Chapter 6 #2
She leaned against the door frame and looked at him, the strong set of his shoulders, the way he confidently cooked the burgers, then added slices of cheese.
“Have you . . . have you ever . . .” She trailed off. She was skirting close to dangerous territory right now. Bringing all this up. But part of her wanted to demystify him.
“What?”
“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
He looked up from the grill and stared at her.
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“Just curious.”
“You ought to know.”
“Well, you went away to college, and I don’t know everything you did while you were there.” She did not say thank God, but she thought it.
“No. I don’t do the girlfriend thing. Like I said, I don’t see my future including a long-term romantic relationship.
It sounds like work. And I . . . Like I said, I love your family.
They’ve been very good to me. But when I think about family, the Clays aren’t the first people I think of.
I think about being a kid and being shuttled back and forth between my mom and my dad, neither of whom really wanted me.
It was kind of the opposite of a healthy custody exchange.
My mom didn’t run to hug me and welcome me home.
It was more like: You again. I put a damper on her social life.
And as far as my dad . . . If he liked having me with him at all, it was because it gave him someone to bully. That’s not better.”
Her heart went tight. “No.”
“I would never put a kid through that.”
“But you’re not your parents.”
“That’s the question I have, Lydia. What makes you into a person like them?”
She didn’t have it in her to be irritated at him now. Because this wasn’t about her crush, her issues, the things she projected onto him.
“Do you think that your dad would ever have taken in a dog like Hank, let him sleep on the couch, then fried him up a hamburger?”
“I guess not.”
“Do you think your mom would ever add to her workload by offering to take care of three extra horses that she didn’t even need?”
“Well . . . no.”
“And do you think that either of them would’ve had the discipline you did in school? To take advantage of all the opportunities you had. Do you think they would’ve planned their future meticulously the way you did, invested their time and energy into the sorts of pursuits you took up?”
“The ability to make money has nothing to do with character.”
“Maybe not. I’m sure there are dirt-poor animal rescuers.
But what it does show is that you have the ability to think about something other than what satisfies you right that very moment.
I think both of your parents can be characterized by their inability to care at all what anyone else wanted from them or needed from them.
I think they essentially just cared about their own feelings, and no one else’s.
And there are so many things you do that demonstrate you’re not that person. ”
“Appreciated, moppet.”
He made it hard. To not love him. To stay mad.
He assembled the burgers, and they sat down at the table. He put the patty he’d cooked up for Hank in a bowl, and the dog settled down beside Remy’s chair.
His use of her childhood nickname made her uncomfortable. A combination of prickly and a little bit . . . Oh, she didn’t want to be aroused. It was because they were in his house, because they were alone.
She didn’t think any of this conversation was going to make him see her differently. But she wanted to shake something up. To shake him up, or maybe just her.
“Well . . . I . . . I’d like to get married someday.” She picked her burger up and took a bite.
“Sure you do. You had a great family. You would be a great mom. I can tell by the way you take care of all those animals. Though I suppose if you only want to have furry children, that would work just as well.”
“I would take both,” she said, her chest feeling sore. She was young to be thinking about children, she knew, but not too young to want to start taking the steps to get there.
“Well, I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
He looked at her, regarding her closely. “Is that right?”
“Yes. And you know, it’s a real problem, being a virgin at twenty-seven. Because how are you supposed to ever make anything happen? At that point, you’re just weird.”
He froze. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just what I said.” She felt foolish for confessing, but he’d talked about his own reputation, and picking up partners with her brother along.
“Actually, if there’s one problem I really feel like I need to solve right now, my virginity is the one.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. She really, really hadn’t.
Except . . . she had been feeling this frustration. Desperation. A need to make him . . . see her differently.
Yeah, and him knowing you’re a latter-day virgin is really going to lift that veil. Really going to make you seem cool and edgy and sexy . . .
She focused on her burger. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to throw that at you. I . . . things just come out of my mouth sometimes and . . .” She took another bite of her burger. “This is great,” she said, talking around the mouthful.
He was just looking at her and not saying anything.
“Are you . . . do you have someone in mind?” he asked, finally, sounding as if he had a piece of hamburger lodged in his throat.
You.
She didn’t say that. “Not . . . no.” She finished her hamburger faster than any other human had ever finished one and slid out of her chair. “I need to go. I just realized it’s late and I have an early start tomorrow. Well, every day because animals don’t sleep in just because you want them to!”
She smiled and pushed her chair in.
He looked a little confused but didn’t stop her. “Okay. See you later.”
“Yeah. See you.”
When she got out to her car, she sat in the driver’s seat and pressed her forehead to the steering wheel for two solid minutes, replaying the stupidity of what she’d just said.
But by the time she got home, she’d started rationalizing, and when she tucked herself into bed she was almost calm.
Because she’d known Remington Lane for most of her life, and one cringeworthy moment wasn’t going to expose her entirely to him.
That confession was something she could almost tell her brother (she wouldn’t, but she could see a scenario where it could have come up and she might have) and Remy was . . . like a brother.
In his mind.
He didn’t know she thought of him the way she did.
And he never had to.
She hadn’t exposed herself. She hadn’t changed anything at all.
Remy was focused on Hank. As he should be.
She repeated that mantra in her head until she fell asleep.