Atticus by Lex Tarin

Author:Lex, Tarin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tarin Lex
Published: 2023-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Four

Arlen

I’m not going to let the drive back to Atticus’s house be the most awkward and uncomfortable experience of my life.

Not that I know how to not make it awkward.

“Let me just be the first to say that I’m sorry, I should never have said what I said. You’re my best friend, I’m sorry for being weird. Let’s please not make this weird, Atty, okay. Can we please?”

Atticus takes forever to say words. And then when he does, they’re stupid ones.

“Ain’t that big a deal,” is what he tells me. He adds a one-shoulder shrug. “We’re not really best friends.”

“What are you talking about? Of course we are.”

He glances at me. “Why don’t you ever play Taylor Swift when I’m with you?”

“What?” What would that have anything to do with this?

“You’re always blasting it in your live pics. Like, always. If I was your best friend, wouldn’t you listen to Tay Tay while I’m around?”

Did he just say Tay Tay? “You…play my live pics?”

“Of course I play your live pics. You don’t play mine?”

Would if I could. “You never have them turned on.”

“That’s because I’m a closeted Swiftie, too.” His smirk runs away from his face.

“Shut up,” I gripe. He is such a bad liar. “I’m not in the closet. Everyone knows I like Taylor Swift.”

“Everyone knows you like her. Not everyone knows you are obsessed.”

“I’m not obsessed.”

“You only see day-light.”

“Hush.”

“You know every lyric all too well.”

“Would you stop it already?” I beg him, exasperated. “It’s just good background music for when I’m at my pottery wheel.”

“When you’re doing anything.”

“Stop it.”

“You named your café after one of her tracks.”

I wait for him to explain himself because, WHAT.

“You want customers to feel like when they are there, they have nothing else on their mind or to-do list, nothing outside of those four walls even should matter,” Atticus says. “It’s their break, their little slice of sweet nothing in their day.”

I just look at him for a long while then, blinking.

“Literally nobody knows that,” I finally say.

“But I know that,” he says.

“We are best friends.” I slowly shift my gaze to the road. “I… don’t know… what to do with my heart right now.”

“She’s playing in Billings,” Atty informs me like I didn’t already know that. “I could take you to her show.”

“That’s like six hours away. And besides, it’s sold-out.”

“It wasn’t sold-out when I bought the tickets.”

Another pregnant pause. What is he even doing? He’s a Swiftie? Or just a mastermind. But he’s so much of a grump, so much of the time.

“I don’t understand,” I say, looking right at him. “I’m getting major more-than-friends vibes from you right now, even though you were saying we’re not even besties, but you turned me down.”

“I know.”

“I was so embarrassed.”

“I know.”

“You have feelings for me too.”

He pulls into his driveway. Throws the shifter in park. Then we’re just sitting here in my words You have feelings for me too, until Atticus mutters, “I know.”

“Then why did you?”

“Same reason my mom kicked me out of the house at seventeen.

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