Page 29 of Truth or More Truth
“Why are you staring at me, B.S.?” she asks.
I chuckle at the nickname. “Not so much staring as thinking while looking in your direction.”
“What are you thinking about, then?”
“Your honesty.”
“You’re not honest?”
“I am, usually to a fault. And I’m honest with what I say, but there’s a lot I don’t say.”
“Yeah, I’ve picked up on that.” She gives me a goofy grin.
“I’m a lot like my dad in that way,” I say, deciding to open myself up to her a little more. “But I don’t want to be anything like him.”
Melissa searches my eyes. “He wasn’t a good man?”
I shake my head. “Not in any way.” I look away from her. “Like I said, I’m a lot like him.”
“Bobby,” she says in an intense tone, “you’re a good man.”
“I thought I was a jerk,” I mutter.
“You can be, but that’s not all you are. And you’re trying to be better, right? If you weren’t a good man, you wouldn’t want to try. You wouldn’t have told me ridiculous jokes to keep me calm when I was about to lose my mind while driving in the snow yesterday. You wouldn’t have offered to help keep me warm overnight. Or maybe you would have, but you also would’ve tried to make a move on me. And you know how else I know you’re a good man, Bobby Jacobs?”
I feel a strange pricking sensation behind my eyes as I finally look at her again. “How?”
“Because Diego Sanchez, Ash Hamilton, and Randall Hamilton are three of the best people I know, and they wouldn’t let you get close enough to be like a brother or ask you to be in their wedding if you weren’t a good man.”
eleven
. . .
Who would’ve ever thought I’d be sitting in a Pizza Hut in Nowhere, Arkansas, trying to convince Bobby Jacobs he’s a better man than he believes he is? Not me, that’s for sure. A day ago, I was dreading what I thought would be an interminable twelve-hour road trip with him. Now? I’m not sure I want it to end. That’s part of the reason I insisted we stop to eat instead of waiting until we arrived in Oakville.
It’s not that I’m not excited to join our friends—and Shannon—in Leslie’s hometown for the wedding festivities, but I’ve somehow become attached to the typically irritating man sitting across from me. And I continue to have mixed feelings about that.
I want to ask Bobby questions about his dad and their relationship, but I know he gave me a gift by telling me as much as he did, and I don’t want to scare him off. I know he’ll tell me what he wants to when he’s ready. Just like I’ll tell him about what happened with Jeremy when I’m ready.
“I don’t know what to say,” he finally says in response to my declaration about him being a good man.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to believe what I said. Do you believe it?Canyou?”
He closes his eyes, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “I can try.”
Now I reach my hand across to cover his on the table. His eyes pop back open.
“That’s a great start,” I say. “Now eat up so we can get back on the road.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to stop and eat. I’m going to take my sweet time.”
He takes a bite of pizza and chews it exaggeratedly slowly. I ball up my napkin and throw it at his face, resulting in a grin that makes his dimple appear again. In this moment, I decide my goal for the next few days is to see that dimple as often as possible.
“We were afraid you were dead in a ditch somewhere!” Wendy exclaims as she hugs me so tightly I’m afraid my ribs will crack.
I glance over at Bobby, who’s chatting with Randall and Ash while smirking at me, which unfortunately does not bring out the dimple. “Told you so,” he mouths at me, and I’m tempted to stick my tongue out at him but I give him a smile and eye roll instead.
“Let her go,” Leslie orders Wendy, “before she’s dead in my parents’ living room from you squeezing her to death.”
