What? The Duffy bit?I watched him, suddenly so fucking confused. My brain couldn’t process what was going on.
“They are, though,” Brian continued, a smile in his voice. “Hauling a cat around town, playing the doting boyfriend at the hospital; no one would’ve imagined you going that far, and it’s actuallygenius. Bethany’s got a big head because the pumpkin patch date was her idea, but that’s better for you anyway. I think you’re staying in Minneapolis, kid, because they’d be insane to let you go now—”
“Brian, stop,” Connor snapped, shaking his head as he looked at me, but the guilt in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Yeah, but I know you weren’t into it the first time and we all kind of bullied you into taking her out—”
“No, you didn’t,” Connor said quickly.
Too quickly.
“You know we did, Cunningham, and you were a total company man for taking one for the team—”
Connor disconnected the call and abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. There was an excruciating second of silence in the car.
“Listen,” he said, looking over at me. “That isn’t what it sounded like.”
It was like everything was in slow motion as he stared at me with guilt all over his face. My thoughts were slow, jumbled, rewinding the words that’d just bounced around the interior of his car.
He hadn’t wanted to take me out.
They’d bullied him into asking me to dinner.
Playing the doting boyfriend at the hospital.
The pumpkin patch date was her idea.
“Don’t lie to me.” The words came out shaky, but I swallowed hard because I needed to keep it together. I looked at that handsome face—fuck my life—and said, “Tell me the truth.”
And in spite of everything, I knew he would.
Connor took a deep breath. “Okay, so after the Kel and Kell show, it might’ve come up that the front office liked the idea of us together, right? They didn’t force me to take you out or anything, but they did say that it’d help them with the ugly Carl story if people were distracted by—”
“So you didn’t want to ask me out.”
Why did that feel so bad? So insulting?
So fucking gross.
“Duff, it doesn’t matter because—”
“It matters to me,” I interrupted. “So when you called me at my dad’s house, it was because you were doing a favor for the company, right?”
He sighed and dragged a hand over his face. “I liked you and I wasn’t against asking you out, but I also—”
“—wouldn’t have asked me out if they hadn’t brought it up, right?”
I looked out the windshield, at the bright morning sun, and felt like a pathetic piece of shit. The entire time I’d known him I’d been spinning in circles, trying to ensure he saw me as more than a friend, but the reality was that he’d never even seen me as that.
“I mean, I can’t say for sure, but I’m grateful it happened, Duff. I can’t regret it because that favor led to me finding you, the very best friend I’ve ever had in my entire fucking life, my favorite fucking human. It was a shitty misstep, but—”
“You’rea shitty misstep,” I said, reaching for the door handle, wanting to die as the words “best friend” played on repeat in my head.
“Duffy,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out,” I said, opening the door.
“What? You can’t get out.”