“Oh,” Meredith’s eyes soften as she realizes what I’m trying to tell her.
“Yeah, so...”
“Hey,” she presses her hands to my chest and looks up at me. “No pressure, okay? We don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”
I chuckle a little.
“What?”
“It’s just that usually, it’s the guy telling the girl that there’s no pressure.”
“It’s okay,” she shrugs. “We don’t have to be like all of those other couples.”
“I don’t want you to think there’s anything wrong with you,” I tell her. “I’m nervous about that.”
“It’s okay. It can’t be easy ending a relationship.”
“It’s not.”
“Can I ask you what happened?”
She’s still got her hands on my chest, and she’s still looking up at me like I’m a big, bad, wonderful bear. Meredith doesn’t seem hurt or scared by what I’m about to say. In fact, she just seems calm and gentle. It’s kind of an interesting thing. I’ve never had a woman just ask me what happened. Not that I’ve done a lot of dating since the divorce. I’ve done very little. The women I have dated, though, always seem morbidly curious about my past.
Maybe that’s why I never slept with any of them.
With Meredith, though, I feel like I can be honest.
Maybe it’s because she’s a bartender or maybe it’s because my inner-bear is screaming that she’s my mate – a feeling I’ve never experienced before, not even with my ex – but there’s something about her that makes me feel like I really can be honest.
“You know, we got married young.”
“That’ll do it,” she says. “You grow apart. You grow up differently. You realize you want different things.”
“Pretty much. We drifted apart and I really can’t pinpoint an exact moment when everything went to hell. I guess maybe it was during medical school. I was gone a lot and she was busy with her friends. After graduation, I thought our lives would naturally swing back together, but it didn’t happen.”
“So, you woke up one day and you were married to a stranger.”
“Kind of. We didn’t really have any bad blood toward each other. We just realized that we weren’t in love anymore.”
“So, who made the move to leave?” She asks gently.
“I finally did.”
“Good for you,” Meredith nods. “Standing up for yourself, and trying to move forward to a better future isn’t easy, no matter what anyone says.”
“That’s for sure.”
She rubs her hands over my chest and then smiles.
“So, you aren’t ready to fuck me,” she winks. “But are you ready for some dinner?”
My stomach growls in response, and I laugh.
“Famished.”
“My place? I make a mean delivery pizza.”
“Does that mean you can order pizza for us?”