Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Let’s take this loophole we’re making up on the fly, Layla.
“Maybe in Connecticut, it’s not,” I offer as we reach the door to the diner. “Want me to stop?”
She meets my gaze, her eyes wide, vulnerable. “I don’t. That’s the issue.”
I squeeze tighter, a little sad, but glad, too, for this stolen moment. “Same here,” I say, then brush a kiss to her soft cheek.
A hostess ushers us to a booth for two, and we order quickly, Layla opting for a salad and fries while I pick an omelet.
When we shut the menus, she looks at me with a particular intensity in her eyes. “So, what did you mean with the whole not everyone admits they do comment?”
Ah, I figured I wouldn’t get away with mic dropping that. But it’s for the best. “I just like that you’re…real. You don’t seem to have these judgments about school, or jobs, or where people come from.”
She smiles, shakes her head. “I hope I don’t.” But then she winces, like the question pains her. “But others have?”
I heave a sigh, drag a hand across my beard. Do I want to dive this deep into my past? We’re not supposed to get close.
Or…closer.
But one look at Layla and the patience in her eyes, and my plan to keep my younger years to myself crumbles. I want to get closer to her, even just for tonight, so I serve up my past on a plate. “My ex’s family hated me. Maybe that’s understandable. I’m the asshole who got their princess pregnant. Their words. But they didn’t like where I was from,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I waited tables at that country club where they were members. That’s how I met Rose. I was the guy from the other side of the tracks because my family didn’t have money.”
“That’s terrible,” she says, quick to defend me. “That’s a shitty way to treat someone.”
She sounds so tough, so independent, and so damn certain of what’s right and wrong. A welcome sign perhaps that twenty-somethings are less judgmental than their grandparents. I sure hope so.
“I’m over it,” I say with a shrug that I hope comes off as careless.
“But it still stings?” she asks gently, seeing through my act immediately.
I don’t say anything at first. This kind of vulnerability with a woman is new to me. Hell, it’s new with friends, with family, with anyone but Finn. Vulnerability is not an emotion I like to traffic in too much.
But I invited her into this conversation. I ought to let her in all the way. “I suppose,” I mutter.
Her expression is warm as she says, “I know that was hard for you to say. But thank you. I want to know you,” she adds, then bobs a hopeful shoulder. “Since, maybe in Connecticut we can get to know each other.”
My heart lurches. “I want to know you too,” I say, then clasp our fingers together and return to the tale. “Anyway, my parents lived paycheck to paycheck. I had to earn my own dough and find scholarship money to go to college. I was here a lot working. All day. I’d have swim team practice all week, meets on Saturday morning, then I worked the rest of the weekend,” I say.
She listens attentively. “That’s a lot to balance, Nick.”
“It was, but my friends and I—the waiters, the caddies, the club attendants—we had fun after work. Hung out in that spot where you took me tonight.”
“You knew that spot,” she says, a smile breaking through over this shared history.
“I did, beautiful. Bet you came here with your dad, bet he took his lovely family out to lunch, bet you and your friends sneaked off to explore the grounds,” I say.
The smile widens. “We did. But I never took a boy there.”
I return her smile, feeling a little like I have an ace up my sleeve. “And I never took a girl there,” I say, playing my card.
“Really?”
“I swear,” I say.
“So I get a first of yours?” She sounds too delighted, and I want to stay here in this happy, flirty place with her all night.
“You sure did,” I say, reaching for her hand and running my thumb along her index finger. She shivers.
But that’s my cue to stop. I can’t get caught up in her and me, in our sweet nothings. I clear my expression so I can focus on the serious story I need to tell her. “Anyway, like I was saying, I met Rose here. Waited on her family. And then later, when Rose found out she was pregnant, her parents kind of took over all my choices.” A flash of self-loathing hits me square in the chest. Those hard days return to me in sharp relief. I’d fucked up. Big time. “Which made sense. They were rich. They had means. They had nannies. I was heading to a community college, hoping to land a swimming scholarship to a state school, which I did. But Rose had already been admitted to Yale. And her parents pulled me aside after the lunch service one afternoon. I was in my waiter’s uniform, and her dad said to me in a quiet hallway behind the clubhouse, Rose is done slumming it with you. And you will not ruin our daughter’s chances at Yale.”