Page 87 of Forecheck
We each ordered a bacon cheeseburger and pints of beer—meal plans be damned. The bartender grumbled as he dropped the glasses in front of us, and we retreated into a booth in the corner.
After a long pull from his drink, Mitch set the glass on the scarred wooden table and leveled me with an inexplicable look.
“So, what’s new?”
“Dude, you see me every day.”
“Yeah, atwork.I mean what’s going on in your personal life? How’s the fam? How’s Berk?”
“Fam is good,” I said. “I haven’t seen them in a while, but they’re planning on coming out for the opening games of the playoffs. As for Berk…”
I trailed off, unable to contain my smile. Mitch raised a brown and reclined in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “That good, huh?”
“That good,” I agreed. “She finally told me she loves me.”
Mitch’s responding smile mirrored my own, and he extended a hand for a high-five. “I told you you had nothing to worry about!”
After Vegas, despite the fact that I’d made it clear to Berkley she was under no obligation to return my confession of love, I’d still been a little discouraged that she hadn’t wanted to. I’d hada long heart to heart with Mitch, who’d told me to give her some time.
“That girl is crazy about you,” Mitch had said. “Anyone who sees you together knows it.”
I’d held onto that over the course of the intervening week. It was one thing to think we were happy, and that she reciprocated my feelings. It was an entirely different one to be told by an outsider that we were clearly in love, even if Berkley hadn’t yet said it.
But now that she had…at the risk of sounding like a sap, everything in my life seemed brighter these days.
Shaking my head, I refocused on the conversation at hand. “So what’s going on with you and Lexie?”
Mitch sighed and slumped against the booth. “It’s…complicated.”
“How? Have you talked to her and told her how you feel?”
In the same way Mitch had helped me see clearly where Berkley was concerned, I’d helped him figure out what to do with Lexie. Apparently, Lexie wasn’t interested in more than sex with him, while Mitch was ready for more.
“I want everything with her,” he said. “I’ve wanted everything with her from the moment I met her. But she’s so fucking skittish. I thought I was getting through to her. We were taking it slow, and I was giving her time to warm up to the idea of more. But it’s like every time I broach the subject, she finds some way to redirect. It’s exhausting, and I don’t know what to do.”
We were a couple of sad sacks. He was in love with someone who held him at arm’s length emotionally, and I was in love with a woman who wouldn’t say it back.
I hoped, for both of our sakes, things resolved themselves sooner rather than later.
“You have to force her to listen,” I told him. “I know that seems easier said than done, but if you want to accomplish anything, don’t let her redirect. And if you get to the point where you’ve laid it all out there, and she still wants to run away…it might be time to cut your losses. Because you know what, bro? You’re not exactly getting any younger.”
Mitch flipped me off, and I chuckled, grateful that, for the moment, that forlorn look of heartbreak was gone from his face.
“I did,” Mitch said, pulling me back to the present conversation. He lifted his beer and drained the rest of it. I raised a brow, waiting for him to continue. Mitch did no such thing, instead rising without a word to get another.
Only when he returned did he speak again. “She agreed to try,” he said slowly. “But…she’s still not there all the way. I know she’s coming around, and that she cares about me, but it’s not like with you and Berkley, you know? I really feel like I put everything on the line for her and her response was to say ‘okay’ and keep doing what she’s been doing. I’m at my wit’s end.”
Despite the fact that my friend was clearly hurting and flustered and a whole slew of other emotions I could clearly read on his face, in the way he removed his hat and shoved his fingers through his shoulder-length, dark blond hair, I couldn’t hold back a chuckle.
“I never thought I’d see the day.”
Mitch leveled me with a glare. “This isn’t funny.”
“You’re right. It’s not funny in the ha ha kind of way. It’s funny in an ironic sort of way. You spent your adult life never settling, moving from one woman to the next, keeping them all at arm’s length emotionally. And the first time you fall for someone, she’s…well, she’s giving you a taste of your own medicine.”
Mitch dropped his elbows heavily onto the table, his head following suit into his hands. “How the fuck did I get here?”
“I don’t know, man. But if you think she’s coming around…keep fighting the good fight. Speaking from experience, I know how difficult it is, and how easy it would be to walk away, to wash my hands of it all. But my life is better with her in it. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
