Chapter 10 #2
“I’m not even hating. I just think everyone’s so desperate to find their person that they don’t bother finding out who they are first. I’m not gonna waste my time trying to become the thing somebody else wants, just for him to look at me one day and decide he doesn’t want it anymore.”
Ro watches me thoughtfully, considering my words. Likely trying to find the safest point of entry. “Isn’t that the whole point though? To find somebody you don’t have to change for?”
I shrug, and I’d usually leave it there, but there’s something about the space Ro leaves open that makes me want to fill it.
“It’s a nice thought,” I admit. “But even basic attraction is all presentation. An act. That’s why I prefer the apps.
At least people on there are more obvious about it.
I respect that more than a guy undressing me with his eyes while telling me that it was my sparkling personality he noticed from across the room.
Lying to get into bed, lying to get into a relationship, and then we both have to keep lying to make it work.
” I continue, because I can’t not. “As soon as one person stops lying, everything falls apart. Because none of it was ever real to begin with.”
I should quit, but then another wave of mezcal-flavored truth serum bubbles out of me.
“And no, this isn’t me thinking every guy’s my dad, it’s me knowing what happens when a woman accidentally lets herself be honest or human. Or worst of all, inconvenient.”
“Ah,” he says. “We’re not talking about what people do in relationships. It’s men.”
“Come on. Guys’ll throw a whole life away when it stops being easy. Stops being fun.”
Ro nods, but I wouldn’t call it agreement. “Maybe some guys. But no shot that’s what everybody’s doing. Or no relationship would last.”
“They don’t! That’s the point.”
Ro collects my discarded plate with his and reaches a long arm out to deposit them in the trash can at the far side of our bench. He doesn’t say a word, but I can see in his eyes that he has Thoughts?.
“Don’t worry,” he says finally. “I’m not gonna try to change your mind tonight.”
“You couldn’t if you wanted to.”
“Yeah, I’m kinda gettin’ that,” he says with a look I can’t quite name. He lets out a heavy exhale and with it, he releases the heaviness of our conversation. “How we feeling over there, E? That pizza help?”
“If I close one eye, there’s only two of you now,” I say, only half joking. “I think I’ll do one more for the road.”
Ducking inside for a last slice gives Ro a chance to grab the truck, and me an opportunity to find the off switch for whatever valve has malfunctioned in my brain.
Talking to Ro is way too easy—it’s a liability—and as much as I’d love to blame the alcohol, the truth is, it’s him. It’s every time I see him.
Just this once, I’d love to leave him without having to dissect my every social failing.
Ro’s got the truck iced out by the time I meet him out front. On another warm summer night, I’d welcome the AC, but when I get drunk, I get tired, and when I get tired, I get cold.
I hardly register the shiver ripple up my spine. “Thanks for waiting. Pizza was the thing I missed most when I was in Kansas. Don’t tell Zola I said that.”
Ro laughs and wordlessly reaches into the back seat to retrieve an enormous black hoodie.
He’s already turned the air off, but I don’t argue when he holds it out to me.
I slip into the plushness, burying my nose in the cowl neck once it’s over my head.
Because I’m cold. Obviously. Not because it smells clean and earthy, a little minty, with the tiniest hint of musk. Just like him.
“What were you doing in Kansas?”
I turn toward his voice and the outline of his strong profile. The visual serves as a reminder that if I can see him, he can see me too. So I should probably stop sniffing his clothes.
“Oh,” I say, almost forgetting I’d mentioned it. “That’s where I went to school. The University of Kansas.”
“Well, damn, E. That’s your problem. What’s an East Coast girl gonna do with the guys in Kansas?”
“Oh, you East Coasters had my heart plenty black and dead by the time I left,” I say, laughing. “But shocking as it may be, I went for the school. Not the men. And Kansas has a great early education program.”
“Oh, are we talking about that now? The other day, it was off-limits.”
“Please don’t. I still feel terrible about that,” I admit freely.
“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse, but it really had nothing to do with you.
Everything’s just been so off since I got back—Zola had been in my ear that whole day, I thought my best friend was blowing me off, and you caught me mid-realization that what had felt like four years of forward progress might’ve been a giant fucking circle that dropped me off right back where I started.
You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. ”
No more than a single breath passes after I finish, a single beat, but it’s enough time for me to want to take it all back. “Sorry. That probably doesn’t make sense out of context. Ignore me. I’m drunk.”
Ro smiles, and it’s even more brilliant in the moonlight somehow. “I don’t think you’re that drunk anymore.”
He pulls away from the stop sign, leaving the moment and my confessions behind.
We’re a few miles down the road when Ro breaks our comfortable silence. “I still don’t get what kind of break the internet, straight to jail without passing go dirt Zola has on you to get you to agree to these dates. The more I get to know you, the less sense it makes.”
“I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” I say, laughing.
“You should! You don’t seem like you get caught up doing things you don’t want to.”
“You’ve met my sister,” I joke, hoping maybe this time he’ll let me off the hook.
The hum of Ro’s tires on the highway fills the silence until he offers me an out I should take. “It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to me. You know what you’re doing.”
“I thought I did.”
Even to me, the words sound cryptic. But I’ve been trying to answer this question myself for weeks. I didn’t expect to do it tonight with an audience.
“This one doesn’t have a quick answer,” I say, offering him one last chance to stop the clock on this impromptu therapy session.
But he doesn’t take it. “I’ve got time.”
I try to remember how I got here, but it goes so much further back than coming home.
“My dad was hilarious,” I say, before I can stop myself.
“Sometimes it’s the only good thing I remember about him.
If he was around, somebody was laughing.
I used to love that—how laughter followed him.
And my mom was all heart. Zola’s always been exactly Zola—this genius firecracker of a person.
Everybody in my family had their thing. But I could never figure mine out.
It was like everything good had already been spoken for before I came along.
So I just tried to fly under the radar. I used to prefer it that way. ”
At the stop sign Ro looks at me. His eye contact is so focused and intense that I know his silence is not for lack of interest.
“But then my dad left, and nothing fit together the way it had before. He took the laughter with him. And my mom’s giant heart that had always been her superpower became an overnight liability. She’d go from being a puddle on the kitchen floor to some random guy’s fiancée and back again.”
We still haven’t moved from the stop sign. Ro still hasn’t stopped watching me. And despite my better judgment, I still haven’t stopped talking.
“Zola stepped up to keep things on track. She shouldered a lot of it, and I think it burned her out. And it sounds pathetic now, but when everything fell apart like that, I finally saw an opening. My mom and Zo needed me. I became the bridge between the bleeding heart and the brain. And I did it well. The three of us made sense together. It feels like that again now.”
“And that’s why you’re doing this? To hold them together. To help them make sense.”
“It’s not like I have anything better going on,” I try, but by the look on Ro’s face, he’s unamused.
“Every day before I came home, the same questions ran through my mind on a loop: Who am I? What do I want? Where do I go from here? They’re the same questions I’ve been asking myself forever.
And I’d always assumed the answers were gonna be out there, but clearly that was wrong, because I’ve been out there now, and I’m just as lost as I ever was. ”
Ro pulls to a stop outside my front door as I finish.
“Maybe to get better answers, I need to start asking better questions. Might as well try thirty-six of Zola’s.”
I start to shrug out of Ro’s hoodie, but he stops me. In the dim of night, I can’t make out every detail of Ro’s features, but I’ve already mentally mapped and memorized his face, his smile. I know the exact shape of his dimple, and I know that right now it’s there. On full display.
“Keep it. You’ve still got another twenty feet or so to go. Besides, it’ll give me an excuse to see you again. To find out how it ends.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell him as I hop down from his truck. “I’d never fade to black on you. Not after you saved me. Twice.”