Page 38 of Pretend You're Mine
“Sounds like a riot,” I said, not entirely serious.
But Naomi was still smiling. “Actually, it was. Although I don’t miss my every Sunday being taken up, I miss that aspect; the community.”
I didn’t say anything, but Naomi got me thinking. She had a point about community. As annoying as my family was, I did enjoy spending time with them for the most part. Although, there was something nice about long stretches of weeks when it was just Walter and my work too.
“How’d you find out about this park anyway?” Naomi asked.
“I came here few times when my family was visiting.”
“I forgot,” Naomi said, “You’re from Germany.”
“From Canada,” I corrected her.
She stopped walking. “But your family….”
“Moved to Germany when I was about eighteen. Said they’d had enough of the Canadian winters.”
Naomi nodded, her gaze moved on. “Hell yeah to that. That’s one thing I’ll never get tired of in LA; the weather.”
I wasn’t so sure though. “But at Christmas, don’t you feel like it’s not really Christmas?”
Naomi shook her head. “If I really want snow, I can just go to Lake Alpine. Anyway, do I really want to suffer for four months out of the year, just so I can have snow on Christmas?”
She was about to say something more, but her voice trailed off, and I quickly spotted the reason in the distance. Heading toward us, out of everyone we could have bumped in to, was my family. With Naomi’s words ringing in my ears, I took her by the arm and guided her back the way we came.
“I’d rather we go this way,” I said briskly.
All the way back to the car, we were quiet and I didn’t think anything of it until, at the car, Naomi didn’t get in.
“So,” she said.
One look at her face and I knew that my haste to move us through the park hadn’t helped things.
“I didn’t expect to see them there here,” I said.
Naomi nodded, saying nothing. She got in the car.
“Listen,” I said.
One glance at her face stopped me. There, was everything the situation encompassed. Even if she believed I hadn’t planned to run into my family, they’d still served as a reminder of what we were. And what we weren’t.
The only thing to ask was, “Want me to drive you home?”
She only nodded and then I turned the key in the ignition and put my foot on the gas.
The whole ride there, I didn’t let myself look at her. If I did, if I got thinking too much about what this was and wasn’t, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I didn’t know how to make it right; what the right thing to do was. Not yet at least.
19
Naomi
I got up to my apartment fast. I needed to. What had happened was still hanging over my head like a noose liable to descend at any moment.
One of the things I didn’t like about myself was how I never seemed to know how to react in the moment. So right then, as I bee-lined to the TV like it was the cure, I wasn’t sure whether I was angry, or sad, or neither.
I grabbed the remote control the wrong way, then turned it around and turned on the first Netflix show I saw. What show it was, I couldn’t have told you.
No, I wasn’t looking at the TV, I was thinking.
The whole run-into-his-family thing probably hadn’t been a set up. Xander might’ve been many things but wouldn’t blatantly lie right to my face like that. Or at least, I didn’t think so. And the way he had steered me in the opposite direction and hauled ass back to the car should have confirmed that.
I picked back up the remote, then put it back down.
Who said I even knew that much about Xander anyway? Sure, I could flatter myself that we’d been growing close the past week or so, but there was still the practical fact of how, and under what circumstances, we’d met and how little time we’d actually known each other.
I never really had talked to Xander about that. About if he’d gone into that bar intending to marry the first girl who’d talked to him. Or had he just had the idea percolating in the back of his mind, had just happened upon me, saw the opportunity when it drunkenly presented itself, and took it? Did I even want to know?
Those questions joined hands to form a tormenting marching band, their footsteps pounding deep into a migraine in the center of my forehead. More questions without answers. Just how much longer was I going to put myself through this?
I stood up, then sat back down. When my phone rang, even though I knew it was Dad, even though I knew what that he was going to ask me if I was coming to dinner that night, I picked up.
