Page 3 of Without Pride and Prejudice
Fitz cleared his throat. “No. We called things off.”
“Oh. Because of Lady Winnifred?” Or Lady Whiny, as I liked to call her in my head. She was my nemesis, and not just because her life goal was to marry my best friend. There was just something about her self-righteous attitude that got to me. I always felt like less of a human around her.
“Why would you think that?” He sounded disgruntled.
“Please. You have to know why.”
“Well, it’s not why,” he said hastily, obviously not wanting to acknowledge it.
Huh. “Then why?” I was more than curious.
“Jocelyn and I are not a good fit, and I need to focus on my studies,” he murmured.
I knew there was something he wasn’t saying, but I didn’t press. They’d seemed like a good fit to me when I saw them together during my last visit. She was perfectly gorgeous, just like Fitz, and her family had all the right connections, just likeFitz’s family, except Jocelyn’s family held no titles. “All right, if you say so.”
“I do,” he stated flatly. “Are you still dating that, what’s his name, Leif?” Fitz thought his name was ridiculous.
“You of all people should know that Leif is a strong name. It comes from the Vikings.”
“There was one famous Viking named Leif, and the name meansheirordescendant. It’s not all that powerful.”
“Well, that famous Viking was one of the first to people to colonize Greenland and the first European to set foot on North America, as far as we know.” I said it with atake thatattitude.
“Are you saying your Leif has followed suit?” I could picture his eye roll.
“First of all, he’s not my Leif. We broke up a—”
“Why?” Fitz interrupted, sounding oddly chipper. I hadn’t even known he could be chipper.
I turned to my side, still clutching the phone. “If you must know, it’s because of you.”
“Me?” he said, astonished.
“Yes, you. Apparently, Leif didn’t like you. He thought we were too close to be only friends.”
“That’s rubbish.”
“Exactly what I told him. But then he said I had to choose between him or you, and obviously that didn’t go well for him.” He wasn’t the first boyfriend of mine who didn’t appreciate Fitz. For some reason, no one could believe Fitz and I were totally platonic—like so, so platonic. If you looked upplatonicin the dictionary, there would be a picture of Fitz and me, not touching.
Fitz was silent for a few beats before he said, “I’m sorry I cost you a relationship.” He didn’t sound all that sorry, but I went with it. It’s not like Fitz was a touchy-feely kind of guy, so I could have read him wrong.
“It’s all right. I kind of accidentally set his parents’ lawn on fire during a barbecue when I tried to help his nana, who was wobbling too close to the grill. The good news is I was able to push her away before she got burned. The bad news is their dog tripped me up, and I got burned while knocking over the grill. Next thing I knew, the fire department had to be called.” It’s not the kind of thing you really come back from. Even though Leif’s parents were super nice about it, I couldn’t really look them in the eye anymore.
“You never said anything. When did this happen? How badly were you burned?” Fitz sounded panicked, which was weird because he was always so calm.
“I didn’t want to mention it because, you know, I have a track record with these kinds of things. Anyway, it happened a few weeks ago, and it was just a tiny first-degree burn on my arm.” I looked at the small rectangular patch of fleshy pink skin on my arm, which was healing nicely.
“You should have told me,” he scolded. “And you never mentioned breaking up with Leif.”
“You didn’t mention breaking up with Jocelyn,” I countered, wondering why neither of us had mentioned such gigantic pieces of information, especially since we shared everything with each other. Well, not exactly everything. I shared most of my heart with him, but not all of it. I had to reserve the part that protected me from ever crossing the line Fitz had drawn and made clear he never wanted to cross. And we were only emotionally intimate with each other, which is more valuable than physical intimacy, anyway. Not to say I’d never thought about, well ... physical intimacy with Fitz. And I supposed I’d kept a few embarrassing stories from him now and then. Don’t get me wrong—he’d heard and witnessed his fair share of my embarrassing tales. I just felt like maybe it was okay to leave this one out.
“I wasn’t that serious about her, so it didn’t seem important to mention it,” he defended himself.
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
“What’s your excuse?” he prodded.
I sat up and ran a hand through my overly styled hair that one of my “bandmates” had done for tonight’s performances. She thought I needed to look a little more like an eighties poster girl. The honest answer was that I didn’t know why I hadn’t told Fitz about Leif. The only thing I could think of was, “I guess I didn’t think you cared one way or the other about my love life.”
