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Pearl didn’t answer right away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But, I appreciate you telling me that. It helps me understand you better. I’ve kind of been seeing myself as weak for still letting what Eric did haunt me so much.”
“Hell no,” I said, sitting up straighter. “You’re not weak, Pearl. Not at all.”
She gave a coy smile. “Hey, I’m the one trying to cheer you up. Don’t turn this around on me.”
I sighed. “I was just thinking how one person can only take so much, you know? How many times can people let you down before you can’t see anything else? How are you supposed to put your hand on the stove top, get burned, and then convince yourself the next time it won’t burn you?”
Pearl was quiet for a few moments. “I guess you just have to realize people aren’t stovetops.”
I grinned. “Brilliant insight, Pearl.”
“I mean… Maybe the problem has been the type of people we’re choosing to trust, not people in general. It’s different. A little, at least. We can believe people will do better next time because we can do better. You and I can both do a better job of picking the right person for ourselves, not the easy person. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always just taken the people I get handed. My family knows someone who knows someone, we meet, and we date. I’ve been too chickenshit to go after the guys I actually like.”
I thought about how I decided who to date in the past and felt a little pang of shame. “I guess I always just picked the prettiest woman in the room.”
Pearl smirked. “At least you can admit that’s what you were doing.”
“I guess that means if I want to change my ways, I’ll have to cross you off my list of potential future mates.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I saw Anabelle’s ass on that black and white paper, I think I went into panic mode. And without realizing what I was doing, I looked around and found the prettiest woman in the room. I went to her for a distraction. And then she barfed on me.”
Pearl was blushing hard. “Or maybe you went to the person who looked like they needed to be cheered up. I think you care more about people and making them happy than you admit.”
“That’s a generous interpretation.”
“But I guess I’d have to cross you off my list, too. Because you just kind of fell into my lap like all the other guys before, too. So that settles it, huh? If the two of us ever want to get back on the horse, it can’t be with each other.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That does settle it. But, uh, Pearl?”
“Yeah?”
I was about to apologize again for how I’d acted after we hooked up. I wanted to tell her how it made me feel about her–how it had felt like way more than just sex. Thankfully, I let those words die before they reached my lips. “Good night.”
“Oh. Good night.” She reached up and turned off her reading light. I heard the rustle and clatter of her setting her paperback and glasses on the nightstand in the dark.
There were a few minutes of quiet before Pearl’s quiet voice sounded. “Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad it’s you. I mean, of all the guys I could’ve got into this crazy situation with. You’re a good guy, even if I don’t think you see yourself that way. And I was thinking maybe after this is all over, we could still be friends, because I’d like that.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m glad it’s you, too. And sure, maybe. Pen pals, at least, because you’re going to move out of the city and chase that dream, right?”
She laughed softly. “Right.”
23
PEARL
I’d never been to Colorado in my life, and the moment when we first drove within view of the Rockies was breathtaking. We drove through what felt like hours of flat farmland dotted with windmills all the way through Kansas and eastern Colorado throughout the morning. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we crested a small hill and had a view of mountains running North to South as far as I could see.
Lizzie spent a summer here as a kid, which was why she wanted her wedding in a place called Fairhope. I’d never been, but heard her stories and still hadn’t pictured it being this beautiful.
We wove our way closer and closer to the mountains until I saw a strange and out of place skyscraper a few minutes outside Fairhope. It was surrounded by a sprawl of suburban neighborhoods and some commercial buildings that looked like they’d recently popped up around the building.
Past the skyscraper, we entered a stretch of rolling, wooded hills that eventually opened up to a view of a quaint town that looked straight out of one of the TV shows I’d loved as a teen. There was a river running through the main sprawl, a town center that was packed with cute shops and stores, and a gradual spread of residential houses radiating out from the town center.
