Page 85 of The Incredible Ordinary

“Okay? Not from you, though, so I don’t see how that matters?”

“It doesn’t. Technically.” He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it, and it peters out quickly. “All the individual choices you make in life contribute to how everything turns out for you.” He glances at me. “Right?”

I nod.

“But then, because of those choices, there will also be moments when you look back on your life and have at least a few what-ifs. Kira gets those what-ifs whenever her relationships end, which is about the time she’ll inevitably conclude that I’m the one that got away. Then she’ll make a move, and it’ll be awkward and mess everything up for a while.”

“You’ll reject her, and she’ll be butthurt.”

“Pretty much. We’re having dinner tomorrow, which now feels a bit like an ambush. It’s going to be a mess, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

We’ve made it back to Jordan’s house.

“Tell her something came up.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work.”

I consider him for a bit. “Well… I’m free tomorrow. And I usually eat dinner. And I’m just enough of an asshole to enjoy running this kind of interference.”

He tilts his head to the side just the tiniest bit and studies me. “You’d do that?”

“For you? Yeah.”

One moment he’s looking at me, the next I’m engulfed in a tight hug.

It’s brief. Too brief.

Jordan pulls away and smiles at me.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Anytime.”

I say it like a promise.

And I mean it like a promise.

JORDAN

I’m being a coward,and if I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t really have a problem with it. Maybe I should, from the having-pride standpoint, but Kira and I have done this song and dance a few times over the years, and by now, if I can avoid the mess that is the “No, I don’t think us trying again is a good idea” talk, I will.

We take a walk to the restaurant, Kira and me. She hooks her arm through mine as we walk. Throws her head back and laughs. A lot of her sentences start with “Remember when…”

Remember us. Remember how good we were.

We walk, and my shoulders keep getting more and more tense while I try my best not to show it.

We get to the restaurant, and the hostess greets us with a polite, distant smile. “The rest of your party has already arrived,” she says.

Kira looks startled, then aims a raised-brow look at me.

“Oh, I invited Milán,” I say. “I hope you don’t mind?”

Kira sends me a tight smile. “The more, the merrier.”

True to the hostess’s words, Milán is already at the table, comfortably lounging in his chair, looking like he hasn’t got a care in the world. He’s alert, though. I don’t know what exactlytips me off about it, but somewhere along the way, I’ve become proficient in reading his body language.

He gets up when we approach the table, a lazy smile tilting the corners of his lips up.