Betting on You(6)

Before I could stop myself, I asked him, “Does she live in Alaska?”

He looked up from his phone, and a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. “Who?”

I pointed my fork at the screen. “Your girlfriend.”

He gave me side-eye and set his phone next to the food on his tray. “If you must know, Miss Nosy, she does. She’s a Fairbanks girl.”

“Oh.” I felt bad for him—a little—because leaving someone you love behind felt like utter shit.

“But she’s not my girlfriend.” He cut into his chicken, took a bite, and moaned—while staring directly into my eyes like a sociopath—“Oh my God, this questionable meat is so delicious!”

I just sighed.

He grinned, pleased with himself, and said, “I live in Nebraska and spent the summer in Alaska with my cousins. I hung out with her a lot, but I’m not really into the long-distance thing.”

I swallowed and pictured him kissing the face off Fairbanks Girl. “Does she know that?”

He shrugged and said, “She will.”

What a jerk. The poor girl had probably cried all the way home, devastated to see him go, while he shrugged and said, She will. I took another bite and couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Are you at least going to tell her?”

That made one of his dark eyebrows go up. “What are you—worried about her or something?”

It was my turn to shrug, even though I kind of wanted to rage in Fairbank Girl’s stead. “I just think leaving her hanging is a garbage thing to do.”

“Really.” He picked up his soda and took a long drink before asking, “What would you do?”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Well, um, I’d be forthright, for starters. I’d tell her—”

“Did you just say ‘forthright’?” He grinned like I was hilarious as he set his plastic cup on the tray. “Who says that? I mean, my grandma probably does, but no one under the age of—”

“Forget it,” I interrupted, amazed that the annoyance I felt for this boy kept cranking up to newer and more intense levels.

“Oh, come on. Please continue.” He reined in his smile, but his eyes were still twinkling. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am, I swear. Please—tell me what you’d do. I really want to know.”

“Nope.”

“Pleeeease?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Fine. I would tell her what you said about not wanting to do the long-distance thing, but I’d say it nicely enough where we could still be friends. After all, you’ll probably go back to your cousins’ house again someday, right?”

“Sure,” he said, leaning back so he could reach into the pocket of his jeans and pull out a… TUM?

Is that a TUM? What was he, a sixty-year-old grandfather of five? And he was making fun of me for seeming “old.”

He popped it into his mouth while I asked him, “So wouldn’t it be nice if you could be her friend when you fly into Fairbanks, instead of the jerk who broke her heart?”

His mouth went up a little—only on one side—and his eyes narrowed. He stared at me for a long moment, chewing the antacid tablet, and then he said, “Guys and girls can’t be friends.”

And he said it as if it was a definitive, indisputable fact.

Which it wasn’t. I had guy friends (sort of), and I knew plenty of other girls who did too. I wondered if he was just one of those guys who liked having controversial opinions.

“Yes, they can,” I said, narrowing my eyes and waiting for him to argue.

“Nope,” he said. Like it was scientific data instead of his own antiquated opinion.

“Yep, actually,” I said, setting my napkin on top of the piece of flavorless lasagna, unwilling to let his ludicrous statement stand. “I have guy friends.”

He gave his head a shake. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, defensively and through gritted teeth, because who was he to act like he knew what kind of friends I had? I cleared my throat and added, “A lot of them, actually.”

“You do not.” He took another bite of his chicken, and took the time to chew and swallow before calmly adding, “You have guys that you know. They’re probably nice to you. But they will never be legitimate friends to you—period. That’s impossible.”

I thought about this for a half second before saying, “Okay—I don’t for a millisecond agree or even consider the non-merits of what you’re saying, but why on earth do you believe this utter nonsense?”

“I heard it first in a movie. Ever seen When Harry Met Sally?”

“No,” I said, but I had a vivid memory of my parents watching it on DVD. My dad loved it, but I remembered my mom saying it was boring and a little too “talkie,” whatever that meant.

“It’s this movie that my mom loved,” he said, looking like he, too, was in the middle of a memory. “So I was forced as a kid to watch it with her like a hundred times. The dude in the movie—Harry—says men and women can’t be friends, and it’s always stuck with me because he’s totally right.”

“No, he’s—”

“Take you, for example,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “You’re a relatively attractive human female, so biologically, the human males want to score with you. If they’re single and hanging out with you, they actually want to be getting down with you.”