Page 15 of Knocked Up By The Mountain Man

It makes less sense to me that a woman like Alyssa would leave me her phone number. That she would be back in town, putting her hand on my thigh as we drive up to the mountains, giving me those looks that I'm starting to think I'm not reading into.

I'm starting to think that she might just want me as much as I want her.

But there are periodic breaks in this energy, where something shifts, where she seems to pull back, close in on herself, like she's keeping some kind of secret, and I can't figure out what the hell it is.

Is it something I'm doing? Is she doubting me?

One minute she's praising me and warming up to me. The next, it seems like she retreats, going somewhere hidden, somewhere I'm not allowed to be.

I'll have to get to the bottom of that. Only if I have enough time, though.

The banging on the door doesn't cease, and I curse under my breath, taking one last gulp of coffee before setting the mug down on the counter and striding over.

I open the door to see none other than Adam glaring at me.

"What the fuck, dude?" he asks. “You’ve really done it this time, you know!”

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"Carla," he says. "My cousin. You know, the one that you blew off this afternoon?”

Wow. I’d forgotten all about that.

I went on a full-blown date earlier today, and I had completely wiped it from my memory. As soon as I saw Alyssa, everything else stopped mattering.

"Oh, right," I groan.

"Oh, right," he mocks with a frown. “I told you to go soft on her, man. If you didn't like her, that's one thing. You don't have to reject her so harshly."

"I didn't reject her harshly," I say. "We agreed that we didn't want the same things. I apologized for wasting her time, paid for the coffee, and that was that."

Adam shakes his head.

"What do you mean, you don't want the same things? Like what? You don't want happiness? Is that it?"

I glance over my shoulder, aware that Adam's talking loudly enough for Alyssa to hear every single word.

He wouldn't know that I've got a woman back there. There's only my truck in the drive, and Adam knows me to be an antisocial, anti-dating son of a bitch.

He probably wouldn't be too happy to know that on the same day that I rejected his cousin, I took home a completely different woman.

One that I'm desperately trying to convince to stay.

"Look, man," I say in a low voice. "I didn't want to hurt her, alright? But I didn't ask y'all to start fixing me up with every other woman in town that you know. You know that I don't want kids. So did you not know that Carla does? That’s this is the main reason she's even dating in the first place?"

Adam seems taken aback by this information.

"I mean, sure, I know that kids are a priority for her," he says reluctantly.

"They're the priority," I retort. "Not a priority. The priority. She's worried she's running out of time, and she's looking for a man who's gonna want to have kids with her right away. Well, that's not me. Not only do I not want kids right away, I don't want kids ever. At all. You know that.”

“Okay, well -”

But I’m not done. Adam has interrupted my time with Alyssa and worse, he seems to think that I mistreated her cousin, something that couldn't be farther from the truth.

"So if Carla's feelings are hurt, I'm very sorry to her,” I continue. “It wasn't my goal to hurt her feelings. But maybe you should think twice before setting me up with some woman who wants to tie me down with the burden of kids before we've even finished our coffee."

A door down the hallway opens abruptly, and I turn to see Alyssa rushing out, her cheeks pink.