Page 16 of Pretend You're Mine
Luckily, Xander took care of that. “You go to your church bazaar every year?”
“Yeah almost every year. It’s not exactly my thing, but it makes my parents happy. They’ve done a lot for me so it’s not a big deal to go for them once a year. I didn’t go last year, and they were really disappointed…” I trailed off, realizing I was about to reveal more than I was ready to. Mom had almost mentioned it earlier today and that had been bad enough. I liked how Xander saw me now – I didn’t want that to change if he found out just what had happened with Eric. It really had no bearing on what was happening right now. We were not in a proper relationship so that kind of a revelation wasn’t really necessary anyway.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
Xander’s face was giving away nothing. “No reason. I was surprised, I guess.”
“At?”
“So many happy people in one place.”
“Believing that when you die, you’ll get to party in Heaven for an eternity has a way of doing that to you.”
“I guess,” Xander said and I remembered him admitting that he was agnostic.
Now he’d finished his wine and moved onto his water too. “I guess I’m just used to seeing bitter, unhappy people in my line of work.”
I feigned surprise. “You mean people getting divorced aren’t all joyful and positive by the time they come to see you?”
“I know, it’s shocking right?” he said, chuckling. “Usually they’re angry, hollowed-out. And confused. Confused that what they had thought would last forever could have devolved into such a hateful, soul-crushing mess.”
Whoa. I blinked at him. Something in his voice told me that he was speaking from experience. Maybe we weren’t so different from one another after all.
Xander forced a smile. “Sorry. That’s not exactly dinner conversation.”
“But that’s how you really see it.”
He gave an incline of his head to the affirmative. “That’s how it is. People are just too hepped up on Hollywood movies and romance novels to accept it.” His gaze was testing as it went to me. “Would you get in a plane that had a fifty percent crash rate?”
I knew what he was saying – that the divorce rate was at a point that made marriage seem like a huge risk.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But what about living itself – we have a one hundred percent death rate and people still stick it out most of the time.”
“You know what I mean.”
He was right; I did. All too well, after how gutted I’d been by what Eric had done to me. But right now, for some reason, I didn’t want to just sit here and accept it anymore.
“And you don’t have to get married to be in love,” I said. “Anyway, relationships themselves have as much potential for bad as they do for good.”
He considered for a moment before nodding in agreement.
“My mom was there for my dad when he had his cancer scare, when he didn’t even have enough energy or hope to get out of bed. And my dad, he got my mom exercising, helping her bad hip.”
I was finding the words as I was saying them. “Good relationships make you better than you’d be alone. It’s not about being incomplete, an unfinished half and finding the other that makes you whole. It’s about being whole already and then finding someone who challenges you to be your best self.”
Realizing I’d gone on something of a rant, I focused my attention on my water, which still had a trickle left.
“You’re right,” Xander was saying. “Of course you’re right.”
He didn’t say anything more. There was more to his doubt, it was written in every atom of his sour expression. But I didn’t push it – it wasn’t my place.
Now Xander was eyeing me carefully. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to be so pessimistic. I just get fed up with my family constantly throwing my bachelor status in my face, like it makes me some kind of social pariah.”
“I get it,” I said. “My parents can be overzealous about my relationship status as well. They just want the best for me, without realizing that I already know what’s best for me. At least I’d like to think so.”
Xander quirked his head at me, as if I’d said something he thought but never realized he had.
Just then, a waiter passing by spilled wine on him.
“Crap, crap, I’m sorry,” he said as he went to his knees and began grabbing every napkin in sight to dab on the back of Xander’s chair and the floor. Only a bit had sprayed on Xander’s shoes, which he leaned down to dab dry himself. “Don’t worry about it.”
But the waiter was near tears. “This is my first day, and I know it’s no excuse, I just was trying to balance it and then I saw this other girl moving and I thought….”
