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He lifts his phone as an explanation. “This list I found,” he says, “of romantic tropes and crap.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
I look him up and down. “Have you been going off that list this whole time?” I ask him.
“Yep,” he says.
“Nerd,” I say.
“Yep.”
He looks at me and laughs. He checks his phone again, and I check out his long fingers as he scrolls down the screen. I try to stop myself from staring—it’s just fingers, get a grip. But no, I can’t stop.
“Are you ready for the one-bed trope?” he says, and I swear it’s another amazing but missed opportunity for a spit take. I wasn’t drinking anything, dammit.
“The what now?”
“It’s one of the top tropes in romantic movies,” he explains, making it worse. “They stay together in a room with one bed.”
“This is not a movie,” I say, but my skin breaks out in goose bumps. I get up, put on my jacket. He moves my chair so I can walk away from the table.
Outside, the cold wind slaps my cheeks. My hair moves with it, and I close my eyes and relish the feeling of light, loose curls instead of my usual heavy ponytails.
“It can be, if you want it to,” Marco says with a straight face.
Is he being serious right now?
“I don’t want a pity trope.”
Meanwhile, my heart is fluttering.One bed, you say?
Although we did that before, didn’t we? The one bed thing. It didnotend well.
He shrugs.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight for an entire night,” he says. “I thought that I would phrase it as a romantic movie trope so that it would be more bearable for you. But yeah, you’re basically stuck with me.”
I smile wide, all teeth.
“If you can bear it, so can I,” I tell him sweetly, but it comes out as a hiss.
“Oh, Ican’tbear it”, he says, “make no mistake. I can’t. I just have to, is all.”
I don’t know if he means that, orhowhe means it if by some chance it happens to be true, but somehow it makes me mad. I don’t want to hear him say things like that unless they are absolutely, one hundred percent true. And they are not. Everything is a lie right now, him, me, the whole world.
And if there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s his pity. Or him to take care of me.
“You’re not my bodyguard”, I snap at him.
He just looks at me. And looks.
“No,” he says finally. “No, I’m not.”
“Well, then stop looking as if you’d like to be.”
We have walked the few short steps to the bike, and are now standing next to it, talking. Playing this game of who will snap first. Who will say the most outrageous lie. He’s winning, so far.
