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“I totally did. But I couldn’t stop myself from, I don’t know, being a little flirty? I feel like I was on auto-pilot. Like the smart part of me was screamingno, no, no!But then this other part of me was just like,God, I want him back.Am I a terrible person for sending him mixed signals?”
“No. You are someone who got hurt, and you’re not sure if you are willing to open yourself up to getting hurt again. That’s called being human. And it’ssmart.Don’t second-guess yourself.”
I sighed and hugged my pillow. I looked out the window. Last week, we’d started getting the first snows of the year. Usually, this was when my holiday mania kicked in. I would’ve had all my Christmas decorations out and I would’ve ice picked Mariah Carey and her Christmas songs out of their two-month purgatory. But my heart hadn’t been in it this year.
Go figure.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“You wait. Give him a chance to convince you he learned his lesson. It’s not your job to teach it to him. Make him prove he understands how he fucked up and he won’t do it again.”
“But what if I just want him back, even if he doesn’t prove it?”
“Then you come talk to me and I’ll slap some sense into you. You respect yourself, which means you will not accept anything less than complete and utter proof that he deserves you back. And yes, you heard that right. He needs to prove that hedeservesyou.”
I sighed. “I want to be weak, Charleston. I just want to let him hold me again and say it’s okay. He brought me flowers.”
“And you were a boss when you made the security drag him out. Trust me. This is important. A man like him needs to grovel at least once in his life to be bearable long term. You want this to last? Wait it out and let him come to you. If he’s the one, he’ll figure it out. I mean, I know it’s just a movie, but look at Salem. Hard-headed, dumb as rocks, but does he eventually figure out how to make one hell of a gesture?Yes.”
I grinned, reaching over to unpause the movie. That was true. At least in movies, the dumb hot guys figured it out. And Dominic wasn’t dumb. He was far from it. So maybe Charleston was right. Maybe I really should just wait and let him come to me the right way.
“Fine,” I said. “I will be hardcore and I’ll wait.For a little bit.”
“Repeat after me,” Charleston said, clapping his hands with each syllable. “I will not fuck him until he has properly apologized.”
I grinned. “We’ll see.”
He rolled his eyes at me, but smiled and unpaused the movie.
I watched the rest of it with a lump in my chest. Would Dominic really try to apologize again, or had I ruined everything by having security drag him away?
39
DOMINIC
Research. The answer to how to accomplish most goals in life was the proper amount of research. When I wanted to runThe Squawker,I spent months researching all the most successful magazines in the countryandthe least successful. When I wanted to learn to overcome my dyslexia, I dove into the research myself and learned which exercises and mental techniques I could practice to diminish the symptoms. Everything I’ve ever wanted badly enough, I researched and figured out.
So there I was with greasy pizza on my bed watchingSnowy With a Chance of Lovefor about the tenth time since Darcy had me dragged out by security at her office. I had a notepad to my side with notes–some of which were circled and others were crossed out.
She had to have shown me this movie as some sort of clue, after all. That was how women operated. Everything was a test within a test within a test.
But I wasn’t sure, even after watching the movie over and over. All it really did was reinforce the thoughts in my head.
Darcy had thrown me out because my apology wasn’t good enough. I thought if I could just get her to sit down and listen to me for a few minutes, I could properly explain myself. Maybe then she’d see where I was coming from and forgive me.
But that didn’t feel quite right, either. I’d fucked up gloriously, so I needed to undo my mistake gloriously, too.
I tossed the box of pizza to the side and sat back on the bed, arms crossed behind my head as my thoughts raced. I didn’t just want her to forgive me. I wanted her back. I wanted her to know I was over the fucking moon for her and that I’d learned how badly I fucked up. But what kind of gesture could capture all of that in a single moment?
I heard Marcus shuffling around in the kitchen. Tristan was somewhere, too. I’d been keeping them both at arm’s length on the problem, but finally decided to fill them in. They both insisted on coming over to look after me, which was ridiculous, but they wouldn’t stay away. Apparently, looking after me was code for drinking my beer and eating my food while leaving me alone.
But Marcus knocked on the doorframe and came in. “Pizza in bed? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It’s for research,” I said, annoyed.
Tristan joined Marcus, filing into the room and leaning against the wall with a wide grin. “Research?” he asked.
“I’m just trying to figure out how to say sorry.”
