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“And you still like him?”
“You know when you told me about seeing Justin again and the only thing you felt was mild disgust?”
“Yep.”
“It wasn’t the same for me. I wish it were, but it’s not how I reacted. My body, my heart, it was like I was sixteen again.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, it’s a bad thing. I can’t trust that man. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me. I can’t fall for it again.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, but it feels like our entire love story has turned into a ghost. It died in a weird way, and it left behind so much unfinished business. And after living for sixteen years suspended in another dimension, it has come back to haunt me.”
“Time to face your ghosts?”
“Yeah, and bust them, one way or another.”
17
MARISSA
“Gosh, men are so maddening sometimes,” Blake growls. “And they have the nerve to call us complicated.”
I study my best friend. “What do you want to do with Gabriel?”
“Kiss him, kick him, make love to him, kill him.”
“Yep.” I take another sip of tea. “That sounds about right. So you two are over, for real?”
“I have no other choice, Mari.”
“To the contrary, you have all the choices.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. At the moment it doesn’t feel like it. What’s a relationship without trust?”
“He made a mistake, can’t you just—”
“John made a mistake, too. So why haven’t you forgiven him yet?”
Our situations are widely different, but tonight isn’t the right time to argue with her. Blake’s heart is still too sore to hear hard truths. That whether she likes it or not, her love for Gabriel is not just going to evaporate overnight. I saw them together. Theirs is the kind of love that sticks to the skin, even when you try to scrub it off in the shower. A love that sinks deep and leaves marks on the soul.
This fight is a bump in the road. A blip she’ll jokingly hold against him until the day they’re ninety, I’m convinced of it.
Instead, I simply reply, “Touché.”
“Can I stay here tonight?” Blake blurts.
“Sure,” I say. “But I have to get up super early tomorrow morning to get my eggs harvested.”
“Harvested?” Blake frowns. “That sounds scary.”
“It is a little.”
“How do they do it?”
“They basically puncture your uterus or fundus, I’m not sure about the anatomical details, with a big-ass needle and suck out all the eggs from your ovaries.” Blake’s eyes widen. “But they assured me I’ll be on drugs and won’t feel a thing.”
