“He’s been nice to me,” she said.
“Good for him. I still wouldn’t have pegged him as your type.”
He could be her type. Well, once he got over his unfortunate tendency to walk away after kissing her brains out. But Lauren could work with that.
“He’s a fixer-upper,” she said.
“A what?”
“That’s my type,” she explained. “I sort of collect them. Musicians, tattoo artists, fellow grad students. Guys who need a place to crash after their parents or their girlfriends kick them out. Nice guys, but not long-term relationship material. So they stay with me until I can fix them.”
Meg narrowed her eyes. “You fix them.”
“Mm.” She helped them find their feet or their mojo, gave them haircuts or research help, got them into rehab or out of debt. “And then, when they don’t need me anymore, they move on.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I was.” Lauren blinked.Past tense. Why wasn’t she now? Was it Jack who was different?
Or was the change in new Lauren? Not only the result of trauma, not simply a matter of survival, but a choice.
Meg was frowning, staring into her glass, swirling the contents gently. “You know,” she said slowly. “Jack isn’t some twenty-something couch dweller you can launch after he learns to tie his own shoes. He’s older than me. Older than Matt, even. He’s not going to change for you.”
“I know. I’m his rebound girl,” Lauren said.
“Excuse me?”
“He hasn’t been with anyone since his divorce. He isn’t ready for a committed relationship.”
Meg raised her brows. “And that’s enough for you?”
Lauren looked at Meg, with her New York haircut and three-carat rock, blissfully engaged to the hunky contractor she’d crushed on in high school. So sure of herself, so confident about her life and Sam’s place in it.
It must be nice.
“It has to be,” Lauren said. “My life is a hot mess right now. I have no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in two months. I’m not looking for true love. I’m just hoping to get laid.”
Meg was silent.
“You don’t approve.”
“Not for the reasons you think. Lauren... Before I was with Sam, I wasted six years of my life on a guy who was more interested in what I could do for his career than in who I was or what I wanted. So I have to ask, what do you get out of this?”
Jack, Lauren thought with a stab of pure longing.
She got Jack. All that tough strength, all that tempered control, all that sublimated passion, to wrap herself in like a down comforter, his hard hands and broad shoulders and smoldering dark eyes.
Rescue me.
“Maybe just the chance to feel connected again.” She looked up. Smiled. “It’s been so long since I’ve had sex, I’m practically a virgin.”
Meg laughed and leaned forward to refill her wineglass. “Okay. I think it’s great that you’re rejoining the living. Everybody deserves a summer fling. As long as you know going in that that’s what it is.”
“That’s all it is,” Lauren said.
She was pretty sure she was okay with that.
Six
