Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,60

in front of me which was truly and utterly in the middle of nowhere.

“Yes,” he said casually, as if this was completely normal. As if living in a tiny, cute house in the middle of the desert was a perfectly normal thing to do.

The house was small. Painted a bright shade of white with tiny blue shutters on little windows. A shaded veranda ran the entire length, and on it a wooden table and two chairs. Next to that, a large, comfortable-looking daybed was pushed up against the wall. There was no fence or wall and the house simply stood there, tiny against the massive backdrop. Flat lands surrounded it, no trees, and in the distance, a massive mountain range spread across the skyline. To the left of the house, the only other thing that was taller than the house, was an old windmill pumping water into a round reservoir.

Two big tractor tires lay flat on the ground. They had been painted the same bright white as the house and flowers of cactus and succulents burst out of them. A small path of brightly colored pebbles ran up to the front of the house, to the bright red front door—this place was so quaint and picture-perfect it looked like it belonged in a book of fairytales.

“Oh my God, you should totally put this place on Airbnb, people would love it here . . .” I stopped talking. “Oh. No Airbnb.” I kept forgetting this one important fact. And then another thought hit me. I looked around again; we really were in the middle of nowhere, and honestly, I didn’t know Mark very well. I watched him as he carried a sleepy-looking Harun from his car.

“I don’t really know you, do I?” I blurted out. “And now I’m here. At your house. In the middle of nowhere, and I don’t really know you.”

He looked at me and nodded. “I suppose.”

“So should I be . . .” I chose my words carefully, “worried?”

“About me?” he asked.

“Well, yes.”

He smiled. “Were you worried about going on dates with people who you met online who were, what did you call them, next-level creeps?”

“Hey, how do you know that I online dated?”

“You told me. When I came to hook up the DVD player.”

I had to think about this for a while. “Aaaah. Yes. I did. But I also told you to ignore everything I said to you.”

He smiled. “Sorry.”

“That is not a good example though. Firstly, this is not a date. And secondly, I do know the people I meet online. More so than I know you.”

“I didn’t say this was a date.” His smile grew.

“I didn’t say you said it was a date. I was just acknowledging that it wasn’t a date.” I wished I’d never used the word date, because now things were just getting awkward.

Mark kept smiling. “I think you know me better than some guy you met online.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, folding my arms. Blocking that smile of his.

“Well, we’ve spent actual real time together. I mean, we even spent a night together.”

At that, my face went a little blushy and flushy and, without thinking, I gave it a quick fan with my hand, which caused Mark to smile even more—I assume he was also remembering that wildly awkward moment this morning. Not every day you wake up tangled in the arms of a stranger.

“I’m sure that’s more than you can say for all the people you met online. I bet you’ve never met the majority of the people you know online. And I bet you went on dates with people you knew less about than me.”

I paused. He did have a point, now that I thought about it. I hadn’t met most of my online friends IRL. But that didn’t matter, did it?

“You can know someone online though,” I said, feeling defensive.

“No, you can’t.” He started walking towards the house with Harun, and I followed behind him.

“Uh, yes, you can,” I argued.

“No, you can’t. Until you’ve sat across from a person and looked them in the eye, face to face, you can’t ever truly know someone or call them your friend.”

“Um, yes, you can. I have about ten thousand friends like that. We are all very, very close.”

At that, he burst out laughing and kicked the front door open with his foot. It wasn’t even locked. I followed him inside and was met by a small, cozy-looking sitting room that seemed to be centered around an old stone