Page 27 of Stuck with You

Clary was frowning as she returned to me, my jacket in hand. She passed it over with a shake of her head. “You really know how to pick them. She was really upset.”

“What did you say to her?”

Clary shrugged. “The truth.”

“Which is…”

“That she deserved better than you.”

That couldn’t have been everything. “And…”

“And that you’re a manwhore who doesn’t do relationships, and she should have known better.”

“Ouch.” I winced. Clary really didn’t pull her punches.

She shrugged again like she hadn’t just landed a powerful blow right to my gut. “Just trying to help.” She turned and walked toward the house.

As I watched her leave, all I could think about was the way she had described me. She thought I was a manwhore?A manwhore?

It was beginning to feel like my chances with Clary were only growing more hopeless. I couldn’t be more screwed if I tried.

8

Aiden

Clary had been in our house for a total of four days, and she was still refusing to see me as anything more than a pebble in her shoe. I knew it was going to be hard to win her over, but she refused to even give me a chance.

“It’s not working,” I grunted into the phone. “I keep trying to do nice things for Clary, but none of them change her mind about me. I tried to cook her dinner, and that was a disaster. I helped her drop letters in people’s mailboxes, but it only annoyed her more. I even stopped working out in her bedroom while she’s asleep, and nothing!”

“You worked out in her bedroom while she was sleeping?” Seth replied. “Damn, even I wouldn’t want to date you if you did that.”

“It was one time,” I grumbled. “And I hadn’t really thought it through.”

“Clearly.” Seth chuckled in his deep voice. I scowled at the ceiling and felt tempted to hang up on my best friend. I was far too bored to actually go through with it though.

I was lying on my bed throwing a tennis ball against the wall with my free hand. We’d been under stay-at-home orders for about a week now, and I had a serious case of cabin fever.

It had sounded great at first, like an extended vacation. School was still trying to set up online learning for us, so there wasn’t any homework. And the ability to spend my days doing whatever I wanted was every teen’s dream.

The reality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be though. Since I couldn’t leave the house, my options of what to do were limited. Watching TV passed the time for the first few days, but it had grown old real fast. I struggled to sit still for more than five minutes, and lazing around doing nothing for extended periods of time was like torture.

I tried exercising to fill the void, but there was also only so much time I could spend lifting weights. And while I escaped the house for a run around the neighborhood once a day, the outing was always over far too soon. It felt like my whole life was on pause, and I hated it.

I’d even resorted to doing chores around the house to pass the time. The lawns were mown, the carpets vacuumed, and the kitchen had never looked so clean. I usually helped mom out around the house, but even she couldn’t believe how spotless everything was. My attempts to impress Clary were failing, but at least it was making my mom happy.

I glanced at my closed door. I would have liked to hang out with Clary, but she still wasn’t very receptive to the idea. She was in her room, only a few feet away from mine, but the distance felt so much bigger. She spent most of her days in there, and I spent most of my time wondering what she was doing. Given the number of books she’d packed, she probably did a lot of reading. But, since I couldn’t be certain, my curiosity was killing me.

“So, you really haven’t made any progress at all?” Seth continued.

I let out a long sigh. “Not really. Everything I do seems to backfire. The nice gestures don’t work, it’s almost impossible to strike up a conversation with her, and she laughs at me when I try to flirt. I’ve never tried this hard and been so rejected in my life. What am I doing wrong?”

“Well, I told you nice gestures might thaw her out a bit. I didn’t say they’d make her fall in love with you. I seem to remember telling you to just act yourself, and my advice is still the same.”

“I told you that wasn’t really an option.”

I wished I could simply do what Seth was suggesting, but I found it hard being myself around girls—Clary more so than any of them. When Clary had rejected me in freshman year, I’d learned the hard way she wasn’t interested in me. I tended to learn from my mistakes though, and I refused to make that one again. The next time I asked a girl out I was confident and cool. I used enchanting words and a charming smile, and the girl said yes. The girls had been saying yes ever since.

I’d been acting the part of the cocky football player so long that I wasn’t sure who I really was anymore. Not that it mattered anyway. The girls at school weren’t interested in me showing my true colors. They wanted to date the quarterback, or they wanted to be seen with the popular guy. Perhaps they simply thought I was hot and liked the way we looked together. Whatever their reason for wanting to date me, it seemed to be a universal truth that none of them actually wanted to have a conversation with me.

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