Page 71

“No… Why did you say you have a crush on me?”

“I don’t think I said that.”

“Jonathan…” Phoebe was sweating. It was warm in here, and with the drinks and the present conversation, she felt her face turning into a tomato. She pulled her turtleneck sweater over her head and shoved it onto the bench beside her.

Jonathan pressed his lips together, and Phoebe saw his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed.

“What?”

His eyes had moved down, like a magnet had pulled them from her face to her chest. She looked down to make sure she hadn’t exposed her bra. But no, it was just a black spaghetti-strap tank top that dipped low enough to show her cleavage. She hadn’t planned on removing the sweater.

She was amused now.

“Eyes up here.” She pointed to her own eyes. When Jonathan met her gaze, the look on his face made her soften. He looked wistful.

“Okay, I think we need some air.”

Phoebe collected her sweater, her purse, and her beverage and led the way to the back door. Outside was a covered patio with white plastic lawn chairs and rickety tables. There was a group in the far corner, but other than that, they had the place to themselves.

As soon as the night air hit her skin, Phoebe could think more clearly. She inhaled the fresh air deeply.

They sat down at a table in the opposite corner from the other group, this time with a foot of space between them.

“Let’s just forget about the—” Phoebe began, but Jonathan cut her off.

“Of course I put you.” He lightly smacked her arm with the back of his hand. “What did you think I was going to do, put down the names of some women you’ve never met?”

“Oh, like—” Phoebe braced herself. “Like the women you’re seeing up in New York?”

“Yeah. All the women I’m seeing.” He shook his head at her. “No. I just mean, like, my friends up there—you’ve never met them. I guess I could have put celebrities or whatever. Honestly, I didn’t put that much thought into it. If I had, I wouldn’t have put ‘Gerbil’ as a pet option.”

Several responses flitted through Phoebe’s mind, and she blurted out the least advisable one. “Do you think it means something that we both ended up single at thirty?”

“Like what?”

“Like…”

Ever since they’d first seen each other a few days ago, Phoebe had felt this growing awareness that perhaps it did mean something. Perhaps she had never found the right person because no one had ever compared to him. She’d never felt as comfortable with anyone else as she had with Jonathan. She’d never felt the desire to keep talking to them for hours on end, to bare her soul and tell them things she’d never told anyone else. She’d never wanted to fling herself into their arms, to hug them with gleeful abandon.

The way she always did with him.

“I think it means that we don’t want to settle. We have high expectations. And we just haven’t found…” He started the statement confidently but then trailed off, a line between his brows.

“Yeah.” Phoebe sighed. “We just haven’t found… that.”

The conversation had reached a fork in the road. Either they could move on to a lighter topic, or she could press the issue: that maybe that spark they were both waiting for existed only between the two of them. Maybe she could tell him the realization that had sort of, maybe, dawned on her. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to. For starters, it would make her seem like a real jerk. Because she was the one who had brushed him off all those years ago when he’d tried to tell her the same thing. How would it look for her to now admit that she’d been wrong? How would it make Jonathan feel for her to have taken eight years to realize it? And, more importantly, how could she be sure that he would agree? It was more than likely that, after all this time, Jonathan had completely moved on, and the idea of anything happening between the two of them would be laughable to him. So he’d asked her on a date once. They’d been twenty-two. They were practically different people now.

Phoebe let herself imagine it: She said something to the effect of Maybe it’s supposed to be us. Jonathan blinked in surprise, then laughed until tears leaked from his eyes. And the whole episode would be embarrassing enough that they would have to call it quits on their business plan, because how could they work together after such a huge misunderstanding?

And that, right there, was the hardest to contemplate. Now that he was back in her life, Phoebe didn’t want to risk losing him again. Would she rather have him as a business partner than nothing at all? Yes, a hundred times yes.

So she chose to change the subject.

“Okay, now I think it’s time to tell me about your first tattoo.” Phoebe pulled Jonathan’s arm toward her and flipped it over, accidentally causing his fingers to graze her ribs right under her breast. He left his hand there, with one knuckle resting against her.

“It’s a lotus flower,” he said.

Phoebe craned her head around. “I didn’t notice that before, but I see it.”