Page 85 of Reckless
He glanced toward the house, toward the ocean beyond it, and then back at me.“You like the tea.”
I held the box tighter.
He went on, slower now, like he was trying to give me truth without pushing too hard on any one part of it.
“You drink tea and it seems to help you calm down.My mother’s tea makes you soften every time.”His eyes stayed on my face.“After you slammed the door in my face, I saw those in the shop and I wanted to not make you mad anymore.”
My heart thumped.He believed he cared, at least a little.
I looked down at the box again because if I kept looking at him, I was going to lose my mind and forget myself.
“We have a no-gifts rule,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
The simple agreement should not have rattled me as much as it did.I looked up sharply.“You’re not even arguing.”
“I’m not confused about what this is.”
“Then why are you doing it.”
“Because I wanted to give you something.”
My pulse zipped.He’d thought of me and wanted to give me something.This was intimate in an entirely different direction.
“That is exactly the problem,” I said.
Something in his face tightened.Had I hurt him?No, impossible, but he didn’t like what I said.
His eyes widened.“Why?”
I clenched my body tighter.“Because you keep acting like the fact that you mean well fixes the effect.”
The words came out faster than I meant them to
He was still.The sea moved behind us, slow and endless.
“I didn’t do this to fix anything,” he said.
“I understand.”
“Then what is the issue.”
I laughed once, short and humorless.“It’s still a gift.”
“Yes.”
He truly didn’t understand.God.How was I supposed to fight a man who wasn’t even doing the thing wrong on purpose anymore?
I put the box down on the stone table between us before I crushed it by accident.
“The issue,” I said, “is that this is how men act when they are dating and actually care about women and we both know that’s not what we are.”
His jaw tightened.
I kept going because now that I’d started, I needed the whole truth out in the air where neither of us could pretend it hadn’t been said.
