Chapter 6 Macey
“And then he said, and I quote, ‘I’ve wanted to get into your pants once or twice since I met you, but I’ve concluded that friends are probably the best we can hope for at this time.’”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shaking her head, Kylie poured us a second glass of wine, handing me mine before plopping back down next to me on our living room couch.
“Not even a little,” I said, taking a sip. I looked into the rose-red liquid and shrugged. “I guess that’s to be expected, though, right? I mean, I did blow him off first. More than once. And then I got offended like a child when he agreed with me.”
“Yeah, but…from what you’ve been telling me, he’s not exactly coming on lightly, is he?”
“I didn’t think so, but maybe I was wrong.” I took a long drink and sighed, tucking my feet beneath me on the couch. “I mean, he asked me on a date the night we first met, and I rejected him, but he kept trying. Maybe he’s just done trying, but he made it sound like he was never into me, to begin with.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Kylie said. “It’s his ego. You’ve bruised it not once but twice, and now his childish self-defense mechanism has kicked in, and he’s trying to make it out like he never had feelings for you to begin with.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he really didn’t. Maybe he’s just being nice, and I took it the wrong way.”
“I mean, okay,” Kylie said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s pretend that’s what happened. The guy likes you, Macey. This isn’t normal for him, okay? No one has seen Jayce Gregory in a relationship during his college career. But then he meets you, and suddenly he’s not shy about it. He takes a chance, you reject him, he takes another chance, you reject him again, and this is his retaliation. God, don’t you know how these things work?”
“No,” I said with a slight shrug. “I can’t stand the drama.”
“Sorry to break it to you, sis, but you’re consumed in it now,” Kylie said, setting her glass down to turn her attention to me. “So, tell me the truth. Are you and Jayce happy to be nothing but friends from here on out, or did you want more?”
I thought about this for a moment, wondering if there truly was a right answer. If there was, I didn’t know what it was.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t have the time,” I admitted. “And he doesn’t either, Ky. Why waste our time knowing that it someday might not work out?”
“Why?” repeated Kylie. “Because every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Or so said Napoleon Hill.”
“Wow, I was almost impressed for a minute.”
“You still should be,” said Kylie, tapping her temple with her index finger. “That took me, like, a week to memorize. Maybe even two.”
Laughing, I got to my feet and took my empty glass to the kitchen to rinse it out.
“I’m off to bed,” I said, rubbing the exhaustion from my eyes. “Thanks for staying up and talking to me.”
“Anytime, lady.”
I bid my roommate goodnight and climbed the stairs to my bedroom, my brain teasing me with nothing else but thoughts of Jayce. His smile. His smirk. His…everything. God, he felt so right, and that was the shittiest part of all. Part of me felt like Jayce Gregory was the man I’d been waiting for all of my teenage and adult life, but the other part of me was scared, scared that Jayce was no better than any other egotistical idiot I’d known in my life. I didn’t plan on anything serious until after I graduated college, anyway, and maybe even medical school. Those were the things that, right now, were the most important to me. I had to keep my focus. I wouldn’t allow my relationship with Jayce to go any further than it already had. It was still early enough to nip this in the bud, and that’s what I intended to do. Heartbreak of any kind wasn’t on the agenda for me. I had more important things to focus on, and Jayce Gregory wasn’t one of them.