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Maybe it wasn’treallyabout her, though. Maybe I just wanted something else to focus on. Something I could fix. Some way I could help with something thatcouldbe fixed, because nothing in my life seemed to fit that description at the moment.
“Lyndi.”
She didn’t look up. “Yes?”
“Where did you go?”
“I… I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.” Again, her attention remained on the virtual library in her hands.
“Not good at what?”
Finally, she let the Kindle tip forward and met my gaze. “Talking.”
I chuckled. “That’s not true. We’ve talked.”
“Sure, but not about anything real.”
Her words stung, but at the same time, I knew them to be fact. In all the time I’d known her, we’d kept things utterly surface level. At weddings, we’d joke about the drunk uncle on the dance floor getting yelled at by his elderly mother. When we hung out with Zac and Layla, we’d laugh at Zac’s son’s antics or we’d socialize as a group rather than directly with each other. And half the time on those nights, she was content reading in the corner instead of actively engaging.
That said, when it came to women and what they were willing to share with me, Lyndi’s tendency to keep me at arm’s length washighlyabnormal. My clients always opened up without hesitation. Without prompting. They were literally paying me to be a listening ear or to help them solve some problem they were too ashamed or fearful to admit to anyone in their real life.
But that wasn’t the deal with Lyndi. She had no reason to open up to me, so she just…didn’t. And if that was because the spark that charged the air between us was all in my head, a one-sided thing that would never go anywhere, fine.
We could keep it that way.
It was much safer.
No matter how much my pops wanted me to find something real, I knew I couldn’t do it. Because if I did, and then I lost that person too, I wasn’t sure I’d survive.
