“Right. Well, I’ll just…”
Trailing off again, I pulled my towel tighter around my body and made a beeline toward my bedroom.
I could have sworn, though, that I’d caught a glint of fire in his eyes before I ducked away.
“Mackenzie?”
I blinked, pulling myself from my tangled mess of thoughts as Alex gave me an enigmatic look.
Donkey balls. Maybe my face really was as expressive as Walker had claimed it was. Alex looked like he was reading every thought it my head.
“So…” he drawled. “You never did tell me the full details about you and lover boy. How this whole crazy arrangement has been. Come on, I need the hot deets!” He chuckled. “Jokes about your obvious sexual frustration aside.”
“There are no details to tell.”
“Only someone who has a story to tell but is too shy to tell it says something like that.”
Well, Alex wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t going to let him hear it. I scoffed, shaking my head.
“Seriously, there’s nothing to tell,” I insisted.
“I know you two dated in high school.”
“You also know how it ended.”
“And yet,” Alex said, smirking, “you’ve come to his aid. Funny, that.”
Again, I rolled my eyes. He made it sound so romantic, like I’d swooped in on a damn white horse.
“Well, fine. So, you’re not sleeping together and you’re not living out some long awaited love story. You’ve been strangely secretive about him. Talk to me Mackenzie. We’re best friends.”
My shoulders slumped. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been unintentionally holding back from Alex about the situation—I hadn’t even let him come to the wedding since it hadn’t seemed like there was a point. I should’ve known better than to think he wouldn’t be interested. Or rather, that I couldn’t confide in him. We’d known each other almost as long as Walker and I had been apart.
We ended up settling on the couch back in the living room.
“It’s been different from what I expected,” I admitted.
“Different in a bad way?”
“Different in a different way.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. He’s just… different. More rigid, like he’s on this linear plane with no deviation instead of just being—how he used to be. I guess it makes sense. A lot changed when his mother died. He’s so much more… more put together now.”
Alex laughed. “You sound like you admire that.”
I smirked wryly. “Only sometimes,” I said. “Other times, I think he’s so painfully uptight I might explode. Did you know he feeds Bruno on a schedule instead of just leaving the food out like a normal person? Or that he organizes everything by color. Oh! And the other day, he got all uppity over the fact that I left the TV on while I showered.” I straightened myself up, putting on my best Walker impression. ‘‘It just doesn’t make any sense to have it on when you’re not in the same room.’”
Alex snorted. “So, he’s a bit uptight. Aren’t all businessmen?”
>
“The Walker I knew was never ‘like all businessmen,’” I said. “You know, he never even wanted to run the business? He used to talk about getting out from under his father and the family business all the time. He wasn’t like the other guys at that school, or their stuck-up girlfriends. I was just…”
I bit my lip, a warm feeling spreading through my chest as I let myself remember all the wonderful qualities that’d made me fall in love with Walker. His openness. His goofy, playful side. His ambition.
Alex patted my hand, giving me an understanding smile. “Damn, girl. You had it bad for him, didn’t you?”
Clearing my throat, I pulled my hand away.
“Things change.”