“I’ve never cried after kissing someone, either. So we’re in the same boat.” I wipe my nose on my ridiculously giant robe sleeve, wishing I had a tissue or a paper towel or a wad of toilet paper. Actually, I have cried after kissing a man. Grant.
“What’s on your mind, Riley?” Jae ushers me back into the apartment, and I’m not sure if I can take being back in this place after kissing a man who wasn’t Grant in it. I am a belligerent wild pony, walking all over the place, and Jae puts an arm around me, corralling me to the couch.
“I don’t think I can be in this apartment and not fucking lose it,” I say flatly. I look Jae in the eyes. “I was engaged to another man in here.” I laugh at my absurdity, the tears beginning again after a brief moment.
Jae doesn’t say anything, he looks at me like my therapist does, as if to say, welcome to my office, please take a seat on my couch. “And?”
I don’t know how to explain to him I cannot be in here with him.
“I have too much history here.”
“Do you?”
Do I? I lived here far longer without Grant than I ever did with him.
“I grieved here.”
“Does that make it unlivable?” Jae asks me. I don’t know how he manages to ask the right things.
“Is it bad if it does?” I look at him solemnly. “I don’t think I can ever look at this place again without thinking of Grant and all of the time I spent crying and being miserable and havingpanic attacks.We lived together here for a year, and we were supposed to get married that fall.”
Jae wraps me in a hug while I tell him about my fiancé.
“He had a seizure in September. He had no history of seizures. They did scans and tests. It was brain cancer.” I take a black-hole sized pause. “Totally incurable. There was nothing to be done except wait it out.”
Quiet, gentle tears roll down my cheeks. I have told this story a thousand times, and surely, I will tell it a thousand more. What is one more time?
“They buried him in December in his hometown.” He rubs my shoulders and I put a hand up to my temple, holding my head low.
“Thank you for telling me that, Riley.” Jae lifts my legs over his own, and cradles me in his lap like the massive baby I am. “You don’t have to carry it all, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Jae tells the top of my head.He really is a massive, giant of a man.I feel like a teeny, tiny cookie crumb in his warm arms. “You act like no one will ever be interested in you because of your past.”
“That’s usually the case.”
“Riley. Is that really the case? You just went on two dates!” Jae laughs into my hair. I think for a moment.Is that really the case?“Maybe that was the case a year or two ago. But that’s certainly not the case now.” Jae rests his chin on top of my head.
“And there’s me,” He laughs. “I am so interested in you.”
“What?” Jae presses a kiss to the top of my head. He shifts to stand up, and I stand up with him. “Okay, enough of this.” He turns me to face him and takes my tiny mouse hands in his. I feel like a pouting child in his arms. “Have a little confidence in yourself. You haven’t scared me off yet.”
I look up at him, my eyes red and puffy.
“Let me make this clear to you, Riley.” Jae stares directly to my soul, my heart, whatever internal organ he can lay his eyes on. “I’m interested in you. Your past is included in that. I don’t care that you have a dead fiancé. I don’t care if you cry. I like you for you. Tears and all.”
I feebly smile back at him.
“I bet you’ll live to regret saying that.”
He grins back at me, fiercer than ever.
“I’ll count on it.”
Jae takes my hand, and walks me out of his apartment, down the stairs and into my own. Lily skitters around our ankles. He presses an unassuming kiss to my forehead.
“Go out with me.”
