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I’m smart enough to know why I did what I did.
If I hadonlydone it for Sophie, then I probably wouldn’t have flirted with Evan while leaving the restaurant. Or what I think flirting is at least. Which in my case included a lot of awkward chuckling and weird smiles and a promise of a call later to make another date. Furthermore, ifonlySophie had been on my mind, I probably would have offered some sort of an apology to Tara for leaving with her date. But as it is, all I did was offer a small smile to her before looking away.
The first thing I did — the awkward flirting — was because I wanted to piss off the asshole I’m in love with. And the second thing was for me. It was because I couldn’t bear the thought of him going back tohisdate after crashing and burning mine.
So no, it wasn’t only for Sophie.
It was also for him.
He made me do it.
And despite the fact that it’s even more imperative now to move on from him because hey, I’m in love with an asshole, I still can’t bear the thought of him dropping me off and going back to his date.
That’s whywhen his car breaks down in the middle of the highway — a very lonely part of the highway that’s buried under inches and inches of snow and flanked by nothing but dense woods — I don’t even blink an eye. When he tries to get it to start back up and fails, I purse my lips to stop my smile. When he calls AAA to come help us and they say that they can’t get to us for a few hours because they’ve been swamped with requests during the storm, my first thought is,yay, he can’t make it back to her in time.
It doesn’t hit me that we’re stuck in the middle of a snowstorm on an empty highway until he tells me that there’s a cabin in the woods — a cabin that belongs to his friend and teammate, Ledger Thorne — that we could take shelter in until help comes.
“Wait,” I say, cutting him off mid-speech as he tries to explain where this cabin is. “What?”
We’re standing by the hood of his car under the onslaught of heavy snow. Even though I’m all bundled up in my favorite bottle-green coat with the biggest hood there ever was, I’m still shivering from the chill. I don’t know how he’s managing with just a bomber-style jacket and nothing else.
He doesn’t look happy with my interruption and takes in a sharp, impatient breath. Then he bites out, “As I wassaying, I just texted Ledger if it’s okay to use it and he says yes. The cabin isn’t far from here. A ten-minute walk tops. Unless you want to freeze to death out here, we should get going.”
“I’m not freezing to death,” I lie, noticing how the thick snowflakes cling to his hair like they never want to let go. They also cling to his dark eyelashes, the side of his full mouth and the breadth of his shoulders, making it look like he’s been dusted in sugar.
“You’re not,” he states flatly.
I blink away crazy thoughts and shake my head. “No, I’m not. I’m perfectly fine.”
He gives me a look. “If you turn any more red, you’d look like the stop sign that we passed half a mile back.”
“The one,” I point out, burrowing my gloved hands inside the pockets of my coat, “that let me just say, you didn’t even stop at.”
“There was no one to stopfor.”
“Yes, because no one in their right mind would leave the house tonight,” I snap unnecessarily.
Oh my God, isn’t that the truth.
What was Ithinking? What was mymotherthinking?
Sending me out on a date in a stupid snowstorm even after I reminded her about the weather. This has to be the chilliest snowstorm ever. And it’s slowly seeping into my bones. Seeping and seeping, and slowly killing.
“Unlike you,” he says.
“Well, unlike you too.”
He stares at me a beat and I swear to God, in that beat, the storm picks up. The flakes are thicker and heavier. The wind is chillier and more lashing. It’s noisier too, howling through the woods.
Then, “Are we going to go or are we going to argue while we stand here, turning blue?”
“I thought I was turning red,” I keep at it.
“Blue, red, purple, whatever the fuck. It’s not going to matter what color you are when you are dead from the cold,” he informs me.
“I’m not going to die from the cold,” I lie again because I think I truly am going to die if I stand here much longer. “You’regoing to die from the cold. Look at what you’re wearing.” I glance down to his jacket before shooting my gaze up. “You know what, you were so interested in talking about my clothes, weren’t you? Why don’t we talk about yours, huh? Why don’t we —”
He speaks over me. “You want to talk about my state of undress then.”
