“Bronte, that’s too much.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“That’s a matter of, I wasn’t your girlfriend, just someone you met once.”
“Is that how you’re looking at this?”
He takes a small bite of the danish before licking his bottom lip, and I can’t get over how nonchalant he is about this whole thing. How, even if he had more time to wrap his head around it, how this isn’t weird now that I know about it?
“Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I open my mouth, but he quickly adds, “And before you get on my ass about it, I did it because the senior living center needs it, too. I know how important it is to you. And I wanted to help. Besides, my brother wasn’t doing shit, so consider it payment for wasting your time.”
My stomach coils with the reminder of betrayal and my lack of reading the room.
I can’t help but blame myself for not seeing things for what they were. Nettie was right, but the real story was so much more complex and deeper than that.
Bobby did cheat on me. The text messages are black and white. His flirting and comments about not being able to wait to see Jolene and the other females he had in line. I’ve seen more than I wanted to see.
Naked pictures.
Snippets of sexting that I couldn’t stomach for long.
Unless Bronte went to lengths to forge and make them up, Bobby and I don’t have a future together.
I just need to hear him once I bring it up.
“That was generous,” I divulge, so I don’t sound or come off ungrateful. “Thankyou.”
“Anytime.”
He examines the danish as if it’s something he’s never seen before, which prompts my next question. “You don’t like sweets?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then don’t eat it.” I hold my palm out. “I’ll take it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” He looks up at me. “Sometimes things grow on you, Daydream.”
I don’t see this man ever having an epiphany that sweets are the next best thing coming.
But I don’t miss that meaning either.
Himgrowing onme.
“How are you affording million-dollar donations?”
Bronte leans back and hits me with a blank stare. “Not, what do you like instead of sugary danishes, or do you like having eighty questions peppered off at you early in the morning?”
I mean…
I can’t say I’m the chiperriest person alive, but I’m wired.
And he hasn’t given me much, but that he lives in Boston, he hasn’t been who I thought he was, and donotsay Bobby fucks better than him.
“Fine,” I quip. “Do you like anything instead of sugary danishes?”
“You.”
