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"You want me to hold your hand?"
"No. That won't help. My ex… Ross. He was a friend of hers. She wasn't happy about that."
"Oh."
"Oh?"
"You stole her boyfriend."
"No. Maybe. She had a boyfriend at the time." Maybe Lily did have a thing for Ross. She made him sound so great when she described him. I thought it was because she wanted to set us up. But she might have wanted him for herself. "It was more than that. I leaned on her more than she could handle."
He pulls me closer. "Tell me about it."
"Don't you want to celebrate?"
"I want to hear this."
Okay. I want to tell him. But I'm not about to bring down the mood with my ugly past. Not if it doesn't matter to him.
I run my fingers over his neck. "It's a long story."
"I've got all night."
I motion to the door. "This place closes in an hour."
"Damn. I forgot that this ice cream shop is the only place in the world where we can have a conversation. Fuck. We better hurry up."
"Asshole."
"You can come over."
Maybe. I want to. But—"I have an early class."
"We can go to your place. Sleep."
"Can we?"
He laughs. "Fair enough." He turns me so we're face-to-face. "You don't have to say shit. I meant it, Iris. The past is the past. But I want to be someone you can lean on. If you want to talk—"
"I do. I just… I haven't really talked about this with anyone."
His eyes stay soft. Understanding.
"Lily was always the pretty, athletic one. She still is. She's in a volleyball league. She's good. I was more—"
"The Star Wars geek?"
"Yeah. I looked up to her. I thought she was the coolest person in the world. She was smart too, but she didn't apply herself. If she wasn't into a subject, she'd half ass it, whereas I'd study even harder, bring home straight As."
"You seem like the type."
"I always got the grades. I did well in college. But then I graduated and I hit a wall. I was lucky. I got a job pretty fast. I was excited about the future. Then… then I got my GRE scores back. They were terrible. I'd bombed. It was the first time I really failed at something."
"That must have sucked."
"Yeah. But I wasn't ready to face the possibility of failure. I couldn't stand how badly I wanted to go to grad school. It hurt. So I told myself I didn't want it. I told myself I didn't need the GRE. I tried to convince myself that my boring administrative job was what I wanted."
"Did it work?"
