“Anotherfriend?”
“Right. And before that… I was a junkie, and so was pretty much every girl I got involved with. The ones that weren’t… well… once they see behind the curtain, it ain’t so pretty, they don’t last verylong.”
“But that was a long timeago.”
Yeah; she was definitely challenging me. Feeling me out. Watching for any sign that I was gonna fuck up. Any sign that she needed to call Flynn in here to vacate myass.
“Right,” I said, holding her gaze. “A long timeago.”
“Have you ever had a real relationship?” She sipped her coffee, watching me over the brim of her mug. “You know, since you gotclean.”
“What is that?” I asked her. “Flowers and walks on thebeach?”
“Maybe? Those seem like pretty regular things to do with someone you careabout.”
“Then I guess I’m just not that regular,” Isaid.
Chapter Eight
Seth
“And what about Jessa?”Elle asked me after a long, but not uncomfortable,silence.
She was still sitting in the window seat, still on guard, but as we’d sat in Woo’s kitchen, talking, it felt like we were gaining ground. Millimeter by millimeter, maybe. And it seemed to me that the world outside was falling away. That nothing was more important than this conversation. Right here, rightnow.
Me.Elle.
Answering her questions and chipping away at the bullshit that time and hurt feelings and too many stupid mistakes had layered betweenus.
I had no idea, though, how to answer that particularquestion.
“What aboutJessa?”
“She’s with Brody now,” she said, studying myreaction.
I didn’t really have one. I’d accepted, long ago, that Jessa Mayes wasn’t mine. That she’d never loved me the way I hoped she would. That her heart had always been out of my reach, because it belonged to someoneelse.
And the fact that she was with Brody didn’t surprise me. It only surprised me that they weren’t together from dayone.
“Yeah,” Isaid.
“It doesn’t botheryou?”
“Why would it botherme?”
“I don’t know. You twodated.”
“Yeah. I guess you could call itthat.”
“What would you callit?”
“Jessa and I had a relationship,” I admitted, treading carefully. I had no idea what Elle knew, or believed, or how she felt about that relationship. “It wasn’t exactly… conventional. We were both kind of… lost, back then.” I didn’t know how else to put it. “And it wasn’t out in the open. But you know thatnow.”
“We all know,” Elle said. “But it’s not like we didn’t have a clue back then. At least, I did. I saw how you were with her. I just thought…” She trailed off, hugging her knees tighter. She looked down at her feet and picked at her nail polish. And it hit me, as I watched her face change—that Elle felt… guilty? For what happened between me and Jessa? “I just thought you had a crush onher.”
“I can imagine,” I said, carefully. “I can imagine what yousaw.”
“Brody didn’t want to see it, I’m sure. But you did like her.” She looked up at me. “And as far as I could tell, she liked you,too.”
