Page 62 of The Law of Attraction
“Poor third-grade Olivia.”
“Yeah, it was horrifying. I’m still in therapy over it.” She stretched her leg out and nudged him with her big toe. “Why did you wait so long to have sex?”
“Is twenty-one a long time to wait?”
“It is for some people.”
He shrugged without quite meeting her eye. “I wanted to wait until I was with someone I cared about. I guess I wanted it to mean something.”
Olivia’s stomach tightened. She wished she’d waited like he had. Then maybe her memories of her first time would be something she could look back on fondly instead of this unpleasant stew of awkwardness and guilt.
“Why do you wear so much makeup?” Adam asked.
A million different answers danced on the tip of her tongue. It would be easy to say something flip, or offer an easy half-truth. Instead, she told him the real reason: “Because I always feel like people don’t notice me otherwise. Like I blend into the furniture or something.” She tried to laugh, like it was no big deal rather than something rooted in her deepest insecurities, only it came out sounding hollow.
“I notice you,” he said. “Even without makeup. You always stand out to me.”
It was possibly one of the most romantic things anyone had ever said to her. Even though he’d said it matter-of-factly, like it was just a mundane piece of information he was sharing. And maybe it was. Maybe he hadn’t meant it to be romantic, and Olivia was reading too much into it.
Except his eyes. They were soft and serious, laser-focused on her with an intensity she definitely wasn’t imagining. The spark in his eyes burned bright enough to see even in the storm-filtered light, and it sent her stomach spinning into the outer reaches of the galaxy.
He stretched his arm toward her, in what could be considered a completely innocuous way, like he was just trying to get more comfortable—except for the fact that his finger grazed the back of her hand. It was the lightest of barely-there touches, but it seared into her skin, leaving a stripe that felt permanent.
She could barely get out her next question, the one she’d been dying to ask. “What happened to Brie?” She needed to know more about this woman who was his first time. She wanted to know everything about her: hair color, shoe size, SAT scores. There were hours worth of questions tumbling around in her head. They could be here all day.
She wanted to be here all day.
The realization was punctuated by a distant rumble of thunder outside. For once Olivia was grateful for the storm and this whole cursed fucking trip. Because she was enjoying herself. She hadn’t thought about work in hours, and she wasn’t in any hurry to get back to the plant. All she wanted was to stay here talking to Adam, just like this.
“She got accepted to a graduate program in Ohio.” He was talking to the ceiling again, and he’d retracted his arm. The hand that had touched hers now lay on his chest, right above his heart. “We mutually agreed to end things when she left instead of trying to do long-distance.” He paused, and Olivia thought maybe he was going to add something else, but instead he looked at her and said, “Do you have any tattoos?”
“Yes,” she said. “Did you love her?”
He rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand. “Hang on, I want to know more about this tattoo—or is it multiple tattoos?”
“There’s only one, and you can ask when it’s your turn again. Answer my question first.”
The rain was starting to let up a little—it was no longer falling in sheets, just a simple, steady downpour—and the room wasn’t quite as dark as it had been. It made it easier to see Adam’s expression.
His eyes gazed straight into hers, and the sadness in their depths nearly took her apart. “Yes, I loved her. It broke my heart when she left. I wanted to follow her, but she didn’t want me to.”
“Did she tell you that?” It wasn’t her turn to ask another question, but she had to know.
“Yes. She said she wasn’t that serious about me. She didn’t want to be tied down.”
A sour feeling churned in Olivia’s stomach. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she said, both for asking the question and for the fact that it had ever happened to him. It was hard to imagine anyone saying that to him. What was wrong with this woman named after soft cheese that she couldn’t appreciate a man like Adam when she had him?
Only the thing was, Olivia knew exactly what was wrong with her. Because Olivia had been the woman who’d thrown away a perfectly good man before. A couple of times, actually. Just like Adam had been thrown away.
His eyes lowered, his lashes casting deeper shadows on his face. “It was a long time ago. I’m over it now.”
He didn’t look like he was over it. Olivia could see the pain etched in his face as clear as daylight, and suddenly she didn’t want to ask him any more questions about Brie.
All her preconceptions about him had been wrong. She’d always assumed he was as lucky in love as a guy this gorgeous could be. Instead he was a serial monogamist who seemed to love selectively and hard, and who’d had his heart crushed at least twice before.
She wanted to give him a hug. She wanted to give him a lot more than a hug, but her brain intruded to remind her that was going too far. He didn’t want her like that.
But a hug she might be able to get away with now that they were friends.
