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“We work together. It’s not a good idea.” That succinct list of reasons tumbled out of my mouth, just like I’d rehearsed them in my head a thousand times.
“He’s the one you’re scared of.”
I wondered when the hell she’d gotten so damned smart. Even my teenage niece could read me like I was transparent. “He wishes he was.”
“I saw it last night,” she insisted. I opened my mouth to protest some more, but she kept talking. “How do you stay cool? Men were falling all over themselves to talk to you, and you were so normal, like it didn’t matter. Like you didn’t care what they thought.”
“Because I don’t.” I sighed and contemplated what to say to her next, grateful we’d moved on from Easton. “The reason all those men were talking to me last night is because I’m like their buddy. When they see me, they don’t get nervous the way they would around most women, because they know I’m like them. I curse and drink whiskey, and I don’t get emotional unless we’re talking about the Cowboys or the Rangers.”
“So you hook up like a guy and forget about it after like they do?” I couldn’t tell if she was disgusted or impressed, but either way this wasn’t a conversation I was keen on having with my niece. She sounded like she might be speaking from experience, in which case I was going to have to wring some little punk’s neck.
I suddenly thought about the day she was born. How had seventeen years passed so quickly that we could go from playing poker for candy to talking about men?
“Sometimes I think I’m just wired differently,” I said more to myself than her. “Not all guys just forget about it.” I didn’t want to disillusion Leona, but she deserved more than my tainted view of things. I didn’t have relationships by choice. That didn’t mean she shouldn’t.
She concentrated on Rage, almost as if she was disappointed in me for babying her.
“They don’t,” I insisted. I’d been on both ends of that spectrum, times when hooking up was forgotten almost as soon as it was done and another where—nope, not going there now.
She pulled her scarf tighter around her. “That’s not my experience,” she said, going stiff.
“This has to do with the one you went to homecoming with,” I concluded, tamping down my rising anger. I hadn’t heard much about this story, but I already knew I wasn’t going to like it.
“Yeah.”
I leaned forward on the gate. Ragnor trotted over and nudged me before he chose a new patch of grass to graze on, this one a little closer than before.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another soul,” I started, though my ego screamed at me to keep my mouth shut. I set it aside in hopes of giving my niece some reassurance. “When I was about your age, I took a liking to one of my buddies. To be honest, I wasn’t real sure what to do with that. Butterflies in the stomach weren’t really my thing.”
Leona blinked at me, that dour expression carving the pretty features of her face.
“I decided I’d do what I always do. Be fearless, right?” I couldn’t seem to break through, no matter what I said. “I asked him to go for a run. Nothing crazy. I asked him to study for a test. Still pretty normal. Then I asked him to go to the movies. After about a week or so, I told him if we were going to keep spending so much time together, we might as well date. He’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind until he realized I was serious. With a shrug, he agreed.”
“That worked?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yeah. Playing cat and mouse wasn’t really my style, but it took me that long to work out my nerves.”
She snickered, and I took that as a good sign. “You’re still not very subtle.”
“Don’t see that changing any time soon.”
“I’ve never known you to date anybody,” Leona said, leaning against the fence.
“Once was enough for me. I’m not cut out for emotional crap.” I stiffened as thoughts of the past swamped me.
“What happened?”
I swallowed hard. “After we’d been dating a while, he rejected me pretty publicly.” I yanked on my ponytail. “Humiliated me, really. I was the last one to know he’d been seeing Becky Crenshaw behind my back. If it weren’t for Mitch, I probably still wouldn’t know.”
Memories of the whispers in the halls of school slithered into my head. They’d all been laughing at Mulaney know-it-all Jacobs, the girl nobody wanted to date because she was too brash and always one of the guys. I looked at my boot propped on the gate and forced the pain back. It was twenty years ago but still hurt like it had happened yesterday.
“That’s awful.” At her tone, I looked up. Sympathy filled her eyes, the kind only someone who understood could have.
“It was worse than that, but I handled it.” In a petty way shortly after the fact, and as best I could long-term. By nature, I didn’t like to lose. Bryce Green made me realize if I wanted to avoid a situation like that again, I’d have to do things differently. And I had. I hadn’t dated. Hadn’t done relationships. And I sure as helldidn’tdo love.
“He was a jerk.”
“I can’t argue with that.” Rage came over to the fence again just when I needed him. I stroked his nose and behind his ears. “He made it hard for me to trust.”
