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.”
“Oh my God!” I said, half-surprised he’d called me “relatively attractive” when he seemed irritated by my existence, and half-outraged by the absurdity of his words. “You are so wrong. Not all guys are Neanderthals.”
“No, I’m a guy—trust me on this.” He lowered his voice and said, “I mean, I’ve already pictured every relatively attractive human female on this flight naked two or three times, and we aren’t even close to landing.”
“Oh.My.God.” My mouth dropped open and I couldn’t bring myself to close it. Was he seriously that big a pervert? Also—did guys really do that?
“And before you say, But my friend Jeff is in a happy relationship and we hang all the time,” he said, plucking the straw wrapper from his tray and folding it into tiny triangles, “know that little Jeffy will slowly unfriend you because his girlfriend will be pissed if he doesn’t. She’ll wonder why he needs you when he’s got her. And truthfully, part of him probably does want you too, so he’ll either make a move on you and totally screw the pooch, or he’ll save you for his spank bank and remain true to his girl. Either way it will always be there, making friendship a complete impossibility.”
My mouth was still hanging wide open, the same as if he’d just confessed to murdering his parents. I stared at his self-satisfied grin and couldn’t believe he’d ever had a girlfriend.
“And the bottom line is that none of it really matters anyway.” His voice was sure as he dropped the paper and said, “Relationships are doomed to fail. The odds are greater that you’ll be diagnosed with a deadly illness than live happily ever after with the love of your life.”
“You might be the biggest cynic I’ve ever met,” I said, hating that a tiny part of me worried he was right about relationships being doomed to fail.
“I’m a realist.” He looked very matter-of-fact as he pointed to my tray and said, “Are you going to eat your garlic bread?”
“Take it,” I muttered, praying a good tailwind would push us toward Nebraska a little faster.
I couldn’t wait for the flight to be over so I would never have to see Mr. Nothing again.
CHAPTER FOUR ONE YEAR AGO
Bailey
The next time I saw Charlie was at a movie theater. I was there with Zack, my boyfriend, and we’d just paid for our tickets when we heard clapping from the lobby area by concessions.
“Want to check it out?” Zack looked at his phone and said, “We’ve still got five minutes before the movie starts.”
“Sure.” I smiled at his handsome face, and he grabbed my hand, leading me toward the fray. I was head over heels for Zack, the cute and oh-so-smart debate captain. He was everything I wasn’t—confident, charming, extroverted—and he technically could’ve led me into fire, and I probably would have followed.
“It’s a promposal.” Zack pointed just to the left of the popcorn stand, where someone had hung a fake movie poster. Instead of a title, it said “PROM?” Across the top there was a picture of a dude with a hilarious questioning expression on his face.
It was charming and clever, and just as I narrowed my eyes and thought, That guy looks really familiar, I saw the couple. They were standing in front of the poster, smiling as a movie theater employee took their picture. The girl was petite, blond, and pretty, and the guy was tall, dark, and kind of jacked.
Oh my God—Mr. Nothing!