Page 70 of Meant to be Mine

“How do you want them?” I asked. “I can do soft or slightly less soft. Those are my two settings.”

“Soft,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” I agreed.

Five minutes later, I put two plates on the island. Poured two cups of coffee and sat on the stool beside her.

She picked up her fork and took a bite. I watched her face.

“Okay,” she said. “These are actually good.”

“You sound surprised.”

She shrugged. She took another bite and looked around the kitchen, then out through the glass toward the water. Million-dollar view.

“This place is genuinely beautiful, Drew,” she said. “Like, I knew it would be nice, but this is something else. Seeing it in the daylight is different.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it.” She turned on her stool, taking in the whole space. The ceilings, the stone fireplace, the wall of glass. “It’s really impressive.”

I watched her look at it the way I’d looked at it when I first bought it. I’d forgotten what it felt like to see it fresh. I’d gotten used to it, which felt like a crime. The view alone deserved to be appreciated on the daily.

She turned back to her eggs. “It’s a lot of space, though.” She said it not as a criticism but more like she was thinking out loud. “For just you.”

I picked up my coffee. “Yeah. But the views.”

She glanced at me sideways, probably checking to see if I’d taken it wrong.

I hadn’t. Because she wasn’t wrong.

“The view is stunning,” she said. “A quick walk to the beach.”

“About three minutes.”

“I’m surprised you don’t spend more time on the beach.”

“Some of us work all summer.”

“Ah, good point.” She smiled and took another bite. “It’s gorgeous. And the pool is amazing. I bet you don’t even know what half the bathrooms in this place look like.”

I laughed. “I make it a point to visit every room in the house at least once a month.”

She laughed again. “Oh, the horror of not being able to visit every room in your house.”

She was right. It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. The house was everything I’d wanted when I bought it. The view. The location. The design. It seemed suitable.

Five bedrooms. Seven bathrooms. I’d bought all of it with some vague future in mind. And in the grand scheme of LA mansions, it was small. A lot smaller than my parents’ house.

But Kensey had been here for a single night and the house felt different. It felt like a home. I wanted to know what it would be like to have her in the space every night. I wanted her smutty books sitting on the bedroom nightstand. I wanted her clothes in the closet and her makeup cluttering the bathroom counter.

I stared at my coffee cup and told myself to be careful with that line of thinking. She was leaving. That was the part I kept letting slide to the back of my mind. It was too easy to pretend there was a version of this story that led to a happy ending.

I had to keep her impending departure front and center. She had a job in New Jersey. An apartment. A life she’d built out there that she was proud of and rightfully so. She hadn’t come back to stay. She made it very clear last night she didn’t want to come back home. Her job in New Jersey made her happy. I couldn’t ask her to give that up for me.

Whatever this was between us, whatever it was turning into, it had an expiration date I couldn’t ignore. I was already in deep enough that walking away from this at the end of summer was going to cost me something. The longer I let myself pretend otherwise, the worse the bill was going to be.

I was not going to fall apart over a woman. Even if that woman was someone as special as Kensey.