“Youdothink I’m as bad as him, though. I’m just a self-absorbedinfluencer, remember? You probably think I deserve it.”
He shook his head. “No one deserves that. But I don’t think you’d use someone just to get ahead. Look, I don’t know you that well, and you seem a bit...”
“High maintenance?”
He shook his head. “Tunnel minded. Focused. Like me, actually. We’re so focused that maybe it’s hard to see what’s in front of our nose until someone spells it out for us.” He hesitated. “Or it’s broadcasted on a shirt.”
I snorted. “Are you telling me you’re really a pothead?”
He shook his head, chuckling. “Only into the terra-cotta variety.”
I guess we kinda had a truce for a few moments, so I decided to go in for the big questions. “Is that what happened with you and Addison? You didn’t realize she was such a...” It was totally bad manners to call his ex a bitch while he was driving me home, so I didn’t finish the sentence.
He exhaled. “It took me way too long to notice she’d changed. She’d started putting other people down to make herself look better.”
Yup, she was doing exactly that about him and Juniper at that burger place. “It’s not the same thing, then. Matteo didn’t change—I just never realized how big a dick he always was. I should have seen it.”
“He manipulated you, and none of it was your fault. You’re a driven, determined, focused person, and he took advantage of that. Don’t beat yourself up over it; he’s not worth it. He doesn’t deserve you.”
I turned to him sharply. Really? Rowan Johnston being kind? “Did you just compliment me?”
He frowned. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
I narrowed an eye. “Seriously, though. You’re good at this. I’d never peg you as a relationship/self-esteem pep talk kind of guy.”
“Why, because I’m not talkative? I may not have a lot of close friends, but I’m there for the ones I have. Plus, I’ve been in therapy, so I know my psychobabble.” Rowan’s eyes never left the road in front of him.
I wasn’t used to this kind of realness from my friends—not that Rowan was a friend or anything. But still. He was being so honest and open, telling me what went wrong with Addison, telling me that he saw me as focused and driven. He was more like Juniper than I’d noticed. It was disconcerting. Just like with his shirts—I’d judged him on those, and I was wrong, too.
But then again, I’d thought Matteo was being real with me. Maybe I had no concept anymore of what “real” actually was. I leaned against the cool glass of the window.
“How did you deal?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When you and Addison broke up. What did you do to get over it...so you could go back to being so focused?”
He chuckled, watching the road in front of him. We were almost home—the wide stretches of nothing had been replaced with the houses of our neighborhood. “I kept my mind busy. I immersed myself in my job and school. I filled three sketchbooks. I relied on my friends. I ignored people who talked about it.”
“Gossip, you mean?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I love Bakewell, but seriously, this town knows how totalk.”
I was quiet for a bit. “Where are you going to school in the fall?”
He didn’t look at me. “University of Toronto.”
I chuckled. I really couldn’t imagine Rowan in my city. He pulled into his driveway.
“Thanks,” I said as I unbuckled the seat belt. “For, you know, the talk. And the ride home.”
He got out of the car without saying anything, so I did the same. The sky was pretty black by now, but there was a light on above the Johnstons’ garage door, so I could finally see his shirt clearly. The flowerpots each had cutesy plants in them with happy faces on the flowers. I shook my head, laughing. “Cute,” I said.
He smiled, then looked up. “Clear night,” he said.
I frowned. “It’s too dark. There are too many stars here.”
He snorted as he walked around the car toward his front door. “This is nothing. Give it a few hours, and it will seem like there’s less sky than stars. I love the night skies here.”
