Chapter Seven #2
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, Mom was sad, and all I really knew about it was that it was because my dad was a dick. Then I came across that passage in Much Ado and I…” My face heated at the memory.
God, teenagers were so incredibly extra.
“I calligraphed it in a card for her. And at the top I wrote ‘Men have been scum since 1599.’ I gave it to her, and she laughed.” For a minute I was lost in the memory of her slow smile like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud.
Her laugh, which in those post-accident, pre-Mitch days had been all too rare. She laughed a lot more nowadays.
“Sorry about your dad, though.” He shook his head. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, well.” I blew out an annoyed breath.
I’d bared way too much of my soul to this guy for no good reason.
See? Shakespeare’s words were dangerous.
I stacked all the books, then pushed them across the counter toward him.
I was done with poetry, and I was done with Alex being in my store.
“I’m used to men not sticking around. It’s what they do.
” Okay, maybe now I was talking about him.
He could tell. The softness fled from his face, and his warm brown eyes went flinty.
“All right,” he said, but the brittle tone in his voice said that it wasn’t all right.
It wasn’t all right at all. He pulled the sunglasses from on top of his head and tossed them to the counter with a clatter.
“We’re going to talk about this, and we’re going to talk about it now. ”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Talk about what?”
“About what happened. Obviously you’re still pissed about—”
“Pissed?” I interjected. You know what? Screw being adult.
Screw being civil. “I’m pissed when I leave a lipstick in my pocket when I do my laundry.
I was pissed when I lost my job with no warning and barely any severance, and had to move back in with my mom.
You—” I stabbed a finger into the air between us, aiming for his heart. “You broke my heart, Alex!”
“I broke my own!” The words exploded out of his mouth, and the force of them sent me back on my heels.
Frustration lit a fire in his eyes as he ran a hand through his hair.
He paced away from me, then spun on his heel, pointing an accusing finger in my direction.
“You were supposed to be a quick summer fling, you know.”
“Wasn’t I?” I didn’t like the accusation in his voice. Like somehow this was all my fault. “That’s usually what you call something that doesn’t last into the fall.”
“No. I mean, yes, but…” His annoyed growl did something to my lizard brain.
I told my lizard brain that now was not the time.
He placed his palms flat on the counter, his gaze focused between them for a long moment.
When he looked back up at me, he had a more neutral expression.
He was serious; he really wanted to talk this out. And now, suddenly, I did too.
“Kyle and Brandon did it all the time.” His voice was low now, steady.
“They’d meet a cute girl, spend the run of the Faire romancing her, then it was on to the next one when that season was over.
That kind of thing isn’t my style, but they made it look so easy.
Then we got here to Willow Creek that summer, and I met you, Caitlin. ”
I attempted a scoff, but it was hard when tears choked my throat. “And I was your conquest?”
Alex closed his eyes for longer than a blink, as though absorbing a blow.
“I’d never met anyone like you. You had confidence.
You were at home there. You knew everything.
Everyone. Those younger girls in your a cappella group were following you around like kittens.
I was…” He gave a long slow shake of his head, and I could practically see the memories unspool between us in his eyes.
“Enchanted,” he finally said in a hushed voice.
“I was drawn to you, and wanted to know you better.”
I cleared my throat hard, banishing the tears, because memories were unspooling for me too, and Alex wasn’t the only one who’d been enchanted. “You could have told me, you know. That it was just a season-long fling. You shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”
“I probably should have. But I thought you knew. I mean…you’d just graduated from high school.” His eyes were pained but kind. “How did you think it was going to end? Four years of long distance while you were in college and I was traveling the country doing stupid little sword fights?”
Shame made my cheeks catch fire now, and I hated his sympathetic smile, because yes, I really had started college that fall thinking how lucky I’d been to find the love of my life.
That I was going to wait for him, and surely he was going to wait for me.
I was young and in love. Of course I hadn’t thought it through.
I groaned and covered my eyes with my hand. “I was an idiot, wasn’t I?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I was the idiot. It took Kyle—freaking Kyle, who for the most part didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, to remind me that the point of a summer fling was that it ended.
And I wasn’t supposed to be texting my summer fling in the fall.
That was when I took a step back and realized what we were doing.
That I was leading you on. And…” Now it was his turn for his voice to be choked, his gaze dropping to the counter.
“I don’t think I realized how much I…” He coughed quietly into his fist before continuing.
“How much I’d really fallen for you until I told you we were over. ”
“Then why didn’t you…That next summer…you could have said something.”