Page 103 of Use Me Up

“Why does groveling make a book sell?” says Kane.

“Well, it’s a significance fantasy,” I say. “People like them in books. People like to read books about interesting people, not people who are boring or average or—well, you can have one person in the story be the boring, average person, the everyman. But then, that person has to go on a great adventure, or have a king fall in love with her, or ride a dragon.”

“Okay,” says Gatlin. “I can see that.”

“So, the trend is, right now, for there to be these morally gray male main characters. The average, normal, everywoman girl falls in love with him, and he’s a big freaking jerk, but then, at the end, he realizes the error of his ways, and then he apologizes and grovels.”

“Which I did,” says Ellis. “Also, I said the ‘L’ word, and you haven’t even acknowledged that.”

“I didn’t say you were a big freaking jerk, Ellis,” I say.

“It was heavily implied,” he says.

“Maybe,” I say, “you’ve just been through a lot in your life.”

“Now, you’re making excuses for me,” says Ellis.

“Well, do you like your job?” says Kane. “It’s okay if you don’t. I don’t like mine.”

I smile at him. “I like it, I guess.” I look around the table, and I wonder if I should share the thing that I’ve thought about, worried about. “Sometimes I worry I took this job because it was something that it would be okay to fail at. Sometimes I worry that I assumed that I would fail at anything I tried.”

Ellis looks up from the menu.

Gatlin tilts his head at me. “Why would you say something like that about yourself?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not really sure why.” I look at each of them. “Maybe it doesn’t matter why, though. Maybe what I should ask myself is, ‘What job would I want if I assumed I would succeed’?”

“That seems very wise, actually, Hannah,” says Kane. “So. What job?”

I have no idea. “I’m going to have to think about it,” I say.

“Fair,” says Gatlin.

“What do you guys do for jobs?” I say to them.

“I run a yoga studio,” says Gatlin. “I also teach some tai chi and yoga classes myself. I don’t have to be in there, day in, day out, but I don’t like to be idle. I like to be there, helping out with things.”

“I’m a broker,” says Kane. “Stocks.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, nodding at Kane. “Yeah, that really suits you.”

Kane grins. “Ellis has been telling you things about us, I suppose.”

“We’re at a disadvantage here,” says Gatlin. “We don’t know anything about you.”

“What do you want to know?” I say.

The rest of the evening is nice but intense. They are all three focused on me, the whole time. They ask me questions and they all get quiet when I talk, as if they’re really interested in what I have to say.

We don’t talk about the fact I have not taken the Plan B, and we don’t talk about raising Ellis’s baby together. I’m sort of glad, because otherwise, maybe it would feel like an interview for the job of being the mother of their babies or something.

Instead, it feels like we’re just getting to know each other.

I have to admit that I like them.

Kane is definitely flirting with me, too, despite the fact that he’s adamant that he doesn’t want to settle down or whatever.

I flirt back.