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He sighed. “Lay it on me. What’s the deal with this other dude whose heart I’m going to break?”
“Well, I…uh…” Damn, this wasn’t easy to explain. “I guess you could say I’m in an open relationship.”
Max’s brows rose. “You guess?”
“Sorry…no.” I nodded. “I am. I’m in an open relationship.”
“Why does it sound like there’s more to it than just you’re dating someone without a commitment?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “We were actually engaged.”
“But you’re not now?”
I shook my head. “It’s kind of a complicated story, but I feel like I should share it.”
“Okay…”
“Gabriel and I met when I was working on my MBA. He was an undergrad English professor at NYU, and I went to Stern Business School there. At the time, he had just begun working on a novel. Gabriel taught to pay the bills, but he wanted to be a writer. Eventually he sold his book to a publisher, along with a deal for a second one he’d write someday, and we got engaged. Everything was going well until about a year ago when his book was published. It didn’t do well. In fact, it pretty much flopped—low sales and terrible reviews. Gabriel got pretty down about it. Not long after, he found out that the parents he’d thought were his biological parents were actually his adoptive parents. Then his best friend since childhood died in a car accident.” I sighed. “Anyway…long story short, Gabriel felt really lost and decided to take a visiting-professor position in England for sixteen months. He never even discussed it with me before accepting the job. He said he needed to find himself. With everything he’d been through, I understood. But then a few days before he left, I got another surprise: He told me he wanted to have an open relationship while he was gone.”
“And everything between the two of you was fine before that?”
“I had thought so. I work a lot—more than I need to or really should—and sometimes Gabriel thought it was too much and complained. That was probably our biggest issue. But we weren’t a couple who fought all the time, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Max rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. “How long’s he been gone?”
“Eight months.”
“Have you seen each other during that time?”
“Just once. About six weeks ago. My company opened a franchise boutique in Paris. I went for the grand opening, and he met me there for the weekend.”
“And you’ve both been seeing other people since he left?”
I shook my head. “Apparently he has been, but I haven’t been too much.” I bit my lip again. “Adam was actually only my second date in many years. The first was a guy I met on Tinder two weeks ago, which lasted for coffee only. To be honest, I didn’t even want to go out tonight. But I’m trying really hard to make some much-needed changes in my life, now that I’m on my own. So I made a list of things I’d been putting off, and since dating was at the top of that list, I sort of forced myself to show up.”
Max’s eyes jumped back and forth between mine. “Did you have to force yourself to come to the Garden?”
“No, just the opposite. I was trying to force myself not to come.”
“Why would you do that?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
He stared at me some more. “When are you seeing him again?”
“We don’t have any more plans to reconnect in person until after he’s finished in London and moves back to New York. So I guess December, when he gets back.”
“Are you just looking to get even with this guy because he’s dating? Or are you really looking to see what else is out there for yourself?”
That was a damn good question, and one I didn’t really know the answer to. My relationship with Gabriel was a gray area, and I was a black-or-white type person. Lord knows, I’d spent enough time agonizing over decisions about that man, only to wind up now questioning every decision I’d ever made.
I looked Max in the eye. “I’ll be honest; I’m not sure what I want.” I cocked my head to the side. “Does it matter to you?”
A slow grin spread across his face. “Just want to know what I’m getting myself into.” He reached across the table and took my hand, weaving our fingers together. He looked up with a sparkle in his eyes. “But I’m in.”
I laughed. “You’re a hard sell.”
“I can’t help it. I want to know everything about you.”
I squinted. “Why?”
“I have no damn idea. I just do.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Anything.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “You said you sometimes work more than you need to. Why do you keep working if you don’t need to?”
I smiled sadly. “That’s a question I’ve given a lot of thought, since it was a source of contention in my relationship. I think I work a lot because I’ve always had to. I’m dyslexic, so ever since elementary school, I’ve had to put in extra time. A reading assignment that might take my friends twenty minutes could take me an hour or two, so I’m sort of trained to expect to do more. I also have a tendency to overanalyze everything to death, which can be time consuming, and I’m super competitive—at times obnoxiously so. But I love my business, and I enjoy watching it grow from what I put into it. That said, I actually did hire a director of operations four months ago, so I can work less if I want to. My mom is getting older and lives down in Florida, and I want to be able to go visit her more often. And I love to travel. I also thought it would make Gabriel happy, but you already know how that’s worked out.”
