“Hey,” he says, coming up to squeeze my shoulder. “That’s what friends are for.”
I smile, laugh a little, then turn with him and start walking back to the front of the house.
But I swear to God, I think I hear the ghost of Emily behind me.
Laughing.
Back upstairs the girls are still sleeping, so I gather up my clothes and get dressed in the library. Acutely aware of Hayes, sitting in what I now think of as his chair, watching me with thoughtful consideration.
“What?” I ask.
“Do you have a plan?”
“No,” I say, tucking in my shirt, trying to pull myself together while wearing the same suit for the third fucking day in a row. “Well, maybe. I’m gonna go home and change.” I laugh a little as I say it, because I know what he’s talking about and my deliberate avoidance is pissing him off.
“Do you enjoy it?” he asks.
“Enjoy what?” I ask back, buckling my belt and reaching for my suit coat.
“This thing you have for being… ambiguous.” He sighs, then says, “No. That’s too mild of a word. You have a problem with commitment, Connor. And it worries me. Because it’s like a disease. If you don’t confront it it will fester and take over.”
“Look, I said I’d get out of it, OK? And I will.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
I sit down on the chair opposite him and start putting on my shoes, trying not to meet his intense gaze. “I mean… what do you want me to say? I’m just not a good decision-maker. I’m never gonna choose.” I shrug as I stand up, dressed, but certainly not put back together.
“I can choose for you,” he offers.
I roll my eyes. “I already know who you’d choose.”
“Who?”
“Kiera.”
“Now why would I do that, Connor? Why the hell would I choose the girl you love? And anyway, Kiera and I have a good friendship. I wouldn’t want to put a strain on it like that.”
“Like what?” I look around for my coat, then shoulder into it.
“Singular expectations.”
I point my finger at him. “See, you’ve got the same disease.”
He shrugs. “I’ve always wanted Sofia.”
I stare at him for a second, my head filled with so many things right now. Where I’m at, where I’m supposed to be, the days of work I’ve missed, sex with Kiera, sex with Sofia, sex with Hayes… “Well, is that what you’re gonna do, or what?”
“No.”
I wait for more, but whatever he’s really planning stays locked inside that weird head of his. I sigh. Loudly. “Look, can we talk about this later? I gotta go.”
“Here’s where we’re different,” Hayes says. “You’re only looking for satisfaction. You’re looking for the easier way to make things simple. Do I want Kiera? Or do I want Sofia? When, in actuality, you want both. But both is complicated. Both is a lot of work. Never mind the logistics of getting a girl who lives in Vermont to move to the city, there’s also someone standing in your way. Me. I don’t want the simple, direct route to happiness. If I did, I’d have gone on pretending that book didn’t exist. If I did, I wouldn’t have offered to take your decisions away last night and brought Sofia to your bed. If I did,” he says, kinda angry now, “I wouldn’t have joined the three of you last night. I’m not afraid of complicated, Connor. I welcome it. Crave it. I want everything and that’s where I stand.”
I… just… blink at him. “Everything?” I say, like a dumbass.
“Everything we had and lost,” he says. “I want it all back. That’s why I’m here, that’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re all here.”
There is a lifetime of eternal silence as I internalize what he just said. A lifetime of good sex, and weird days, and exciting adventures in that eternal silence as well.
“Not like that, asshole.”
“What?” I say, so thoroughly fucking confused.
“I want us, man. You know. Normal shit. We can put this all behind us now, Connor. And that’s a beautiful thing, don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighs. Rubbing a finger along the top of his eyebrow as he shakes his head. “We didn’t even finish the book. How did my perfect plan go so sideways?”
I glance down at the book, still sitting on the small side table. “Who cares about the book? We know how it ends.”
“Do we?” Hayes asks. “I mean, I do. I read it. Very carefully.”
“What?” I say, so off balance at how this morning—hell, this whole week—has just gone completely sideways. “So you knew about it?”
He nods. “I was thinking I’d just take care of it myself”—he looks away, out the window at the view of the water—“but then you saw it in the airport. I figured it would do its thing, maybe stay on the list a week or two, at most. And be forgotten. Just like everything else that happened back in senior year. And I could wrap this shit up without bringing the rest of you into it. Let you go on with your lives. But…” He shakes his head. Looks me in the eyes. “Now I can’t.”