Page 102 of The No Try Zone
“ITHINK YOU should download a dating app,” Kari declares a week later, emphasizing her point with a loud crunch on a chip loaded with guac.
I make a face, deeply regretting my decision to join the ladies for a Sunday get-together at the original place I ran into Kari and Elodie a year ago.
“No way,” Elodie says. “Have you been on those things?”
“Obviously,” Kari answers. “Go on there, find a guy who wants some no-strings-attached sex, bang him, and move on. Because whatever this is –” she gestures in my general direction – “I’m over it.”
My jaw drops. “I can’t just flip a switch, Kari.”
“It’s been almost a month,” she retorts. “You have to move on.”
“She doesn’t have to do anything,” Allyson says, finally coming to my defense from her spot in the corner of the booth.
“And she’s allowed to take her time!” Elodie says. “But I really wish he hadn’t been so stupid. Has he truly been acting like nothing happened?”
I take a sip of my soda water with lime, then pluck another chip from the half-empty bowl in front of us. I dunk it in the salsa and pop it in my mouth before answering. “He’s…solicitous.”
“Solicitous?” Elodie echoes, a confused look on her face.
“It’s hard to describe.”
“Try,” she urges.
I scrunch my nose and look up. “Like everything he says and does is done in a way that lets me know he’s going out of his way to make things easy on me, even though the things he’s saying and doing are all perfectly normal things he’d say over the course of us working together. It’s weird. His energy is like a golden retriever paired with a British butler.”
Allyson snorts. “Oddly specific, but it works. I know what you mean.” She toasts me with a chip. “When’s the divorce?”
For the first time in a week, I manage to hold back the shiver that comes at the word. “End of the week.”
Elodie’s eyes go wide. “Thisweek?” she squeaks. “But that’s so soon!”
“Not soon enough,” Kari mutters. At my dark look, she holds her hands up. “Sorry! But my boss is all over my ass about him. Frank is convinced there’s something going on, so he’s digging into everything there is to know about Colin in some weird effort to, I don’t know, expose the dirt before someone else does?” She shrugs. “It’s weird.”
My stomach clenches at the thought of anything bad happening to Colin. The same as it has ever since I realized I love him.
Love. Not loved.
I can’t tell my friends that. Can’t tell them that for all his odd behavior, I see the way he looks at me. That I know there’s still something there, and that all my stupid heart wants is for him to wrap me in his arms and tell me he loves me, that he’s sorry, and that he’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to me.
Not that I’d actually let him do that. Not when I’m finally finding my way back to myself again after months of being dimmer. I won’t let myself be like that ever again, letting myself be hidden.
Never again.
“Listen, he fucked up,” Elodie says, wincing as the word comes out of her mouth.
I giggle. “Aw, Els, you must feel really strongly about this if you cussed!”
She blushes and barrels forward. “My point is that I think he still loves you –”
“Hell no,” Allyson interjects. “If he wanted to, he would. And as much as I like and respect him as a coach, he is a low-down dirty slug for the way he’s treated you.”
“Preach.” Kari raises her margarita before taking a sip.
Allyson rolls her eyes. “You’re making him pay for the plane ticket, right?”
“I’m there with the team.”
“Damn, hoping it’d come out of his pocket,” she says. “But the divorce fees. Those areallhim, you hear me?” She raises a brow.
