“Then you’ll what?” I ask. “Then what will you do?”
He tips his head back against the window. “Then I don’t fucking know what I’ll do. I don’t fucking know what either of us will do.”
And neither do I.
My heart is beating in my ears. My stomach twisted up as I contemplate the cold hard reality of my best friend falling for the girl I’m in love with.
I can’t lie to him. I don’t want to lie to him.
And I don’t want to lie to myself, either.
“I’m in love with her,” I admit, and it sounds despicable even as I say it.
“Fuck,” he says.
“Fuck,” I agree.
He takes a deep breath. “Well, fuck. That’s really put us up shit creek.”
I close my eyes. “When she showed you her–” I pause. “Does she want you? Does she… have feelings?”
“Fuck knows what the girl wants,” he says. “She doesn’t think you’re interested. Says you blew her out and don’t give a shit about her. She probably thinks the same about me.”
A wave of regret washes over me. “She really thinks that?”
I open my eyes and he’s staring right at me. “She’s not as confident as she thinks she is. It’s all bluster. I don’t think she has any idea how attractive she is.”
“And she thinks she’s not good enough…”
“Yes, that’s what I’d suspect.” His fingers tap against the steering wheel. “Not gonna lie to you, Mike. She’s under my fucking skin.”
I laugh, because what else is there to do?
“The Carrie Wells effect. Welcome to my world.”
“We need to work out what we do from here, because she’s in my house, Mike. She’s in my house and I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“And neither can I,” I admit. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else for months.”
“Fuck,” he says again.
“We can’t act on this,” I tell him. “She needs to know she can count on us. She needs to know she’s safe, and supported.”
“She doesn’t need pandering to, she needs discipline. She needs to feel part of something, and to feel part of something she needs to know there are ground rules.”
I sigh. “Jack, it’s not that simple. Carrie has behavioural issues, she’s been let down by the system and –”
He shakes his head. “She pushes away everyone that gives a shit about her. She tests people and they always fail. They fail because they refuse to stand their ground and pull her up on her bullshit. They expect her to behave like a fucking nightmare so she does. But not in my house. Not with me.”
“You’ve known her a couple of weeks,” I tell him.
“And you’ve been working with her five months and she speaks to you like you’re a piece of shit.”
His observation smarts. “What’s your point?”
He shifts in his seat. “My point is that your approach isn’t working, not with her. If we’re going to get her through whatever crap she’s got going on in that pretty head of hers, we need a united front. She needs to know that she can’t just throw her fucking toys out of the pram without consequences.”
“And you plan to do that by fucking her? Is that what you’re saying?” My tone is more brutal than I intend.
“I’m not saying anything about fucking the girl, Mike. I’m just making an observation. Whether I fuck her or not is incidental.”
“Incidental?”
He nods. “Yeah, incidental. One of us is going to end up fucking the girl. Now or in six fucking months, it doesn’t matter. The question is, how do we make sure this situation works in a way that doesn’t fuck one, two or all fucking three of us right up.” He pauses. “We’ve been friends a long time, Mike. Never has a girl come between us so far, I don’t want it to start now.”
My laugh is low and mainly for my benefit. “You’ve never been interested in a girl long enough for her to come between us, what makes you think Carrie is going to be any different?”
“Because I think I’m falling in love with her,” he says, and my heart fucking stops. “When I said I’m falling for her, I meant it, Mike. I mean I’m falling for her hard.”
“And I’ve already fallen,” I tell him. “Hard.”
He nods. “So what do we do now? Where the fuck do we go from here?”
I shake my head. Sigh, then take a breath.
“I have no fucking idea.”
Carrie
I hear Jack’s car pull away and it breaks my heart.