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normal with Spencer. But in the back of
my mind, I couldn’t help but think that there was more to our changing
friendship than I realized.
    ***
    “Hey, how was your
night?” Tim greeted me with a kiss and proceeded into the kitchen.
    “It was fine, just
helped my mom.” I knew I sounded off and felt guilty for lying to him again. I
sat on a barstool at the counter and watched him help himself to a glass of
soda and a bag of chips.
    Tim brought his
snack to the couch and sat down, picking up the remote control. “Ready to watch
some football? Then maybe we can go back to my place and hang out there for a
while.”
    “Sure.” I crossed
the room to sit beside him, not sure what to say next. It would be weird if I
started apologizing for the previous night again, so I settled on saying
nothing at all.
    “Do you have any
salsa?” Tim asked.
    “I think so, want
me to check?”
    Tim shook his
head. “I got it, you find the game.”
    “Thanks,” I took
the remote from him and surfed through the sports channels.
    “You got a letter
from Spencer?” Tim asked from the kitchen. He was holding my letter from
Spencer.
    I shrugged and continued
flipping through the guide. I hoped that he wouldn’t ask when I got it or draw
any conclusions about why I really bailed on him the night before. I found the
game we’d planned to watch and selected it, but I wasn’t really that excited
about it. I’d much rather be doing something else with my time than watching
Tim’s favorite football team play against another team that I didn’t care
about. I only liked sports when my team was playing.
    I glanced toward
the kitchen and balked when I saw Tim unfolding one of the letters. There was
nothing in it that I wouldn’t mind him knowing, but it still felt like an
invasion of privacy for him to just read it like that. I jumped up from the
couch and took the letter out of his hands.
    “That’s not very
nice,” Tim said, frowning. “Do you have something to hide?”
    “No,” I answered.
“I just don’t know why you would start reading it before asking if you could.
It’s not addressed to you.”
    Tim raised a
perfectly kempt brow and ran his fingers through his cropped brown hair. “Ellie,
are you sure there isn’t something I should know about you and Spencer? I know
you guys have been friends for a long time, but I can’t help but wonder if
there’s something more going on between you two.”
    I laughed without
humor. “Tim, we’ve been over this. Spencer is my best friend. I care about him
a lot, but I’m not the girl for him. He’s not the guy for me. We both know
that. So, once again, there is nothing going on between us.”
    “I can understand
why he wouldn’t be the guy for you.”
    I surprised myself
with how defensive I felt in that moment. It was one thing for me to
occasionally mock Spencer for his womanizing ways, but I didn’t want anyone
else doing it. “You know, Tim, green’s not a very good look for you.”
    He cocked his head
at me with a hint of challenge. “It’s not jealously. He’s a dick. And he treats
girls like objects that he can just throw away when he’s done with them. I’ve
known him as long as you have, and I’ve never met a girl that he hasn’t slept
with and then dumped right away. Present company excluded.”
    I watched
stoically as Tim reached for my hand and brought it to his lips when he said
the last words. I tugged my hand from his grasp. “That doesn’t make him a
‘dick,’ Tim. He’s complicated. There are things in his past that made him the
way that he is, but he really is a good guy underneath all of that. You just
don’t know him like I do.”
    “And how does that
excuse his behavior with girls? He’s not a God, Ellie.”
    “I know that. But
those girls never jump into bed with him thinking they’re going to get a
relationship out of it. He tells them up front that he probably won’t even call
them again.”
    Tim shook his head
and laughed. “Yeah,