by Katie Cross
“Yes, please.”
He held out his hand. It was warm as it clasped mine, tugging me to my feet. It was no first kiss.
But his hand in mine sure felt good.
22
JJ
I imagined what one of Lizbeth’s romance books might say about our impromptu date. I’d only read five of them so far—all of them different romance subgenres—but they all seemed somewhat the same.
For a date like this, I could imagine the books describing a rush of giddiness with butterflies. Or a feeling of some caution from one of us, likely her. Instead, she appeared to be an open book. Made eye contact. Smiled. Revealed no wariness or uncertainty.
Meanwhile, I felt a slice of euphoria and a deep sense of finally as I stared at her across the table. And I had no idea why.
“I suck at this, Lizbeth,” I said, just to make my thoughts clear. “I haven’t been on a date in a long time.”
Her head tilted to the side. “Why don’t you go on dates?”
“What does the gossip around town say?”
A sly smile twitched on her lips. “That’s for me to know. Let’s face it, Mark is too in love with his career to date and—”
“He wants to.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Very much. Mark could almost be called a romantic, but all of his relationships fail to land. Just when they seem to be going somewhere, they die.”
“Why?”
“He’s had a hard time finding a girl who can handle his energy, I think. He’s erratic and so full of ideas it’s annoying. A lot of women find it . . .”
“Unstable?” she ventured.
I laughed. “Definitely that.”
“Well, gossip around the town speaks highly of both of you, if you must know. Of the two of you, you’re the more mysterious.”
At that, I laughed harder. Pineville had always been very small. But then, we’d always given reasons for people to talk about us. “Good, I’m glad. And there are a lot of reasons I haven’t dated, but Stacey is the main one. And my parents’ divorce,” I tacked on with a grimace. “That hasn’t felt good.”
Lizbeth leaned back a little. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. If it’s easier for you, we can just call this lunch. Doesn’t have to be a date.”
“It’s a date,” I said immediately.
Lizbeth’s lips twitched. The bunched-up muscles in my neck relaxed. A waitress handed us plastic-covered menus, rattled off specials, and disappeared. I skimmed the menu, grateful for a few moments to recover my wits.
“Their butternut ravioli is amazing,” I said. “I’ve tried to mimic it, but I can’t.”
When I glanced up, she was cautiously eyeing her menu.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“No.” She waved a hand. “I just . . . had a weird experience with a date recently when we went to order.”
“Tyler?” I asked. She fought off a smile when I muttered, “Idiot,” under my breath.
“Anything else you recommend?” she asked.
We tossed favorites back and forth, unable to decide, until I set my menu down and said, “Let’s share. I’ll get the butternut ravioli, you get the chicken parm. I hear it’s breathtaking.”
Her gaze tapered. “But you’re vegetarian.”
Taken aback, I stared at her for a moment. “How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Must have come up in conversation at some point at the coffee shop, or something. I’ll get something we can really share.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can have some of the pasta. Mark says it’s the sauce that really makes it legendary.”
She smiled at me over her menu. “I want to.”
Stunned, I simply leaned back. When was the last time anyone had made a concession to my belief systems? Almost never. Point for Lizbeth, because that could almost be called romantic. After we ordered, she leaned forward. Strands of glimmering red hair tumbled onto her shoulders. I wondered how soft it felt.
“Tell me about your day,” she said.
“My day? Oh. Ah . . . I think Mark spoke with the contractors today. It’s official that he’s accepted—”
“No. Not about Mark. About your day.”
Stupidly, I had to pause for a second. Unzipping myself from Mark wasn’t a natural process, but I appreciated her calling it out so gently. “Right. Well . . . I’m trying out a new recipe.”
She brightened. “Oh?”
“Madeleines. They’re finicky, but delicious.”
“Have you always loved baking?” she asked.
Her question forced me to think. Did I enjoy baking? Yes. I enjoyed the challenge and precision of it, just like climbing. Not to mention a delicious and tangible end result. Most of all, I liked that it enabled me to live at Adventura and climb as much as I wanted. Climbing was the real queen here.
“I like baking.”
“Like.” Her eyebrows rose. “Not love?”
Ah, perceptive.
“There’s not much I truly love. I don’t apply the word as liberally as you,” I said with a quick wink. She smiled, but I sensed deep thought behind it. “I’ve only really concentrated on baking lately, though. Once I stopped traveling in a van and lived in one place long enough to focus.”
“You should sell everything you bake.”
I almost choked on my water. “Yeah.” I coughed. “Maybe one day.”
The conversation turned to her thoughts on working with Mark. My only regret was that I couldn’t hold her hand from across the table.
“Has it been weird for you to have me there all the time?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
There was a lot I left out. That it felt nice to have someone else around. That I didn’t mind having a grateful person to pamper a little bit, because Mark was like a black hole. We’d been together our whole lives and had fallen into our patterns, like rivets in rock. Water flowed easiest downhill. I couldn’t stop watching out for him, simply because it’s what I had always done.
But it felt nice to see a far more beautiful face at home.
The waitress set a plate of black bean enchiladas in front of Lizbeth and handed the butternut ravioli with a sage and brown butter sauce to me. As soon as the waitress disappeared, we swapped half of our portions.
“Thanks.” Her eyes twinkled. “I’ve never shared on a date before.”
“A travesty.”
“Can we swap something else?” she asked as she sliced into a piece of ravioli with the edge of her fork.
“Depends.”
“If I tell you what I think is romantic, will you tell me what happened with Stacey?”
Hearing Stacey’s name from Lizbeth’s lips sent a shudder through me. Did I want to revisit that day? Definitely not. But did I want to know what Lizbeth found romantic—since she obviously didn’t like rich guys who overflowed with all the stereotypical trappings of romance?
Definitely yes.
Full of thoughts I didn’t quite understand, I turned back to my ravioli. She gave me a little space to think. To weigh out whether I wanted to dredge this back up. I hadn’t spoken about Stacey in eight years.
But I had a feeling it would be worth it.
Finally, I looked at her and nodded. “Exchange accepted.”
Lizbeth grinned. “I’ll go first,” she said. “With a caveat. I don’t know if any of this is real.”
My eyes almost bugged out of my head. She didn’t know if romance was real?
Before I could clarify, she continued, “I mean, if I really find these things romantic. There have been a few times lately that should have been wildly romantic, but they weren’t. At least . . . maybe they were in hindsight, but . . .”
She trailed off for a second, shook her head, and started again. “These are the things I find romantic when I read books or watch movies,” she said. “Sometimes when I have a hard time sleeping, I get on YouTube and watch compilations of the most romantic scenes
in movies. And the moments I love the most are almost always the little things.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . a hand on the small of the back. A look across the room. Maybe someone doing or saying something small to show they’re paying attention.”
Interesting.
“So it’s not always about the grand gestures?” I asked. Which would be nice because that took some pressure off.
She shrugged. “Those are good, too, but without the little stuff, it doesn’t mean as much. Or it’s not quite as exciting. Snuggling on the couch always seemed more romantic than anything else, frankly. I wouldn’t honestly know.”
“A real travesty,” I said softly.
She smiled. “My friend Leslie says the most romantic thing in her world is when someone else makes dinner.”
The impossible intricacy of romance never ceased to amaze me. While there seemed to be standards in movies and books, real-life romance appeared to be far more . . . subdued. Making dinner was romantic? Cleaning a cabin was romantic?
How could I ever figure it out?
“What situations were supposed to be romantic but weren’t?” I asked, hazarding my true burning question.
She hesitated, and it was then that I realized those situations might have involved me. And a car plunging off a cliff. And the fact that her entire world had burned down and she still wouldn’t talk about it.
Were those romantic?
Lizbeth stared hard at me. She didn’t fill the silence or change the subject like Mark would have. Instead, she said, “Well, you saved my life, and then we were stuck in a wintry cabin together for days.”
“Let me guess.” I leaned forward. “There are books about that situation?”
She grinned and nodded. Unable to help myself, I glanced at her lips, then back at her eyes. Man, did I want to kiss her.
“Did you want that to be romantic?” I asked quietly.
She nodded.
“And it wasn’t?”
She hesitated again. So there must have been some romance, but when? What? What had I done then so I could do more of it now?
“There was,” she said with a little smile. It seemed like an attempt to play this off as something small when, in reality, it was big. “I mean . . . the whole almost-dying thing was only terrifying.”
“Of course.”
She let out a long breath and then chuckled. “I feel like I’m making this totally awkward. I didn’t mean to imply that you did something wrong, just that . . . maybe you’re partially right about romance.”
“What?” I cried, acting scandalized.
“Only partially!”
“Of course. Because what man is ever fully right compared to a woman?”
Her laugh lightened the air, but her voice remained sober.
“I haven’t actually fallen in love or been in a relationship, so I may have idealized romance too much. Now that I’m experiencing it in different ways, I can’t help but wonder why. What does it mean?”
“Something worth exploring?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Something lurked beneath her expression.
Although the last thing I wanted to do was talk about Stacey, I took the moment to save her. “Now I think it’s my turn.”
Visibly relieved, she nodded and turned back to her food. I braced myself for the inevitable rush of feels, but none came. Instead of pain, I felt something like resignation, maybe distance.
“Stacey and I dated my senior year of college.” I played with my fork to have something to do. It had been years since I’d sussed out the details. “She was bright, enigmatic, and popular. I was quiet, focused on my studies. We were total opposites.”
Like us, I thought.
“How did you meet her?”
“Through Mark, the way I meet most people. Stacey and I were friends for a while. Our relationship moved slowly at first, but then seemed to happen all at once. One minute I was admiring her work ethic—she wanted to be a veterinarian—and then I was head-over-heels for her. I thought it was the same way for her.”
Lizbeth’s eyebrows rose. “You thought?”
I laughed, but it was bitter. “Oh, yeah. Stacey was all about the romance. Flowers. Chocolates. Bracelets. The grand gestures.”
Was Lizbeth paling a bit?
“What happened?” she asked.
“We kept dating. I thought we were drawing closer together, but I can see now that I was enraptured and she was in love with attention. After a while, Stacey was my whole world. I couldn’t live or breathe without her. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
Lizbeth chortled, but her face remained empathetic.
“After graduation, shortly before she was going to move on to vet school, I planned the perfect date. Picnic on the beach. Candles. Romantic music in the background. An isolated location—just the two of us beneath the stars.”
“Oh no,” she murmured.
“Stacey loved it. At least she seemed to. Then I started talking about what I really wanted—commitment. Marriage. I’d go with her to her next place and support her as she pursued her dreams.”
Lizbeth swallowed, her food long since abandoned.
“She said no?”
“Worse. She said, ‘Where is this coming from, JJ? I thought we were just friends.’”
Lizbeth’s mouth dropped. “No!”
“Yes.”
“She friend-zoned you in the worst way.”
The pain tugged at me again, but it wasn’t so bad this time. Instead, it hovered in the background, a reminder of how romance really ends.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Not sure.” My brow wrinkled. “There’s a sense of shock that makes everything foggy. I think we argued. I remember rehashing everything that had happened between us in my mind. I had no idea how she could think we weren’t . . . something. Later, I realized she was just a manipulative person who hated commitment. She never finished her vet degree and has disappeared into the world somewhere.” I waved a hand. “Regardless, it was a good thing I didn’t marry her, but it hurt like hell then.”
Lizbeth blinked. “Wow. No wonder you have a thing against romance.”
“It’s not so much a thing as experience. Romance leads to a broken heart.”
“That wasn’t romance’s fault,” she said. “Your romantic gestures were a sincere reflection of your effort and the way you felt. The fallout? That was Stacey. She used you and manipulated you. A person broke your heart, JJ. Not love.”
Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. She was right, and I felt it in my bones. Perhaps I’d held a vendetta against romance all these years because I assumed Stacey was in love with love. But really, Stacey had been in love with herself.
Romance had nothing to do with it.
With a sigh that dropped my shoulders an inch, I nodded. “You’re right. Point to you, Lizbeth. Romance often gets blamed for people’s problems, and I’ve been guilty of that for the last eight years.”
No sense of victory lit up her gaze, and I knew the feeling well.
She set down her fork. “Are you going to hold my hand again when we leave?”
“Yes. Do you want me to?”
She nodded, and I offered her a soft smile as we dug back into our food.
23
Lizbeth
The next day, I sat in the office and stared at the rest of the papers.
Only one small pile remained. One stupid, ridiculous group of papers left and I could move on to developing the online interface for the investors and working on the websites.
Still, I wanted to stick a fork in my eyes at the thought of scanning one more page. When I finished the paperwork, half my work here would be done. The online stuff would move easily and quickly.
Except, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to finish.
Now that I’d Pinnable’d this place out, it wasn’t half-bad here at the office. Living in the warmth of Adventura had felt so . . . easy. Un
complicated.
Did I want to leave?
There was also the matter of JJ and whatever was budding between us. I thought for far too long of the way it felt to sit next to him in the Zombie Mobile, his hand in mine.
Was this real?
Then again, how could it not be?
To make the day bearable while JJ tortured me by working in the main kitchen for far too long, I uploaded files and puttered around the office. Shelved books by topic and height. Placed a blanket that I’d found in the spare bedroom over the back of the couch for a splash of color. A little organization had a profound effect.
Though the Bailey boys hadn’t said anything, the way they stopped and stared as if they couldn’t figure out what had happened always made me giggle.
While I waited for the latest batch of pictures to upload, I leaned back in the chair and grabbed my newest read, The King’s Desire. An otherworld, Regency-esque romance with said castles and dresses. So far, it hadn’t disappointed, though it had been a bit . . . rote. Since when did I predict so much of the plot?
Annoyed, I set it aside, grabbed the love binder, and updated my observations. His confession about Stacey had been a big one. The fact that he’d conceded a point to me should have thrilled me, but it didn’t. I recorded it, but didn’t like the way it had happened. So far, we were even.
Romance still had a chance.
And maybe we did too.
Something definitive had shifted between us yesterday. My mind kept wandering to the movie. Then lunch. Now I wanted more. More of him. More confessions. More JJ in his element.
The rustle of JJ’s parka and snow pants drew me out of my reverie. He shuffled in through the main door with a smile. My stomach flipped.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
He set a plate on the table. The smell of sugar and butter drew me closer. Pastries! A glaze had crisped along the edges. I broke a piece off, and it crumbled on my fingertips.
“Oddballs,” he said as he tossed his coat onto a peg on the wall. “They look a little funny, but taste delicious.”
