He looks at me like I’m the only thing anchoring him to this moment. Each step brings him closer to breaking every bit of resolve I’ve managed to piece together.
“Hey, I’m Xander.” He offers me his hand.
I stifle a giggle and shake his hand. “I’m Coraline,” I say, for the first time using the name he monopolized when my father couldn’t anymore.
He gives me that winning smile of his. “Nice to meet you, Coraline. Do you mind if I join you?”
“I guess you bought me a drink, so it’s only fair.” I extend my hand toward the chair.
He takes the same seat he vacated moments ago.
For a moment our gazes hold, suspended in this air ofopportunity, second chances, and tender trust. Maybe hope. Not a desperate one. Hope that speeds up my heart rate. I’m not sure what we are doing, but it feels a thousand times better than anything I’ve felt in the past few months.
“I hope I’m not intruding,” Xander says after we order pizza.
“Do you really?”
“I guess I’m intruding, but just say the word and I will leave. I heard that just because I can have something, it doesn’t mean I want it. I recently learned, in a very hard, life-changing way, that it works the other way as well. Just because I want to have something, it doesn’t mean I can… take it.”
His words take my breath away. I’m not sure if it’s in a good way or a bad way, but it’s dizzying to have him in front of me, trying and hoping, giving me space instead of just taking.
“Do you want me to leave, Coraline?”
I should want him to leave, but I don’t. “I would have to finish this bottle alone. That’s not a good idea.”
He smiles and refills my glass.
“Besides, I have been eating alone for many long weeks. I might enjoy the company.”
He puts the bottle down and looks at me with that penetrating gaze that holds me prisoner. “So what is it you do, Coraline?”
I raise my eyebrows, a smile tugging at the cornersof my mouth. Are we going to try to rebuild the missing foundation? “I own a bistro in Manhattan.”
“Interesting. I live there. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”
The smile is automatic now. I can’t stop grinning at him. Whatever game we’re playing, it’s simple and honest. Something our relationship so fiercely needed. “Actually, I’m writing a book.”
He leans closer. “Wow, that’s amazing. What are you writing about?”
I take a sip. “I write children’s stories, animal parables.”
“Will you write a story about a tiger who was an entitled dumbass?”
A laugh escapes me, unbidden. “What will be the moral of that story?”
“That sometimes you need to be brave and risk rejection. That losing the girl is the worst fucking feeling in the world, but the fear of it doesn’t justify manipulation as a love language.”
I sigh, this reminder of the past tainting the moment, but also opening a possibility for me. Perhaps I can start trusting again. Just as he started understanding where things went wrong.
I take another sip. “Tiger, hmm…?”
He grins. “I’m glad you picked up on that.”
Our pizzas arrive, and we fall into an easyconversation about anything, retelling things we know about each other, and accepting them through new lenses.
After we pay the bill, Xander leads me outside, and while his hand is absent from the small of my back, his heat is radiating and warming me up, on the outside and on the inside.
“Can I give you a ride?” He clicks his keys, and the truck flashes open.
