“Admit that you like fucking with me.”
“Only if you admit that you like it when I do.”
“Maybe,” he muttered, dropping his hand to his lap. “Get the dip.”
“So,I’m already having the worst year of teaching in the history of public education and then Grace moves out in January to live with her fiancé,” I said, shoveling a chip through the dip. “And I’m happy for her. I’m happy and I’m not jealous, and I’m not saying these things to sell myself the lie. But I wasn’t even alone in the apartment for a week before Ines texts me to say she needs a place to live.”
“What happened to the dorms at MIT?”
“Her dad ‘forgot’ to pay for the spring semester and she lost her room.” I pointed another chip at him. “Honestly, I’m shocked she got through three and a half years of college without Gary going broke again.”
“It’s probably better if you don’t ask any questions about where Gary got the money in the first place,” he said under his breath. “It might implicate you in a RICO investigation.”
“Oh, Gary,” I murmured. “When will he ever learn?”
Gary was my first stepfather and my favorite of the bunch. My mom left him when our house in Miami was seized by the federal government and we were escorted off the property. But he was areallysweet guy. Far better than the two stepfathers that followed.
“I take it you invited Ines to move in,” Ryan said.
“What was I supposed to do? I had an empty room and she’s family…ish.”
He arched a brow at that but went back to the dip without comment.
“Her schedule is packed with classes and labs and a whole bunch of other stuff, so I never see her. I think I saw her once last week and that was it.” I took a sip. “But when she’s there—in themiddle of the night, I guess—she takes things apart. Microwave, hair dryer, blender. Doorknobs—everything, anything. I’ll wake up in the morning and find the appliances in a million pieces on the kitchen floor but Ines is long gone. I demanded she return my hair dryer but I haven’t had a smoothie since February. I’m back on Pop-Tarts.”
He nudged a few chips toward my side of the platter. “No good deed unpunished.”
“Yeah, well, I must’ve done a whole lot of good because the punishment just keeps coming.”
I nodded toward the back of the booth, and Ryan immediately understood as he shuffled around to the bend. We were in the restaurant’s most private booth but there was no hiding that my companion was a superstar in this town. The whole place was straining for a glimpse of him, for any clip of conversation they could steal away to tell their friends and coworkers that they’d seen Ryan Ralston out to dinner with some overheated girl who hated her job and had a cheating ex.
When we were at the back of the booth, I continued. “I was seeing this guy and I thought things were going well.”
His knee brushed my thigh as he shifted. He glanced down and then back up at me, crossing his arms again. “The firefighter?”
I bobbed my head. The best thing about Ryan was that I could tell him all of my awful and ugly things like this, but they were never awful or ugly to him. They were simply the facts of a story. I couldn’t remember a single thing he’d ever held against me. “Yeah, but I went to his place one night thinking we’d be getting engaged soon and found him in bed with someone else.”
He winced. “Muggsy.”
“My life is a slow-moving tragic comedy.”
He shook his head. “How do you do it? How are you able to locate the most worthless guys in every town?”
“It’s a gift.” I rolled my eyes but Ryan only grimaced like I was missing the point. “But here’s the really sad part. He’s the best man in Grace’s wedding and I’m supposed to be putting everything into making this special for her, but I’m out here white-knuckling it through every damn minute of wedding planning. I’m barely cutting it as a maid of honor and it’s because of this trash-bucket boy who had a ring in his drawer that wasn’t for me and I can’t get away from him for the next few months.”
I reached across the table for a glass of water. It was more to keep my hands busy than anything. Ryan’s knee pressed into my thigh while he drummed his fingers on his elbow. Again, my attention snagged on the ink peeking out from under his sweater. All of it came after high school. Some toward the end of his college years but mostly since turning pro. If we ever had more time to talk, I’d want to hear about every piece.
“Obviously, I need a revenge date for this wedding,” I said, laughing to fend off the bitterness, the hurt that still lingered right beneath the surface. The desire to scream until I lost my voice and the urgent, fiery need to make Teddy regret every single minute of it. I needed him to know how wrong he’d been—about all of it. “I’ve been working that angle hard, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a decent, tolerable human man who is actually,literallysingle and not just a creep on the internet? It’s next to impossible. I have been looking and looking for years, Ryan.Years. I’m so tired of dating. I’m so tired of putting myself out there and talking and getting to know people, and then watching it come crashing down. It’s one dead end after another.”
I traced the rim of my glass while Ryan drew in a deep breath. He went on tapping his elbow. It probably hurt. I still didn’t understand how he didn’t dissolve into a blob of aches and pains after every game and practice. I knew I would.
“Then why are you doing it?” His words were low, like he wasn’t sure he wanted me to hear.
“What am I supposed to do? Wait for my future husband to appear on the fire escape outside my kitchen window? I want to stop, but what is that going to get me? I know it’s not cool to say it because I’m supposed to love my independence and not need anyone to complete my life—and don’t even get me started on my parents and their marriages—but I want to be married, I want to be settled, and I want to stop feeling like I’m living in the in-between. I want to stop looking for someone to love me.”
When I was finished heaving my sob story into his lap, he met my eyes with a dark, even gaze and said, “You can.”
“What?” I turned the water glass, letting the condensation slick my palms. “What do you mean?”
