He was right. “I needed to get myself together a little before I came home,” I said. “I didn’t want to show up and then fall on the floor crying. I didn’t want them to worry about me, which they already do because I’m so far away and in such a big city. And I guess…it’s a little hard to admit, but I was also embarrassed by how things had turned out with Dax. They hated him. They wouldn’t have ever used that language, but they hated him.”
“Didn’t your grandma try to kill him?”
“No! She only said that she wanted to, because as she got older, she lost a little control over what came out of her mouth. She wouldn’t have actually done it. Probably not,” I felt constrainedto add. “I know that they wanted me to leave him, and they definitely didn’t want me to go to Detroit with him. I had been working in Knoxville and they were happy to have me close. But for my career, it was also a great move.”
I got up and went to the couch to tuck in the bedding that my mom had given me. “They like you,” I commented as I billowed out the bottom sheet. “My dad told me that you seem like a fine young man.”
Silas laughed quietly. “That’s the first time anyone ever said that about me. I think they like Lyra, too.”
“They’re already crazy about her,” I agreed. “You both made very good impressions.”
He also stood and reached his hands over his head to stretch. He couldn’t reach very high in here, of course. “Maybe next time we come, Ly and I could stay at a motel. Or just me,” he suggested. “That bed…”
“It’s not huge,” I conceded as I curled on the couch. This was pretty narrow, too. “You’re right, though.”
“I need to go to a motel?”
“Yes, but also how you said that I hurt their feelings by not coming down here before, no matter how hard the sleeping arrangements are.”
“Did I say that?” He joined me on the couch and I moved my legs to make a little room for him. “I don’t think you’d hurt anyone’s feelings on purpose. I don’t think there’s much of a mean bone in your body.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “I’m very competitive.”
“Would you injure someone else so that you could win? Would you cheat or lie?”
“Of course not!” I said, and he smiled.
“Thought so. Can I ask you something?”
I had a feeling that it was going to be something terrible. “Ok. Yes, go ahead.”
“How did you end up with Dax Misstuck? He’s as much fun as a rope burn and he’s the size of—”
“Most people are small compared to you,” I pointed out. “I certainly am and it never bothered me that he’s, um, diminutive. I met him when I had just started college, when I was sixteen.”
“College at sixteen? That can’t be right.”
“I got ahead in school,” I explained. “I graduated pretty early. I didn’t start dating Dax until later, though, because he’s a little older.”
“How much older?”
“He’s thirty-eight now,” I said, and Silas could do math.
“So you met him when you were sixteen and he was twenty-seven. Eleven years older, the fucking pervert. What would you think if that was Lyra?” I could tell what he would think, because he was crushing a pillow in his hands as if he was murdering someone. “You’re that age now. Can you imagine what you’d have in common with a kid who just got his license?”
“We didn’t get together until I was eighteen,” I corrected. “But I was in love with him the whole time. He was very different from anyone I had known before and I thought he was exciting. He’s not a totally bad person, but I can see now why people hated him.”
“Can you? Do you see the problems?” Silas started counting them out on his fingers. “He broke into your apartment and scared the crap out of you, he tried to humiliate you with a rap, he gave you fake diamonds to make himself look good. He cheated on you and lied more than you’ll probably ever know.” He studied me in the dim glow that came only from the porch light. “But you don’t hate him.”
“I don’t love him anymore, though. I did for a while even after we broke up, but I can promise now that I don’t.”
“If he came knocking at that door, would you take him back?”
My eyes immediately went to the entrance, and Silas shook his head as if I’d answered his question. “No!” I countered. “I really wouldn’t. Enough time has passed and my feelings really have changed. But it’s still hard to think that…never mind.”
“What?”
It was hard to think that I wasn’t good enough for Dax, when I’d tried so hard to be what he wanted. I never would have been, though. No matter how much I worked on it, I couldn’t have transformed myself into a sexy, exciting woman who drew eyes at the club (for good things and not because she was a terrible dancer). And the longer that we’d been apart, the less I was sure that I wanted to be that woman, anyway.
