My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,43
from him again—except for what I read in Rolling Stone after he got famous.
To call it the worst year of my life would be an understatement. I’d lost a lot of people who mattered to me in a short span of time. Our mom had been the glue that made our family a family, and without her it all felt flimsy and impermanent. Dad had pursued his own method of dealing with his grief—he married Heather just six months after my mom died, and Cody was born eight months later—leaving me and Tanner to cope mostly on our own. Thank god for Ryan, who’d done his best to hold the three of us together as stubbornly as our mom had before she got sick.
But ever since, I’d avoided close relationships. Friends, girlfriends, didn’t matter. I kept them all at a safe distance. I became good-time Wyatt, because everyone liked having that guy around. Fun, irresponsible, charming, unreliable Wyatt. The guy who worked hard to get people to like him, then ghosted before anyone could like him too much. Because if I let anyone get close enough to see the real me, they might decide it wasn’t worth sticking around. Always leave them wanting, that was my strategy. Better to leave than be left.
The only people who knew the real me were the ones who’d been there when my world fell apart. Tanner, Ryan, Josh, Andie—they’d all been grandfathered in.
I couldn’t afford to lose any of them. I wouldn’t let that happen. Not if I could help it.
“You need to have a little faith in people,” Tanner said. “I think you should be straight with Andie about everything. She’s a smart woman. Let her make her own decision.”
“Tell me again how it went when you told Lucy you loved her?” The alcohol was making me sulky and mean, or I wouldn’t have thrown his ex in his face. The one he still hadn’t gotten over.
“Low blow,” he shot back, frowning at me. “And totally different. You’ve been friends with Andie for most of your life. I’d only known Lucy for a little while.”
And yet, he’d known her well enough to think he was in love with her, which showed just how different the two of us were. I kept everyone at arm’s length, but Tanner fell in love fast and hard—way too fast and way too hard—which meant he’d had his heart broken a lot.
You had to hand it to the guy though, at least he practiced what he preached. He didn’t hold back or bottle his feelings up. No, he’d courageously dropped the L bomb on Lucy after just a few weeks.
She’d run screaming for the hills, of course, leaving Tanner brokenhearted. Not that I could blame her. I’d have done the same thing in her shoes.
But at least Tanner wasn’t a coward like me.
I leaned forward to set my drink down and propped my elbows on my knees, raking my fingers through my hair. “Fuck. I really screwed up tonight.”
“All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase – ‘I love you.’” When I swiveled my head toward him, he shrugged. “F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that.”
I ignored the aptness of the quote. “What if Andie’s so pissed she can’t move past this?”
“She’s put up with your ass for this long.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands as I thought about tomorrow, and how I was going to have to go back there and face her. I didn’t have a choice. Not if I wanted to save our friendship. I’d already screwed up enough by running out on her tonight. I wasn’t going to bail on my commitment to help her on top of that.
Tomorrow I’d go back and try to fix what I’d broken between us while I finished the repairs to her house. At least I had that going for me. She needed me right now, so she probably wouldn’t throw me off her property.
Andie was almost as good at holding a grudge as her brother, but I could wait her out. I’d just keep showing up and acting like nothing had changed until I’d worn her down.
What other choice did I have?
Take Tanner’s advice? Tell her I love her, ruin my oldest friendship, then probably screw everything up with Andie anyway?
Pass.
I poured more whiskey into my glass and knocked the whole thing back. Tomorrow I’d face the music. Tonight I just wanted to be numb.