The sentence does something to my lungs. “Should we talk about…” He finally looks over at me and it’s too much. His slate-blue eyes bore through mine. I’d forgotten how intense those eyes could be. Like ice picks.
“About what?” he asks me, so infuriatingly nonchalant that he might already be enacting his ghosting protocols on me like he has on every other woman who’s slept in that stupid van.Like he did after my wedding,I think before suppressing the unwelcome comparison.
“About…” He trails off. He’s making me say it. I can’t believe he’s making me say it!
Two can play that game. I saynothing.My eyes stare back, daringhimto say it. But he doesn’t flinch as the silence stretches around us like sticky taffy, and I can’t take it. I’m too tired. Too weak.
“We can just pretend it never happened if you’d like,” I offer.
He tilts his forehead up to the sky, an animal lounging in a sunbeam. “That would be impossible.”
I practically catapult off the hood of the van. “Hah! I knew you knew what I was talking about!”
He almost smiles, and I can finally take a breath. “As my legal representative, I was hoping you’d use your words.”
“I said I was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again—”
“To be clear, are we talking about when you lied to a police officer or the time you mauled me in—”
“Mauledyou! That is just…” I can hardly form a proper rebuttal. “That is…false! Just absolutely…You think…?” Pebbles ping against the metal bumper with my pacing. “No. No. You’re not putting this all on me. I heardzerocomplaints from you when weconsensuallytouched mouths.”
His top lip curls upward in a micromovement of amusement. I force my eye line to a spot on the bridge of his nose.
“Leave it to you to make kissing sound revolting.”
My hands pin against my sides and clench into fists. “You kissed me back.”
“Oh, I one thousand percent kissed you back,” he replies. It stuns me. I didn’t anticipate such an enthusiastic admission of guilt. I’m a deer caught in his headlights. “And when you do it again,” he continues, “I’ll kiss you back that time too.”
How is he this relaxed? How many other women have this relationship with Ethan? Does he have “friends” he makes out with all across the contiguous United States? Dozens of Charleys, when I’ve only ever had one Ethan?
“Why do you keep saying ‘when it happens again’? Itwon’thappen again,” I promise him.
He confidently hops onto the gravel drive. “It will.”
I turn away and spot a crowd collecting in front of a building with wood slats and a white awning. “Then how about you wait here for that kiss, and I’ll go find coffee.”
“Charley.” He catches me by the shoulders and swivels me back around. “It doesn’t…,” he starts. His face twists every which way. “Everything doesn’t have to meaneverything, you know? It can be one thing for one of us…and then something else, and then…who knows? You know?”
This scene is humiliating. The way he starts and stops is like watching a boat parallel park. Mr. I Don’t Do Relationships isletting me down easy between a mud-caked camper van and a garbage can painted to look like Marvin the Martian. I thought being left for a rowing machine while holding a plastic phallus was my rock bottom, but I hadn’t known the true depths of my personal indignity.
“Look.” I free myself from his grip. “We’re now friends who’ve…kissed each other. But our friendship means too much to me to let that one minute become some world-ending thing.” I couldn’t handle it being a world-ending thing. Even if I’m one of many, he’s so much moreto methan that.
I start down the road, powered by avoidance and a desire for caffeine.
He follows me. “Hey.” He knocks my elbow with his, as though he’s not ready to let go of the time I made out with him in a broken-down van on a marathon route and got woken up by Alf Knudsen and his band of enforcers. “We ‘touched mouths’ for way longer than a minute.”
I grimace. “ ‘Touched mouths’? Disgusting.”
“Yousaid that.” He lengthens his stride to catch up to me. “I was repeating whatyousaid.”
“I can still plead ‘vulnerable divorcée’ for every embarrassing thing I do for the next six months. It’s my rolling affirmative defense.”
He grabs my wrist. “You know I can’t take you seriously when you speak legalese. You’re like three kids in a Chico’s blazer.”
“Chico’s?” I pull my arm back with a gasp. “I’m not yourmom. My blazers are Sézane.”
Do I have a spending problem?
