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“Is that why you’re so angry?” he asked. “Because of what happened at the conference?”
I looked back at my salad and started trying to corral a little candied peanut and lettuce, but both were just bouncing around the plate and trying to escape. I gave up in frustration, setting the fork down again. “No, because that would be stupid and immature. You told me there’d be no strings before we went in that room. So what kind of idiot would be upset that there were, in fact, no strings?”
“What?” I snapped, turning to face him when he hadn’t spoken for a few moments.
“When I was writing Embers, I was dating a woman named Patricia. Mr. Meatball’s original owner.”
I realized he was actually opening up and, for once, stopped talking so I could listen.
“Things got… messy,” he said. “In the end she tried everything she could to get me to give up writing the book and focus on her. Everything,” he added darkly. “But in the end, I chose the book. It fucked my life over within twenty-four hours. Patricia was my best friend’s sister. My father loved her. She was my business partner’s cousin and my boss's niece. When she realized I wouldn’t change my mind, she went scorched Earth. She told every story she could to make me into a monster. Maybe I could’ve stayed around to fix things, but I just left. I rented a small place, left all my shit behind along with my old life. I put everything into the book.”
“That’s horrible,” I breathed.
“It all made me realize what a relationship really is. It’s a vulnerability. It’s a part of yourself you willingly expose. It’s showing someone where you’re weak and hoping they’ll never decide to drive a knife into that spot and twist. And for what? Sex? Companionship?” he pursed his lips, shaking his head without looking up from his plate. “I decided I wasn’t going down that road again. Nobody would have that sort of power over me. Not again.”
“And that’s why you left the conference the way you did? If you’d stayed to get to know me, I’d have power over you?”
“Something like that,” he said.
I titled my head, raising my eyebrows. “What I’m hearing is that you knew you were going to fall hopelessly in love with me if you didn’t run away. I have to admit I thought you were a mean idiot. Now I can see you were just self-aware.”
Sebastian chuckled humorlessly. “And now I’ve tangled you up in my life. So maybe I’m not that self-aware after all.”
“Unless you knew exactly what you were doing when you offered me the job watching Mr. Meatball,” I said. My tone was playful, but I was voicing a suspicion I seriously held. Why else would he choose me? The part I wasn’t sure about was whether he just wanted one more no strings encounter, or if he wanted more.
Sebastian met my eyes for a long time, then looked away. “I need to get some rest before we land. I don’t want to squander my time at the retreat.”
Bastard, I thought. One of these days, I was going to refuse to let him change the subject. But for once, I felt like he and I had actually made some sort of progress. The more time I spent around him, the more I was realizing how manufactured my loathing of him was. Even my blog felt like a pathetic, spiteful joke. Probably because that’s exactly what it was.
I pulled out my laptop to write again once the flight attendant took up our food trays. Sebastian was leaning against the window, eyes closed and motionless. Between the temptation to steal glances at him and my thoughts about our conversation, I got next to nothing done. I pulled up my last blog post, which was still in draft, and worked on that instead. But for the first time since I started my blog, my heart didn’t feel in it. I tried to ignore the emails and messages from my followers asking when the next post would come.
I snapped my laptop shut, put it in my bag under the seat, and tried to get comfortable. Sebastian’s shoulder looked like the comfiest pillow imaginable, but I settled for the back of my headrest. In a few hours, we’d be in Washington. Another hour after that and we’d be at a beautiful, secluded cabin with just the two of us. In another world with another pair of people, it would almost be romantic.
In my reality, it was more like a tragedy.
20
Sebastian
“You have to be kidding me,” I said.
Kenzie and I had just arrive in front of the mountainside cabin. There were half a dozen other cars scattered around the long, gravel path leading up to the house.
“Don’t leave yet,” I told our driver.
