Page 123 of Love, Luck & Clusterf*ck

“Shit, Perry. You’re not interrupting. That… that wasn’t what it looked like.” He dragged his hands through his hair, looking nervous as hell. “Nothing was going on. You just surprised us, that’s all.”

“It doesn’t matter, Dre. You’re free to do whatever you want.” I wouldn’t have cared even if I’d walked in to see him bending her over the desk. I searched for a jealous twinge. Nothing.

“I don’t want to be free. Are you finally ready to hear me out?”

I didn’t want to mislead him, and I didn’t have that same need to hear him explain as I had with Christa. “Thank you for respecting me enough to leave me alone when I asked you to. It made things a lot easier for me. But you have to know, at least on some level, that we’re never getting back together. I’ve moved on and I forgive you. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

He leaned back against the desk, his jaw ticking. “Moved on. What, with that guy all over you at the Brewhouse?”

“No, that was just a friend messing around.”

“Then the dude who came after me in the parking lot?”

I didn’t respond and his jaw clenched harder. He was going to crack teeth soon.

“You and I were over no matter what. That wouldn’t have changed no matter who did or didn’t come into my life.” His knuckles were losing color against the desk edge. “The reason I’m here, Dre… well, I just came from speaking with Christa.”

“Okay?”

“How could you treat her that way for all those months?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me this. How have you forgiven her but not me?”

“I just told you seconds ago that I forgave you. And Christa and I are over too. We’re not back the way we were, and probably never will be, but I do understand some of what she told me.”

“So I’m the bad guy in all this? I never cared about Christa. I cared aboutyou. I fucked up royally, Perry. I had a moment of weakness.”

I almost laughed. He hadamoment of weakness, as in singular? “That’s what I’m getting at here. You never cared about her, but she cared about you. You took advantage of that.”

“Not intentionally. How the hell was I supposed to know how she felt? She told me she was just looking for a little fun.” That I believed. Christa would never have opened herself up to him.

“Would you have been there for her if she would’ve been pregnant?”

He sucked a bunch of air through his teeth. “She told you about that?”

“I was fucking with her the whole night she thought she was! She was terrified as hell. Would you have been there for her?”

“I’m sure, eventually. Man….” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It was fucked-up, all right? She told me that she’d had a scare right before I was supposed to be with you that weekend. It freaked me out bad. You know I don’t want kids. I had to take off after that and think about shit.”

“You don’t want kids, yet you convinced her not to use a condom? What the hell, Dre?”

“It didn’t take much convincing. She said she was probably safe.”

“Because she cared about you so much that she would’ve done anything, you ass!”

“How the fuck did I know that at the time?”

All right, this was just going in circles. Didn’t matter. It was over. I didn’t even care to bring up the point that he was so freaked out, yet he came back and fucked her again.

“It’d be good to talk to her, Dre. It’s really none of my business anymore, but it’d be a decent thing to do. She said you haven’t spoken to her since I found you two together.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, think about it. Maybe, I don’t know, it’ll give her some closure in all this shit too.”

“So there’s nothing I can do, Perry? Nothing will change your mind about us?”

“No.”

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