Page 9 of Ghosted By Texas
“What if you met Clarence and realized that he was in love with me? Would you then be okay if I called him to come fix something in my apartment while we’re there alone? What about if he asked me to go out to dinner with him? Would you want to meet my family if they were dead set on me marrying Clarence one day? What if we were innocently watching a movie and I fell asleep on his couch and spent the night there? I would of course, assure that nothing happened, but would you be inclined to believe it, if I told you that right now or even two weeks or a month from now?”
“Fuck no! Clea better be a chick.”
“But you should trust me, though. Who cares if Clea is a man that I’ve had sex with often for the past couple years? If I say it won’t happen again, that should make you comfortable with the situation, right? Plus, I just know that you and Clarence will become best friends, too. Who knows, maybe when I’m not around, my former fuck buddy bestie and you can trade tips and tricks on how to get me off. I bet that would happen because you know, jealousy games and shit.”
It might have been petty to mock him, but he needed to understand how callously he was treating my feelings about the situation. Slowly, I watched as his reaction to the same exact scenario he’d placed me in, finally dawned on him.
“Okay, I get it. Fuck, I never even thought about it like that. Not that I don’t trust you to be honest with me. As far as I’m concerned, you have my faith until you do something to take it away.”
“You did do something to take away the little faith I would have given you at the start of a relationship. I had faith that I was the only person you were seeing, dating, and potentially screwing when we started hanging out. As it turned out, that wasn’t true. Even if you say that you weren’t physical with Jordan since before our first date, you never informed her of that change and certainly didn’t tell me about your former arrangement. All those things should have happened before you ever attempted to move forward with me.”
“I feel like such an asshole, and I never meant for it to seem like I was hiding anything. I swear, I would have told you about my past with Jordan before introducing you.” He saw me noticeably cringe and inadvertently mimicked my response.
“Although now that you gave me that very detailed example using ‘Clarence’,” he finger-quoted the name. “I’m guessing even the thought of being introduced to her in a different light is not the greatest idea.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know what to do about her. It was stupid to start down any physical path. I never thought it would be a big deal with people I dated down the road, though.”
“That’s because you’re the one who doesn’t have feelings beyond friendship. She’s dealing with unrequited love or whatever. Anyone you date is going to have to deal with her inevitable jealousy and the hate she throws their way. Kind of like she tried to do with me in the movie theater parking lot by talking so cavalierly about your sex life and insinuating it had been more recent than it was.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t think everything through sooner.”
“Austin, you said you dated other people during the two years when your relationship turned physical with Jordan.” He nodded his agreement. “Why didn’t it work out with any of those women?”
“I don’t know. They all just kind of lost interest in me.” He shrugged his shoulders, clearly embarrassed to admit that he’d basically been dumped by every woman he tried to date over the past couple years.
“So, your relationship not progressing with them was always on the part of the women?”
“There were only a handful of women I tried to date, and I broke it off with one because she was crazy,” he explained. As he did, something dawned on him, though. His eyes met mine briefly before he quickly looked away.
“Let me guess, she made a bunch of claims about Jordan that didn’t seem believable to you?”
“She’s been my best friend practically my whole life,” he argued, which was enough of an admission.
“Still, that’s the uphill battle any woman who dates you will have to deal with. Even if nothing is going on between you and your friend while you’re with someone else, I promise you that Jordan is probably filling them in with all the details of your past together. You missed the daggers she threw at me with her eyes the other night because your focus was on my reaction. I can just bet that all those women were run off by your bestie.”
“Becs, I don’t think…”
“I’m going to stop you right there. What you’re trying to do now is why things will never work out between us, or with any other woman you try to date. Jordan will always come first. You will always defend her actions or pretend they never happened. You have a Jordan problem, Austin, and it’s a lot bigger than you seem to think it is.”
“I told you that she went away for a while. I think the distance will help put our relationship back into perspective for both of us. Please don’t give up on you and me because I made a mess of things with her.”
The niggling feeling in my gut should have been warning enough not to jump in with the man. The overwhelming urge to be with him negated most of the worry, though. There was no doubt in my mind that Austin was being genuine with me. I didn’t think he had real feelings for his best friend, aside from normal bestie vibes, despite the fact that Jordan was dealing with a whopping dose of unrequited love, lust, or maybe just a weird obsession created by overzealous, matchmaking parents. Still, I went against my better judgment, and decided to take a chance on my Mr. Texas.
“How about we put all of our cards on the table and then we try going back to square one with a first date all over again?” I suggested.
“What exactly does ‘put all our cards on the table’ mean?”
“Austin, are you married?” He grinned and shook his head in response. “Dating anyone?”
“No and no.”
“Are you currently in, or were you recently involved with and forgot to end it with your partner, a fuck buddy situation of any type?”
He sighed and shook his head with what looked like remorse written in his eyes as they met with mine again. “My best friend, since we were kids, is a girl. For the past two years, we’ve had a friends with benefits arrangement whenever one of us isn’t seeing other people. I have broken that arrangement with her, and she isn’t even in town right now.”
“Well, my next question was going to be: Do you have a female bestie or close friend who might cause problems in our relationship, but the last question kind of answered that. How is your friend going to take me being in your life when she gets back?”
“She’s going to have to deal with it.” Austin didn’t even hesitate as he gave his answer.
“Okay, so what will you do if she can’t deal with it and tries to cause trouble to get me out of the picture?” I widened my eyes as if to reiterate my earlier point about why all the women he attempted to date broke things off or seemed to come at him with ‘crazy’ accusations about his bestie.