Page 18 of Heartache & Playdates
MADDOX
This was real.This was really happening. I was really sitting beside Peyton. I kept having to remind myself that this wasn’t a dream. If it was, I sure as shit didn’t want to wake up.
I sipped my third drink as Peyton took her call. She was speaking in a low tone, and I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. No that’s bullshit. I totally was.
“Okay.”
She sounded like she was on a business call. Like she was using her professional voice.
“It’s fine.”
Was she keeping her answers short because I was sitting beside her?
“Yeah.”
One word response.
“No, don’t worry about it.”
That sentence was clearly supposed to be reassuring, but if I was on the other end of the call, I woulddefinitelybe worried about it.
“Okay.”
And we’re back to just one word.
“Okay.”
One. Word.
“Yeah. Okay. Bye.”
Those were three words, but they weren’t I love you.
How serious could she be with this guy if she hadn’t ended with, I love you?
She set the phone down and I noticed that her hands were shaking. Her hands had a tendency to tremble when she was scared, nervous, mad or turned on. I wondered which one she was feeling now.
“How’s Trent?” I asked.
“Good.”
“So, he’s the boyfriend?”
She took a drink before answering, “Sort of.”
Sort of?That wasn’t a yes but it sure as hell wasn’t a no.
I waited for her to continue. When I didn’t speak, she glanced over at me.
“What?” she asked, even though I knew that she knew what I was waiting for.
“Sort of?” I repeated.
She closed her eyes in a long blink as if this was not a conversation she wanted to have. Well, if that was the case, it made two of us. If she thought for one second that after not seeing her for twenty years I wanted to be sitting here talking about a guy that was ‘sort of’ her boyfriend she was out of her mind.
When her lids reopened, she calmly stated, “We don’t use labels.”
“How long have you two not been using labels?”
