“Sadie Hawkins? Isn’t that where the girls ask the guys?”
I nodded. “My date ended up sneaking off with Ellory Pitzer.”
Ronan shook his head. “What a dumbass. Anyone ever suggested you need to recalibrate your picker, Laney?”
I shrugged. “It’s possibly occurred to me. Still, Derek swooped in and saved the day. That time, anyway.”
“So, how long did you and The Great Disappointment date?”
I swung my sandals lightly to and fro. “Eight years, on and off.”
“Eightfucking years, and he couldn’t close the deal? What happened?”
I pressed my lips together. “Do you really want to know?”
At that, Ronan stopped and waited until I turned back to face him.
I sighed. “Well, the easy explanation is that he cheated on me after my mom got sick.”
Ronan tipped his head. “Fucker. And the hard one?”
I went back to walking. His legs were long enough that he caught up to me in a few quick strides.
“The hard one is that it started to fall apart a long time before that. I don’t know if you noticed, but Derek likes his backhanded compliments.”
“You mean like when he said, ‘Laney’s really smart for someone with no business sense?’”
“Yeah, that one’s a classic.”
Ronan chuckled with me, though I noticed that his left hand opened and closed several times as we walked, like he was trying to relieve some tension with an invisible stress ball. “I’m no saint, but at least I’ve never felt the need to put down a girl I was seeing just to feel like a man.”
“It’s not a contest between you two, but that’s good to hear.”
“People like that are too ashamed of their own shortcomings to face them, so they have to point out everyone else’s. He’s no better than a schoolyard bully, Laney. You’re better off without him.”
I nodded. “I know. And I think I was starting to figure that out long before he cheated with my mom’s medical assistant.”
He mumbled something like, “And I thought I was missing a moral compass.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What do you mean, you figured it out?”
I kicked up a bit of sand. “There were signs. Like when I moved to Chicago for grad school, and he started making jokes about how I was more interested in dead people that live ones. Or when I started teaching yoga, he’d say I was in pretty good shape for someone who wasn’t athletic. Things like that.”
“Northwestern?”
“University of Chicago. Go gargoyles.”
“And school was for, let’s see, archaeology and Greek mythology, you said? Let me guess: you specialized in the cult of Dionysus.” He offered a cheeky grin that was obviously related to the fact that he had named me after Dionysus’s wife.
I rolled my eyes. “Close, but no cigar. Actually, my dissertation was on the origins of the Oracle of Delphi and the transition from a cult of a goddess to Apollo.” I darted him a quick look. “Did any of that make sense?”
Ronan shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked the sand bashfully. “I actually minored in Classics, if you can believe it. In another life, I might have gone the PhD route too.”
I grinned. That explained the penchant for Greek literary references.
Ronan didn’t notice my pleasure as he shook his head in disbelief. “So, you turned into a brilliant, gorgeous scholar who can put her legs behind her head, and he was too mediocre to appreciate hitting the jackpot. Let me guess: Derek’s a car salesman with a passion for kettlebell workouts.”
