I give him a sideways glance. “I never said our relationship was perfect.”
“But what would you change?”
I’d have him be more like you. He’d wake with a quarter-inch of scruff every morning. He’d laugh at my jokes, and he’d sometimes look at me like he’d give up a decade of his life to fuck me.
“I guess I do sort of miss nights like this. Sometimes I want to get a drink, or ice cream, or pizza. I want to sit outsidesomewhere and just hang.” Our feet brush against each other. It’s like a tiny electric charge. I move mine away and hitch a shoulder.
“And?” he prods.
I bet Elijah has never once written sex on a calendar. I bet when he wants someone, he’s precisely the way he was that night at the party, as if a nuclear blast wouldn’t have stopped him.
“All of our sex is scheduled,” I blurt, peeling the wrapper off my bottle. “It’s actually on the calendar.”
His own bottle was poised at his lips. He sets it down without drinking. “I don’t understand. You mean some kind of birth control method?”
Argh. I wish I’d just kept it to myself. “There was a study that said that once or twice a week was optimal, and that there aren’t really any benefits to having sex more than that. So it’s every Wednesday and Saturday like clockwork, and sometimes I just...”
“Sometimes you just what?” he asks.
I laugh, though it sounds more angry than humorous. “I bet you love this entire thing, don’t you, Elijah? You just love the fact that you didn’t want me, and the guy who came after you doesn’t seem to want me much either.”
“You can’t possibly believe that I didn’t want you,” he grunts.
I grow still. Is he talking about wanting mephysically, or something else?
“That’s generally what you take from the situation when a guy says that he isn’t interested in youlike that.”
He runs a hand over his face. “I think it was pretty obvious that I was interested in youlike that. But there were other things going on at the time.”
What things, Elijah?
I want to call him on it, but have just enough pride not to let him know I still care. Andthere were things going on at the timeis the exact sort of bullshit answer I’d give a person I’d dumped too.
“Whatever,” I reply, brushing his answer away.
“So, as you were saying, sex with Thomas is terrible, and fills you with dread, and?—”
I laugh. “I didn’t say that.”
“I was interpreting. Please continue.”
“Sometimes I wish I’d had a little more fun before I settled down.”
“You could, you know,” he says quietly, his tongue sweeping his lower lip. He stares at the bottle in his hand rather than me. “You’re single. You can do anything you want.”
I’m holding my breath, every nerve ending strung tight and eager as I wait for him to finish that thought. To suggest I could do anything I want withhim. It would be the worst idea, but God...I’d really like to.
But heisn’toffering, of course.Remember the way he blew you off, Easton? Why the fuck would you even want him to ask?“I guess that’s what weddings are good for, huh?” I finally say. “Kelsey is doing her best to set me up with Aiden, Hawk’s best friend.”
Maybe it’s all in my head—many things with Elijah are—but he looks absolutely stunned as he picks up the trash and walks back inside.
26
EASTON
Love is really about hormones.
I remind myself of this as I watch Elijah move around the kitchen, making us breakfast. Dopamine, the pleasure hormone, and norepinephrine, so fizzy it can make you an insomniac—they surge when you fall in love, and they last just long enough to make sure you’ve reproduced. Five years hits, though, and it’s all gone. Your dopamine is back at baseline and norepinephrine does the same. When you hear people saying that the thrill is gone? It’s just that they never realized the thrill was entirely manufactured—nature’s little trick to save the species from dying out.
