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“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m not going to fuck this up with you. You’re my chance to get this right, and I’ve been waiting for you, and now I’m—” He broke off, wincing. “Fuck, there I go with the intensity.”
She took his hand in both of hers and interlaced their fingers. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “All these people, warning you off me, you must think—”
“Well, they also have their opinions about me, of course. They think that I must be doing this to myself on purpose.”
“What to yourself?”
“Most of the conversations have been variations on, ‘Oh, it’s so good you finally woke up and got out of that thing with Tommy, but you’re just repeating bad patterns with Niles.’ Three women have told me about how they used to date ‘bad boys’ until they realized they needed to respect themselves and make better choices.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” he muttered.
“You think it about me too,” she said. “Everyone does.”
He surveyed her. “I’ll stop.”
She laughed. “No, you won’t.”
“I’ll be on your side, Dahlia. Always. Okay?”
She grinned at him. “Niles, you don’t have to—”
“I’m serious. It’s a deal, right? A bargain. Another one. I’m always on your side.”
Her expression stilled, softened. She pressed into him and put her mouth on his.
He kissed her back, holding onto her.
DAHLIA SET DOWNthe grocery bags on Niles’s counter.
“You do not have to buy me groceries,” he said.
It was that evening after work. Third evening in a row with him. She kept thinking things like,Too fast,and,You should probably stay home this evening.
But she wanted to be with him, and so here she was. “I know I don’t have to, but I thought I’d cook for you tonight.”
“I can cook,” he said.
“I know you can, but I want to,” she said. “So, I bought things to cook. That’s all. Anyway, if I’m here all the time, I don’t want to be an imposition—”
“Dahlia, nothing about you is an imposition, please,” he said.
“Okay, but I just got a few things.” She started to empty the bags.
He looked over her shoulder. “A few things? You have five bags.”
“Well, they don’t really fill them when they’re bagging,” she said.
“You bought me bread? And eggs?”
“Just some staples.” She looked at him. “You feel stifled, don’t you?” Maybe she was acting like they were together-together, and they hadn’t really had that conversation, even though she had ended the sex with Tommy, and he’d said something like,All yours, only yours.Which, seemed like… together-together.
“Stifled? What do you mean?”
“You know, like I’m acting as though we’re more serious than we are too fast.”
“We’re not serious?” he said.
