The words sound even worse out loud than they did in my head, which is saying something, because they sounded pretty bad in my head.
"How'd the apology go otherwise?" Ramsey asks, and there's the faintest edge of amusement in his voice.
”Ramsey, man..."
"I'm just asking."
"It went fine until I kissed her and then walked out without saying anything useful,” I say with a glare.
Ramsey sets his bottle down slowly, fixing me with anexpression I haven't seen since we were seventeen and I reversed my truck into a ditch trying to impress a girl at a bonfire.
"So you kissed her and left?"
It sounds so much worse when he says it. "Correct."
"Cal..." He levels me with a look that lands somewhere between disbelief and disappointment, and I feel every year of our friendship in that single syllable.
"I know."
"That's possibly the most..."
"I know, man. I know."
I rub a hand over my face because I don't need him to finish that sentence. I've already finished it a dozen different ways in my own head, and none of them are flattering.
Ramsey sits back and turns his bottle in a slow circle. I've known this man all my life. I know what every silence means, and this one is the kind where he's deciding how much truth I can handle.
"The promise to Rome," he says finally, not quite a question.
"Still stands."
"How the fuck you figure that after all this?"
"Because that is all it will ever be."
There isn't much else to say to that, and we both know it. I made the promise and then kissed her anyway and walked out, which means I'd managed to break it and not break it at the same time. I had not touched her and I had also very much touched her, and now I have to live with both of those things simultaneously.
I rub both hands down my face again and stare at the street like it might offer me something useful.
"She said something. Before." I apparently need to talk to someone about this. “She said who she wants and who she takes to bed is her choice and not Rome's."
Ramsey is quiet for a moment, considering that. "She's not wrong."
"No. She's not."
"She's also twenty-two. Not twenty-one."
I catch his eye and he holds it. "She's also twenty-two," he continues. "The age thing is the least interesting argument you have."
It is. I know it is. I've known it for months and kept reaching for it anyway because it was easier than the real one.
I'm terrified. Her age doesn't scare me, and Rome doesn't scare me. How badly I want her and everything that comes with her scares me.
"She is just so..." I stop, let out a big sigh, and try to find words that don't make me sound like a complete idiot.
Ramsey waits.
"She is just so fucking hot I want to open the door for her and be the one to say thank you."
