Page 36 of Thank you, Next

That sounded like a whole production to get to the reason she wasn’t The One for a stand-up comedian. He got finding someone you could laugh with—his whole marriage had been built on gallows humor about working in the restaurant industry—but having to douse their inner turmoil in alcohol before having a conversation with someone was a bit much.

“You’re judging me for dating a stand-up comedian, aren’t you?” Alex almost read his mind.

“Not judging you, but questioning his charm.” Will had done a little research on this guy. He was markedly less good-looking than James.

“Well, looks aren’t everything.” Alex shrugged. “He was great in bed.” Before he could get jealous, which he shouldn’t be doing because jealousy was bad, she added, “Well, he was great in the sack when he didn’t have whiskey dick.”

“It sounds like you two didn’t work out because of alcoholism.” If Alex decided to give up on talking to this guy, or there was a reason she hadn’t worked out with this guy other than something she did, they could get back to kissing. If that’s what she wanted after having a conversation about the kissing.

And if she was hesitant to continue kissing, he wasn’t opposed to tempting and seducing her into it. He would be as underhanded as he needed to be to get more of Alex.

“I knew that I was likely getting some substance-abuse issues when I started dating a stand-up.” Alex looked at the door to the club as though she was dreading seeing the dude again. “Best get it over with.”

As they made their way through the club to the courtyard behind it where the show would be held, he stopped her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, and he felt like a jerk for asking. He didn’t know where he stood with her, and he wasn’t used to the feeling of caring about whether someone else was on the same page. “I mean, you only kissed me a week ago and then haven’t talked to me since. Excuse me if I’m a little wary of that, given our history.”

Oh shit. “I thought about calling you—”

“You know what?” She pulled her arm out of his grasp. “I’m glad you didn’t. If you had called, I would have thought you cared about me.”

He didn’t have a good answer for that. Although he really had thought about calling, he didn’t know if the kiss had meant anything to her. Instead of staying and talking to him, she’d suggested they leave with Jane as soon as she got a text from her friend. And when he’d assumed that she would get out of the car at his place so they could talk things out and possibly pick up where they’d left off, she’d stayed in the car and done an awkward salute at him.

She’d been unreadable, and he hadn’t wanted to risk getting his olive branch slapped back into his face. It had happened too many times with Alex. She’d never forgiven him for rejecting her when they were lost teenagers. And every time he felt like they were making progress, she tripped him and kicked dirt in his face.

And even though all signs pointed to her enjoying the kiss, he didn’t even think that she liked him very much. So he hadn’t reached out. Like a coward. But he wasn’t too cowardly to apologize. “I’m sorry. I should have called. I just assumed that we would talk about it when we were done here.”

“It’s fine,” she said, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. He was going to say something else, maybe emphasize his apology, when she said, “C’mon. The show’s about to start.”

The last thing he felt like doing was laughing.

•••

Maybe Will was right, and it didn’t matter why she was always the last one before The One. It wasn’t like she wanted to be The One for any of the guys she’d dated—not really. She had very good reasons for eschewing marriage altogether. But in the week since she’d kissed Will, it suddenly mattered more that she couldn’t seem to find someone who would think about her feelings. She knew that it could seem—at times—like she didn’t have any, but it hurt to share an OMG-mazing kiss with someone and then not hear from him other than a “Still on for Friday?” text around midweek.

What could she read into about that? Maybe someone more compelling to him had asked him out on a date. Maybe he’d rather work on stuff for the opening of the new restaurant, which was coming up in a few weeks. Maybe he felt so awkward about the kiss that he couldn’t look her in the face anymore. The possibilities—at least the ones in which he was on the precipice of rejecting her yet again—were endless.

This was why she’d set out to get answers from her exes. None of them had worked out, and some of them had even bruised her heart. But none of them had left the ache that Will had. And she was more annoyed that she was the last straw to being in the dating world for them anyway. She needed to know why she was such a trial that they committed themselves permanently to the very next person they met.

She was in a really bad mood, but a strong vodka soda and a funny feature act before her ex Ace’s set helped loosen her up. The woman who came on before him told a lot of humorous and relatable stories about planning a wedding while pregnant—or at least Alex could imagine relating to them in a universe where she wanted kids.

Will sat next to her in the dim evening air, lit by a string of white Christmas lights. It was warm out, so he’d taken off his leather jacket to reveal another of his endless supply of plain T-shirts. It was black this time. Faded, with little holes at the edges. It had been well loved.

That was the thing about Will. Once he loved something, he kept it. He loved Lexi, and he took that love seriously, even after she and his father were long divorced. Will’s own divorce had to have been so hard on him.

At the wedding, she’d forced herself to keep her eyes open the whole time and really look at the way Will had looked at April. She wanted for there to be no doubt in her own mind that Will was never going to be hers. And he’d looked at April as though she was the whole world. He hadn’t cried, at least not that she could see from halfway back in the sanctuary.

If Will had broken her heart when she was a teenager, he’d shattered it when he’d gotten married. The feeling of pain and hollowness in her chest had taken her by surprise. She’d thought she’d been over it. But she hadn’t been, so she’d hardened her heart toward him even further.

The trouble was, the more she hardened her heart toward Will, the harder it was to feel anything for someone new.

Oddly enough, she’d been at the wedding with Ace. She’d only started dating the stand-up because she’d been pretty drunk at a comedy club—not this one—when she’d met him and he’d laughed when she’d given him the finger and told him she’d rather suck on a dumpster full of dicks than let him buy her a drink.

That had actually made him a little more interested. Although she hadn’t been lying when she’d told Will that Ace was great in the sack, she’d left off the part about how he could only get off if she was insulting him while he came. And that it kind of turned her on, too. Until it didn’t.

But she’d kept seeing him for a while after that had stopped being fun. She just hadn’t heard from him when he returned from the road once. Alex had left a few messages, but he’d never returned them, and eventually she’d given up.

A few months later, she saw—via Twitter, of course—that he’d met a woman on the road trip after he’d ghosted her and married her in a very tasteful ceremony on Martha’s Vineyard.