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“No, stop! No.” She cringed, so I tried to stop laughing and let her speak before I made it worse. “Please don’t tell me you’re into that.”
I shrugged, quirking a brow in a challenge. “I could be.”
Her empty gaze told me she knew I was kidding. “Funny.”
I winked, and she smiled again, shaking her head.
“Why do you do that? You get all squirmy, sarcastic, and flirty, but then you act normal and nice.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. It wasn’t something I’d been asked before. “I guess I get goofy when I’m not sure what to say. Or do. I have an image of myself being all smooth and suave, but I can never pull it off.”
That seemed to make her think. She leaned forward on her fist again, her eyes back in that thinking place that made my mouth water. Christie looked so confident like that, so sure of what she was thinking. Like whatever came out of her mouth next could be the next quote on a muted background. I just had to give her the space to think it up.
It didn’t take long. “Would you say the nervous you is the real you or the calm you?”
“Wouldn’t they both be me?”
A ghost of a smile played on her lips but didn’t quite make it. “I feel like two people sometimes.”
“How’s that?”
She eyed me up and down. “You want to know, or you’re just continuing the conversation?”
I shrugged. “If you want to tell me, I wanna know. Is it a secret?”
“Maybe. You can’t judge. Or make fun of me.”
“I swear.” I lifted my hands in a placating gesture, and when that didn’t convince her, I drew anXover my heart. “I really won’t.”
Christie nodded slowly and placed her fork down. It had just occurred to me that she was eating her burger with a fork, and I’d missed my chance to give her crap about it. Another time.
She brushed off her shirt, which was clean already. “Okay, well, what I meant was, at the bar ...”
“When we met?”
She nodded. “I was serious when I said I hadn’t had a one-night stand before.”
I tried to remember her saying that and couldn’t but nodded anyway so she’d continue.
“Before that, I had all these ideas of what I wanted—for myself, for my future, for my relationships...”
I tried not to smile when I said, “Did I open up your horizons?”
She sent me a hot glare that didn’t have the intended effect. I shifted in my seat, trying to calm the storm that brewed below. What was it with this woman?
“I just realized that I wasn’t as form-fitted to my standards as I thought. But at the same time, I wanted to meet my own expectations.”
I hadn’t expected to relate to her story but nodded slowly as I realized how alike we really were. “You ever wonder if your expectations are the thing keeping you from being who you really are?”
She searched the table, her eyes moving quickly as she bit the inside of her lip in thought. “But I want to succeed. I want to do big things.”
“And doing what you enjoy will get in the way of that?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I just don’t want it to change me. Change my priorities.”
“What are your priorities?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. I knew where her question lay because I had that question with myself not long ago. Before the divorce, before I finally signed my life away, I had to decide what was most important to me. And it never was my job like Darlene thought, nor was it Darlene. I started to really miss James at that moment, and more than anything, I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. But if Darlene was taking action like she seemed, I had to get my shit together fast, starting with the few showings I had today.
