Happily Never After

“THAT GUY. YOUR turn.”

“Okay.” I narrowed my eyes and looked at the man who’d just entered the bar. Max and I had been playing “What would that person do in an apocalypse?” for nearly an hour, side by side on our stools at the bar, and I was having a blast.

“His name is Chuck and he’s going to die the first week.”

“Why?” Max asked, also watching the new customer as he lifted a bottle of Dos Equis to his lips.

“Because he works in construction—no offense,” I quickly added, not wanting to insult him.

When I’d done my Max creeping, I’d noticed he had degrees in architecture and engineering, which somehow made him wildly interesting to me.

Probably because I sucked at math and he obviously did not.

“No offense?” Max said with a teasing gleam in his dark eyes. “Because I work in construction. Have you been stalking me, Miss Steinbeck?”

“I wouldn’t say stalking,” I replied, having a hard time not grinning. “More like investigating.”

“Should I be alarmed?” he asked, looking anything but. He looked, actually, like he was amused that I’d checked him out.

He also looked really freaking hot.

He was wearing nothing special—black button-down shirt, faded jeans, square-toed boots—but he wore nothing special well. His shirt was rolled up, giving a little forearm, and I was distracted by the breadth of his chest. I was definitely not admiring the curve of his ass in those jeans.

Perhaps I needed to slow down on the wine.

I said, “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t a serial killer before I hopped in the car with you.”

“Do LinkedIn profiles include murdering statuses?”

“Ish.”

“Seriously with that?”

“Do you want to hear about Chuck or not?” I set down my wineglass and crossed my arms, my gaze returning to the man.

“Lay it on me, Soph.”

Soph. We barely knew each other, but I was already Soph to him. It didn’t make sense, but it felt right for him to call me that.

Probably because of his involvement in my wedding. That gave us history, somehow, a weird foundation to connect to this new friendship.

Friendship? Were we friends?

“He’s one of those guys who knows enough to be dangerous. A do-it-himselfer, even when he shouldn’t be.”

“I know a lot of those,” Max muttered, also watching Chuck.

“So in the face of danger, he’s going to go all in on his machismo-fueled need to prove he’s a man, right? He’s going to gas up his generator, chop his own wood, get out his crossbow, and find a deer to kill even though his pantry is still full of food.”

As if hearing me, Chuck’s head swiveled in my direction and he looked right at me.

“Gahhh,” I managed, whipping my stool around so I was facing the bar again.

“I think Chuckles sensed your degradation,” Max said, smirking as he slowly turned his stool around, as well.

“I think he did,” I agreed.

“Holy shit, you guys!” TJ appeared from nowhere—now in a hoodie and jeans—and took the stool beside Max, wearing a huge smile. “That was amazing. I can’t believe it worked!”

God, that took me back to my wedding day, the way I’d felt right afterward. It was like a lifetime of stress and worry had dissolved instantly and I’d felt like I could run a hundred miles.

“Can I hug you, Sophie?” he asked me, and that took me a little off guard. I wasn’t a hugger and definitely hadn’t expected this stranger to request it, but I wasn’t a jerk, either.

“Of course,” I said, and the words were barely out of my mouth before he was on his feet and wrapping his arms around me. It was a big, tight, all-encompassing hug that for some reason made me feel a little emotional.

“Thank you so much,” TJ said, and when he pulled back I could see the tears in his eyes.

Tears, sadness, exhaustion, but also—I could see relief.

Because he was free.

Exactly how I’d felt.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and I felt like I’d done something good. Something important.

Which felt amazing because I’d been a bit lost since the wedding.

I glanced over at Max, who was staring at me like he was trying to figure me out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to.

So I flipped him off.

“So how did it go?” I asked TJ, smiling as I heard Max’s deep chuckle. “Did the drama die after we left?”

“Fuck, no,” he said, then proceeded to launch into the bonkers story of how Callie denied everything until Ronnie stood up and confessed. Ronnie confessed, apologized to TJ, then professed his undying love to Callie in front of literally God and everyone.

“So just when I thought the entire ordeal couldn’t get any more Jerry Springer, Callie called Ronnie pathetic and told him she didn’t love him and never had. She said—and I quote—‘I only love your penis.’ ”

“No,” Max said, shaking his head. “Nope. Dude, I am so sorry.”

TJ shrugged. “I’m just glad I finally saw her for who she was before it was too late.”

I raised my wineglass. “Hear, hear.”

We hung out with TJ for another hour, drinking (TJ and I—not Max) and watching baseball on the TVs behind the bar. TJ was incredibly sweet, the kind of guy you wanted to protect at all costs, and I had mad respect for Max’s insistence that I help him out.

He was a very nice guy for being determined to save his old friend.

The more wine I drank, the more interested I became in their childhood stories.

Max was suddenly the most fascinating man on the planet, but not because of my buzz. It was because I was learning about my partner in crime, this stranger I was joining forces with to do something important.

I told him that on the way home. I turned a little in my seat and said, “Do you realize how interesting you’ve become now that we’re partners?”

His lips turned up into a smile, but his eyes stayed on the road. “I did not realize that.”

“I mean, you’re objectively a handsome guy and fairly charming, but who’s not, right?”

“Right . . . ?” he replied, looking amused as his wrist casually hung over the steering wheel.

“I mean,” I explained, “that isn’t necessarily interesting. At least not to me.”

I knew I was tipsy rambling, but I didn’t particularly care. I kept going.

“But now that we’re officially an objecting team and I’ve seen you at work, I want to know where you live, what your office looks like, if you go to a barber or a salon, if you have any pets, what your favorite food is, and what song is stuck in your head lately—you’ve become a whole thing I’m curious about.”

“Well,” he said, glancing over at me for a second before his eyes returned to the road, “I live a couple blocks away from you, my office is modern minimalist, barber, a cat, spaghetti, and ‘Exile.’ ”

“God—cat, spaghetti, and ‘Exile’—we’re the same person,” I replied, surprised.

“Are we?” he asked, giving me a small smile as he hit his blinker and slowed at an intersection.

“Are we what?” I replied, forgetting what I’d last said because he was looking at me and damn, the man was attractive. There was something about the way his lips turned up that did things to my stomach.

I bet he’s good in bed.

Not that I was thinking about sleeping with him—God, no—but objectively speaking, he seemed very . . . capable. He struck me as the kind of guy who was remembered as “the best I ever had” by everyone he’d been with.

He had that I-know-carnal-secrets look about him.

“The same person.” He came to a stop at the red light and looked over at me again, his mouth in a sexy grin.

“Are you laughing at me?” I asked, not caring if he was.

“I’m enjoying you,” he replied, and his grin set butterflies loose in my stomach. “You seem very relaxed.”

“That’s the German dessert wine,” I lied, because the truth was that I barely felt the wine. No, I felt relaxed because I was having more fun with him—had been since he’d picked me up—than I’d had in a very long time. For some reason it was just easy to be myself around him and not get caught up in my own head.

It felt like warm sunshine after a dreary, endless winter, and I was disappointed when he pulled up in front of my building a few minutes later. I wasn’t ready to go back to the usual, and I felt a knot of melancholy as I looked at my lobby doors.

“Hey,” I said, stepping out and closing the door. “Take a picture with me before I go in?”

“What is this, prom night?” he teased as he came around the car.

“No, this is the first night since my wedding that I haven’t cried about Stuart. The first night I haven’t felt broken and alone.” I shrugged and knew I shouldn’t be sharing this with anyone, especially not a man I sort of barely knew, but in the dark of the spring night with a tiny wine buzz, I admitted, “I guess I just want to remember the night I reconnected with happy for a few hours.”