Except my brain must be broken because now I want him to keep asking. I don’t want to just go back to the tattoo and act like we’re strangers making a business deal.
“I’ll tell you about Milo, but you have to tell me a story first.”
He leans back and extends his long legs underneath the table. “A story?”
I look him up and down. What I really want to know is something I can’t quite figure out how to ask. It’s not simple, likedo you hook up with guys?
That’s a lot of it, but I’m not deluded enough to think something would actually happen between us.
But I am deluded enough to believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that Stone is more complicated than that. There’s more happening with him than I could learn by just having one word, like gay or bi or curious or whatever.
“Yeah, a story,” I say with a smile, then stretch my shorter leg out beside his. “I want to hear if you’ve ever been in love.”
CHAPTEREIGHT
STONE
Matty stareswith a sly smile on his face, like he’s just pulled one over on me. It makes me want to reach across the table and mess up his blue hair, but I just laugh instead.
I feel weirdly disappointed after hearing him talk about this Milo guy, but Matty still makes me chuckle.
“You want a story about when I fell in love?”
“You got one?”
“Love’s not really my style,” I answer.
“Now it sounds like you definitely have a story.”
My pen is in my hand, and I spin it without thinking while I look at him. Even in the dim light of this hipster coffee shop, the blue of his hair pulls on the color of his eyes, which look like they have a touch of teal today.
Fuck it. I almost never talk about this kind of shit with anyone, but he’s going to run back into his happy love world in a couple of weeks. We’ll probably never talk again, anyway, so what’s the harm?
“I fell in love once. Her name was Sydney.”
“And did Sydney love you?”
I snort. “I thought so.”
Matty sighs. “Damn, Stone. I don’t mind the broody silent routine usually, don’t get me wrong. But a story involves, like, multiple sentences. You shouldn’t be able to finish it in one breath.”
I give him a look, likewatch it,which makes us both smile. Then I unload the story. “We started dating when I was twenty-one, moved in at twenty-two. I got a GED and enrolled in community college, working my ass off to get a degree. Then, during my finals week a year later, I found out Sydney hadn’t been paying the landlords the rent I gave her, we got evicted, and I failed all the classes.”
Matty winces. “Yikes, Stone. That sucks.”
I shake my head. “That was the first time.”
His wince twists into a grimace. “What was the second time?”
“That was when we got back on our feet, and a year down the road, I found out she’d opened a bunch of credit cards in my name.”
“Stone, that’s awful! Please tell me you broke up with her after that.”
I snort a laugh out my nose. “Pretty quick, yeah.”
He’s looking at me the way people sometimes do, like he wants to comfort me and tell me things are okay.
Usually, that pisses me off. I’ve dealt plenty worse than a girlfriend derailing my life, and if I sat around stewing over it, I’d never get anything done.
