She grabbed him a cup and started to slowly pour out the liquid, trying to think of a good enough reason to not talk to him.
“Were you going to tell me you’re back?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I’m back. I don’t know what I’m doing.” That was the truth. She didn’t have a goal. There was no exact plan right now. She didn’t know why she’d given up her teaching assistant position or left her not-real boyfriend.
It hadn’t been working out. He’d wanted more, and she kind of only agreed to dating because she felt guilty for always turning him down in the past.
Otherwise, there had been no one. No one since Matthew.
She had vowed not to save herself for this guy, and yet, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to have sex with anyone else. How pathetic did that make her?
While she wasn’t pining for Matthew, no other guy had even come close to making her want to drop her pants.
How she hated herself right now.
“You don’t know if you’re back but you’re standing right in front of me.”
“Technically, we have a distance. A counter’s worth of distance, but that counts.”
He chuckled. “That’s what counts?”
“Yes.” She finished pouring him a cup of coffee. “That is all that counts.”
“Okay, so while you’re standing in front of a counter in front of me, were you going to tell me?”
She sighed and held the coffee pot against her. “I honestly don’t know, Matthew. I guess I figured we’d meet each other at some point. Vale Valley isn’t a massive town. There would have been reasons for us to meet. It’s not a big deal.”
“I told you that I loved you, and you don’t think that is a big deal.”
It was a big deal. A massive one, but Matthew didn’t seem to get it. Those words, she had heard them before. He’d been more than happy to say them to her.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Luna?”
“No.” She held her hand up. “You don’t get to blame me right now. You don’t get to make me look guilty. I’m—do you even remember what you said to me? How much you loved me? How much you wanted me? Just me? That you couldn’t stop thinking about me, and how we were going to make this work? Just you and me?” She stared at him. His eyes were so brown, a slightly lighter color than his father’s, but intense. The kind that had been so easy to fall into.
Unlike hers. She had boring, dark-brown eyes.
“Luna?”
“Stop. Okay? Just stop. I don’t owe you anything, and you certainly don’t owe me anything. You and I, we don’t mesh well. So, stop trying to make out that just because you said you love me and that we’d find some way to make it work that it’s the first time I’m hearing it. Trust me, it’s not. I’ve heard it all before, and then, you were balls deep inside another girl. Chasing a different skirt or whatever the hell kind of reference you want.”
She had hung on to those words like they were a lifeline. Even when he said them to her a few weeks ago, it had meant something to her, but she had no choice but to bring up the other memories that accompanied those words. Not just the feeling of during, or after, but even after then. When she had no choice but to take a pregnancy test with his stepmom nearby.
Luna had never told her parents about what happened. That month she’d skipped a period had been scary. She’d been so freaking scared. Going to Matthew had been a last resort.
He’d dumped her ass and never looked at her again.
Never even cared about tutoring, and she knew why. She’d been an easy target for him. That was what she’d been. She had to remember that. And it was why she tried to move on with a different boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked.
After she left the counter, Matthew stayed in his seat, and she worked her way through the diners, filling up their coffee cups for a reason to not be close to him. Once everyone’s coffee was filled, she cleaned each table, moving the empty pot with her as she went.
By the time she got to the counter, Matthew was gone, and she was pleased about that.
“Is there anything going on with you and that boy?” Mac asked, surprising her. He stood at the window where she passed through orders.
“No, nothing.”