Fucking ridiculous, honestly. I’d be willing to put money on her having followed us. But I understand how it made me look from Savannah’s point of view.
“Okay, this needs to be cleared up right now,” I say with a newfound demanding tone. I’ll be damned if I let this miscommunication make Savannah think I’m some manipulative asshole who’s hung up on his ex any longer.
“The way I see it, Emma is the one with the agenda here, not me. I know she showed up during our date, but I had no idea she’d be there, trust me,” I put a hand on my chest and take a few steps toward her. “If I’d have known she was there, I wouldn’t have been caught dead in that restaurant. I wasn’t trying to make her jealous, or even see her. I just wanted to go on a date with you. That’s all, I promise.”
It takes a minute, but the shields of defense and skepticism in her expression fade enough for me to drop my shoulders a notch. She’s still looking away from me and biting the corner of her lip, though. I don’t think I’m totally in the clear yet.
“Explain what just happened then,” her hand juts out toward the party, referring to the kiss. “Isthatwhy you invited me here?”
“What?” I shake my head and furrow my brow. “No. That didn’t even cross my mind until I heard her yelling my name and coming toward us.”
Yes, I wanted Emma to see me with someone else, hoping it’d finally send the message that I was not interested in getting back with her and that her efforts to keep squirming her way into my proximity were pointless. But it wasn’t a preconceived plan.
And admittedly, it wasn’t just about scaring off Emma. I couldn’t stop staring at Savvy across the table during that game of beer pong. Iwantedto kiss her.
But I leave out that part of the reasoning and stick to the main point.
“I’ve been letting her down easy for too long. Trying to be nice and let her figure out for herself that there was no way I was getting back with her. But she keeps trying, and you were there, and I thought—” my right boot shuffles across the hardwood floor and I struggle to keep the nerves at bay as I try to make her understand. “I thought if she saw me kiss you, she’d finally drop it and move on.”
“That doesn’t make sense, though. She’s with my brother. Why would she still be coming after you if she has a boyfriend?”
“She doesn’t even like your brother,” I scoff. “She runs around town with him on her arm hoping it’ll stir me up. I know it sounds complicated. Itiscomplicated, but believe me, I wouldn’t orchestrate all of this. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Sounds like something an envious ex-boyfriend would say,” she argues. Her eyes narrow and she begins pacing again, this time walking toward the window and looking out across the open field filled with one too many tumbleweeds.
I run my palm over my face, but then my hands find their way to my pockets, the only other option that doesn’t involve me touching her right now. I’m trying to resist the instinct to take her hand or hug her, resolving to wait patiently for her to respond.
When she walks over to the far side of my bed, using it as a barrier between us, she finally turns back to face me.
“That’s not the case, Savvy. I don’t want her. I want her to leave me alone. Plain and simple,” I state.
“Why does shit like this always happen to me,” she whispers, closing her eyes. Her head is pointed toward the ceiling now and she looks almost as defeated as the last time we had a one-on-one conversation like this. I’ve never made such a fool of myself so many times in front of a girl that I’m into like I have with the one standing in front of me.
“So . . . you’re not using me for your own personal gain, and you’re not in love with your ex who happened to crash our date as well as this party.”
I smirk at the way she thinks out loud, running over every detail. It makes me think that she’s probably a kick-ass lawyer and I admire that about her. Even if our conversations sometimes make me feel like I’m on the stand about to plead my case.
The fact that she states it more like a realization than a question gives me hope that she might be beginning to believe me, though. I stand across from her on the opposite side of the bed and shake my head.
“No.”
She nods and looks down, still contemplating.
“Why is your bed so huge?” She’s wrinkling her brows together now, both hands on her hips, looking at the bed from the foot all the way to the headboard. Her eyes land on the pair of briefs I left lying on top of the comforter earlier this morning and I catch her rolling her lips into her mouth and subtly running her tongue over them.
I hate having to stand up so far to get out of bed in the morning, so I got a pretty tall bed frame not long ago. The kind that dogs need stairs for instead of being able to jump onto. Between that and the four-inch mattress pad, it nearly covers her entire body, and I can only see her from her rib cage up when I face her from the opposite side.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head suddenly. “Never mind. Back to the kiss. I can’t imagine what was going through your head thinking that being seen with me like that would even be believable. There’s no way Emma, let alone anyone else in that room, thought it was anything other than a joke.”
My head pulls back, and I twist my face trying to figure out what she means. Why would it not be believable?
“Obviously one person believed it. You kissed me like you meant it.”
Instantly, her face turns from its natural color to a shade of bright pink I’ve only ever seen on the late spring peonies in my mama’s front yard. One corner of my mouth lifts ever so slightly as I remember the way she fisted the sleeve of my shirt and pulled me toward her.
“I didn’t want to kiss you for the first time in front of a bunch of people like that, but I’m not sorry it happened. Next time there won’t be anyone else around,” I say in a low voice, trying not to fantasize about all the ways it could end differently if we were alone.
I nearly miss it, but the edges of her mouth tip up in an almost smile and the corners of her eyes wrinkle just enough to notice. Just as quickly, she changes her expression to one of indifference.
