Page 74 of Holding Out for a Gyro
He sighed. “Can we offer each other a little grace? We’re both works in progress.” He leaned forward, reaching his hand forward. What did it mean? “Chelsea, take my hand. I’m still not going to propose.”
I took his hand, relaxing at the warmth of his skin against mine. I hadn’t expected to ever be here again. “Will you forgive me?”
“I don’t think there’s anything to forgive.” His thumb rubbed the back of mine. “But yes, if you need me to say I do. Will you forgive me?”
I didn’t think there was anything to forgive, either, but I nodded. “So what now?”
“The thing is I still want to get to know you. The real you.” He licked his lips. “Would you be interested in getting to know me?”
“As friends?” What madness was I suggesting? When he looked like that, all dark eyes and suckable lips, I wanted to revert to bad habits and use him all night long. “Or…?”
“Chelsea, you are the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but I wonder if both of us need to put sex and romance on the back burner. I just want to spend time with you.”
No sex? Why had I lost my shit last week? No, but he was right. We had something more valuable growing between us, and if I could only have one part of Bas, I wanted it to be this. Just sharing time together.
So I said, “I can offer references. Elizabeth will vouch for my killer friend skills.”
“I have observed.”
“But first, I have some questions for you.”
I finally did go crack a bottle of wine and dug out some cold leftover pizza that I should have been ashamed to serve a world-class chef. He didn’t mind.
As we ate, I prodded him, testing out a theory. “I’m curious why you dropped out of college.”
His shoulders slumped a beat, but then he rallied. “Like I told you, my parents were pushing me to study chemistry so I could go to med school like my brother, but I had more fun studying humanities. They didn’t want to waste their money and gave me an ultimatum—change majors or pay my own way. So I quit.”
“You didn’t give up?”
He exhaled, letting go a burst of buried frustration. “I just said I quit.”
“But you never wanted to study chemistry.” I kept my tone light, conversational, but still he stiffened.
“No.”
“Why did you stop fencing?” He’d spoken of the past in broad strokes of failures and abandonment, but I wanted to understand why. “Bas?”
He set his wineglass down. “I liked fencing. I liked soccer more. But when I started winning, my dad got involved. I loved his attention, hispride, so I worked hard at it, but every time I’d hit the next level, he’d raise the bar, like he’d never be satisfied until I won an Olympic gold. The thrill of winning never lasted, and I started to take on my dad’s dissatisfaction, working toward thenext high. No success was going to be enough, and it stopped being fun. So I dropped out and joined the college fencing club.”
“Your dad must have been hella pissed.”
“He got over it. My older brother got a killer residency, and nobody cared much about my sports after that.” He coughed a bitter laugh.
Ouch. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” One shoulder shrugged, and I saw the child he used to be, pretending to love a sport to win the approval he craved. I could identify. “It was better he stopped giving a shit. I hated the pressure.”
“But you didn’t quit fencing entirely, right?”
“I quit competing. I stopped trying to be thebest.” Sarcasm dripped from that one word, and I’d have wagered money he’d heard that phrase verbatim more than once. How awful.
I leaned into his line of sight to recapture the gaze that had drifted to the floor. “You found a way to keep it up and have fun at the same time.”
He lifted his chin, confusion in his eyes when he looked up. “I guess. I’ve never looked at it that way.”
“And you still play soccer sometimes.”
“With friends. For fun.”
