“Jesus.” Cassie jabs her fork into a small heap of corned beef hash. “Insecure much?”
“But that’s what I’m talking about,” I say, flattening my hands on the table. “I’ve put myself out there. I’ve dated plenty of guys. I’ve had serious relationships, but I still haven’t hooked up with my dream man.”
“Maybe you just haven’t met him yet,” Lisa offers helpfully.
“Or maybe I’m meant to have a different kind of marriage,” I say. “One that doesn’t involve falling head over heels like some kind of love-drunk klutz, but walking deliberately into something more…sensible.”
“Sensible.” Lisa makes a face. “You’re choosing a husband, not buying a pair of loafers.”
Cassie pokes her fork around in what’s left of her corned beef hash and considers it. “I suppose it makes some sense,” she says. “More than 50 percent of marriages in the world are arranged marriages, and the average divorce rate for those is about 6 percent.” She frowns. “Some of that is skewed by forced marriage and child brides and other grim stuff like that.”
“I promise this is nothing that horrifying,” I assure her. “We’re both consenting adults who already know each other. Hell, we’re already good friends.”
Good friends who have great sex.
I keep that part to myself, but I can tell by how they’re looking at me that they hear the unspoken words.
“Do you really know each other anymore?” Lisa asks. “You said yourself you hadn’t seen each other since college.”
“Last night, it was like we never missed a beat,” I tell them. “We fell right back into being best friends again. It was the strangest thing.”
“Best friends who bang each other silly,” Cassie says, smirking.
Lisa shoots her sister an eyeroll. “You don’t base marriage on friendship and good sex.”
Cassie rolls her eyes right back. “Why the hell not? It seems like a good starting point to me.”
Lisa frowns, but seems to concede the point. “Fine,” she says as she turns back to me. “Just promise you’ll be careful? I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I promise,” I tell her. “I’m just thinking about it for now. Not running down to the courthouse with a ring in my pocket.”
We split the check and hug goodbye, with me pledging to keep them both posted on tonight’s costume party. “I’ll take pictures,” I promise.
“Of the costumes,” Lisa clarifies. “We don’t need naked stuff.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cassie says. “I wouldn’t mind a shirtless pic of Ian.”
The two of them walk away with their heads close together, talking or bickering or whispering their sisterly secrets. I always wished for a sister, or even a brother or cousin. It was just my mom and me, out on a farm in northeast Oregon. I envied my classmates with their big families and smiling, cheerful parents who held hands at the dinner table and teased each other about whose turn it was to do the dishes.
Shaking off the memories, I turn and head the opposite direction. Ian and I agreed to meet at Portland’s biggest costume shop to grab what we need for tonight’s charity costume party.
As I round the corner, I spot him waiting for me on a bench outside the shop. He’s staring down at his phone, which gives me a chance to study him. Sunlight glints off his reddish-brown mop, giving his hair a flamelike appearance. His shoulders seem even broader hunched the way they are now, and the blue T-shirt he’s wearing shows the edge of a tattoo I glimpsed last night.
I asked him about it this morning.
“What’s this?” I’d traced a finger over one of the lines as we said goodbye at my front door.
It’s possible I just wanted another excuse to touch him.
Ian pulled up the edge of his sleeve, revealing the three arrows I’d been noticing all night. “The number three represents how people with Down Syndrome have three copies of the twenty-first chromosome instead of just two,” he explained softly. “And the arrows represent rising up and moving forward.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I blinked them back as he reached for the door. “That’s beautiful.”
It is. For all Ian’s lack of sentimentality about marriage, I know he’s still raw about Shane’s death. That day is burned permanently into my brain, but I know it left marks elsewhere on Ian. Can I really blame him for not wanting to pour his heart into anything?
A soft wind kicks up, pulling me back to the present on this Portland city street. I study the edge of the tattoo now, feeling my heart ball up tight in my chest. Ian Nolan is a good man. If he’s serious about the marriage thing, I know he’ll commit for life. That’s the kind of guy Ian is. Reliable. Kind. Loyal.
Sexy. Hot. Phenomenal in bed.
