“Well, I am. Let me grab something up here.” He indicates the food truck parked at the corner.
“What? You said you wanted to talk and I said you had one minute. I’m not waiting for you to eat dinner.”
“Calm down, girl. I’ll grab a hot pretzel and we’ll be on our way in two seconds.” He doesn’t even wait for me to answer, just walks up to the food truck and expects me to stand there and wait. And inexplicably, I do, mentally cursing him out the entire time. He buys a soft pretzel, and I wait some more while he pumps mustard from a giant jug into a little plastic cup, my irritation forgotten for a few seconds as I watch the fine muscles in his arms harden and flex. I follow him to a metal table behind the food truck, and we sit.
“You ever have one of these?” he asks. “So good. I don’t know how they get the salt to stick. Not like some places where you pick up the pretzel and a salt blizzard spills onto the ground.”
“Can we get on with it? I have things to do. What did you want to talk about?”
He licks the corner of his lip and looks at me. “That fucking kiss.”
I break his gaze immediately. I didn’t expect him to be that direct. “What about it?”
“It was pretty hot. Don’t you think?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, it was just a kiss. It was fine,I guess.”
“Fine, huh?” He says it like he doesn’t believe a word I say, and if I wasn’t working so hard to act uninterested, I’d be annoyed by his unshakable confidence. “Funny, I coulda sworn you looked a little more than fine when it was over.”
“That was surprise. Don’t get it twisted.”
He laughs. “Surprise? No, I think that was your mind being blown wide open.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. Where does he get the nerve?
Reeve leans closer. “I would know. It blew my mind too.”
His admission hangs in the air between us, taking me completely by surprise. We stare at each other, and I swallow hard, hoping my eyes haven’t betrayed me. “What does it matter whether it was good or bad?” I ask, pulling away from him. “It was just a meaningless kiss.”
Reeve shakes his head. “I know what a meaningless kiss is. Do you know how many girls I’ve kissed that didn’t even know my name?”
“No. Believe it or not, I don’t sit up late-night trolling your social media and tallying up the hundreds of skanks you run around with.”
He bites back a smile. “Well, there’s been a lot of them. And a handful that did mean something. You and me? That was something else.”
“What? A drunken make out? Mutual dislike mistaken for passion?”
I can’t believe he doesn’t turn away from me. If someone said that to me, it’d be an invitation to an epic flounce, but Reeve doesn’t even blink.
“Is this about the way I treated Lenni?”
“Yeah, the way you treated Lenni. The way you treat everyone. The way you sit there expecting me to believe a single thing you say.”
“What I did to Lenni was fucked up. I’ve admitted that and apologized for it, but that’s not who I am.”
“Oh, so you’ve changed?” I ask doubtfully.
“I was never that guy. She caught me in a really bad moment, one I don’t ever plan to relive. But I don’t know why I have to apologize to you for something that happened between me and her. I’ve worked to get her forgiveness, and I have it.”
He’s right. He and Lenni are cool now, their brief past a former lifetime. I’m the one holding the grudge.
“Anyway, I’m talking about you and me. Come on, Jade, admit it: There was something between us that night.”
“You really cannot believe that someone could kiss you and not immediately lose her mind, can you?”
“Someone? Sure. But not you. I was on the other end of that kiss, remember? I felt the way you responded.”
I can’t meet his eye any longer. I hoist my bag onto my shoulder, because god help me, Iwillflounce if I have to. But Reeve grabs my wrist before I can move.
