Happily Never After

I NEEDED A drink.

I followed Sophie as the hostess led us to a booth, and though I needed food, I needed something that burned going down even more.

“Thank you,” Sophie said as she took her menu and slid into the booth. She’d taken the lipstick off, her waves were back, and the eyeliner was a little smudged, yet she somehow looked hotter than she had when I picked her up.

“Thanks,” I said, and opened the laminated menu.

“I know I should get something healthy because I swore off fast food, but it smells so much like french fries in here that I don’t think I can resist.” Sophie opened her bag and got out her glasses, sliding them up the bridge of her nose.

“You’re not wearing contacts?” I asked.

“I hate contacts,” she said, not looking up from the menu. “I’d rather wear glasses all the time.”

“Except for tonight . . . ?”

She glanced up and shrugged. “My glasses didn’t really match my dress.”

“So . . . could you see at all at the wedding?”

“Ish,” she said dismissively, and went back to the menu. “I wonder if their chicken-fried steak is good.”

It was mind-boggling, how she moved on so effortlessly to food after what had just happened. I mean, technically it was just a kiss—one single, meaningless kiss.

But dear God, it had been next fucking level.

The joke was on me because I’d brought the whole thing up before the wedding to prove a point to her, to show her that it couldn’t have “been anyone” that made our last kiss spectacular.

For some asinine reason, I wanted her to realize the kiss was great because I was a great kisser.

Fucking idiot.

Instead, I’d proven to myself that I was crazy attracted to her and she still remained clinical about both kisses.

I picked up the water glass and took a drink, parched all of a sudden.

“Can you imagine if we had sex that way?”

I started coughing, absolutely hacking because the water went down the wrong tube. As I coughed and my eyes watered, Sophie sat there, watching me with her head tilted, like I was entertaining.

“I’m okay, thanks for asking,” I managed once I got the coughing a little under control.

“Oh, I know,” she said, closing her menu. “You just sucked your water down the wrong tube when I mentioned sex.”

“Why did you do that,” I asked, dying to know what she’d meant while knowing full well I didn’t need to talk about sex with Sophie. “I’m having a burger, by the way.”

“Same,” she said, grabbing my menu and setting it on top of hers. “All I meant, when I scared you into inhaling your beverage, was that can you imagine having sex for yourself, without giving a damn about the other person’s thoughts or desires?”

“That’s called masturbation.”

“Ha ha, very funny, but no,” she said, and I noticed she had goose bumps on her arms. “And I don’t mean as a kink, either, like a dom-sub situation where one person calls the shots.”

I snorted. There was something funny about hearing HR Sophie saying dom-sub.

“Okay, forget it,” she said, rolling her eyes as her cheeks got a little pink.

“I guarantee you I cannot,” I admitted, which made her cough out a little laugh. “Tell me—I’ll be good.”

She looked at me for a minute before apparently accepting my promise and shrugging. “I just mean, like, kissing you—last wedding and today—was the most sexually gratifying thing that’s happened to me maybe ever.”

It sucked that she didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but I wanted to ask her to say it again anyway.

“And if you quit being a smart-ass,” she said, leaning forward and setting her elbow on the table, “I think you might agree. Like, kissing me outside just now, only interested in what you wanted from the kiss—wasn’t it hot?”

Was it? Was it hot? I don’t know, Sophie, because my brain no longer functions properly and I can’t stop staring at your mouth! “It was.”

“So all I was saying is that I imagine sex like that—self-centric—would be out of this world.”

The waitress approached, and Sophie launched into her order while I did my best to appear cool and unaffected. She was so damn straightforward about what she wanted, yet it didn’t feel sexually aggressive because it wasn’t.

She was literally experimenting like a scientist in a lab.

There was some part of me that liked that she felt safe enough with me to be honest. I knew it was because she knew we both wanted zero romance—that was the catalyst that had given her the idea to go after the kiss last time—but something about it felt good.

After the waitress walked away, Sophie looked at me, and I could tell she was waiting for me to comment.

“You were really great with Ashley at the wedding,” I said instead, unwilling to discuss sex with Sophie out of fear we’d end up at the seedy motel next door. “I seriously think she would’ve married that douchebag if you hadn’t been there.”

She bit her lip, her smile wavering as she ran an index finger over the side of her water glass. “It’s hard to make the decision to walk away, even when it’s the right thing.”

“You’re not over him yet, are you?” I asked, bothered by the furrow between her eyebrows. She looked sad, and I didn’t like it.

“Stuart?” She cleared her throat and shrugged. “I’m over him. I don’t want him back, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be over us.”

“I get that,” I said, feeling the sentiment down to my fucking bones.

“Do you?” she asked, sounding sincere. “Because I’m not sure I do. Like, when will I stop being shocked by how full the medicine cabinet is, now that it’s Rose and Larry living with me instead of Stuart? Or how quiet it is when I get home from work? When will the damn theme song to The Office not make me sad? Why can’t I not care about all the little things that pop up on a daily basis and remind me of what I thought we’d be?”

“Because it was your whole world,” I said. “Every moment of every day belonged to the two of you, together. So how do you not feel a loss when those moments are only yours now?”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed, and she just looked at me for a minute before putting her chin on her fist. “What was her name?”

“The cliché. Stop.” I got out of the booth, took off my jacket, and held it out to her. “Put this on before you freeze to death.”

“What?” Her eyebrows screwed together, and she looked baffled.

I gestured to her arms. “You’re covered in goose bumps.”

Her eyes got even squintier behind her glasses, and I fully expected her to ignore the jacket entirely and lecture me. But she held out a hand instead and said, “Thank you.”

I sat back down. “You’re welcome.”

She slid into the jacket, which was huge on her, just as the waitress brought over our food. I foolishly thought the discussion was over, but as she squirted ketchup on her burger, Sophie asked me, “So are you over your ‘us’ yet?”

“For the most part.”

Fuck me. I didn’t know shit about Sophie, not really, so I didn’t understand why I had shared that.

She took a huge bite of her burger, then said as she wiped her hands, “Does that mean it doesn’t hit you in the gut every day anymore?”

I nodded and picked up a french fry. “It means I almost never think about her.”

“Really?” Her face brightened a little. “So there’s hope?”

“There’s hope, I promise,” I said, compelled to reassure her as I cut my double cheeseburger in half. “Now I have a question for you that I hope doesn’t piss you off.”

“Sounds promising,” she muttered, licking a dab of ketchup off her finger.

“Hush.” I set down my knife and picked up my burger. “So . . . how can you not believe in love when it’s so hard for you to move on? It seems like you must’ve loved the guy for it to hurt so much.”

“No,” she insisted, shaking her head emphatically and making a face. It was clear she’d given this a lot of thought. “Incorrect. I trusted him, I liked him, I was intimate with him, and I planned a future with him. He destroyed all of those things, which destroyed me. Doesn’t mean it’s love.”

I wanted to point out that she’d just described love and the only difference was what she was calling it, but who was I to throw rocks at her belief system? I might not agree with her, but I also had no interest in looking for love myself, so we weren’t really that different.

Same endgame.

“What the hell are you doing all the way out here, Parks?”

I looked up and Don Howell, one of our project managers, was standing beside our table with his wife.

I glanced at Sophie before saying, “Hey, Don. We had a thing in Everstom and now we’re starving. This is my friend Sophie. Sophie, this is Don Howell—we work together—and this is his wife, Barb.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” she said, smiling at them, and Barb beamed back at her with a huge hi as if Sophie had been sent to earth to save us all.

Barb was one of my mother’s best friends.

“We’ll let you get back to your dinner,” Don said. “But we thought it was you and wanted to say hi.”

“I’m glad you did. Nice to see you, Barb.”

“You, too, Maxxie.”

As soon as they walked away Sophie said, “You told me Maxxie isn’t your name.”

“When did I say that?”

“At the hotel, after my wedding.”

“We got pretty hammered that night,” I said, barely remembering the walk back to my hotel room.

“Yeah, we did,” she said. “I don’t even remember you leaving.”

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out.

Mom: Barb thinks she’s gorgeous, too. Hope you’re having fun!

“Are you kidding me right now?” I muttered, glancing out the window as Don and Barb pulled away. That didn’t take long.

“Problems?” Sophie asked, reaching across the table to take one of my fries because she’d finished hers.

“Barb has already texted my mother to tell her I’m on a date.”

“Is that bad?” she asked, dipping the fry into my ketchup.

“It is when we’re talking about my mom. It’s giving her false hope.”

“Oh, so you’ve got one of those mommies who wants to marry you off, huh?”

“Not necessarily marry, but yeah, there’s definitely pressure for me to find someone.”

“Just be fine with disappointing them,” Sophie said, popping the french fry into her mouth. “That’s what I do. Every month when my grandchildless parents call me, I remind them that I have no interest in ever settling down, just so they have realistic expectations.”

“You only talk to your parents once a month?” I couldn’t imagine.

“We aren’t close,” she said, shrugging like it was no big deal. “But we’re talking about your disappointed parents, not mine.”

“It’s not just about my parents’ expectations.” I don’t know why, but I sat there in the vinyl booth and told her everything. I told her about my job, my happily married sisters, and the fact that my parents wouldn’t move on with their lives until I was taken care of.

“So this.” I gestured to the two of us. “This just gives them false hope.”

“Can’t you fib, though? Have a girlfriend in Niagara Falls or something?” Sophie picked up her soda and took a long sip through the straw, and I wondered if there was something wrong with me for being distracted by her lips so often. She said, “Like, not lying, but can’t you let them think that you’re seeing someone with serious potential, and then when they move be like, ‘Oops we broke up’?”

“You want me to catfish my parents.”

“Sort of.” She shrugged. “Once they’re happy in retirement land, you can let them know that you are happy without the whole family and kids thing. Just give them enough comfort to make them move.”

“I wish it was that easy, but we’re pretty close. It isn’t realistic that I’d be seeing someone and have zero proof.” I shook my head and said, “My dad actually asked me to ‘milk’ our friendship and let my mom think it has potential. All so he can buy a boat.”

“Our friendship?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and pointing back and forth between us with her index finger and pinkie, just like the groom had done.

“Yes, Spider-Man.”

She winked and said, “Do you know what milking entails, exactly?”

“What are you thinking, Steinbeck?”

“Well. What if we both ‘milk’ the friendship?” she asked, her face instantly changing into strategic planner mode. “Think about it. We could literally say, ‘We’re just friends,’ to everyone—so we’re not lying—while just . . . being friends. You know, like hanging out and randomly posting photos of us together on social media.”

“That doesn’t seem like a solid long-term plan, does it?”

“Oh, it’s not. But we don’t need long-term. We just need to do it long enough for everyone to get that ‘ha ha, sure, they’re just friends’ smirk on their faces while they stop worrying about our love lives and give us what we want.”

There was no way it could work.

Could it?

“I don’t know, Soph,” I said, torn between knowing it was ridiculous and really wanting it to work. “It sounds more like a rom-com plot than an actual thing that will produce results.”

“But.” She pushed her empty plate into the center of the table and dusted off her hands. “We lose nothing by trying. Neither of us are interested in being in a relationship, so we don’t have to worry about that. We’re not lying, we’re not pretending—we’re just being friends.”

I . . . shit, I couldn’t argue with that, could I?

“The only change to our lives is that we’re hanging out more and posting photos on our socials, Max.”

I knew there was something very wrong with this plan, but at that moment, I couldn’t come up with what it was. “Fine. Will you be my friend, Sophie?”

“A thousand times yes, Maxxie.”