Page 76 of The Law of Attraction
“Blackberries and raspberries—also not berries.”
She shoved the banana back in the bowl and went for an apple Danish instead. “I can’t even process that. I’m still too pissed off about bananas being berries.”
“You know what else is a berry? Watermelon.”
“What the fuck?”
“Also avocados.”
“Okay, now I know you’re just messing with me.” She grabbed a vanilla yogurt—because apparently all berry yogurt was a lie—and took it and her Danish over to the table.
Adam followed her with his two yogurt cups and a tiny box of Frosted Flakes. “Botanically, a berry is defined as a fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower. Which includes grapes, tomatoes, and peppers, but not a lot of the fruits that we commonly consider berries.”
Olivia shotgunned the rest of her coffee. “I can’t believe you’re talking to me about plant ovaries at seven in the morning.”
“I thought you’d find it interesting.” He looked slightly hurt that she wasn’t more impressed by his fun facts about fruit, but she couldn’t very well explain that she was in a bad mood because she’d been awake half the night agonizing over the fact that he hadn’t wanted to sleep with her.
“I do find it interesting,” she told him, trying to sound conciliatory. “I just haven’t had enough coffee to have my entire fruit worldview upended.”
“Then I’d better get you some more,” he said, and took her coffee cup for a refill.
Damn him, why did he have to be so sweet? It was making this even harder on her.
But she’d made it over the hump. She’d faced Adam this morning and come through it with her dignity mostly intact. They could do this. They could interact and work together and be mostly normal.
Only as soon as they were alone in the car together, on the way to the plant, things got awkward again.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked, casting a worried glance her way.
“Yes,” she said, turning to look out the window. It wasn’t a lie. She was okay. She would be.
“Because it seems like something’s wrong,” he persisted.
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer. They were passing a very nice pasture of cows, and she watched them graze on a patch of wildflowers.
“Is something wrong?” He really wasn’t going to let this go.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said to the window. There was no point in lying when he could clearly see that something was bothering her. Lying would only make him prod more.
“Okay.”
He fell silent, and she breathed out a sigh of relief.
“How about this…” he said after a moment. “How about I tell you what I think is wrong, and you tell me if I’m right or not?”
She could say no. He would probably drop it if she told him she didn’t want to play this game right now. But then she’d never hear what he thought was wrong—and she needed to know.
“Fine,” she said. Her gaze was still fixed on the window, but without seeing what lay beyond the glass. All of her awareness was concentrated on the inside of the car. On Adam and what he might be about to say.
“I think you were hurt that I went to my own room and didn’t spend the night with you last night. I think you think I did that because I didn’t want to spend the night with you, and I want you to know that’s not true at all.”
She swiveled her head to look at him, but his focus remained on the road ahead. “Then why?” she asked, feeling that familiar flare of longing again.
“I really was exhausted. I don’t know if you noticed, but I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before.”
“I noticed,” she said, closing her eyes against the memory of his body sliding against hers into the wee hours of the morning.
“Yeah, well I didn’t get much sleep the night before that either.” He was talking about the first night they’d shared a bed, when the storm had displaced him from his room. His fingers squeezed the steering wheel. “Or the night before that, truthfully.” That was after the wrecker had dropped them at that creepy motel.
