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I blanched.
“Y-your boyfriend?” I asked and took a large sip of wine from my glass.
We were in another, high class restaurant—one recommended by my father. I stared up at the ceiling and tried to calm my heart rate. We were friends,friends. Sure, we put on a show, went out to dinner, and played the part, but we weren’tactuallya couple, were we?
“Calm down, Ade.” Melissa dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “He just thinks we’re a couple, and I’m in no mood to disillusion him.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief, and the girl across from me knotted her eyebrows.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just—why are we doing this, Adrian?” she inquired, and I had to admit she had a point.
We were supposed to be falling in love, we were supposed to be growing closer, and we were supposed to be the perfect person for each other.
Instead, we went on “dates” and pined after people that our lives would never allow us to be with.
On our very first date, Melissa had told me about Harry. She’d met him at a signing event, when he’d brought a bunch of kids in to meet the author she was with. He was an ex-gang member that had been set straight when his brother died when they were both fifteen. I’d met the man before and couldn’t deny he had a powerful presence. He was tatted, pierced, and kept his head shaved for convenience. But he also ran an after-school program to keep kids like himself out of trouble and helped them with their homework. He and Melissa had fallen for each other almost as quickly as I had for Stevie, but their relationship was even more frowned upon. Her parents owned a lot of publishing houses and came from old money. She was expected to marry well and take over the businesses, even though she loved her current position. The idea of her marrying someone that had grown up bouncing from the streets to juvie was beyond what they could even comprehend.
She was as stuck as I was, if not more.
“We’re doing this because we know it’s what’s best,” I replied, and Melissa frowned.
“You know that they’ll expect more from us, eventually,” she pointed out. “Meeting my father is one thing, but someday they’re going to expect a ring, a wedding, andchildren.”
I didn’t answer her but instead pushed my food around my plate. The unspoken truth was that we would probably give all that to our parents and forsake the true loves we’d found elsewhere.
Because that was what was “right”.
That was what was expected.
* * *
We finished our meals in silence, and I dutifully paid the bill. I walked Melissa home, wished her a goodnight, and began heading back to my own place.
There was something undeniably quiet in all the noise of Boston at night. Sure, there were cars and I could hear voices. There were lights everywhere, and cafes lit up like safe havens. But none of it had anything to do with me. My brain could shut off and my senses could be distracted by the textures of the city. I walked and walked, and it didn’t take me long to recognize that I wasn’t walking back to my home. Instead, like my heart had its own GPS, I was tracing the steps I’d taken to the bar the night I’d met Stevie. Sweet Nell’s squatted like a beacon of hope, like it could infuse me with alcohol and warm memories and let me dream about what might have been. I didn’t think about it too much before I pushed my way in.
I thought my heart couldn’t handle any more rejection, but apparently, I was wrong. In the dim lighting, with the smell of stale beer floating through the air and men discussing something in grumbling tones at the bar, I knew that I would stay with Melissa, wouldalwaysstay with Melissa because Stevie was launching herself at someone I recognized as Dr. George Hale and kissing him with all the passion and determination I had thought would only ever be reserved for me. My heart clenched painfully, but in the same way you watch a car wreck happen and can’t look away, my sight never strayed from her. Stevie held his face.
Did she hold my face like that?
I saw the flicker of her cheek that meant her tongue had breached the barrier of his mouth, and then, he was kissing back, but I didn’t give a shit about George Hale. I cared about Stevie. I cared about what she was doing, and the fact that she was making out with someone thatwasn’t me. I could have ripped Dr. Hale’s face off, but then I heard Stevie speak.
Her voice had some strange, breathless, yet stale quality that I couldn’t place. It was probably the alcohol, judging by the empty glasses on their table. For a moment, the whole place seemed to quiet down, and I could hear the gasped words, even from across the room.
“Come back to my place,” she begged.
I had seen and heard enough.
Instead of staying, I stalked back out the door and gulped in breaths of the night air, wondering how my love life had gotten so messed up. How did she make it look so easy, moving on? I was envious of her and flashed all sorts of shades of green when Stevie and George tumbled out of the pub, like leaves on the wind, and headed in the direction that would take them back to Stevie’s place.
Instead of making my presence known, I disappeared back into the shadows, watching their retreating forms and wishing, more than anything else, that I was the one to elicit the drunken giggle I heard slip past Stevie’s lips.
Chapter Fifteen
Stevie
My hands fumbled with the locks and then we were inside.
