Hate to Date You (Dating #4) - Monica Murphy Page 0,5
town not even two hours ago. Staying at Alex’s family’s hotel is great and all, but I don’t plan on staying there for long.
Knowing me, I’d want to sleep in till noon, play a round a golf, and find myself in the bar, paying for a round of drinks for my new golf buddies.
I need to break all my old habits. Living at a hotel won’t help me do that.
“I understand. But where are you going to find a place to live with cheap rent around here? And I hate the idea of leaving Stella alone. But Alex and I, we’re just anxious to start our lives together. Really together,” Caroline stresses, and I wonder what that’s like, to be so in love with someone, you can barely stand the thought of not seeing that person every single day.
I wouldn’t have a clue. I’ve been in casual relationships. In my early twenties, you could’ve even called me a player. But have I ever been desperately in love?
That would be a firm no.
“I get it,” I tell her, lying through my teeth. “And I’m sure Stella will get it too. But me moving in with her? I don’t think she’ll go for that.”
“You’re just being stubborn,” Caroline says irritably “Like I said, you’re both so busy all the time, you two wouldn’t have to deal with each other much.”
“I won’t be as busy here, Caro. I need to find a job first. Establish myself.” She’s forgetting that I have no job, and I’m not that busy. I could go work for a real estate agency. I could walk into any one of them in the area and they’d hire me in an instant.
But I’m not sure if I want to do that. What I’d really love to do is buy a home, fix it up and sell it. A project all my own, something just for me.
“You’re such a go-getter, I’m sure you’ll find a job immediately. Next thing you know, you’ll be working your ass off, as usual, and you’ll never be home,” Caroline says with extreme knowledge, because she knows me so well. “It would work out perfectly.”
“I suppose,” I say slowly, though I don’t know if it’ll happen as quickly as she says. I want to take my time, figure out a plan, reassess my entire life, if I’m being truthful.
Do I really want to do that while living with Stella? Knowing she’s mad at me for what I did to her? She’s a reminder of how I used to be. The player who had sex with women and then immediately forgot all about them. I don’t want to do that anymore.
I want to change.
Caroline’s face brightens. “So you think it would be a good idea? Because I do. You could take over my room, pay rent, reevaluate what you want to do here now that you’re back. We know you’ll eventually find a job, find a place to live, and firmly establish yourself here. It’s the perfect solution to your temporary situation.”
“What will happen to Stella once I move out?” I’m speaking hypothetically, of course, because we know this is never going to happen.
Caroline’s eyes dim and she sighs. “I don’t know. I suppose she could find another roommate eventually. Or she could live alone. She might want to, after you two live together for a while.”
“Ha, very funny.”
“Listen, the best part about living with Stella is the rent is super cheap. Only four hundred dollars a month, and that includes utilities,” Caroline tells me.
My eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of my head. “That’s it?” The leases for any business on Ocean Avenue in Carmel-by-the-Sea are way more than that. As in, four hundred dollars is probably their hourly rate.
Caroline nods, her expression guilty. “I know, right? It’s so cheap.”
Living with Stella is sounding better by the minute. But I know it could never work. First, she would never allow it. Second, the temptation of having Stella living in the same place I do would be too much.
Way too much.
I can’t risk it.
What happened between us that one night can never happen again, no matter how badly I might want it to. Lately, I think about that night a lot. Maybe it’s because I can’t have her, and we always want what we can’t have, am I right?
But who the hell is saying that I can’t have Stella? Me?
Yeah. It’s me. I don’t deserve her, especially after what I did.