“What?” I asked, his subject change leaving me confused.
“My parents are throwing this fancy party. They do it every year. A fundraiser. This year for the community boys and girls club. And I just… will you come?”
“I didn’t bring anything to wear to something like that,” I said. We passed a flowerbed on our right of pink and purple and white flowers.
“Maybe Tara has something you can borrow? Women do that, right? Borrow things from each other?”
I laughed. “Yes, we do.”
“Wait, what about that dress from the first night I met you when you were supposed to be doing something? You can’t wear that?”
“Would that work?” It seemed too… sexy? Too slinky. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to wear to meet parents for the first time. Not that I wasmeetinghis parents, I was just meeting them.
“It would work very well.” A little smile was on his face, like he was imagining me in it now. “So what were you supposed to be doing that night inthatdress?”
“Meeting my boyfriend,” I said.
His head whipped in my direction. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Had. He broke up with me that night.”
“Is he an idiot?”
“No, unfortunately. He’s not. He made the right decision.” I kicked at a rock on the path in front of us, and it went skittering across the sidewalk until it was stopped by the edge of the grass.
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve been very wrapped up in my restaurant and hadn’t been so wrapped up in him.”
“He was needy?”
I chuckled. “In that he needed me to want him occasionally, yes. What about you? Why aren’t you in a relationship… or are you?”
“I am not. Maybe your mom has me figured out. Women see through my pretty words.”
“So you don’t ever mean what you say?”
“I feel like I always mean what I say, but maybe I lack sincerity. I don’t know, Sutton. My last girlfriend left me because she said I would never be ready to settle down.”
“Was that true?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Maybe. I had been feeling unsettled.”
“And now?”
“Well, I imagined myself as a child and gave that child a pep talk and now I’m cured.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nobody is claiming it’s that easy, smartass.”
“What was that about then?” he asked. “Thespeaking to our childhood selfexercise?”
“I think a lot of the problems we carry with us originate from childhood trauma, and she wanted us to have a good, hard look at our past.”
“Did it help you?”
“She thinks I’m too independent.”
“Dr. Franklin?”
