Chapter Thirty-One
Horrible Men
Emmie
“I’m just saying.” Gavin spears a piece of salmon, looking far too pleased with himself. “I told you from the beginning something was off about him.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I absolutely said that. Ask Mom. I said, ‘That guy’s too intense. Too wound up. Mark my words, it’s not going to last.’”
I push a cherry tomato around my plate. We’re at the same lunch spot we always go to—Gavin’s choice, some overpriced bistro near his office where everyone wears suits and talks about quarterly projections.
“He wasn’t that intense,” I mutter.
“Em, the guy had a seventeen-page roommate agreement. With tabs.”
“It was actually kind of impressive.”
Gavin sets down his fork, giving me his big-brother look. “You’re defending him.”
“I’m not defending him. I’m just saying he wasn’t as bad as you’re making him sound.”
“He broke up with you.”
“We were never really—” I stop. I still haven’t told Gavin the truth about the arrangement. It’s too complicated, too embarrassing, too everything. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s not that complicated. He let you go. That makes him an idiot.” Gavin shrugs. “I never trusted him anyway. Too stoic. Too controlled. You never knew what he was thinking.”
“Some people would call that mysterious.”
“Some people would call it a red flag.” He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “You deserve someone who’s actually present, Em. Someone who knows how to communicate like a normal human being. Not some robot FBI agent who treats emotions like a tactical liability.”
I want to argue. I want to tell him about the Crew I got to know—the one who held me through cramps and who had nightmares, who let me teach him to knead bread and fold egg whites. The one who laughed so rarely that when he did, it felt like a gift.
But what’s the point? That Crew is gone. Or maybe he was never really there to begin with.
“You’re right,” I say instead. “He wasn’t the one.”
Gavin nods, satisfied. “You’ll find someone better. You always land on your feet.”
“Yeah.” I force a smile. “I always do.”
* * *
The date is a disaster.
His name is Brad. He works in marketing. Sadie didn’t set this one up—I found him on an app, which should have been my first warning sign.
Within twenty minutes, I know three things about Brad:
One, he thinks he’s much funnier than he actually is.
Two, he has opinions about everything—my drink order, my career choice, the way I hold my fork.
Three, he has not asked me a single question about myself.
“So then I told my boss,” Brad is saying, gesturing expansively with his wine glass, “I said, ‘Look, Steve, if you can’t see the value I bring to this team, that’s a you problem, not a me problem.’” He laughs at his own story. “Steve’s face was priceless.”
“Wow,” I say flatly. “Steve sounds like he had it coming.”
“Right? That’s what I said.” Brad doesn’t notice my tone. “Anyway, enough about work. Tell me something interesting about yourself.”
Finally. A question.
“I’m a cookbook author. I’m working on my third—”
“Oh, cool, cool. You know, I actually dated a chef once. Totally crazy. Like, unhinged. She threw a pan at my head when I told her the risotto was too salty.” He shakes his head. “Women and food, am I right?”
I stare at him.
“Right,” I say. “Women and food. Totally crazy. All of us.”
“Not you, obviously.” He winks. “You seem normal.”
“I’m going to get the check.”
“What? We haven’t even ordered dessert.”
“I have an early morning.”
“It’s Saturday tomorrow.”
“I have a very ambitious Saturday planned.”
I flag down the waiter, pay for my half of the meal—Brad doesn’t offer to cover it, which tracks—and get out of there as fast as my legs will carry me.
The Uber ride home involves a stop at a liquor store. I buy a bottle of wine that costs more than Brad’s entire personality is worth and drink half of it in the elevator.
By the time I get to the apartment, I’m well on my way to drunk.
Crew is on the couch.
Of course he is. The one night I need to fall apart in peace, and he’s here—not at his stupid cabin, not working late, but sitting in the living room with Murphy on his lap and some documentary about World War II on the TV.
“Hey,” he says, then does a double take. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great.” I kick off my heels, nearly falling over in the process. “I’m fantastic. I’m living the dream.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m tipsy. There’s a difference.” I wave the wine bottle at him. “Want some? It’s the good stuff. Better than Brad deserves, but here we are.”
“Who’s Brad?”
“Brad is an asshole.” I collapse onto the other end of the couch, tucking my feet underneath me. Murphy immediately abandons Crew and crawls into my lap. “Brad is the reason women become lesbians.”
Crew’s mouth twitches. “That bad?”
“Worse.” I take another swig from the bottle. “He told me women in food are crazy. He spent forty-five minutes talking about himself and asked me exactly one question, which he then interrupted to tell me about his ex-girlfriend who threw a pan at his head.”
“Did she have good aim?”
“Apparently not, since he’s still alive.” I groan, letting my head fall back against the cushions. “Men are horrible.”
“I’m a man.”
“I know. You’re horrible too.” I lift my head to look at him. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
We sit in silence for a moment. The documentary drones on—something about D-Day, soldiers storming beaches, heroic sacrifices.
I should probably care, but all I can think about is how tired I am.
Tired of bad dates. Tired of trying to move on.
Tired of pretending I don’t still want the man sitting three feet away from me.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you ever date? Before me, I mean. Like, real dating. Not contractual obligations with subsections.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “Never saw the point.” He shifts, eyes fixed on the TV. “When you grow up the way I did, you learn not to get attached to things. People leave. Places change. Nothing is permanent.”
“The foster care thing?”
“Yeah. The foster care thing.” He says it flatly, like it’s just a fact and not a tragedy. “Eleven homes in ten years. You learn pretty quick that letting people in just means it hurts more when they go.”
My chest aches. “Crew…”
“I’m not saying it for sympathy. I’m just—” He exhales. “That’s why I’m like this. Why I can’t… be what people need me to be.”
“What do you think people need you to be?”
“Present. Open. Capable of—” He stops. Shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He finally looks at me, and there’s something raw in his expression. Something unguarded.
“You deserve someone who can give you everything, Emmie. The family, the future, all of it. Someone who doesn’t have to fight his own brain just to function like a normal person.”
“Can we just…” I set down the wine bottle. “Can we not talk about this? Can we just… be? For a minute?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” I look at the space between us on the couch. “Can we cuddle? I know that’s weird, I know we’re not—I just had a horrible day and I really need—”
“Yeah.” The word comes out quiet. Rough. “Okay.”
I don’t wait for him to change his mind. I crawl across the couch and tuck myself against his side, my head finding that spot on his shoulder that always felt like it was made for me. His arm comes around me slowly, carefully, like he’s handling something fragile.
We don’t speak. The documentary plays on. Murphy resettles himself across both our laps, purring.
“Emmie.”
“Hmm?”
“If I was capable of this—” He stops. Starts again. “If I was the kind of guy who was capable of love and romance and… things like that. You’d be the girl I’d want.”
A tear slips down my cheek. “Crew—”
“I just needed you to know that.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing my face into his shoulder so he won’t see me cry.
“Shh,” I whisper. “Just hold me. I still have twelve more minutes.”
He huffs out a sound—not quite a laugh, but close.
“Twelve minutes?”
“Mandatory cuddle time. Those were the terms.”
“That contract is void.”
“Some clauses are forever.” I snuggle closer, breathing him in. “Just… twelve more minutes. Please.”
His arm tightens around me.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Twelve more minutes.”
We both know it’ll be longer than that.
Neither of us says a word.