conversation.
“I’ve got one more load of chairs to bring in,” he said. “I’ll just put them with the rest.”
“That’s fine,” Winnie said. “Lucy, why don’t you help him while I give Rodrigo one of his favorite sugar cookies.”
She narrowed her gaze at her grandmother but didn’t feel she had any kind of choice in the matter, especially since her grilled cheese sandwich now looked as appetizing as a plate of dancing shrimp from the night market in Chiang Mai.
She walked outside with José into the clear, beautiful December afternoon toward his pickup truck.
“So. Quinn. I guess I don’t know her. How long have you been dating?”
“We’ve gone out only two or three times. I’m not sure you could exactly classify that as dating.”
“More than once is dating. Have you slept with her?”
“None of your damn business.” He pulled two folding chairs from the bed of the pickup, set them against the tire of the truck and reached in for two more, all without looking at her.
“Really? I would have said you kind of made it my business when you came to Thailand and messed up everything.”
He faced her finally, and the intensity of his expression made her catch her breath. “I told you I have feelings for you. That I’ve had feelings for you forever. And you basically told me to go to hell. Who messed up what again?”
She had handled that encounter so badly. If she could do it all over again, would she have done anything differently? She honestly didn’t know. She only knew she hated this distance between them and the terrible fear that she could never regain what they had lost.
“I didn’t tell you to go to hell.”
“Not in so many words. We want different things, you said. You don’t believe in love, you said. Why can’t we just have a steamy affair and call it good, you said.”
Had she really said those words? He made her sound hard, unfeeling. Awful. She wasn’t. Was she? She had only been trying to process a moment that had shocked her to her core.
“Give me a break. You sprung all of that on me out of nowhere without warning and I didn’t know how to respond.”
“Come on, Lucy. You’re not blind. You had to see I have feelings for you. Either you ignored it or you didn’t want to see. Everybody else in the damn world seemed to guess except you.”
She grabbed a chair and held it in front of her as if it were a shield against his words.
He looked at her, looked at the chair, then sighed. “If I had given you days to prepare, would your response have been different? For instance, if I told you that I’m still in love with you and nothing has changed, what would you say?”
I would say then maybe you shouldn’t be dating another woman.
She couldn’t say those words, and felt small and ugly for even thinking them.
“From my perspective, love ruins everything. Our friendship is a perfect example. We’ve always had fun together and now everything is different.”
She didn’t know what else to say and felt ridiculously like she was going to cry. Wouldn’t that be a nightmare?
“You have always been a dear friend to me,” she finally said. “One of my favorite people on the planet. Every time I see you, I’m happy. We like the same kinds of food, the same music, the same activities. We are attracted to each other. Why can’t we just sleep together and let that be enough?”
“You know why. Because it wouldn’t be enough for me.”
“How do you know? Maybe we would be lousy together.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We wouldn’t be,” he said with an absolute certainty that made her toes curl.
“So it’s your way or nothing. You’re willing to ruin a good friendship because I’m not willing to play romantic games.”
“It’s not about playing games. It’s about being willing to put your heart on the line. About allowing yourself to be vulnerable to somebody else. You have never done that. You want to be the one in control, the person who holds all the cards. I’ve seen the way you operate, Lucy. The moment anybody tries to get close to you, you run away without looking back. I would rather not put myself through that.”
His words gutted her, left her feeling attacked and hurting. He said he loved her. How could he when he seemed to respect her so little?
She couldn’t face him now so she picked up the three chairs,