I firmly believe that cheating is an asshole move.”
“Wow. So honorable.”
“Not really. I watched my mom cheat on my dad, and I’m not a fan.”
“Ah, so that’s why you don’t believe in love,” she says. “I get it.”
I bend my straw in half, watching it flip back up like a spring. I don’t want to talk about my issues or about Mom. Both make me squeamish.
“What about you?” I ask. “Do you believe in some fated love like you see in movies?”
“Of course I do.” She tugs my jacket around her waist in a subconscious move. “It’s a basic human need—to love and be loved.”
“That’s where I think you’re wrong. People need to be understood, not necessarily roped into buying flowers and chocolates.”
She makes a face and turns her attention to the kitchen as a cook shouts an order is up. “It must suck to be so jaded about love.”
“Or maybe it sucks to be so naive about it?”
“I don’t think believing in one true love is being naive.” She looks at me with a softness that feels like someone sent a rock through a slingshot and struck my chest. “I think believing you can go through life and not need love is naive.”
There’s something about what she says that prickles the back of my brain. It bothers me, irritates me, begs me to pay attention and dig deeper. But it’s hard to do that when I have to spend so much energy telling myself not to reach for her and pull her into my arms.
“I didn’t say you don’t need love,” I mutter. “I just said maybe getting different loves as you go through life may be more practical.”
“That’s sad.”
“That’s honesty.”
She shakes her head. “You are the exact kind of guy who’s broken my heart a dozen times. I should hate you on principle.”
The softness in her eyes hardens as a shield locks in place. The need to touch her deepens, and I busy my hand with my cup to keep from making that connection—one I need more and more.
She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. I can’t help but wonder what she sees when she looks at me.
“What kind of guy am I?” I ask finally.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Depends on the day.”
“Today, then.”
“I’d say today you’re . . . charismatic. Cute.”
“I hate that word,” I grumble.
“Okay. How’s ‘unavailable’ sound?”
“Fair enough.” I stretch out my legs, my body tight. “For the record, you’re the epitome of the women whose hearts I keep breaking.”
“I’ll play. What kind of girl am I?”
Every word that pops in my mind is one I can’t say—one I shouldn’t say. Words like “captivating” and “sexy” aren’t going to help.
I twist my lips as she watches me and awaits my answer.
“Charming,” I say, landing on the word closest to “charismatic” I can find. “Adorable.”
“You make me sound like a little boy,” she whines.
“Okay. How’s ‘available’ sound?”
“Ugh,” she groans. “See? Right there. That’s the problem.”
“What? That I go for the available ones? I’m sorry. I thought that was the right thing to do.”
“No. That you say ‘available’ like it’s a curse word. Like it makes us needy.” Her eyes burn with an intensity that I can’t look away from. “Yes, I want to be in a relationship. Yes, I want to be loved and needed, and that’s not a bad thing.”
“No, it’s not, theoretically. But it is when the proverbial ‘you’ thinks they’re going to get those things from me when I’m crystal clear it’s not going to happen.” I sigh. “I don’t like hurting people’s feelings, Haley. I go into relationships with all my cards on the table, and I still walk out of it feeling like a prick.”
She takes a napkin out of the container. Folding it over and over, her chest rises and falls faster. “For the record,” she says, “I don’t like wanting guys who don’t want me in the same way. If I could figure out how to do that, I wouldn’t do it either.”
I turn away from her for both our sakes. “Seems pretty easy to me. Stay away from guys like me.”
“Well, guys like you could not let girls like me in your bed.”
“There go my plans for tonight,” I joke.
We chuckle together. I barely hear the sound over the clatter of the kitchen, but somehow, it almost drowns it out too.
Although I’ve been clear and up front, I feel . . . disappointment. It’s like the lines have been drawn, and I feel