AllFreeNovel
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It hurts to breathe when I find him watching me with something very close to adoration on his face.
“You’re okay, dear. Remember. I like you. I’ll never ask you to force yourself to do anything you don’t want to. There are no hidden expectations to meet. You simply fascinate me, and I enjoy having you around in any capacity you’re comfortable with.”
That’s a real cute thing to say. Shame I don’t know how to handle it.
Pouting at my tablet, I pull up Finn’s favorite bagel shop to put his egregious order in. “I wish you’d be meaner to me. I don’t know what to do with nice people.”
His smile tilts into darker shades. “You wish I’d be meaner to you?”
“I know you’re incapable. It’s fine. I’ll get over it. Maybe with persistence, I’ll learn how to function in a healthy relationship.”
He exhales a laugh. “That is the goal.”
“My goal is actually to corrupt you first.”
“Just so I’m clear on your wishes, could you explain what being mean to you looks like? Open communication is very important to me, and I would hate to overstep in my efforts.”
He’s so family Christian pure I might gag. If only I weren’t looking at beautiful pictures of bagels and deciding which I want to put on his card, as girlfriend tax, not an employee meal. While I am still an employee and my meals are still tax write offs, I am busy reframing how I consider my boss. Girlfriend tax is simple: when the boyfriend eats, the girlfriend does, too.
Lest she take to devouring him under the light of a full moon with nothing but a steak knife and her bare hands…
Mm.
Weird.
I’m not certain Finn could handle what I mean when I say be mean to me. The periodic mandatory death threat just does not seem to align with his TV Y-rated MO.
Ignoring his query, I mutter, “I can’t believe you’re making me order from two separate locations for your meal and drink. This is abuse.”
“Oh good. Abuse sounds like I’m succeeding in the mean to you department. Should I add a dessert from a third location, or is that too far? Would it make you utilize the safe word? Or does the safe word exist as a safeguard against the potential of going too far, allowing me to live freely and only step back once I hear it?”
Internally, I scree. Swallowing against the mutiny of my heart, I order myself a custard doughnut from a third location, tack a pumpkin spice doughnut on for boyfriend tax—because, yes, it goes both ways—and press my tablet to my chest when I’m done. “You appear rather competent at teasing, which is not easier on my feeble nerves. Please treat me with utmost disregard if you are incapable of meanness.”
“So, to you, teasing and being mean aren’t synonymous?” He tilts his head to the side.
“Teasing is flirty and clever. Being mean is…” I puff a breath and look away. This is really going to sound messed up. “You know. Like. Bullying. No pleases and thank yous or smiles and kindnesses. Only insults. Undermines. Disgusted expressions. Pretending I am a crumpled rag housing a crushed bug. Show me I’m the absolute opposite of a burden on you by how little you give a crap about me.”
“Marcella.”
Face red, I meet his gaze. “What?”
“Can you weave taking you to therapy into my schedule?”
I scoff and turn on my heel. “I’m going to go wait for our food!”
“Marcella.”
Stopping dead in my tracks, I refuse to turn around—especially given that he’s found a pen to click, which is about to make me rabid.
With all the gentle force of a train, he says, “You are the absolute opposite of a burden already. The fact lies in your job description. You know, in case you needed that reminder. My life is, quite literally and quantifiably, easier with you in it. Okay?”
My chest squeezes, and I can’t justify that with a response, so I just nod before I step out.
Awful lot of something in your next to nothing, pumpkin.
– Finnegan
Chapter 16
