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“You had...” He palmed his face. “I don’t want to know.”
“You’re not my dad. Lord knows he didn’t care. Drew wouldn’t sleep with me. I chose a guy I knew from school. It was awful. It hurt because neither of us knew what we were doing, and afterward we were so embarrassed we never spoke again.”
She was disarmingly clever. He uncovered his face and rolled his head to look at her. “You do this. You put yourself out there so your target, your victim, which would be me, feels they have to share too. I’m not falling for it again.”
She laughed. Roy sang “Crying.” Tom thought about cleaning the kitchen and didn’t move. He should get moving. He was going hiking again tomorrow if the weather didn’t turn. He wanted to make an early start.
A phone rang. Hers.
She leaped up. “If that wasn’t all the way in my room, I wouldn’t have to run for it.”
He heard her laughing on the call and instead of getting up, he waited for her to come back. Roy was singing “Only the Lonely” when she did.
She sat in the spot she’d been before but on the edge of the sectional with her leg crossed, foot swinging. “So Tom, are you lonely?”
Should’ve cleaned the kitchen. “I don’t regret deleting Tinder, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not lonely. Too busy. Had a long email from Josh today. My social needs for the week have been met.” Maybe that’s why he felt loose. He was socially overdosing with Flick. “Are you lonely?”
“Yeah, I am.”
Last thing he expected her to admit. He sat forward. “Is that about your family?” She would grab attention anywhere she went. Never need to be alone. The fact she had no one significan
t was an oversight she could correct with a crook of her finger.
“No. Maybe. Yes, I feel apart from them. That’s not going to change. I have good friends, mostly made at various jobs, but they’re not coming to Washington with me and I’ll see them more on LinkedIn than in real life.”
Josh had mentioned he was too busy settling in to feel lonely but he feared it would be an issue once the complexity of being new to the city cleared, that he’d need to find time to make friends outside of the office.
“It’s why I still miss Drew. Through school, through college, I could tell him anything and know he’d have my back. He was my person. That’s what I’m lonely for. That one person who accepts me unconditionally. You’re lucky you don’t feel that way.”
Lucky, or there was some deficit in him. Either way, he wasn’t unhappy. He sat back again, let himself sink into the sectional. He’d watched Wren love Josh in a way Josh didn’t need, and what that did to Wren wasn’t something Tom was lining up to experience. He wouldn’t want Josh’s part in that either. To be loved by someone you couldn’t feel the same way for.
Flick swung her dangling foot. Portions of her toenails were painted bright red. “Have you ever been in love?”
“In lust.” A few times. “Infatuated. There’s never been anyone I felt I couldn’t walk away from. You were in love with Drew?” Those words felt sour on his tongue.
“I loved him. I still do. I wasn’t in love with him. It was hero worship. I left when I was nineteen and ruthless. God, that makes me sound like the politician you accused me of being.”
“It makes you sound like a survivor. Like someone who knows what they want.”
Roy sang “In Dreams” and they studied each other until she said, “It’s not so weird between us now.”
It was easier. He was grateful for that. The ride less bumpy.
“But we have this thing.”
Here came a corner, a sharp turn sending him back to the vision of Flick in her underwear, defiant and sexy as sin. “I shouldn’t have said what I said about your ass last night. I was half asleep and you were...it wasn’t a—”
“I liked it.” She got to her knees. “I like the way you look at me as if you’re afraid I’ll bite, as if you need a chair and a whip to tame me.”
Ah. Not a corner, a loop-the-loop.
“As if you’d like to find out what happens if you can’t.”
Roller coaster, wrecking ball.
“You look like my next mistake, Tom.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” It was a well-used dating app line. He knew exactly what she meant and he was up against the Gravitron’s wall.
