I am physically assaulted by the body odor and thick man musk that blasts off his body and slaps me in my nasal cavity.
“Uhhh.” I’m paralyzed from the stench. It’s penetrated through my skin and my stomach clenches and threatens to spew whatever I drank at him. I calmly put down my drink and cover my nose with a napkin.
“No, really, why don’t you have a boyfriend?” he asks again, chuckling.
I dart my eyes to the next table and Dex is asking my neighbor what her hobbies are.
“Shy, huh?” Mike asks. “Do you work?”
I nod. I’m afraid to open my mouth. I don’t want the smell to get in. “I’m a writer,” I mumble into the napkin that’s covered by my hand.
“Oh, wow. I don’t like to read at all.”
I nod again.
“So, serious question…would you date a guy who lived in a tent?” he asks.
“Does the tent have a shower?”
He laughs and reaches for my wine, “May I?”
I squeeze my eyes closed and nod. I hear him drink my wine in slurps and I want to cry. Next to us, Dex is angling his back to Mike and talking to his date about her job; she’s in real estate.
I ignore Mike for the rest of our date and keep my eyes closed until the bell sounds.
When I open them, Dex sits down across from me, lifts his head, and finally his eyes meet mine.
Chapter 9
Ionly have seven minutes.
Seven minutes to get out all the pent-up feelings I’ve been holding in, simmering and bubbling, ready to boil over. All the things my tears were made of, the agony and anxiety that’s eaten away at my heart for weeks.
Dex straightens up in his chair very slowly and stares at me without speaking.
I stretch out my hands and touch the cool surface of the table between us. It feels like the only real thing here, the only thing keeping me from floating away. Looking at him seems more like a dream than anything else. His eyes are so golden, his shoulders so broad, and for a little while he is everything that is perfect for me.
A few seconds pass, and I lose my nerve. Every angry, hurt feeling I wanted to lob at him feels too trivial to say. The anger is more confusion now, and sadness.
We just keep staring at each other, until I finally look away and choke out a half-cry, half-laugh. I shake my head and lean back in my chair. I rub the back of my neck and nervously wipe at my cheeks in case of any escaping tears.
The words I love you are buried in the back of my throat. They want to claw their way out and be heard, but my heart holds them in. It doesn’t want to get hurt again. I stay silent, like I have for weeks. Maybe it cost me my voice—all that happened between us and having to face letting him go.
I know I’ll survive this, and life will go on, and one day I’ll forget to think about him, and just how much it hurt will slip away from my memory.
But what if I have it all wrong right now? What if I regret never saying what I need to say? I think of all the things I want to tell him and suddenly I’m melting, looking back up at him.
Dex swallows and a tremor runs down the length of his throat.
“I’m so sorry about your father,” I say.Please talk to me. Please make this all okay again because I don’t know how.Ask me like you always do, just say the words: Nash, what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?Fluttery tingles explode in my chest and drop low in my stomach.
“Gail misinterpreted my reasons for taking time off. I didn’t go to his funeral, I stayed with my niece and nephew while my sisters attended.”
“Sean and Maggie,” I blurt.
His eyes narrow. He probably doesn’t even know I met them and how his sister came to see me and tell she thought he’d never be happy with someone like Stephanie.
“Your sister Megan, she came to see me at work with them. Sean and I shared some goldfish,” I stammer, trying to explain.
