Page 119 of Hard to Get

“But I decided I couldn’t. I didn’t want to compete.”

LG looks at me as though I just told him I want to strip naked and sing karaoke up on the small stage. “Are you okay?”

“I thought I was being clear that I am not okay.”

“I’ve never heard you say you don’t want to compete for something.”

I sigh. “I know. But a competition implies a winner and a loser. I want us both to win. I want her to want me, too.”

“Ahhh. Okay, let’s think. Let’s be logical. She says she doesn’t believe in love or marriage. But yet she wants to keep seeing you.”

“Right.”

“Why is that?”

“Why does she want to keep seeing me? I’m not that repulsive.”

He laughs. “That’s not what I meant. Why does she want to keep seeing you but she says she doesn’t believe in love or marriage?”

“She’s using me for my hot body.”

He rolls his eyes.

“This is making my head hurt. Okay. Like I said, her parents aren’t a good example of marital longevity.”

“I don’t know… you say you want her to want you, too. It seems like she does. Otherwise she would have ended things.”

Another solid point. “So you think I should keep seeing her.”

“I can’t tell you what to do.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

He grins. “Think about it.”

When I get home and Frank greets me ecstatically then stares at me with his anxious, depressed little face, I say, “I think I fucked things up with our girls.”

He tilts his head.

I reach out and rub it. “Sorry, little man.”

His head tilts the other way.

“You want to see her again, don’t you? You want to see Betty.”

Another head tilt.

“Betty?”

Tilt.

“I wish you could tell me what to do, buddy. LG won’t tell me what to do.” I blow out a breath. “I guess it’s up to me.”

Of course it’s up to me.

I think more about what LG and I talked about. His statement that Stella was trying to say she didn’t want a serious relationship, but yet she didn’t want to end things with me. And I remember something else she said that night she told me about that fucking parasitic shithead she was with: how it felt good to be loved. After feeling abandoned and alone as a kid, finally finding that feeling of love and belonging and connection… it felt good to be loved.

She does want love. She does care about me. I know it. Maybe I can’t compete with her bubble baths, her orchids, and her vibrator. I don’t want to compete with those things. She can have all those things. But she can have love, too.