I stared at him, my smile growing slightly as thatthingin my chest fluttered. He was adorable right now. Adorably sexy. “Fine. But I’m driving. I’ll bring you back to get your car.”
Blake huffed out a laugh. “Deal.”
I gestured to my jeep. When I unlocked it, we opened the back doors, slipping our bags into the backseat before moving to the front.
When Blake slid into the passenger seat, he laughed just as I shut my door. “How the hell do you not get distracted while driving with all these damn ducks in the window?”
I did have a lot of ducks. “I’m so used to them being there, I don’t even notice them anymore.”
He shook his head with a laugh as I situated myself in my seat. I reached down, slipping my hand into my pocket and pulling out a handful of supplies—gauze, alcohol wipes, tape, whatever else I stuffed in there earlier.
When I reached over and popped the glove compartment open, a snort of laughter escaped him as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Haley,” he said, his voice playfully scolding.
“Listen, do not judge me!” I said through a chuckle, trying to defend myself for having my own medical supply in my car. “It’s an accident. I’ve always kept my pockets stuffed so I have things on hand, and then I forget that they’re there. And the white coat pockets are going to make itsomuch worse because they’re bigger and deeper and can hold more.”
He looked over at me. “You’re a mess…”
“Yeah…I am,” I nodded with a sheepish smile.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed up the street away from the hospital, pulling into The Rusty Anchor a couple of minutes later. When we walked inside, Blake went to the bar while I grabbed a table in the back by the window—it happened to be the same table I saw him sitting at that night all those months ago.
A few moments later, Blake approached, a beer in one hand and a mojito in the other. Sitting across from me, he slid my glass my way and took a pull from his drink. “So…tell me about these exes that keep messaging you…”
I took a long sip of my drink before letting out a breath. “Well, in simple terms, according to Marie, I tend to go back to my exes. She says it’s because they’refamiliar. It goes hand-in-hand with what Wes always said—that I am the epitome of an ‘I can fix him’ girl, that my heart is too big for my own good, and that I offer too many chances, even when they don’t deserve it.”
“And would you say those are accurate assessments?”
I nodded, playing with the condensation on my glass. “Yeah. I am an ‘I can fix him’ girl. I tend to overlook being disrespected and not treated that great because I always think they’ll change—that they’llwantto change and be better. And I seem to have a habit of giving too many chances because of it.”
“You want them to changefor you?”
I laughed wryly. “It’s pathetic, I know.”
“It’s not pathetic.”
“But it is. Especially when they end up changing forother peopleinstead, making all the effort you put in feel like a complete waste.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of them—the one who messaged me today—he gotengaged a year after we ended things. So, in just a year, he found someone, dated them, and decidedtheywere worth changing for.”
“Well, how do youknowhe changed?”
“He proposed to someone. What do you mean?”
“Just because he proposed to someone else doesn’t mean he’s not the same man you walked away from, Haley. He could have just found someone stupid enough to put up with his bullshit.”
“Huh…” I stared at him. “I never thought of it that way.”
Blake smirked with a wink. “You gotta make the logic work in your favor.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“There’s something I’m not understanding, though,” he said. “Before, you recognized that you’re being treated like shit by these guys, so why keep putting yourself through the same thing when you know damn well it’s less than you deserve?”
A quiet, bitter laugh escaped me. “I don’t know. I guess…I guess somewhere along the way, ‘less’ is what became familiar.”
Just like Marie always told me—I favored familiarity. Andlesswas part of that.
