He huffs. “Is it because of that guy?”
“There is no guy.”
“The hockey guy,” he says and air quotes, “‘Lachlan Duke’.”
“He’s not a fictional character, you know. The air quotes are unnecessary.”
“Why can’t you just forget about him? Besides, we already had sex, remember?” he asks a little too loudly, and turns to me when we stop at the crosswalk.
“Yep.” I resist the urge to facepalm myself.
Why, why, whyyyydid I do that? What in the world possessed me to hook up with him? Oh yeah, alcohol, boredom, and loneliness. A dangerous triple threat. It happened once. ONCE and the guy brings it up all the time.
“We can do it again.” He reaches out and slides his pointer across my crossed arms.
“We can’t.”
“We’d be good together and you know it.” He brings his hand up and brushes his fingers against my cheek. “You feel it, don’t you?”
“I don’t.” I lower my arms and turn to start walking across the street.
I should feel bad about this, but I don’t. Am I supposed to apologize for not feeling the same way? My mother would say I should. That nags at me, but when I open my mouth, the words won’t come out. I allow myself to think about her often, these days, and find myself asking whether or not she’d approve of certain things. Not that I’d ever really know how she’d treat me, now that I’m an adult, but I do the best I can with what she gave me while she was alive.
“Is it that you genuinely don’t feel anything, or that you don’t want to feel anything?” He asks, stopping at the end of my building.
“I genuinely don’t feel anything,” I say, looking at the ground and back at him.
“How can you feel nothing?” he asks. “That makes no sense.”
I look up at the sky and ask for help before I look at him again. “I don’t know how to explain it. I just. . .feel nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing?” he asks again, clearly in disbelief.
“Nothing.”
“Okay.” He runs a hand through his hair. “What if we kiss?”
“What?” My eyes widen. I take a step back and hit the brick wall behind me.
“A kiss,” he repeats. “We never kissed when we hooked up.”
“Oh.” I play dumb about the kiss, as I look up and down the block to make sure we’re not being followed.
My stomach is coiled so tight that I should just tell him to walk me up to my apartment. I just know he’s watching. I fucking know it. My hands begin to shake but I keep looking.
“Delilah,” Wade says.
I blink. “Yeah?”
“One kiss.”
“I don’t kiss.” I stare at him when I say it and hope my deadpan face makes him give up already.
Besides, it’s the truth. I don’t want to kiss anyone else. Ever.God, I’m pathetic. I’m so fucking pathetic.Maybe Marissa’s right and I should give this guy a shot, even if just to take my mind off Lach for a moment. I know what’ll happen, though. I’ll compare everything he does to the memory of the way Lachlan did things, and then I’ll have to break up with him. Or he’ll break up with me when he realizes he’ll never live up to my expectations. I pause at that. My own thoughts sound ridiculous. It’s official, I’ve gone mad. I focus on Wade again. He’s cute. Hot, even. This is so damn frustrating. Why doesn’t he do anything for me?
“Really?” he asks in disbelief. “Well, now we have to do it. One kiss. Just one.”
“Fine, but we’re only doing it once.”
