She purses her lips in thought before she replies. “He’s the one who broke it off with me. I’m always busy working, and he didn’t like that I couldn’t make him a priority.”
Good.“His loss.”
She spins the stick in her hand to cook the other side of the hot dog. “We were together but not really together, you know what I mean?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Her mouth tips up on one side. “We weren’t really . . . we didn’t share much other than a physical relationship. I never felt really connected to Reed, like I could rely on him for anything more than friendship and, well, you know.”
“Sex?”
She winces. “It sounds so crude. But yes. Even though we put the girlfriend and boyfriend labels on each other, which sounds so juvenile when you’re over thirty. We didn’t really have an emotional connection. It was more about alleviating occasional loneliness.”
My head bobs. “I get it.”
“What about you? Any relationship nonrelationships?”
“Not really. Even though it sounds sort of like we have a similar problem. I’ve been focusing on my business, which means I travel a lot.”
“Lots of one-night stands?” Her tone is casual, but a muscle in her jaw tics.
I wince. “I can’t say I’veneverdone that, but only a couple of times. It’s not really my thing.” When the constant solitude was too much to bear on my own. “It’s not as appealing as they make it seem on TV.”
She nods.
“I’ve had a few short-term girlfriends, but it never seems to last. Like you, I’ve never been able to prioritize anyone, and relationships are work, I guess. I’ve never wanted to stay in one place long enough to give it a shot.”
Until now.The thought strikes me like a hammer upside the head. I can’t sit still. I get up and pull out the buns and condiments from the cooler with one hand, setting them on the lid and then dragging it behind our chairs to use as a makeshift table.
“Where do you live most of the time?” She opens the package of buns and hands me one.
It takes a few seconds for the ringing in my ears to ebb and for her question to register so I can answer. “I own a condo in Dallas, but I’ve been subletting it for the past year.”
“Sounds like we are quite the pair of commitment-phobes.” She puts her hot dog on her lap, clicking open the mustard. “What about your stuff? Like possessions? I think it would take a thousand years to clean out our house.”
“I don’t have a lot of personal items, just some things that belonged to my mother and photos and whatnot in a small storage unit in Dallas.”
The dichotomy between us is interesting. I go everywhere and she goes nowhere, and yet neither of us has settled down, so to speak.
She takes a bite of her food and chews before asking, “Do you ever want to stay still for a bit?”
“I have to admit that it would be nice to have a home base.” I hesitate before continuing. “I don’t have any family, though, not like you. There’s no one that depends on me or cares if I show up. Except Nora.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and Finley keeps casting me sidelong glances as if she wants to say something, but she’s holding back.
“Go ahead. Ask whatever’s rolling around in your mind.” I gesture with my free hand, taking a bite of my hot dog.
“Why were you at that camp, the one where you met Oliver? You said your mother was sick a lot when you were growing up? What happened that sent you there?”
I consider how to answer her question, and she misinterprets the silence as avoidance.
“You don’t have to answer.”
“I know. I want to. It’s a hard question. My mom was sick, but it wasn’t that she was physically ill or anything. She had schizophrenia.”
She turns, her knees leaning toward me. “Archer. I’m sorry.”
“She was okay when she was on her meds. She was actually really intelligent in a lot of ways, very creative, but she couldn’t work. She had a hard time with consistency, staying on task, or getting basic household things accomplished. We had a fixed income, and her medication made her tired a lot. She tried, she really did, but a couple of times . . .”