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“But now you love me as more than a friend, right?”The corner of her mouth dances with delight though she doesn’t let herself smile.
I bear down weight onto her frame, still stabilizing us both with my arms against the sides. “I love you as my friend. As my lover… I love you as everything. And I shouldn’t have said we can’t talk about our exes. I want you to be able to talk about anything with me. But it is hard to hear about other men.”
“There was only one. It was enough for me to know none of them would ever compare to you.”
My heart thumps against my ribcage. But if she knew that… “Why did you stay with him for so long? And take him back when he wasn’t good to you? It doesn’t line up with the woman I know. If anyone can tell a guy to fuck off, it’s you.”
She laughs lightly. “Yeah, well, Eric had a way of… it’s hard to explain.” Shame chokes her up, and she drops her gaze to the ice again.
I tilt up her chin. “Hey. You can talk to me.”
“This one is hard to admit. It’s… it still hurts. His words still make me wonder… I still ask myself if he’s right…”
“Tell me.” The haunted look in her eye is back, and I need to exorcize this demon Eric put inside her. It doesn’t belong there.
“When Eric did his childish man-boy stuff, I saw it for what it was. Like he doesn’t want to skate anymore with me because he’s jealous? Whatever. I just didn’t really give a shit. I wasn’t that invested in him anyway. But I think he might have felt that energy from me, and when I stopped caring so much, his methods of controlling the situation got… meaner. And sometimes, he said things that I actually wondered if they were true and maybe they weren’t mean at all.”
She reflects, her eyebrows furrowing with her remembering conversations I wish I could erase from her memory because they clearly still hurt her.
“Like what? What kinds of things would he say?”
“I don’t want to go there. We’re having fun.”
I grab her hand and circle the delicate bone of her wrist. “And it’s even more fun to connect with someone.”
She reaches her thumb onto my wrist and strokes me back. Her gaze is low. “He told me I was hard to love.”
Her special spark falls down and out of her, extinguishing on the ice below. Her ember may have gone out, but mine has only just now burst into flames. Howdarehe talk to her like that?
“That’s not an easy thing to hear,” she says, “especially when he seemed to have valid points.”
I want to cut her off and say how wrong he was. But I let her talk, even though I’m now raging. Right now, this isn’t about him. It’s about Jolie getting a chance to get it off her chest and have a moment to process her feelings with someone who makes her feel safe and valid. It’s not about showing him how much I disagree.
Later.
Next week.
On the ice… that’s when I’ll make this about him.
I tuck hair behind her ear, and it brings me back to the one who’s important. Her. My Joey.
“He used to say I would just blurt things out with no consideration for people’s feelings. That it takes a strong person to love someone so insensitive and tactless.”
How dare he make my favorite part about this beautiful human a blemish? I swallow down my need to rage. My feelings don’t matter right now. And she’s talking… and I get the sense she needs it.
“And he’s kind of right. So because he was right about me being tactless, it begged to reason that he might be right about me being… hard to love.”
I take her head against my chest. She can probably hear my heartbeat right through my jacket. It’s pounding so hard. “You are not hard to love.” I ease her back and gaze into her eyes. “Your unbridled honesty is my favorite thing about you. It takes a strong man to be with a strong woman, and he clearly isn’t that.”
She offers a crooked smile, but his words so obviously cling to her memory.
“Joey, you can say anything you want around me and I’ll love it. I’ll never shame you for the things you feel, think, or want. Your honesty is everything to me, and I’ll take it as it comes.” I cock a smile. “Diplomatic or not. I don’t care. Truth is intimacy. I’ve never had that with anyone and I know I’ll always have it with you because it’s woven through the very fabric that is you. And that? That’s the easiest thing in the world to love.”
Her eyes glass over, and her nose goes red.
I kiss it. “You’re mine now. And you’ll never deal with that prick, Eric Larose, again, because I’ll do it for you.”
She laughs.
