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“That makes two of us,” I say. The thing is, I’ve never made an effort to make relationships work. I hadn’t felt the need for more than a good time. But now, looking at this amazing woman in front of me, hell. I do want to make things work. Shit. I’m in deep shit, or shitty shit as Alice would say.
“Friendship is different. It runs deeper, it’s more constant, it’s forever,” she continues. “You know what I have stuffed in my closet?”
I grin. “A battery-operated friend?”
“That too. Next to my unused wedding dress.”
Sucker punched. “Why do you keep it? Are you still in love with him?”
She shakes her head. “Nah, it’s been more than six months. I was this close”—she holds her thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart—“to throwing eggs at his car when he dumped me. I was angry, still am, I think. But I’m not in love with him.”
“If you ever feel the need to make good on the eggs part, I can help you. I have excellent aim.”
“I know. You were the one who introduced me to the world of throwing eggs when Johnson bailed on me.”
“That’s right.” Shit, I’d better come clean. “In the interest of honesty, Johnson didn’t bail on you. I might have scared him off.”
“What? I was about to sign us up as dance partners for the end of year dance.”
“Yeah, and I had it on good authority that he was a lousy dancer. He just wanted to kiss you.”
“We were twelve,” she exclaims.
“Yeah. Boys lose their brain to their penis about one year earlier.”
“I can’t believe this.” She shakes her head, but smiles, elbowing me. “You’re such an ass.”
“Was protecting you. I’m not even going to say I was sorry.”
“Any other times you protected me?” She shoots daggers with her eyes at me.
“Now that you mention it, remember Smith?”
She groans. “The guy I was working with on the chemistry project, who mysteriously dropped out and found another teammate?”
“That’s the one. He’d made a bet with his friends that he’d be your first kiss.”
“What if I wanted him to be?”
Sucker punched for the second time in less than ten minutes. “He wasn’t good enough for you. None of them were.”
“I see. It’s a good thing I moved, then, or I would have never dated.”
I’m about to remark that she wouldn’t have gotten engaged or hurt if that was the case, but I sound too much like a caveman even to my own mind. She looks at me with a mix of amusement and annoyance.
“So why are you keeping the wedding dress?” I ask.
“Trying to sell it, haven’t found a buyer yet. I had some interest right when you arrived at the clinic, but she ended up not buying it. It’s weird having it in my closet though. It symbolized a big chunk of my hopes and dreams, and now it’s just the reminder of another failure.”
I lean over to her, tilting her head up.
“You’re not going to kiss me again, are you?” she whispers, licking her lips.
“No. Just wanted to say, don’t think of it as failure, Jonesie. It was experience. He wasn’t man enough to fight for a woman like you.”
The more time I spend with her, the more I want to be that man who fights for her. So what if I don’t have a great record with women? I never wanted to make an effort before, and damn it, I want to now. Emilia makes me want things I never wanted before, and I don’t want them with anyone else. I want them with her. But I’ll take it slow. If she needs me to be her friend for now, that’s what I’ll be.
