Some people spoke the loudest when they said nothing at all, and my father was a prime example of that.
Two hours later and a belly full of three very expensive bottles of beer, I received a text from Leo.
Leo: Wanna escape?
Adele: Pleeeeease.
Leo showed up at the door, snow in his brown hair. He hugged my mom and Celeste, and shook hands with my father. My father had always admired Leo, though I knew that was because Leo was athletic and his family was, like my father, well off. When I thought of my father’s study and its expensive furnishings, I imagined that had he seen my apartment in person, he would have considered it squalor.
Leo held his arm out for me to grab hold of and I looped my arm in his.
When we were halfway down the block, our boots covered in snow, Leo said what I’d been waiting for him to ask.
“About the kiss…”
“Yeah, about that…”
He rubbed one gloved hand over his hair, brushing the snowflakes away. “I’d always wondered, you know? About you and me. If it was meant to be.”
I stopped walking, turned to face him. Please, please don’t tell me my kiss made you realize you loved me in that way, I thought.
“And when you kissed me, there was just … nothing.”
I was silent for a beat, absorbing that. “There was nothing for me too.” I tucked my hands into my coat pockets. “I was drunk, and I know that doesn’t excuse my behavior. But I guess…” my voice trailed off and I looked down the road, thinking. “I guess I wanted to kiss you and have it be you, you know?”
I turned back to him and he nodded. “I feel the same way. After the shit with Darcy and the girls since, I’m just over it. I’m not cut out for this game.” He lifted his shoulders and dropped them a second later.
“It’d be easy if kissing you solved my commitment issues.”
“It’d be easy if kissing you solved my bad luck.”
I stepped forward and wrapped my arm around his back. “Aw, Leo. You don’t have bad luck. Just bad taste.”
He laughed, his head bobbing back. “Just that. No bigs. I’ll just train my dick to zero in on a different type.”
“See? Easy?” I laughed along with him and squeezed him to me.
He sighed and wrapped both arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. “To be honest? I’m kinda glad you kissed me. Because I was never going to work up the nerve to do it, even as I wondered.”
I leaned my head back to meet his eyes. “What? That’s crazy. Why not?”
Gesturing with a hand from my head downward, he said, “Because you’re intimidating as fuck. When you want something, you don’t just go after it—you stalk it. You grab it by the balls and demand its attention. You’re like that bitch from Fatal Attraction, without the crazy.”
I laughed, nearly slipping on the snow under my feet and held on to him. His eyes grew serious. “And you’d never looked at me that way.”
“Yeah,” I said solemnly, shrugging. “That doesn’t mean I know my type either.”
“What about the guy? With the ring.”
It was the first time someone had mentioned him to me since I’d left him, but that wasn’t exactly surprising given the very secretive nature of our relationship. I hadn’t even told my best friend about him. But bringing him front and center in the conversation brought all of the baggage along with it and I rubbed my chest absently.
It turned out a week away from Nathan, even while ignoring the legions of emails he’d sent me since then, wasn’t enough time to turn me back to normal, to heal the hairline fracture on my heart. It was what I imagined the pain must be from, because nothing else made sense.
I pulled back from him, so we were at arm’s length. “So.” I exhaled, watched my air cloud up. “That night I left the bar with that guy? Well, he was my professor.”
Leo didn’t say anything, but looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish.
“Well, you were on the money with the Fatal Attraction comparison, because I’d known he was my professor when I’d taken him home with me. And he hadn’t known that I was his student.” Just admitting it aloud highlighted how very villainous that action was, but I continued. “And when he found out, he pushed me away and was very insistent that we not continue. But you know me; I’m not easily deterred. It turned into a month of back-and-forths and another month of accepting that we couldn’t get enough of each other. Until last week.”
He nodded, taking it all in. “What happened last week?”
“Oh, fuck. This is a long story. But basically, I changed my major.”
Leo’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked incredulously.
Nodding, I said, “I know! A lot has happened! Anyway. I changed my major because I’m sick of choosing rent over groceries that don’t have a shelf life of a hundred years. All that ramen was really wearing me down. And—long story short—my dad offered, because my mom worries, to support me financially if I changed my degree to something more practical.” I heaved a breath, the words having come out in a rush. “And because the professor and I had kept sneaking around, I saw this as a way for us to date publicly, especially since I wouldn’t be his student anymore.” I looked around, almost expecting someone to be listening in to our conversation. “But when I told him, he called me stupid and I happened to be wearing his dead wife’s ring at the time, so that didn’t help things and well, I haven’t talked to him since then.”
“Holy shit, Adele.”
“Right?” There wasn’t much else for me to say, so I just waited while Leo processed.
“Have you heard from him since?”
I pulled my phone from my pocket. “He’s emailed me almost every day since.”
“Have you replied?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t even read them.” I opened my phone, scrolled through the eleven missed calls—all from him. I probably would have answered if I hadn’t been asleep, the sheer number was cause for alarm. But when I’d seen the subject line of his follow up email this morning, The mortification of a hangover. And another apology, I’d deduced that he’d drunk dialed me repeatedly. I still hadn’t read the email.
“Why haven’t you read them?”
There was no easy answer to that, because there were many reasons why I couldn’t:
Because despite how much he’d hurt me, I still wanted him.
Because wanting him made me feel as stupid as he’d said I was.
Because stupid or not, I wasn’t over him.
Because I had a feeling that reading his emails would either break my heart completely or propel me back into arms.
Because either option was gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
“Maybe you should read them. Take it from me, Add—guys aren’t always the best at communicating. You and I have said a lot of things to one another in the heat of the moment that we’ve regretted later on.” He raised his eyebrows, hinting at the whole drunk-sloppy-kiss thing. “And even if he apologizes to you, it doesn’t mean you have to forgive him.”
“Maybe,” I replied unconvincingly. “Or maybe I’ll keep chilling out here, on the island of denial. Population of one.”
He tugged me forward for another hug. “Just think about it. Maybe he’s as sad as you clearly are. Either that or he’s already on the rebound.”
I shoved him playfully away. “Whatever, Leo.” The thought itself stung a little and piqued my curiosity enough that I considered what he was saying.
As we walked back to my home, I realized that talking to Leo was just what I needed to shove me to the right direction.
After settling on the leather recliner next to the fireplace, I pulled my email up on my phone and took a deep breath before I clicked the first one, sent this past Sunday.
Chapter Thirty-Three