Lie of My Life

16 The Game

I knew he would come over tonight. He came over every night. It would be the perfect time to talk to him.

So I wore my ugliest pajamas, hoping that they would inspire us to get through a conversation without jumping each other's bones, and I downed a glass or two of wine for liquid courage. I knew the chances of my success. Carter never dated a woman for longer than a week. He had clearly and explicitly stated his disinterest in relationships and took pains in his every day life to avoid giving any girl he stumbled upon the false hope that she might tie him down. But Emma was right. Even if it was going to hurt, I had to get it off my chest. I wasn't sure what I was feeling. But I was feeling something and Carter deserved to know that if whatever this was between us was going to continue.

As expected, there was a knock on my door a little after seven. I opened it to see the man himself standing there, smiling at me.

"Carter-" I started but I got no further.

My brain registered the scene before me in the following sequence. Carter was not alone. Aaron, Wes, Shane, and Emma were all behind him. He was wearing a football jersey. They were all wearing football jerseys. The baby blue and red of the Tennessee Titans assaulted my eyes as the guys all entered, lugging case after case of half rate beer with them. Shane and Emma had picked up wings and set them down on the coffee table as my apartment became a swarm of activity. I blinked in surprise as Carter sidled up next to me, unseen by the busy group around us.

"You didn't forget about game night, did you?" He teased, raising a brow and glancing down at my ratty pajamas.

Yes.

"No," I lied. "I just... wanted to be more comfortable."

"Ava! Come on. It's starting," Aaron called and I turned away from Carter to join our friends in the living room, wedging myself on the couch between Emma and Wes.

We were only halfway through the first quarter when there was a knock at my door and I stood to open it. It was Mindy, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other as one headphone dangled off of her ear.

"One second," she said to whoever she was on the phone with and then smiled at me. "These came for you boss."

She thrust the bouquet out, a knowing smile on her lips. I reached out slowly to take them, doing my best to ignore the five pairs of eyes glued to my back as I did. Internally panicking, I bid Mindy a goodnight and then shut the door behind her.

Was Carter sending me flowers now? Had he sent them to the office so that our friends wouldn't know and Mindy had just ruined his plan? How was I going to explain this?

But a moment later I glanced at the card nestled among the roses and my heart fell. Max Jordan.

Not Carter. Of course not Carter.

I scolded myself for my own foolishness. Carter was not the type to send flowers. He never had been. I knew that now and I knew that getting into this. So why was I suddenly expecting him to change? He wouldn't and it wasn't even his fault. He was who he was and it was my fault for thinking he could be something else, for thinking that I was enough to make him into someone else, someone I wanted him to be.

"Who are those from?" Emma sang from the living room, waggling her eyebrows as I set the bouquet down and went to get a vase.

"Max," I told her.

"Who's Max?" Aaron asked through a mouthful of wings. But I didn't answer. I just stared at the flowers.

I stood there for a time, staring at those roses and thinking about his offer. Chicago. New York. Los Angeles. Maybe it could be a good thing, expansion. And maybe throwing myself into a new project right now was precisely what I needed. Maybe once I had this conversation with Carter that was doomed to fail, it would be nice to board a plane and fly away and not see him for a while. Maybe if I got that distance we could someday go back to being friends. It wouldn't be the same as it was. I doubted it would ever be that way again. But I could still have him in my life. If I got away from him now.

"Beer?"

I looked up to see that, at some point, Carter had entered the kitchen and was standing beside me, next to the open refrigerator, holding out a cold can of beer. I blinked at him for a moment, surprised by how indifferent he seemed to the fact that another man had clearly sent me flowers.

"You didn't ask," I muttered, speaking the words aloud before I really thought about what I was saying. His brow furrowed in confusion as he cocked his head to the side in question. I gestured at the flowers on the counter in front of me. "The flowers. You didn't ask who they were from. You didn't ask who Max was."

"Emma and Aaron did," he said. That was true. But why hadn't he?

"And I didn't answer Aaron," I argued. "Don't you want to know?"

He watched me for a moment as if trying to decipher what I thought the correct answer was. Then he popped the tab on his beer and shrugged.

"Do you want me to want to know?" He asked. My lips parted in surprise. "As far as I see it, a guy sends you flowers, that's your business."

"My-" I stuttered. I truly had no idea how to respond to that. So I just blinked at him for a moment, too stunned by his lack of jealousy, envy, or even curiosity to answer. Finally, I decided on a better approach so I crossed my arms and replied, more quietly. "We need to talk."

His forehead scrunched at that as if he truly had something to be worried about for the first time tonight. Something about that, combined with his previous indifference, infuriated me. So I walked away before I started yelling at him right here in this kitchen, confusing our friends who had not been privy to the last few weeks we had been spending together and the way in which our relationship had changed.

I made my way back to the living room, resuming my former seat and trying to focus on the game even though my heart wasn't in it. I fought the urge to allow my gaze to stray to Carter too many times that night. Even though I could feel him watching me all throughout the second quarter and then into the third.

"This game is insane, man," Aaron said just as the fourth quarter was beginning, stuffing the rest of the chips I'd poured into a bowl into his mouth and holding the empty bowl up for Emma to grab on her way to the kitchen and refill. "If we win, we've got to go out. The city is going to be crazy tonight. We should celebrate with the rest of them."

Wes, Emma, and Shane whooped their agreement. My eyes snapped up to Carter to find that he was already looking my way.

I guess our talk was going to have to wait.