Willa’s face softened. “Oh, Bo.”
“I’ll be okay.” Bo said the words like a prayer, hoping they would come true. “I’ll be fine. It just . . . it hurts, Wills. I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“How much it hurts. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back. I mean, it hurt when Oliver left me for Phoebe. But that was more like a sting, a puncture wound to my pride more than my heart.” Bo felt sadness wash over her. “Max not loving me is like having a stake driven through my soul. I didn’t know how much I needed him until I had him, and then I didn’t know how much I didn’t have him until I needed him.”
Swallowing more wine down over the lump in her throat, Bo passed her phone to Willa, showing her the one and only message Max had ever sent her. She watched as Willa read it quickly, a slight furrow to her brow.
“What was obvious this morning?” Willa asked, before she frowned again. “And what does ‘extrapolate’ mean?”
Bo blushed again. “You know when you have amazing sex which is soft and gentle and loving and it’s so obvious how you feel about someone that you can’t hide it?”
Something in Willa’s face changed, a look so poignant sweeping her features that Bo wondered exactlywhathad happened between her and Berg in LA.
“Yes,” Willa said quietly.
“Well, that’s what happened with Max. We had this amazing, passionate, romantic sex, and I couldn’t hide how I felt from him. I even stopped at one point tosmile at him.”Bo buried her face in Max’s ugly shirt in embarrassment.
Willa seemed to think for a moment. “Did he smile back?”
“What?” Bo’s words and face were still muffled in Max’s shirt, and she felt Willa reach over and pull the garment away from her.
“I said, did he smile back?”
“What does that matter? He left, didn’t he? Went back to Berlin.”
Willa gave her a look. “It matters, trust me. Tell me, did Mr Two out of Ten—”
“Max.”
“Fine, fine. Did Max smile back at you?”
Bo thought back to the morning. She thought back to sitting astride Max, their foreheads touching, and how her arms had been around his neck and his around her waist. She thought back to the feel of his skin under her fingertips, and how she’d traced her hand down his spine, so that he’d made a noise of pleasure before her. She remembered looking in his eyes, nose to nose with him, and smiling at him. All the love she held for him had been poured into that smile, and she remembered Max moving his hands to her face, tracing the contour of her cheeks, smiling back at her and—
“He did smile back,” Bo whispered. “He smiled back at me.”
Willa paused. “He smiled back at you?”
“Yes. He did.”
For a moment Willa was still, and then, when Bo was least expecting it, she tossed Max’s shirt back at her so that it slapped her on the face.
“Hey!” Bo protested, but Willa hit her with the shirt again.
“Oh, my God, Bo, men don’t smile back at women during sex if they’re not interested in them!” Willa exclaimed. “It’s like Sex 101. Amazing, emotional and romantic sex is a two-way street, you know? It’s not just you showing him you care for him . . . did you even stop to think that maybe, just maybe, he cares for you too?”
“Well, no,” admitted Bo. “Why would I? Men like Max don’t date women like me.”
Willa froze. “Women like you? Explain yourself on that one, please.”
Bo shrugged awkwardly. “I mean, Max is really clever, and talented, and successful, and I’m just—”
“I’m sorry, you’re just what? You’re clever. I mean, you don’t use words like ‘extrapolate’, but then, no one does.”
“Max does.”
“What? You mean Max, your abrasive and unpleasant two out of ten?”
