Biting my lip, I gave a slight nod. “Not where I thought I’d end up when I walked into Spades Saturday night.”
“Me neither,” he murmured. “I, uh… I’m gonna be completely honest for a second.” His eyes held mine, slightly concerned, waiting for me to tell him not to. When I only waited, he said, “I haven’t done this in a while. Saw someone, and then saw that same person again. I was twenty the last time, and we’d been together since I was eighteen.”
He stopped after that, and when the pause lingered, I figured it was my cue.
“I was eighteen the last time I saw someone consecutively too, so I know what you mean.”
A touch of relief lightened his gaze. He nodded, rubbing his jaw. “And I wasn’t exactly looking for anyone right now.”
“Neither was I.”
“But we’re here. And I…” Discomfort shining through his gaze, he rubbed from the bridge of his nose to his mouth. “Look, we clearly have a lot of shit that we have to do. We barely know each other. But we don’t hate each other.”
I smirked. “Debatable.”
He returned it, letting out a quiet laugh. “Are you being sarcastic, or are you serious?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Mostly sarcasm.”
“Mostly?”
“Mostly.” I let my smile widen.
He shook his head, bare smile across his lips. “My point is, I don’t expect anything from you. I’m not ring shopping or rearranging my shit to fit your book collection.” Bold of him to assume we’d move into his house on the other side of the city if anything blossomed between us. “But I’d like to get to know one another better and see where it takes us. Do you want to do that? Or are you completely opposed to anything that might resemble a relationship?”
I turned down, eyes falling on my hands. Picking at my cuticles, I searched for a way to respond.
My last relationship had been my only relationship. We started dating at sixteen, we grew up in this same rough end of the city, and we both wanted better lives than the ones that had been dealt to us.
Tyler, his name was. He was a good guy. But he applied to a college in California and insisted I do the same. It was a prestigious university, and I didn’t think either of us would get in, so I did. Sure enough, we were both accepted, and he jumped on the opportunity to get out of here.
But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t leave Ria.
He’d tried convincing me for months, but I was adamant about staying here. I said we could do long distance until Ria was eighteen, and I could move both of us down there with him. He didn’t want that.
He wanted away from not only this place, but the lifestyle. The lifestyle my sister was encompassed in.
There’d been a great big fight over it, one where he called her a whore, and that was that. But before I walked out, he’d screamed something about how it never would’ve worked anyway because I’d never let him get close enough to me. He was tired of trying to drill a way into my heart, and it was for the best either way.
That part of me hadn’t changed. It wasn’t easy for me to open up.
I wasn’t sure if I ever truly would, even with Declan.
But I wasn’t opposed to trying.
“Dating might be a better word.” I finally met his gaze. “I’m not… Relationships require emotional depth I’m not ready for. Maybe one day, I will be. But like you said, we just met.”
He took a step in and sat on the seat beside me. Not so close that our legs were flush with one another’s but enough that we weren’t a room’s distance apart. Holding my gaze, eyes somewhere between gentle and forward, he said, “I like the idea of dating.”
I expected a knot to form in my stomach at those words, but instead, a warm, tingling sensation spread through my chest. “Dating it is then.”
A playful smile came to his lips. “Those words taste like bleach?”
“What?”
“Looks like it hurt to say that,” he said. “But correct me if I’m wrong.”
“It didn’t, actually.” I swiveled to face him better. “But can we be realistic about this?”