“Oh no, I couldn’t,” she says.
“I’m not offering for your benefit, Isla. Your plate looks irresistible to me,” I say. I watch her lick her lips, thinking a bit before capitulating.
“Fine then, give it here,” she says, passing her plate to me while I pass mine to her.
The waitress pours us both glasses of wine. I swirl mine, enjoying it as an accessory even though I’m not really planning on drinking much of it.
“So tell me, if you’re such a cynic about love, why are you even here, Jackson?” Isla asks.
“It’s simple,” I say, “The app isn’t doing great. My investors thought it would help if I was on the show.”
“But so what? You don’t need the money.” She bites into a chunk of meat and closes her eyes. “This is so good.”
“Listen, Veruca, I may not be in it for the money, but this app is important to me. If I can save one couple from the strife my sister and I went through, it’s all worth it.”
“You parents didn’t love each other then?”
“Oh they loved each other. But in a toxic, dumpster fire kind of way. Their love blew up everything around them, spewing black ash for miles. It didn’t make any sense.”
“Was that due to your father’s alcoholism?” Isla asks.
“Absolutely,” I say. “His drinking decimated our family.”
“So if he’d suffered from dementia or been stricken with another kind of illness or brain injury, maybe cancer, would you have been so down on love?”
I freeze with my fork halfway to my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean that maybe you’re working on the wrong equation.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
Preposterous.
I take a cautious sip of my wine.
“Look at you. You’re anxious about having two drinks in one night. You’ve clearly read up on alcoholism and the hereditary predisposition. So good for you for being cautious. But I have to wonder about your rationale for the app. At least your parents loved each other before their lives got messy. Mine never did. They merely tolerated each other because they had so much in common. You might even say they werecompatible. That’s not something I’d wish on anyone.”
“You think love is a cakewalk?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t know. Seems like it though.” Isla shrugs and spears a bit of potato.
“So you’ve never been in love either?” I ask, surprised to hear this.The irony.“How exactly can you be a best-selling romance author if you’ve never been in love?” I slide a succulent, tender morsel of scallop in my mouth and savor it.
“I don’t have to be the one in love to recognize the emotion. True love is all around us, even if it’s not for me. I don’t know. I think I might have a disability when it comes to falling in love.” She shrugs.
“Okay, now I see it,” I say, rocking back in my chair. “You’ve got some kind of martyr complex. You’re like the Mother Theresa of romance.” I adopt a mocking tone “Don’t mind about me,” I say, with a fake British accent in falsetto. “I will wash your wounds and make you whole again. I need only subsist on the occasional dry crust of human kindness.”
Her eyes flash angrily at me. “That is not it at all, you arrogant ass.”
“Looks like from where I’m sitting. You’re like some sort of emotional holy virgin statue.”
There’s no such thing as a love disability. And even if there were, nobody who writes love stories like the ones she writes has one. I have read her books. I can’t even let myself dwell on the passion I’ve uncovered between her pages.
“Okay, you know what, Jackson? From where I’m sitting, you look like a scared little boy who’s looking for a scapegoat to blame for his father’shealthproblems. You’re so afraid of repeating history that you’re afraid to live your own love life. How’s always playing it ‘safe’ with casual hookups really working out for you? ” Isla’s eyes are blazes of blue as she fires back at me with both barrels.
“Dessert?” the server approaches warily, holding a plate of delicious looking confections.
“She’ll have the chocolate cake,” I say, without breaking eye contact.
