“My housemate walked past you in the hallway on the way back from the croissant run I asked him to do.” He was going to make eggs and include croissants? Okay. Not bad. A bit considerate.
“And?”
“I told him we had a connection,” he says, before sipping from the bottle. “I told him that you wereintome.” He coughs out a laugh. “And I went on and on about it until he told me that you were gone. And I still didn’t believe him until I walked back into my room.” He offers a shrug at the end and it’s so earnest I know it’s not about his ego, and yet I can’t help but say it out loud. Call it a defense mechanism.
“So fragile masculinity,” I say, like a smartass.
“Just a fragile human heart,” he says, correcting me. And I know he’s right. Because in my drunken slushy mind, I know exactly what he’s talking about. There was a connection. I just had to sever it before we could both really get hurt. Because I don’t do feelings. Feelings are bad. And he made me feel way too much.
“I’m sorry I snuck out.”
This apology lends itself to intense staring on both our accounts.
“We’ve established how you did it. I want to know why,” Xander says, still staring. “Did I get the wrong impression that you liked me?” There’s so much honesty in his eyes, I decide not to deflect and instead answer the damn question.
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t get the wrong impression.” Xander’s eyes go wide at this confession. “Everything you felt, I felt it too. I just know that relationships don’t work—and statistically speaking, we’re no different. It was easier to bail before things got complicated. And hard. And messy. And sad.”
He nods slowly, accepting it. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“How’d you get fired, anyway?” he says, moving us along.
The change in conversation throws me. “You really want to know?” I say, thankful he decided that talking about my termination is better than continuing down the path of apology, which we all know is the gateway conversation to deep and meaningful. And I don’t think I’ll ever be drunk enough for that.
“I mean, you are talking to a lawyer,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Do you think you have a case for wrongful termination?”
“The idea of taking a case like this to court and not winning, it’d be over for me,” I say.
“Case like this?”
“Putting a woman’s sexual activity on display like she should be condemned,” I say, looking straight ahead, avoiding eye contact. And that’s truly why I could never hate my mom. In a world that still slut shames women, my mom doesn’t just celebrate it. She writes aNew York Timesbestselling book about it. She produces a show about it. She leads a revolution about it.
I will my eyes to stay straight, because it seems that while we’ve avoided any deep and meaningful between us, we’ve stumbled on vulnerability, and it’s making my skin itch. I feel my heart pound a little faster at this confession.
“Can you walk me through what happened, start to finish?”
“You’re going to judge me,” I say, still avoiding eye contact.
“I’m not here to judge you.”
“One of my Bone It hook ups,” I start, but stop and look over at him. His eyes are steady and soft, so I continue. “Picked me up from the school and was a little handsy at the school gates. So apparently I’m a pervert now.”
“I could win it for you,” he says, like it’s a done deal, and he must read the shock on my face because he says, “Hello, I’m Xander Miller. A lawyer. Nice to meet you.”
I shake my head. “Aren’t you in corporate law? White-collar crime shit?” He laughs at this.
“Correct, but part of that white-collar crime comes under employment law. Let me look into it for you,” he says, and this time I can tell he’s asking for approval. It dawns on me that even in this drunken haze, I’m getting pretty good at reading Xander Miller and his intentions.
“You’ll have to get me way more drunk to even consider that,” I say, reaching for the bottle between his strong thighs that I am not hyper-fixating on. I take a Xander-sized gulp. It turns out that Xander-sized gulp was the last one. “Shit,” I say, inspecting the empty bottle. “Do you think we can DoorDash another?”
Xander springs into action and gets his phone out. He smashes the screen a little too hard but declares with a grin: “Done.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Boo!” I jump up from Xander’s side of the bed, trying to spike his heart rate. I look over at Xander’s monitor, hopeful. But no such luck. It’s steady as she goes. Not even a blip.
Xander slowly turns his head to look at me. He shakes it, pitying me.
