In bright, bold print, it listed SPBespoke28 as the winner of the World’s Worst Boyfriend contest. I knew exactly who had won. The caption went on to explain that they liked to keep the person anonymous so as not to hurt their personal and professional relationships with their poor boyfriend choices.
The article bullet pointed the things this “boyfriend” had done to win such an ignominious title.
Left dirty laundry everywhere.
Stood her up on dates.
Fell asleep in the middle of a conversation.
Ignored calls and texts.
Kept cancelling plans.
Gave her socks for her birthday.
The article went on to outline a list of bad habits that no girl should have to put up with from her guy.
This couldn’t possibly be real. I was not the world’s worst boyfriend.
I mean, I knew I wasn’t the best, but the worst? Those had been Saidy’s words at one point, but I’d thought it was a metaphor.
I’d locked up some of the worst. I definitely wasn’t one of those. Sure, I fell asleep and missed our date the other night. Sometimes accidents happen. And yes, I hadn’t had time to go to Glamma’s birthday celebration.
“Can I buy this?” I asked.
“You can have it. It’s mine, not the store’s. That was the only article that caught my attention this time.”
I nodded and finished paying Marni for our greasy lunch.
I carried the bag in one hand and the magazine in the other. “See you around!” she called as I left the building.
I walked to the car and climbed in.
West sat up from where he’d been napping. “Did you have to make those corndogs yourself?”
I shoved the bag at him and flipped open the magazine. I couldn’t stop staring at the list of grievances. Saidy had won the World’s Worst Boyfriend. Her handle hadn’t exactly been discreet. It was the handle she used for every online profile she ever created!
“What’s that?” West asked around a mouthful of greasy food.
Absentmindedly, I passed him a napkin, just like Saidy would have done if she were here. Saidy. Saidy who’d nominated me as World’s Worst Boyfriend according to this article.
The vindictive backstabber!
“Hey, what’s with the magazine?”
“Just some light afternoon reading,” I muttered.
I tossed the magazine onto the dash and started the van. This was bad. And it had nothing to do with me worrying about her blowing my cover. That was locked in tight, and now I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had made the right decision to keep it a secret from her. She probably would have written an op-ed article about it in the local paper.
I might not have been as present as she was, but did that mean she had to start slinging mud?
I glanced at the obtrusive thing sliding back and forth on the dash as I weaved my way out of town.
I knew one thing, and one thing only, I was going to confront Saidy the first chance I got.
Chapter Eleven
Saidy
Milo finally proposed to Andrea, and she’d managed to act surprised. Or, at least, that was the story she told me when she called me in an excited frenzy to tell me the news. She’d asked me to help plan their wedding and I kindly refused, knowing I couldn’t handle planning an event for two such spur-of-the-moment people. Both of them were adventurers at heart.
I adored them. Which was why I didn’t ever want to feel the need to strangle them.
Today was their engagement party and I was going to show up and be the most supportive friend they ever had.
I didn’t want to think about the fact that I would be the only single one there. That was fine. I’d made my decision, and I knew it was the right one.
I spent over an hour doing my makeup and hair. Then I picked the perfect casual, but sexy dress to showcase the fact that I was feeling good about myself. Even if I wasn’t. Because guess what? I really wasn’t feeling good about myself. I didn’t know what to do with myself now that Fletcher wasn’t part of my life.
And that really sucked.
I also couldn’t figure out how to get the ice machine in my freezer to work. That had been Fletcher’s specialty. I’d been drinking room temperature, non-iced tea for almost a week now.
I sighed and added a layer of gloss on top of my lipstick. Ironically, besides the ice machine, my life hadn’t change much in the last couple of weeks either.
Turning my speakers up in the car as I drove to Milo and Andrea’s house was the perfect thing to pump me up. I listened to classic break-up songs and threw Fletcher’s name in as I sang along with them.
I pulled up to Milo’s country house sitting on a couple acres of beautiful green grass with a big red barn for Andrea’s horses. The house itself was a turn-of-the-century farmhouse they’d renovated themselves. Not because they were into renovation, but because they were up for a challenge.
Milo and Andrea were the kind of friends that you loved completely even though you had minimal things in common with. (Like, the fact that you breathed air.) But they were wonderful friends, never pressuring Fletcher and me to be different. Simply accepting us for who we were.
And now I was going to their engagement party alone. And single. So. Very. Single. It was going to be a little strange going to the party alone. So much of our friendship with Milo and Andrea had been as a couple.
I took a deep breath and stepped from the car, making my way to the house and through the open front door.
A few people I didn’t know stood talking in little groups throughout the house.
I wandered through the living room, toward the outdoor patio. A man standing next to the back door was digging through a tub of ice for a beer bottle. He paused when he saw me and smiled. He reached into the ice again and pulled out two
