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“But?”
So she sensed the “but.” “You know, if you would have told me yesterday that today I’d be sitting half naked in a million-dollar yacht with you, I wouldn’t have believed it,” I said, changing the subject.
She laughed. Then she gazed at me with those kaleidoscope eyes. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I am.”
The corner of my lip twitched.
“You know, I just realized you’re the first boyfriend my mom has ever met,” she said.
I grinned. “Boyfriend?”
“You know what I mean.” She gave my knee a little push.
“No, I’ll be your boyfriend. Sign me up. I mean, we’re not supposed to be dating anyone else, so we are technically exclusive. It’s not far off,” I said.
“Isn’t this whole thing so weird? What we’re doing?” she asked.
“I don’t really care if it’s weird. I’m just glad it’s happening. And not because I want to break a curse either.”
She smiled.
I cleared my throat. “So how does the boyfriend thing even work for you?” I asked. “You know, with you moving so much. If you get into a relationship, is it just long distance or…?”
“Well, right now relationships aren’t working. That’s why we’re doing this, right?”
“I mean, yeah. But if you did like someone. You know, in theory.”
She shrugged. “It hasn’t happened yet. By the time I’m ready to move on to the next assignment, it’s usually just sort of petered out.”
“And if it didn’t peter out?”
“I don’t know. It’s never happened.”
She looked back into the room at Amber’s bags. “I should probably look for Stuffie,” she said. But she didn’t get up. She peered at the luggage like she dreaded opening it and I wondered if she might find something in there she didn’t want to see.
“Are you unpacked yet?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah. All done the day we got here. It was just two bags.”
I raised my head to look at her. “Two? What about all the stuff you accumulate?”
“I don’t accumulate. I don’t get attached.”
“To what?”
She shrugged. “To anything. You know how you get a new phone and you save the box? I don’t do that.”
“You don’t save your phone box? What if you need it?”
She gave me an amused look. “Have you ever actually needed your phone box, Justin?”
“Well, no—”
“There you go. I bet you have a whole closet full of clothes you never wear anymore. A bin full of random wires and chargers that don’t go to anything—”
