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"Earth to Gray. Are you even listening to me?"
I looked up and saw Wilder, who was leaning on the bar counter right in front of me, looking at me quizzically. "What?"
"Why are you here?"
After enteringthe Curved Grape, I had given him a brief summary of what had happened, only to lapse into silence afterward because my thoughts were too busy for me to bother with his pearls of wisdom.
"You already know the answer," I reminded him, but Wilder shook his head. "No. Why are you here—instead of being with her?"
"Because I don't know if I can do that to her."
He looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. Brow furrowed, head slightly shaking. "Just so I get this straight…"
"You don't need to understand."
"Yes, I do. Otherwise, how can I rightfully knock some sense into you with my tray for your foolishness?"
I squinted my eyes.
"Again, just so I get this straight: Amelia told you that she loves you, that she wants to be with you, and would choose you over and over again… and you left her and disappeared because suddenly you're not sure if it's fair to love a younger woman?" He laughed. "You're a few weeks too late for that, my friend. You've wanted her from the first second, and now you want to back out."
"I don't."
"Really? Then once again: why are you here?"
Wilder was already on my last nerve.
"You're scared, Gray. That's your problem. All this time, it was a fictitious thing, and now it's becoming real. How long has it been since you last had something real? Wasn't it with your ex-wife… ten years ago? You don't seriously believe Amelia would do the same to you."
"No," I gritted out through clenched teeth. But what she might indeed do was leave me if she woke from her dream and realized she no longer wanted a man much older than her.
"Then go home already. There's nothing to drown in alcohol. Have you forgotten what you said to me during the first days she was here? Is senility setting in?"
Why had I chosen Wilder as my best friend again? Oh, right, because he always spoke the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might get. That was a quality I usually appreciated in him, not so much today because it highlighted how ridiculous I was being.
The only right response would have been to embrace Amelia, kiss her passionately, and finally claim her as the woman by my side. Instead, I sat here while Wilder was having a one-sided discussion with me about how I was being a damn fool.
Not to mention that I had relied on the reasonableness of her ex-boyfriend, firmly believing he had already made his way home. What if he had stayed and waited until I left, only to harass her again?
Before convincing myself of that, I looked at Wilder again. "You're hardly qualified to give me relationship advice. Ever since I've known you, you haven't managed to keep a woman entertained for more than four weeks."
"Because I didn't come here to find true love, in case you forgot."
How could I forget that?
"So, back to you, Gray," he continued smoothly. "You're going home now, begging for forgiveness, and then telling her that you love her too."
"Do I now?"
"You've been looking at her with not-so-subtle heart eyes since the very first second. So yes, you do. Or do you want to list all the reasons why you supposedly don't love her? Because I'm really curious to hear what arguments you'll come up with."
I shook my head. There were no arguments. Yet somehow, at that very moment, even my typical optimism wasn't enough to get my butt off this chair and go to her so I could show her the same honesty she had shown me. If I owed it to anyone to make myself vulnerable, it was Amelia.
"Do you really want to let irrational fear take the lead in the most important matter of your life?"
"No."
"Good. Now I'm going to tell you something that might be painful."
