I shrug. “Sure.”
“I mean, not that I’m surprised you told him,” she says, “knowing how tight Mark and you are, but doesn’t he usually shoot down these types of ideas?”
“Oh, he’s trying to shoot it down,” I mutter, picking a little fleck of candy cane off my slowly melting mound of whipped cream.
“Yeeeeah,” Ivy says slowly. “I’m gonna suggest you try to meet up with these exes with Mark not around.”
“Well . . . I mean, yeah, I guess that’s the plan. Although now that I think of it, I am two for two with having Mark present for the encounters. First with Jack at the restaurant, then with Joey at the tree farm.”
“Uh-huh.” She finishes off her drink. “And how’d that go? Either one end happily?”
“Well . . .”
“Sweets, look. I love you. I love Mark. You guys are two of my favorites. But when it comes to relationships, best friends of the opposite sex are only, well, I don’t want to say troublesome, but it’s tricky, you know? How many of your exes have had an issue with Mark and you being so close?”
I shift in my seat. “A few.”
“Most,” she corrects. “And how many of Mark’s girlfriends have been chilly to you despite your attempts to BFF all over them?”
“A few.”
“All,” she corrects. “It’s not because you’re dating bad guys, or because he’s dating bitchy women, it’s just . . . it’s normal for new relationships to be jealous, and Mark’s a damn good catalyst for jealousy.”
“He’s just Mark!”
“He looks like a lumberjack version of Clark Kent, Byrne. Other men don’t exactly love their girl being besties with sexy, scruffy Superman.”
Her description pulls up his face—and body—perfectly in my mind, and I suddenly feel just a tiny bit short of breath, and, um . . . is it hot in here?
Still, she has a point. I mean, I don’t like that it works that way, but . . . it sort of does. Some of the guys I’ve dated haven’t seemed to care about Mark, but they’re also the ones that didn’t seem to care much about me either. The rest got weird whenever Mark’s name was mentioned. Even Colin, who I rather openly adored, got kind of quiet whenever Mark and I talked on the phone during college. Of all the people in my life, Colin was the closest I ever came to telling someone about Mark’s sister. Colin and I were dating when Emily died, and it felt wrong to tell my boyfriend that I was going home to visit my parents rather than the full truth—that I was going to a funeral.
But it had felt more wrong to tell Colin my best friend’s secret.
Ivy’s right. Maintaining a romantic relationship with a guy at the same time as fostering a platonic relationship with a different guy is not for the faint of heart.
“Okay, I’ll keep Mark out of it. And here’s the best part: I already have Doug and Chad on my radar. Chad agreed to have lunch, and if Doug messages me back—”
Ivy laughs. “Two in one day. I love this about you. But you really think you’ll be able to determine anything over lunch?”
“That’s what the mistletoe test is for.”
“Uh-huh. And how are you planning to lure Chad Morrister, a fortysomething podiatrist, beneath the mistletoe over lunch.”
“Easy,” I say with a grin. “I’ve invited him over for lunch.”
“And you’ve got a bough of mistletoe?”
“Better.” I lean forward. “I’ve got three.”
Kelly Byrne’s Ex List: Version Four
Jack Chance
Joey Russo
Chad Morrister: Okay, so our breakup wasn’t quite as amicable or mutual as I thought. Turns out someone’s been holding a grudge that I “unceremoniously dumped him.” Whoops. And he has zero interest in “setting himself up for that sort of pain again.” Double whoops.
Onward.
Doug Porter, you’re up, and I’ve got a good feeling about you. . . .
December 18, Monday Afternoon
“And we need a little Christmas, right this very minute . . .”
I sing along with the song full blast, off-key and everything, as I wash the dishes and set them on the drying rack. My grandma never had a dishwasher installed, and I keep meaning to, but it just doesn’t quite seem to make sense since I don’t even live here full-time.
Plus I’m a pretty good dishwasher. The cooking, not so much, but I find cleaning sort of therapeutic.
I’m up to my elbows in suds when I hear Rigby’s happy bark and the heavy footsteps that so often follow it.
I glance over my shoulder and smile when I see Mark come through my back door. “Hey! Thought you’d be at the restaurant.”
“On my way. Just working the dinner shift today, not lunch.” He glances at my kitchen table, frowning a little when he sees the table that still has the two placemats. “I thought you and Ivy went out for coffee.”
“We did. The lunch setting was for Chad.”
“Chad?”
“Morrister,” I say, glancing over my shoulder again, as I set a serving plate on the rack and drop a pan into the water-filled sink to soak. “We dated—”
“I remember. And you . . . cooked?”
I laugh at his skeptical tone. “I made a chicken salad. Your recipe, of course, although please don’t tell my mother.”
I expect him to smile. Usually praise of his cooking at least gets me a half smile. Nothing.
“He still here?”
“Yeah. Stashed him in my bedroom,” I say, peeling off the rubber gloves I donned to protect my candy cane manicure.
Mark’s eyes flick up to the ceiling.
“I’m kidding. He went home.”
Mark moves to the counter, pulling a piece of chicken out of the Tupperware I haven’t put in the fridge yet. “Chicken’s overcooked.”
“Aren’t you going to ask how it went?” I cross my arms.
He points at the leftovers. “If you served him that, I already know how it went.” I throw the dish towel at him, and this time he does smile. “Fine. How’d it go?”
“Not great,” I say, stepping back and hoisting myself up onto the counter. “He seems to be a bit, um, bitter about the way things ended between us. I hadn’t seen that coming.”
“Really? You thought he’d be happy that you dumped him?”
“Well, no. Honestly, I didn’t think I dumped him. He was ten years older, you know? He was thirty-four and ready to settle down, I was twenty-four and still learning that shots on a Tuesday night are a bad decision. I thought I was doing him a favor when I suggested we weren’t super-compatible.”
“I take it he didn’t feel the same?”
“Well, let’s just say when he accepted my lunch invitation so readily, I thought it was because he might want to reconcile. Turns out, it was more to tell me all the ways his life has been better with me out of it.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “He was a very wounded bear, or whatever.”
“Not gonna ask what that means.” Mark walks toward the living room, pokes his head in. “No tree topper.”
“Still working on it.” I hop down from the counter and put the lid on the leftovers, even though I know I probably won’t eat them. Mark’s right, the chicken wasn’t great, and the rest of the salad’s even worse.