“Wow,” Iain said as I stood there actually kind of impressed myself.
“That’s right,” Drew said, looking smug. “I know you think you’re slick, Hoult, but you’re not. I mean I’m not the most detail-oriented guy, so if I noticed that you’re in love with this girl then you’re in love with her. And you shouldn’t have even wasted your time on the friends shit. End of story. Mic drop.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was good until the last few words.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna take that as a thank you, and to that I say fuck you. Now I’m the only bachelor left in the group.”
I grinned, pretty happy to be on this side of the argument for once.
“Yeah, well maybe if you stop chasing girls with a history of trespassing and stalking,” Iain muttered while doing ten things at once at his desk.
“Hey, a lot of the crazy ones happen to be beautiful,” Drew shrugged as if it were out of his hands.
“Yeah, well Emmett just scored him a beautiful, sane woman so stop making excuses and get out of my office,” Iain said, barely looking up from his work. “I have a meeting and you have physical therapy in an hour.”
“Jesus. Fine,” Drew said, getting up. “What are you doing, E? Wanna get food?”
“I’m Iain’s meeting,” I said, snorting when he rolled his head back and groaned at the ceiling. “But I owe you dinner for your non-traditional winging, alright? It’s going to take me a second to believe that you pulled that shit for noble purposes, but if you did, you did a damned good job,” I smirked.
“Yeah, yeah. Probably gonna be my last night out with you before you get all wifed up,” Drew said, returning my laugh as he dragged his feet out the door.
When he was finally gone, I heaved a sigh and sat across from Iain.
“Nice client you’ve got,” I laughed.
“Hey, I’m only associated to that prick through work. What’s your excuse?” Iain grinned before pulling up the profile on a new venture we’d been looking into. After turning the screen to me, he leaned back in his chair and fixed his cufflinks. “So you bringing Aly to the gala?”
“Hopefully. I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t really had the time. It’s kind of been a whirlwind.”
“Well, how serious are you two?”
I narrowed my eyes up at Iain. “Why are you grilling me?”
“You know why,” he said, typing away on his phone. “I’m curious about whether or not you’ve told her about – ”
“No,” I cut him off bluntly. “I haven’t. And I don’t plan on it either.”
“Whoa.” He held a hand up. “That’s fine, Emmett. I’m just wondering so I know what I’m allowed to say around her when I see her at the gala,” he said, holding eye contact till he knew I’d relaxed a little. “What are you so tense about?” he asked. “You really don’t have anything to feel guilty about. What you did was ages ago. Well before you thought you’d ever see Aly again.”
I nodded in agreement but I wasn’t completely convinced. I just didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t know how to word what bothered me anyway. All I knew was that I felt like I’d somewhat deceived Aly – that she maybe didn’t have reason to trust me completely.
And after the past couple days, it was fucking tearing at me.
“Trust me, Emmett. You’re good,” Iain said. He cracked a smile. “I mean if all the things Drew said before were true, then this is the one and only girl you’ve really cared about your whole life. So if she ever finds out about all the shit, I’m sure she’ll be able to look past it. Trust me on that?”
“Yeah,” I lied just to get the meeting back on track. “Sure thing.”
25
EMMETT
My last meeting of the day was with the gala sponsors, and it wound up running so late that Aly texted just a big frown emoji that made me laugh in the middle of dinner.
ME: What’s the face for?