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“And you were his victim?”
“No,” she said, sipping her wine, then holding the glass a little more away. “Maybe… I don’t know.”
“How do you feel?”
Her best friend had a way of coaxing answers out of her. “I have no idea.” Her elbow found her knee as her fingers sank into her hair. “Alex was… my friend. I trusted him. I don’t want to let men get away with bullshit like this.”
“You think getting with this guy or not will teach all of them a lesson? It won’t. Don’t focus on the world, focus on this guy. No matter what you do with him, the next guy isn’t going to know it.”
“That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t want there to be a next one.”
Stunned, Gwen lurched forward. “You want to marry him?”
“No! I didn’t mean… I mean, I don’t want to go into a relationship thinking that it won’t last. If I’m going to give anything a shot with Alex, I have to believe it will stick or there’s no point.”
“This just days after saying you’d hook up with your ex for sex.”
Rainie groaned. “That’s… if it’s a hook up, at least I know it’s a hook up and nothing serious. A relationship is a completely different thing, and you know that. You were with Steve for two years, and you still go back for a hook up now and then.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have your idealism. Men fuck up with me all the time and I let it roll off. Relationships with you are a zero-sum game. If he fucks up, then it’s done.”
“I’m not like that. I can be tolerant.”
“It’s not a bad thing, it’s actually healthy. You know yourself, Rainie. You know what you can get over and what you can’t. If you can’t, then you end it, which makes sense. You’re not dragging it out, wasting everyone’s time.”
And a man like Xander Gauge couldn’t be frivolous with his time.
“Gwenie,” she whimpered, hiding her mouth in her glass.
“Okay,” Gwen said, wriggling closer to slap a hand onto her leg. “Pros and cons. Con: he misled you. Pro: he copped to it. He didn’t feed you excuses or try to snivel out of it.” True. “Pro: he’s hot. Con: he’s hot.”
They laughed.
If he was who he made himself out to be, Xander was a serious man. Deliberate. Screwing around didn’t seem like his style. Though it wasn’t like she hadn’t made errors in judgment over guys on that front before.
“He’s smart and considerate,” she said. “Attentive.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she shook her head. “What am I doing? We can’t just run down his qualities and make some quantitative choice.”
“No, because you don’t know what else might be different.” That same question again. Who was Xander Gauge? “You have to decide if you can get over this… He wasn’t the one who came up with the lie… if you believe him.”
She did. Didn’t she? She’d believed in Alex… then he turned out not to be Alex at all.
“I don’t want to walk away from something that could be everything I’ve ever wanted,” she said. “But I don’t want to believe it could be because…” One thing was for sure. “If it goes wrong with him, it will destroy me.”
Softly, softly seemed to be the best approach. Xander was right about one thing, whatever they were, for better or worse, it wasn’t typical. But was he the man she’d been waiting for all her life, or the one sent to destroy her?
19
By the next day, optimism was on high. Throughout her sleepless night, she’d swung back and forth on what to do. Reaching a decision sent her into slumber. This was it. She’d figured it out.
Work had whizzed by that morning, which was great. Lunch couldn’t come quick enough.
Xander was at their table in the coffee shop. She went over, smiling at him as he rose to pull out her chair.
Before sitting down, she curved a hand around the back of his neck and drew him down to kiss the corner of his mouth.
“Feeling good, Button?” he asked, seating himself.
Their chairs were closer than normal, she had noticed, but wasn’t objecting.
