I pushed passed it to whisper, “Pardon?”
“You’re into me,” he repeated.
I straightened in my chair and since he didn’t move I, firstly, had no escape and I, secondly and stupidly, brought my face even closer to his.
“I’m not into you,” I lied.
“Liar,” Mitch called me on it. “You’re so into me you’re shit-scared of me.”
God! I hated it when he figured me out.
“I am not!” I lied again.
He ignored me. “A woman like you, who looks like you, dresses like you, who’s into me does not run away from me, she does not push me away and she does not lie to her friends about me unless she’s for some secret reason shit-scared of me.”
Okay, we were done.
“You need to leave,” I told him.
He continued to ignore me. “What a woman like you who’s not got some secret that makes her shit-scared of me does is make me pizza. She tells me about her life. She asks me about mine. And she doesn’t get pissed as all hell anytime I get close to figuring something out about her.”
“Well, you would know. You’ve had plenty of women ‘into you’ parading in and out of your apartment,” I fired back.
“So, you paid attention,” he returned.
“It was hard to miss.”
“No, Mara, you paid attention.”
He was not wrong about that.
Moving on.
“I will remind you, Mitch, that when I made you that pizza that you said you didn’t care much about but bring up all the time, you had a woman in your apartment.”
“And I’ll remind you, Mara, that I told you I’d be over in fifteen minutes which meant I intended to get rid of her in fifteen minutes so I could be with you.”
“So you could have my pizza!” I snapped.
“No,” he growled, visibly losing patience, “so I could be with you.”
I glared at him. He kept talking.
“And I was here in fifteen minutes but you were gone and when you got back, I came to you and tried to explain and you shut the door in my face.”
“It was late,” I reminded him.
He ignored me again. “I had no idea she was comin’ over. I didn’t want her over. I wasn’t happy she was over because she and I have been over awhile and she just doesn’t get it. But mostly I wasn’t happy she was over because I wanted…to be…with you.”
“Can I ask that we have this conversation another time like…never?” I requested sarcastically.
Mitch ignored me yet again. “Why do you find it so difficult even to consider the fact that I want to be with you?”
“Mitch, please, would you just shut up and leave?” I snapped.
“Yeah, I’ll shut up when you give me an honest answer.”
“I already have,” I lied.