I try to absorb this. She likes me. As a friend?
Can I be her friend when I have a hard-on whenever she’s around and feeling jealous of every man she looks at?
“You don’t know me,” I say.
“I don’t need to. I can tell.”
“Tell what?”
“That you’re nice.”
Funny how fucking much that pleases me. Yeah, I’m a whore for a good word, it seems.
“Thanks,” I say. “So how do you imagine yourself going out with someone you don’t like?”
“You mean, Ryan?”
“Yes, Ryan. You told him you don’t like him.”
“Yeah, I said that.”
“Was it true?”
“Yes, it was. It is. Do you know how many times I asked him to go out for a drink with me? Nothing more. And he was just like now. Distant. Cold. Not just saying no, but making it clear that he’d never do it. That it was a bad idea.”
I process this. “So… what’s this for you? A challenge?” She turns away, but I catch a gleam in her eye that makes me snort in disbelief. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a challenge. It’s a goal. I reach my goals. I follow my plans through.”
“But you don’t like him.” Isn’t that fucking essential to a relationship?
“He’s very handsome.”
No argument there. “And that’s enough?”
“The only way to be where you want to be in ten, twenty years, is to follow your goals.”
“Not your dreams?”
“Dreams. Pff.” She sits down across from me, in the seat Ryan vacated, and examines her nails. They’re painted a hot pink. “Dreams don’t pay off. Objectives do.”
“Come on, Bry. You’re too young to be so cynical.”
“Am I?”
What’s going on here? I reach for her hand across the table, and she lets me take it. “Why are you so scared of the future?”
Like me. Always running and never getting anywhere. Always getting distracted by hope and never seeing it come true. No wonder the future scares me.
She studies our hands, folded together on the scratched table top. “I’m not afraid. It doesn’t feel like fear. It’s more like…a promise.”
“A promise to who?”
But she pulls her hand away. “I should get going, too.”
“Yeah, Princess. Run away from the Big Bad Wolf.”
She frowns at me. “You’re mixing up stories. I…”