“I’m not in a relationship with Marielle.”
I swallowed down my next lot of bitching.
“What?”
“I let you think I was because I was still angry you lied to me about your age, and I also didn’t want you to think I was an unlovable loser.”
“Oh.”
Nolan spread yoghurt on the flatbreads and added the salad, then tossed balls of falafel into an air fryer on the counter.
“Do you want tomato in this? If so, I’ll have to go and pick one.”
I didn’t care about the tomato, but I did need breathing space. “Tomato sounds good.”
Nolan disappeared out the back door, and I soon realised my mistake when the dog got up to follow, but then stopped right beside me instead of heading outside. I froze.
“Good dog. Just stay there, okay? Don’t move. Please?”
She began salivating.
“I’m not lunch. I probably taste really shitty. Like…like durian fruit, or fermented herring, or candy corn. How about I buy you a steak? A nice filet mignon? Rare, definitely rare. You look like the kind of dog who’d enjoy gnawing on raw flesh.”
“You still hate candy corn, huh?” Nolan said, reappearing behind me. “She only wants a snack.” He reached past me and fished a bone-shaped treat out of a cookie jar on the table, then tossed it to Juno. She caught it with a loud snap and began crunching. “See?”
“I see her teeth.”
“She won’t bite you, I swear.” He scratched the dog’s head. “She showed up outside the gates when she was a puppy, and one of the neighbours said she’d been thrown from a car."
“Did they get the licence plate?”
Nolan shook his head. “Nope. I asked around in case she was stolen, but nobody ever did come forward to claim her. Plus she was walking funny, so I took her to the veterinarian, and it turned out she had a broken leg.”
“That sucks.”
“I got the better end of the deal.” He picked up another treat. “Give her this.”
“I like my fingers, thanks.”
“Just try.”
Gingerly, I held out the treat, and Juno took it without so much as touching me. Huh. Then she drooled on my leg.
“Ick.”
Nolan laughed and wiped away the gloop with the bottom of his T-shirt, giving me a glimpse of tanned abs he definitely hadn’t had in Virginia.
“Okay, where were we?” He pulled a knife from the block and began chopping a couple of ripe tomatoes.
“We were both bitching about being lonely and unlovable.”
“Right. And I was bellyaching about your lies.”
“I didn’t actually tell you I was dating Chase. You assumed.”
“Can’t we just agree to be open and honest with each other? No more evasiveness, no more stonewalling? Yeah, I get that we both have pasts we don’t like to talk about, but there are times when I think you bend the truth out of habit.”
I shrugged again.
