Page 51 of Irresistibly Us
So yeah, I’m feeling all kinds of ways about my best friend.
I don’t totally understand it, and I don’t think I’m ready to dig into it, but the more time we spend together, the less tolerant I am for time we aren’t spending together. Hence, my spur-of-the-moment idea to bring her lunch because I make her breakfast and dinner every day, and while I was walking through her house earlier listening to the contractor lay out the timeline for the renovations now that everything is all dried out, it suddenly felt unacceptable for me not to provide her with lunch too.
“Why?” Sophie asks, and her confused tone makes me grin wider.
I shrug. “Because you never eat lunch and I decided it’s time to put a stop to that.”
I bend and kiss Sophie’s mom, Molly, on the cheek before shaking Gabe’s hand the way I’ve been doing since I was a little kid. Since my parents and the Sullivans are best friends, they, along with Maddy’s parents and Caitlin and Jack’s parents, ran herd on all of us in this big, collective family situation. My mom definitely grounded Sophie at least once while we were growing up, and Gabe once caught Jack and me drinking beer in their backyard when we were sixteen and used his pull with thecompany he founded to get our phones kicked completely off the Redwood network for two weeks.
It was both savage and hilarious and fully blessed by my parents and the Parkers.
“How do you know I never eat lunch?” Sophie grumbles, grabbing a handful of jelly beans and shoving them into her mouth.
I chuckle, dropping the takeout bags on the coffee table and flicking her bracelets before taking the Dr Pepper can out of her hand and chucking the warm soda into the trash bin by her desk. Before she can protest, I hand her one of the fountain sodas I have in a drink carrier—properly chilled the way she likes with the perfect ratio of soda to ice. It’s a hard feat to accomplish in the extra-large gas station fountain sodas we both love, but I’ve become somewhat of an expert after all these years, if I do say so myself. Also, my dad is a fountain soda fiend—even going so far as to install an actual soda fountain in our kitchen—so I’ve had a lot of practice.
“You burst into the house at six-thirty every night and the first words out of your mouth are how starving you are. Why do you think dinner is always ready?” I smirk at her. “Hangry Soph is scary Soph.”
Molly and Gabe laugh, and Sophie glowers at me. “I can feed myself,” she mumbles around the candy in her mouth.
I look pointedly down at her bowl of jelly beans and back up at her with a raised eyebrow. She rolls her eyes, huffing out a breath. “Fine, I suck at feeding myself, but they came to rescue me from my lunchless existence.” She waves a hand at her parents.
“We were thinking lunch at the diner,” Gabe says with a gaze that feels a little bit knowing bouncing between Sophie and me before landing back on me. “Strawberry pancakes and french fries. Can you top that? Think carefully, my friend, because winner gets to take my girl to lunch.”
Sophie rolls her eyes again, eating more candy. “I’m not a prize to be won.”
“Damn straight.” Molly pokes Gabe in the side before she grins at me. “At least promise her the mozzarella sticks too, Gabe. That’ll tip you straight into winning territory.”
Sophie’s stomach lets out an audible growl at the wordsmozzarella sticks,and I bark out a laugh. “Looks like someone is hungry after all,” I say gleefully. Reaching into the takeout bags I brought, I pull out a bunch of containers from the exact diner Molly and Gabe were planning to take her to. The one we’ve all been going to for most of our lives.
I know my girl.
Shit. No. Not my girl. My friend. My best friend. Just my best friend.
Probably.
“Looks like someone knows his customer,” Molly says thoughtfully.
“Damn right, I do,” I say with a look in Sophie’s direction. Her purple sweater somehow makes the gold flecks in her brown eyes glow, and I have the wild thought that it would be easy to get lost in those eyes.
You know, if that was something I wanted to do.
I blink back to the present, hoping for a distraction from the direction of my spinning thoughts.
“Grilled cheese!” I practically yell, popping the lid off one of the containers with a flourish. “Obviously it’s not as good as mine, but I had them mix the cheeses, so it’ll be passable.” I busy myself opening the rest of the containers, revealing strawberry pancakes, french fries, mozzarella sticks, chicken tenders, and twelve different dipping sauces. All Sophie’s diner favorites.
“You should totally stay,” I say, glancing over at Molly and Gabe. “I didn’t know what Soph would be in the mood for, so I got everything.”
Molly clasps her hands to her chest in dramatic fashion. “Tyler Hansley, I have never been prouder of anyone in my entire life. You got all the dipping sauces.”
I flash her a grin. “Every single one. A guy doesn’t grow up with four sisters, a plethora of real and pseudo-aunts and cousins and best friends of the female variety, and a very particular mom and forget about the dipping sauces.”
Molly laughs. “If you think your mom is particular now, you should have known her back when we were your age. Taking charge of everything, organizing everyone to within an inch of their lives, veryher way or the highwayenergy, and anxiety vibrating at a frequency with which us mere mortals are not acquainted.”
At the mention of my mom’s anxiety, I feel a cloud descend on my brain, my lips turning down in a frown. I know it’s something she deals with every day of her life—she and my dad were always real with my sisters and me about it. Mental health was something we talked about in my house a lot. It was something I grew up understanding. Respecting. My parents wanted all five of us to know it wasn’t something to hide from or fear or be ashamed of, and the reminder that by keeping my own struggles to myself I’m doing all three of those things makes me feel, well…not all that great, actually.
The tap on my foot pulls me out of my spiral. I look down and see Sophie’s platform boot nudging my sneaker, and when I look up at her, a silent conversation passes between us.
You okay?
