I set my plate down with undue care. “Sure.”
“Do you like the beer I’ve brought you every day this week?”
It’s not where I expected him to go. But it’s a complicated question, because I don’t like beer in general, but I love that it was him who placed it in front of me six nights on the trot, so I drank it anyway. “It’s not my favorite.”
“What would you drink if I’d given you the choice?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. Molly gave me the choice, and it didn’t pan out.”
“Because you don’t know what you like, or you’re afraid to say so?”
“It’s not fear. It’s habit.”
Tanner frowns, then seems to make an effort to stop. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get up in your shit. I don’t like it when people do it to me.”
“Who gets up in your shit?”
“My brother when he’s around. Eve when I pick up the phone. Jerry would too if I didn’t cross the street every time I see him.”
That surprises me. Aside from checking I still have a roof over my head, Jerry hasn’t mentioned Tanner at all. They don’t seem close enough to be up in each other’s business. I’m not surprised about Eve, though. She blows up my phone every day, and I don’t mind that any more than I do Tanner’s attention. And I want to explain myself. The truth is no worse than whatever he’s thinking.
Not that I ever know what Tanner Reid is thinking.
I reach forward and set my laptop into sleep mode. “I told you I was a surfer, right?”
Tanner nods.
I take a breath and go on. “It’s the reason I’m here…I mean, in the US and not back home. I turned pro when I was nineteen and moved to California. I met someone there who swept me up in their life because they wanted a slice of mine. We got married and lived it for a while, then I got hurt, and everything changed.”
“It’s funny how that happens, huh? Like, a split second and everything’s different. Or sometimes it takes years and you don’t even notice it’s all fucked.” Tanner’s not looking at me. He’s captivated by my blank laptop screen.
I want to nudge him so I can see his face properly when he elaborates, but he doesn’t. So I take my cue and continue. “Anyway, my girl was pretty set on the pro-surfer lifestyle, so she was all kinds of disappointed in me when I couldn’t give it to her anymore, especially when she figured out being married to a rookie filmmaker had nothing to do with Hollywood and everything to do with lying in the dirt all day to get that magical shot.”
“She got mean?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t that simple. She played on my guilt, you know? And I let her, and before I knew it, the whole thing was toxic. Her parents got involved with every facet of our lives. They’re rich as fuck. Her father controlled everything—the house we lived in, the cars we drove. Cos I’m a naive fuckwit, I thought they were helping us, then my choices disappeared one by one, and suddenly I was living in a prison no other fucker could see.”
“Didn’t your wife see it?”
“Nah, she hated me by then, and she let her dad push me around because it saved her having to do it for herself.”
“She sounds like a bitch.”
Tanner’s blunt assessment makes me smile. “Yeah, well. I don’t want to paint the sad picture of a cartoon evil ex, but she’s not a nice person. I see that now.”
I stand and take our plates to the sink. His phone is on the kitchen counter. A message from Eve lights up the screen and I wonder if she’s said something that prompted him to ask me those questions, or if I fritzed out so bad at the bar that he’s the one asking her. Either way, I don’t feel good about it. I tackle the dishes to keep my hands busy, and it pans out because Tanner is a messy cook and he doesn’t own a dishwasher.
He’s also the quietest person in the history of quiet people.
“Hey.”
I jump a fucking mile, despite the fact that his deep voice wraps around me like velvet. “Hey there, ninja. What are you sneaking up on me for?”
“I didn’t. You’d become one with the dish-soap bubbles.”
“Nice.” I drain the sink and wipe my hands. “Sorry about that. I’m usually a good listener.”
Tanner grunts. I don’t know it that means he has nothing to say, or if he’s just tired of me being a fucking flake already. Either way, he takes the dishtowel out of my hands and jerks his head at the living room. “I need your help with something.”
