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Lisa shook her head, hand on her hip. “It’s for the best—you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Paul replied, looking at me with a little smile that made my breath catch. “I’m beginning to think it was.”
“Of course it was,” Lisa insisted. “It cleared the way for Shelby to move in.”
I gaped at her. “Lisa.”
“What? I’m old, but I’m not blind. You two finally wised up, didn’t you?”
A hot blush worked its way up my neck as Paul’s gorgeous eyes met mine. Swallowing, I looked back up at Lisa. “You know, if everyone was so sure we were going to get together eventually, you really could have tried some kind of meddling, small-town,Parent Trapsituation to help us out a little bit.”
“Oh, where’s the fun in that? We liked watching you suffer.” And with that, she turned on her heel and bustled away.
Paul laughed, reaching for my hands again. “No sense trying to hide it. The whole town is going to know by lunchtime.”
“Here we go. Hopefully they don’t rake you over the coals too badly for moving on so fast.”
“Eh, let them. I don’t care.”
Of course he didn’t. Paul was way too sure of himself to let that kind of thing get to him. He wasn’t a rebel without a cause in high school because he cared what people thought or what they’d say behind his back. In fact, it was one of the things I loved about him. When his skater friends teased him for how much time he spent with me, he’d told them to shut up.
“Well,” I said, straightening in my seat, “I know you don’t care. But still. We’ve talked about stuff that I was all torn up about when it came to being with you, but we haven’t really talked about Roxy.”
“What about her?”
“I don’t know. You seemed so hurt that night when she turned you down.”
He turned his attention to the street on the other side of the large window next to us, seemingly thinking about how to answer. “This is probably going to sound bad, but I think my ego was bruised more than anything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It hurt, obviously, getting rejected like that when I really thought it was the right move. But I also felt really guilty because I was almost… relieved when she turned me down. And that was hard to swallow. Because what would that mean if she’d said yes?”
I swallowed hard. “That’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, um, after going through all of that, are you sure you’re ready for this? We can take it slow, you know. All that talk about kids last night was pretty heavy.”
He met my eyes then, a surprising amount of intensity there. “Shel, come on. It’s us.”
“So?”
“So, people take things slow at the beginning of a relationship because they’re taking the time to get to know each other. Name one thing about yourself that I don’t know,” he challenged.
I looked up, trying to think of something, but came up empty. “I’m not good on the spot.”
“Or, there’s nothing I don’t know.” He wagged his eyebrows, then pursed his lips. “You don’t look convinced.”
“I’m trying to think of something I can stump you with.”
“You can’t. I know it all.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“Sure. I know you have to have a plan, and even your plans have plans. So you’re always good to go if a bad day comes out of nowhere and you have to pivot. I know you hate procrastinating because you don’t want something to happen that will mean you let somebody down. I know you have a super cliché fear of clowns thanks to the creepy, balloon-animal wielding one at your fifth birthday party. And I know you’re a whiz on any tech that sports an Apple logo but you wouldn’t be able to do something on a PC to save your life.”
Throwing my head back with a laugh, I kicked him gently under the table. “Yeah, well, you didn’t know I had feelings for you all this time.”
