The Thing About Three

chapter five | halftime

I GUESS DALLAS and Megan didn't hit it off as well as I thought they did, because I didn't hear a peep about her the following week.

Though, Dallas never mentioned girls to me if he could help it, so I wouldn't really know if he liked her or not. I just let myself assume that he didn't. And I liked the assumption, so I stuck with it.

I didn't see Dallas much during the week. He was back in the shop a lot instead of upfront with me in his office, trying to pick up some of Bill's slack.

Bill had sprained his ankle (or so he had told us) outside of work that Sunday, and was out for a week, leaving a lot of repairs for Dallas to deal with.

On the bright side, Noah was a fast learner and was able to help as much as he could. On the downside, he didn't miss an opportunity to come up to the front and mess with me.

Surprisingly, being around him so often wasn't as exhausting as I thought it would be. I started to get comfortable with him, and actually began enjoying his presence more than usual, mainly because he kept me from thinking about Dallas.

Of course, I started to like-like him a bit more, too, and I was perfectly fine with that. If anything, my feelings for him kept me distracted from my feelings for Dallas.

Noah was a safe guy to let my heart warm to. He wasn't serious, being all jokes and harmless flirting, so I really couldn't get to the level of emotion I was at with Dallas. I couldn't establish that deep, heartfelt connection. To put it short—Noah was the guy you crushed on, not the guy you fell in love with. So, I let myself crush on him, because it helped to curb some of my thoughts and feelings away from Dallas.

But on Friday, all I could do was think about Dallas. It was an unusually slow day, which let Dallas go back to his managing duties.

He mostly stayed in his office during my shift, leaving his door open like he always did in the way that allowed for me to have a straight-shot view of him when I turned my head to the left.

I abused this power, of course, always stealing glances when I thought he wasn't looking. Sadly, I never caught him looking back. He was so hyper-fixated on his computer screen that I didn't think he knew he was in reality anymore.

But he did look up when Noah entered the room very loudly calling out my name.

"Yo, Champagne!" I whirled around in my chair, my eyes meeting his. "You going to the game tonight?"

"Uh, I haven't really thought about it," I said to him, trying to make myself look busy with my doodles.

"You should come," he said, coming to sit on the corner of my desk. "I just talked to Rex and he said he and Alayna were thinking about going—they're in town for some wedding."

"Oh, well if they go, I'll definitely go," I answered.

"Cool," he replied. "What about you, Whitlock?" Noah called out to Dallas. "Football game with us and Alayna and Rex?"

Dallas leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on his armrests as he thought before nodding. "Yeah, I'm down."

Noah left shortly after, leaving me alone with my excitement. It was rare that I got to spend my nights with friends. Well, it was rare to spend my anything with friends.

All I had was friend—Dallas, and even though we were just about as close as platonic guy-girl friendships could get, you couldn't really be best friends with the person you're secretly in love with.

And it wasn't like I had a mother at home to talk to about everything. She died before I was old enough to really have any memories of her. All I had was a dad who, while he gave good advice, kind of went glassy-eyed and shrunk into himself whenever I even broached a topic dealing with girl problems or love interests.