CHAPTER TWELVE
Seeing Max again was going to be the perfect opportunity to practice my new resolutions. Asking myself WWKD, I changed into her blue-and-white dress I’d worn to the pitch meeting. I figured it would be a good visual reminder to myself that I was trying to do things differently.
Walking into Adrian’s apartment didn’t feel the way it used to. There had always been this little thrill about being in his home, his private sanctuary. I’d sometimes imagined myself living there, married to a prince of New York society, wearing ball gowns and tiaras.
Today was different. It was just an apartment, and what I currently felt was panic and annoyance.
Annoyed that I had to be there instead of being able to have lunch with Max, and panicked that he was going to show up any minute and I wasn’t sure exactly when to expect him as he hadn’t given me a specific time. The waiting was driving me to distraction.
I tried to work but felt too jittery and unable to concentrate. I attempted to water Adrian’s plants, but I ended up making a huge mess by knocking the watering can over in the kitchen. After I cleaned up the spill, I decided to sit on the couch, where I couldn’t do any more damage.
The electrician had arrived right after I did, and now he was coming into the living room to tell me that he had finished up. He had me sign some paperwork and then gathered up his tools. I walked him out and thanked him for coming.
Right as I opened the front door, I had to stifle a gasp because Max was standing there with his hand lifted, as if he’d just been about to knock. All the cells in my body jumped with joy at seeing him again and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
Max was every bit as gorgeous as I’d remembered. If anything, my memory had failed to do him justice.
With the bright sunlight streaming in, I noticed that his eyes were an icy, light blue. Sharp and piercing, but beautiful.
I wanted to sigh.
He and the electrician nodded at each other as the electrician left. Max let himself into the apartment while I stood there with the doorknob in my hand, not able to move.
“Nice place,” he said, taking it all in.
Okay, time to get myself together. WWKD, remember? I needed to act with some decorum, to be regal and elegant like Kat, but it wasn’t happening.
Instead I was a bumbling mess.
“Thanks,” I said, finally managing to shut the door. Then I realized how stupid I probably sounded, given that it wasn’t my apartment. “I mean, it’s my boss’s place.”
“The same boss that you have the crush on?” he asked as he walked over to the glass doors to the balcony, taking in the view.
Now I was regretting that I’d spilled my guts so easily to Max. “That’s him. The same one that’s getting engaged.”
I wasn’t really sure why I felt compelled to tack on that last part—I’d already shared that information with him.
Okay, that was a lie. I knew why I had said it. A not-very-bright part of me wanted to oh-so-subtly let Max know that Adrian was not an option for me. It was not a great inclination, given that I’d already had many talks with myself to not get swept away in an impossible romantic fantasy.
But then I noticed Max’s expression had turned into a mixture of distaste and terror when I’d said Adrian was going to get married.
“What is that face for?” I asked.
His eyebrows flew up his forehead, as if he were surprised that I’d caught him. “What face?”
“The one you made when I said he was getting engaged.”
He made the expression again, and this time I laughed. “Just the mere mention of the word is enough to freak you out? Marriage is not an epidemic. You’re not going to catch the commitment flu and find yourself at an altar against your will.”
While his reaction was amusing, it also let me know that we were fundamentally incompatible because I one hundred percent wanted to get married and have a family. This realization felt like a large stone sinking down from my chest and settling into my stomach.
Such a shame.
“I know that,” he said. “I just can’t imagine myself getting married. I prefer having fun.”
That sinking feeling intensified, but I focused on the indignant flame that was coming to life inside me. As I’d suspected, a total playboy just out to have a good time, moving from one woman to the next. I knew he didn’t mean it as some kind of attack on my personal choices, but it sort of felt like one. “I guess that’ll be sustainable for a while, especially while you look ...” It probably wouldn’t have been a good thing for me to say “Like someone asked Santa Claus for the hottest guy imaginable as a Christmas present and he brought you.” I settled for vaguely waving my hand in his direction. “Like that. But as my meemaw loves to remind me, looks fade and you’ll want to find somebody you enjoy being with all the time, someone you can build a life with, someone who has the same goals and aspirations that you do. It’s not a bad thing to spend your life with your best friend.”
“Your Dr. Seuss grandmother sounds like a wise woman,” he said with a smile.
He was avoiding what I’d said by skirting the subject and redirecting my attention. I wasn’t going to let him do that. “Do you think your feelings about marriage are a reaction to your last relationship not working out?”
Considering that my own mother hadn’t dated anyone seriously since her divorce, it would have been valid for Max to feel that way.
He looked a bit surprised, as if I’d taken him off guard. “Possibly. Maybe I am scared to go down that road again. To trust somebody with my heart a second time. It seems easier to just stay casual.”
Yes, casual as he flitted about, sharing himself with all the women of New York. “If you don’t trust anybody, if you don’t take that risk, you’ll also miss out on all the rewards,” I said. I paused and then added, “Not that I’m the expert at that sort of thing. Like Alice in Wonderland, I am good at giving out advice, but I very seldom follow it.”
Max smiled at me, and even though Adrian’s apartment had new lighting, the wattage of Max’s smile put every other light source to shame. “Which is why Vella forced you to go out last night. Have you thought about her theory?”
I blinked slowly, not sure what he meant. “About reptilian aliens secretly running the government?”
His smile somehow got bigger and brighter. “No, her theory about why you go after emotionally unavailable men.”
“Oh, she’s made sure I know the reason why. As she so often tells me, I’ve always been attracted to men who aren’t attracted to me because it’s safer.” She spent six months majoring in psychology in college and felt like this gave her some sort of license to psychoanalyze me.
“Safer how?” he asked.
“If I keep everyone at arm’s length, then I don’t have to worry about my heart getting broken.” While I was attributing the words to Vella, I did have some insight as to why I made the choices I did. I decided to go for broke. “I use my workload as an excuse, and even though it is a valid one, the truth is I’m too scared to be with anybody. Relationships terrify me.”
Adrenaline made my limbs feel shaky. Why was it so hard to admit that? This being more open and putting myself out there more thing sucked.
“Because of your parents’ divorce?” he asked.
“Probably,” I said. “Which I know is super cliché. My dad being completely unfaithful, never being there for my mom or me, messed me up and gave me some serious self-esteem issues. We were never good enough for him. That’s not the only reason, though. The few times I’ve let my guard down and let myself be excited about someone, it’s never turned out well.”
“In what way?”
So I told Max the story of what had happened to me in high school at the dance, how humiliated I’d been when I was ditched and mocked. The time in college when a guy who had invited me to meet him at a basketball game stood me up and then ghosted me. When a girl in my economics class had offered to set me up on a blind date with her brother and he’d stayed for about ten minutes and then made up an excuse about a sick ferret and all but sprinted to his car.
While part of me was freaking out at telling Max all these things, internally warning me that I was presenting myself as so unattractive and undesirable, the other part of me wanted to be honest.
I wanted to be seen.
Even if it made him come up with an excuse for his own hasty exit.
But when I finished, he didn’t run off flailing his arms like Kermit the Frog.
He stayed.
I felt compelled to fill in the silence. “My dad constantly cheating on my mom is probably the main reason why it’s hard for me to trust men. I think some part of me expects that it will happen to me, too. I want to protect myself.”
Max was silent for several beats and finally said in a rough voice, “And then when you take a chance, you get let down time and time again. All of that must have been incredibly difficult to deal with.”
I felt tears burning at the edge of my eyelids, and I was not going to cry in front of the hot man who just wanted to get his phone back. “Well, you know what they say. What doesn’t kill you makes you weird about intimacy.”
His eyes crinkled, like he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. He gave me a sad but supportive look that somehow made me feel worse, even though I could tell he wanted to comfort me.
To my dismay, he kept his hands to himself. I would have bet his hugs were fantastic. I let out a big breath. “Wow, I’m glad we skipped over the playful-banter portion of our day and went straight into our own personal therapy session.”
“Yes, I appreciate the insight, Dr. Aprile,” he said, giving me a slight nod.
“Sorry for going deep. I’ve never been a big fan of small talk.”
“Me either.” He paused and then looked the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Had I shared too much about my dysfunctional childhood? “Here. I got you this.”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a single red rose.
I caught my breath and put a hand over my stomach. “What’s this for?”
“To thank you for taking such good care of my things,” he said.
It felt a little like a freight train slamming into my chest, knocking the wind out of me. He meant it as a token of his appreciation. Not as an indication of something more.
When was I going to stop reading so much into every innocent thing he was doing?
Last night I’d been worried that he would accuse me of keeping his stuff deliberately and being obsessed with him, like that guy Vella had gone out with. It was a relief to see that wasn’t the case. That he had even brought me a thoughtful gift to thank me.
Or if he’d thought it, at least he’d had the courtesy not to say as much.
I reached for the rose and was careful to avoid brushing my fingers against his. It was the first time anyone had given me a flower. I wanted to thank him but worried that if I did, I might actually start to cry. I joked instead. “You don’t know that I took good care of your stuff. I might have taken a hammer to your phone screen and dragged your coat through the streets.”
“You wouldn’t.” He said it with such surety and confidence, like he knew me and didn’t have a single doubt in his mind.
“You’re right. I didn’t. But I am sorry about inadvertently committing grand theft coat.” I walked over to the coffee table, where I’d put his things, and handed them back to him.
Now he was going to say his goodbyes and someday I would tell my grandchildren about the time I met and hung out with a hot Monterran man who made my knees wobble and how he had been very nice to me.
“Have you been up to anything exciting since I last saw you?” he asked, as he walked over to the couch and sat down.
I was in such shock that he didn’t head for the door that I wasn’t sure what to do or how to react. I stood there for a few beats, my heart pounding and my mind racing. Why had he sat down?
As if he sensed my inner turmoil, he gave me a quizzical look. Which was well deserved, given that I was behaving like someone who had never spoken to a man before.
I had to head this off before I wound up in some embarrassing place. Which was kind of where I was currently living. Mayor of Humiliationville, Population: Me.
Taking in a deep breath, I walked over and sat in one of Adrian’s extremely uncomfortable and weirdly shaped chairs that flanked his coffee table. It took me a second to figure out how to sit in it but I finally settled in.
“I’ve decided that I’m going to revamp my life. Make new choices,” I told him. “I made a list this morning.”
“What brought this on?” He put his arm along the back of the couch, and it took every bit of strength I had not to go over there and snuggle up next to him.
And meeting him was what had made me want to change things, but that wasn’t something I was going to confess. Because I knew how this conversation was going to go. I would indicate interest in him; he would look at me sympathetically. I couldn’t bear to hear him say, “You’re a really nice girl, but ...” He’d tell me he wasn’t looking for anything serious. Nobody ever wanted to hear that from a cute guy because it was so demoralizing. But from a man like Max? Perfect Saint Max?
It would be devastating.
Despite me telling him he should take risks, I was not willing to risk my own heart just to get it inevitably bruised, if not broken.
This would all be a lot easier if I said it. Then I wouldn’t have to wait for the axe to inevitably fall. I’d just rip off the Band-Aid now.
I tried to shrug nonchalantly, sure that I hadn’t pulled it off. “I realized that if I wanted something else, something better, in my life, I was going to have to do things differently. And one of my resolutions is to make more friends. As much as I don’t want to sound like I’m in first grade right now, I’d really like it if you and I could be friends.”
There. I was the one who said “friends only” so that he couldn’t do it first. I was going to keep my potential humiliation in check. I recognized that this was probably coming across strangely to him—but I had put myself up on a shelf for so long that I no longer knew how to have a normal interaction with a guy.
Holding my breath, I studied his face for a reaction. Part of me desperately wanted him to disagree. To tell me he wasn’t interested in being only my friend.
To say he wanted something more.