Page 107 of A Lick and A Promise
I hadn’t come close to resuscitating myself since we ended.
But still.
I died another death.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him since. In the world I never wanted to live in, where we gave it a go and discovered we were awesome, and then it all fell apart, this was what I’d been trying to avoid.
At the look on his face, I had hope, because his beautiful hazel eyes ringed with their dark, dark lashes never left me from the second he entered, and he looked as wasted as I felt.
After he sat across from me, I slid the apple fritter and bear claw his way, then his paper cup of coffee—milk, not cream, no sugar.
He looked down at it then at me with a soft, poignant smile on his face.
And there was another death.
“Remembered,” he muttered.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago,” I replied, took a sip of coffee, then said, “Okay, I’m here. You’re here. But why am I here?”
“Shit has been weird between us.”
Well…duh.
“Around the others,” he continued.
I’ll repeat…
Duh.
“What happened at the Christmas party can’t happen again,” he carried on.
Yeah, at the Oasis Square Christmas party, we’d gotten into it.
It was silly shit.
I’d told him I had a present for him, bought before we broke up, and I wanted to get rid of it by giving it to him.
Okay, so perhaps in an alternate universe I’d admit that using the words “get rid of it” were not the strong choice if I wanted to avoid an altercation (but I’d only admit that in an alternate universe).
He told me he was uncomfortable accepting it because he hadn’t gotten around to getting me anything (men and their last-minute Christmas shopping, ulk).
I told him that didn’t matter, my gift didn’t really matter, but I couldn’t return it because the return window had closed, and I couldn’t use it.
He told me, if the gift didn’t matter, then I could just give it to one of the other guys.
I told him I didn’t buy it for one of the other guys, I bought it for him.
He suggested that our discussion was not about the gift, but about something else, and maybe we should take time to have a chat (and now I suspected the chat he’d been suggesting was supposed to be like the one we were having now at Randy’s).
I told him we’d said what needed to be said, and that was not going to happen.
This degenerated to some harsh words, some curse words, me poking him in the chest (yeah, I did that, so lame) and both of us storming off in opposite directions.
Though, obviously since then, I changed my mind about the chat.
“We need to figure this out, Luna,” he concluded.
That was exactly why I changed my mind about the chat.
