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“Yeah,” he agreed with what sounded like a sigh in his voice.
What was I supposed to say here?
This was nice.
Talk to you later.
Let’s do this again sometime.
None of them were wrong.
But they were still wrong to say.
“Goodnight, Quin,” I said instead of the dozen or so things that were rolling around my head.
“Thanks, babe.”
And with that, and nothing more, the call ended, and reality came back to me far too quickly.
I could have wallowed.
I could have sat and rolled things around in my head until I drove myself just a little more crazy.
But I dragged myself to the bathroom, showered, redressed, and went back to cooking.
Gunner showed up forty minutes later, not bothering to knock since I left the door open when I let Mackey out.
“You fuckin’ serious?” he growled at me as he moved inside, a brown paper shopping bag in his arm.
I felt my lips pull upward slightly at that, but kept my head ducked. “Whatever do you mean?”
“The door, woman. The fucking door,” he said, putting the bag down next to where I was sliding slices of butter in between the spaces in the bread.
“I thought you guys said I was safe now,” I remarked, working to keep my lips in a straight line. What can I say, it was fun teasing someone as easy to bait as Gunner.
“Safe from the one fuck with the crazy sister, sure, but let’s not invite the next one in for tea, okay? Christ.”
“Is that hard cider?” I asked, smiling as he put the six-pack down on the counter as I reached for the garlic.
“I lost fifty fucking man points by bringing that to the checkout.”
“And yet, look, you survived. What movie did you bring?” I asked, nodding toward the DVD boxes, maybe somewhat charmed that he was old school enough to have them, not buying everything digitally.
“The Bourne Identity and The Fast and the Furious,” he said casually, looking down at the boxes, completely unaware of the slight gut-punch sensation I had at the titles. “What?” he asked, looking up, seeing something on my face that made his brows crease.
I wanted to watch these movies with Quin, not Gunner. I wanted to laugh at how the cars defied the laws of physics, and how no one human could be as trained as Jason Bourne. That being said, I refused to be that girl. That girl who couldn’t enjoy things she had for years because she equated it with a guy. Hell to the no on that.
“Nothing,” I said, giving him a wry smile. “I think you just regained some man points for those choices though. Tell me, Gunner, do you live your life a quarter mile at a time? Do you eat your tuna without the crust? Are you still a busta?”
His lips twitched at that. “Seen this a few times, huh?” he asked, waving the case around.
“I maybe wanted to get a Challenger for about five years after it came out. But, ah, I am mildly terrified at going over the speed limit, let alone racing.” I turned back to him, trying to hold back the smile as I threw another movie quote at him. “‘But one thing Edwin knows is, it’s not how you stand by your car…'”
“‘It’s how you race your car,'” Gunner finished for me. “This is going to be two hours of you quoting the entire thing, isn’t it?”
“Four,” I said, leaning in to pull out the lasagne, and put in the garlic bread. “I’ve seen the Bourne movies just as much as the Fast and Furious ones.”
“Well, if that lasagne is even half as good as it looks, I guess I can endure it for the night.”
And then he did.
And after a choppy start of trying not to make fun of the racing and action scenes, we fell into a rhythm. I almost forgot about Quin. Almost. You know, until Gunner left, and left me alone with my thoughts.
The next day, there was no call.
And it wasn’t until I was getting ready for bed, which meant that in his time, he was already on his new day, that I got a text.
No privacy.
Then that was it.
For two whole days, leaving me with a pit in my stomach, figuring that whatever was going on with his job, must have been serious suddenly since he had managed to find time every other day to call and text.
I had to fight to keep my hands from typing out something like I watched The Fast and the Furious with Gunner tonight. And wished it was you.
Like, ugh, how sappy and pathetic would that make me sound? Even if it was true.
I guess I had forgotten this about dating – the uncertainty, the second-guessing yourself, the nights staring at your ceiling, unable to sleep because you are trying to dissect what was said or done, trying to make sense of it, trying to find meaning in it.
