave a small laugh.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. I needed to end the call before I did something stupid, like beg her for a date.
I really liked her, but I also respected what she was saying. “Well, if you change your mind, feel free to shoot me a text.”
“Okay, and good luck Sunday, by the way.”
“Will you be back in your seats?” I asked.
“I know my dad will,” she said with an eye roll. “But the idea of getting pummeled with stadium snacks is still too fresh. I’ll probably watch from a sports bar or at home.”
“By the way, was there really someone at your door the first time I asked you out?” I asked, still curious about that.
“Not a soul,” she admitted. “I had no idea what to say, so I needed to buy myself a minute.”
“I knew it,” I said, smiling in spite of this rejection.
“I assumed you did, but it was all I could do.” She gave a helpless shrug and smile. “Have a good day, Connor.”
“Yeah, you, too,” I said, and I was surprised how fucking disappointed I was when I hung up the phone.
Asking her out the first time hadn’t even been my idea, so why did getting shot down for the second feel so shitty?
9
Duffy
It was a weird thing, becoming slightly obsessed with the guy you rejected.
But I couldn’t help it.
Because for starters, he’d asked me out for a second date.
Asecondfricking date.
I didn’t get those a lot.
And I wasn’t being melodramatic; it was simply a fact.
Which was why the reality that he’d called to ask me out again, in and of itself, was truly astounding.
But then, on top of that unreal moment, I panicked and totally ruined everything by saying no, leaving me nothing to do but creepily stalk him on the internet and daydream about a scenario where Ihadn’t“No, thank you’d” him.
God, I am so stupid.
But in my defense, it was the internet’s fault.
Because the results of a quick search earlier this morning had sent me into a panic, the wounds left by Carl still too fresh. TheGetty images of me and Connor getting out of the car, him looking like a god while I squinted next to him like I was a bear coming out of hibernation, blinded by the bright lights, were bad enough, but I’d been a fool and had taken a glimpse at a few comments that followed the article andnope—I wasn’t going back there.
Beauty and the bust.