Plan B (Best Laid Plans #2) - Jana Aston Page 0,37
partner who reads about taxes for fun.
"A ring is a little presumptuous. And unnecessary. I haven't agreed to this."
"And yet I spent my day fielding congratulatory emails from colleagues due to your fiancée stunt at the party. Then I was late for a meeting due to an unannounced visit from my grandfather demanding to know if I was going to run his company into ruin with my erratic social life."
"Okay, wow. Did he also talk to you about the proper handling of condoms? By the way, did you use the store brand? I've been dying to know. I imagined you sitting at your desk using your employee discount to order a case, but now that I've met Mrs Lascola I'm wondering if you just add them on your shopping list and let her buy them when she's out picking up your dry-cleaning."
He side-eyes me while merging onto the expressway. "You're kind of a bitch," he says, but his lip is twisted in amusement and he's not saying it with any animosity.
"Don't I know it." I nod in agreement. "And I hope you told your grandfather that if you crash and burn his company it will be all your fault ’cause I don't need that on my head."
"Something like that, yeah." Kyle laughs. "I told him I had a vested interest in seeing the company succeed."
"I can understand that. Being the one to fuck everything up sucks."
"Are you speaking from experience?" He doesn't ask the question in a snarky way, more like he's genuinely interested.
"Sort of. I'm a twin and my sister was the perfect kid growing up. She's still perfect, so it's like living your life with a side-by-side example of perfection staring at you all the time."
"You get along though? You and your sister?"
"Oh, of course. She's my best friend."
"But she worries about you, so you try not to be a burden," he fills in. He's not wrong.
"She's a fixer, my sister. A natural-born leader. I've always imagined that our mom must have told her to keep an eye on me at some point and she never stopped."
"You don't think of yourself that way? As a leader? You run your own business, with the blog. You're very successful."
I blink. No one ever really gives me credit for my blog. And I get it—to a certain degree, I get it. It sounds like a hobby. But it's not, far from it. And it's more profitable than a lot of careers. I make more money than most of the people who glance at me and ask, “But is that sustainable, dear?”
"I guess, but it's not like I have employees, it's just me. So I'm not really leading anyone, I'm just doing my own thing." I shrug, but I turn in my seat so I can watch him instead of the traffic. The view is better this way.
"Sometimes leading yourself is the hardest part."
"Hmm," I hum while I stare at him. "True. But I don't usually do such a great job of that in my personal life. I do stupid things like lose my credit card, or forget to renew my vehicle sticker. And as hard as I try not to, I somehow always pick the wrong guy."
"Maybe you don't have to try so hard. And maybe I could be the right guy."
I think I forget how to breathe for a second, because who says that? Who actually says that? I'm reminded of how instantly right we felt together the day we met. How easily we fell into rhythm, kinda like now. But I'm also reminded that he didn't seem interested in staying with me until he had a vested interest—his baby.
"Do you have commitment issues?"
"Far from it."
"Yet here you are, mid-thirties and unattached until I stumble along and then you put a ring on it." I look down at my hand, the ring sitting in all its surreal splendor on my finger. Does it make me a whore that I like it? A shiny bauble on my finger? I like the ring. I like looking at it on my hand. I like that he picked out exactly what I described, even though I never meant for him to. I like the symbol of being taken.
Or maybe I like the symbol of being picked, like I'm not the last kid standing during team selection for grade school dodgeball.
I rub the ring band with my thumb, back and forth, making it wiggle on my finger.
I like feeling wanted, as if I'm not temporary