I grab my glass and take a sip, hoping he didn’t pick up on my actions.
He turns in his chair, fully facing me, and places his hand on my knee, motioning for me to turn to face him too. Heat rises up my body, which I try to hide by taking another sip and doing as he asked.
Once I’m facing him, he removes his hand. It takes everything in my power to not reach out to grab it and place it back on my leg.
“Why did we always hate each other so much?” he asks sincerely.
I can’t help but laugh under my breath, but I don’t respond.
“I’m being serious. Why have you always hated me?”
Being face-to-face with him like this is making it hard for me to think. The entire English language escapes me at this moment, and all I can do is shrug.
“That’s all you got?” He smirks. “No answer, just a shrug?”
“I guess I thought you hated me,” I finally blurt out.
“Me?” He places his hands on his chest dramatically. “You thoughtIhated you? What gave you that impression?”
Again, blank. My mind has never been so blank in my life. I try to think back to the office to remember all the times I wanted to wring his neck, but can’t remember exactly why a single time.
He takes my silence in, then turns back to the bar again. “And here I thought, it was becauseyouhated me.” He sips his beer, sending questions swirling around in my head.
I place my hand on his arm, wanting to touch him in any way possible. “Why would you think that?”
With the beer bottle up to his lips, he looks down at my hand and then to me. I don’t budge though. I keep it there, feeling more alive than I have in a while.
He places the beer down on the bar. “At first, I thought we had playful banter, but then you got mad, and it seemed like that feeling never went away.”
“Playful banter?” I laugh. “Are you for real right now?”
He purses his lips and nods. “Yeah. It drives me crazy that you take everything so seriously.”
“Then why do you continue to bother me?”
His lips tilt up just slightly. “I didn’t know why until this trip, when you stopped fighting back. Once I hit that fight button in the car again, I understood why.”
I hold up my finger to him. “I do not have a fight button.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Don’t worry though. It’s cute. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until you acted differently for some reason.”
The expression on his face is doing things to my insides that need to stop.
I look forward, trying to gain my composure and drink my wine. “I don’t have a fight button,” I say under my breath.
“So then, it’s settled. We don’t actually hate each other.”
He tilts his beer sideways to cheers with my wine glass.
We sit in silence for a few moments before he slams his hands on the bar. “Let’s do shots in celebration.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” He gives me a cheesy grin. “It’s nice, knowing we don’t actually hate each other. We should celebrate that fact.”
I hold up my finger to him. “I never said I didn’t hate you anymore.”
He nudges me with his leg playfully. “It’s okay; I won’t tell anyone. And we can go back to pretending we hate each other when we get back.”
