“I don’t want to go back to what we had,” I said. “I liked where we were going. Where I thought we were going, as boyfriends. So, no. If you’re offering me the choice between the way we started and nothing at all, then I guess we are breaking up.”
For a second he looked truly shocked, like I’d said something completely beyond his comprehension. And I wanted to reach out, to pull him into a hug and tell him that if he really thought that all we had wasfucking, then he was wrong about me, and he was wrong about himself too. I wanted to tell him that I wanted the Chase Hooper who laughed, and cuddled, and let me introduce him to my family as my boyfriend. The guy I’d only caught glimpses of because he was hiding behind that goddamn wall, but I didn’t say that, because he was a feral cat.
Then he rallied, and scowled, and said, “Fuck you then, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice rasping. “Fuck me.” I dug into my pocket for my car keys and said, “I can still give you a lift home.”
His scowl deepened, and he curled his fingers into fists. “Fuck you!”
And then, leaving the words echoing in the kitchen, he stormed out.
I heard the door slam, and the bell jingled a long time after he was gone.
When the bellrang again my heart raced, and for one shining second I dared to hope that Chase regretted walking out and was here to ask for a second chance. But this was Chase. He wouldn’t ask for a first chance if his life depended on it. So I was disappointed but not really surprised when someone else stuck their head through the doorway to the kitchen.
“Everything okay?” Tyler asked. “I just saw Chase taking off like his ass was on fire.” He wrinkled his nose. “You guys fight or something?”
“Or something,” I said and rested my head on the prep table and let out a sigh. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the wordswe broke up, but at the same time I needed to tell someone what had happened, and I knew Tyler wouldn’t be a dick about it. “Chase wants to keep it casual. I said no. So he told me, ‘fuck you,’ and I guess we’re done.”
Tyler hissed between his teeth. “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” I said into the table. “It worked out about how you’d expect.”
I heard Tyler rattling around somewhere behind me and then the heavy clunk of a bottle being placed on the prep table. I lifted my head and said, “Why do you have the Marsala?”
Tyler set two coffee mugs down beside the bottle. “Drink up, boss.”
“That’s for tiramisu.”
“Unpopular opinion,” Tyler said, “but tiramisu tastes like ball sweat. And it didn’t sell when we made it, so this is fair game.” He poured a generous amount of the wine into a mug and slid it my way. “Get that in you.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“Says the guy who tried to date Chase,” Tyler said. He poured himself a mug. “What? Too soon?”
I snorted. “Asshole.” I took a sip of wine. “That’s gross.”
“It’s either this or vanilla extract,” Tyler said.
“Or we could not drink anything?”
“That’s quitter talk,” Tyler said and slapped me on the back. “So, you want to talk about it?”
“Still trying to get my head around what happened, honestly. I think I just turned down no-strings sex.” I tried to laugh, and it didn’t work.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “but that’s not what you wanted, right? Nothing wrong with that.” He lifted himself up onto the prep table and patted the space beside him. “Did I ever tell you how Jess and I met? We were a one-night stand that went horribly wrong. So I get it. The wanting more part, not necessarily the Chase part.”
“Still too soon,” I said. I sat on the table beside him and took a swig of the awful wine. It tasted slightly less awful this time around. By the third swig my taste buds were numb and it slid down just fine. And it was doing a pretty good job of numbing the crushing disappointment that was threatening to roll over me too.
IlikedChase. He was abrasive and rude and took no shit, but most of that was just for show. Underneath he was smarter than people thought, and he was secretly kind—I knew that from watching him with Gracie—and he was protective as hell when it came to his family. But I only knew those things about him because he’d let me peek past his defenses. And maybe he thought I’d seen too much, who knew? Whatever the reason, he’d slammed those walls right back up, and I couldn’t see him letting me back in any time soon.
Tyler poured more wine into my cup. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”
I took another drink and felt the warmth spread down to my toes. “I doubt it. Have you ever seen Chase back down about anything?”
Tyler grimaced. “True.” He slapped my shoulder. “Well, maybe it’s for the best, if you don’t want the same thing.”
“Maybe,” I said. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever Chase had said just now, it wasn’t true. We’d held each other the night after Sam’s party, and Chase wasn’t as good a bullshitter as he thought he was. He hadn’t been faking, not then and not the time at his place when we hadn’t just fucked. We’d shared something softer and more meaningful, something deeper than just getting off together. Chase and Ididwant the same thing, even though he’d never admit it. And that meant we were both missing out.
