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“If those are your terms . . .” This can’t be happening. What if she finds someone else? Two years is a long fucking time. But I also know this is the woman for me, and I am not letting her go. “. . . then I accept them.”
All four words feel like ash in my mouth.
“Can we talk in the meantime? Text?”
Can I come over there and cover your body with mine and show you how much I really do love you?
“I don’t know, we’ll have to figure it out. But maybe consider what we talked about first.”
I don’t need to think about it, but clearly she does.
“OK,” I agree, even though the word nearly sticks in my throat. “I’ll think about it.”
Maybe she’ll change her mind. Because, looking at her now, I don’t need her to say the words. There’s not a doubt in my mind.
She loves me too.
34
Hayden
“This place is awesome,” says Devon, Enzo’s closest friend from home. He’s come to the city for the night.
Unfortunately, it reminds me of Rooftop 40. Minus the pool. And minus Ada.
Decorated in mostly royal blue and white, big-cushioned chairs make it look more like Miami than New York.
I listen to Enzo and Devon through a fog. The same one that’s been hanging over my head for weeks.
Ever since Ada dumped me.
“Sorry to say it,” Devon comments, “but you look like shit.”
I’ve hung out with him enough to call him a friend, so I don’t take offense. Or even disagree with him. It’s my first time out since Ada stopped talking to me, and I only came because Enzo inherited his mother’s ability to use Catholic guilt as a weapon, and he dragged my sorry ass here.
Otherwise I’d be at home doing what I do best these days.
Cursing and wallowing in self-pity because I somehow managed to bungle up the first truly great thing to ever happen to me besides Enzo and Angel, Inc.
“Girl problems,” Enzo says, handing me another drink.
I hadn’t even noticed mine was empty.
Devon snorts. “If Hayden Tanner has girl problems, then the rest of us are royally fucked.”
Leaning against the railing, I look out to a view that’s as familiar to me as the lake near my parents’ home in Connecticut. The French and Swiss Alps in Switzerland. All beautiful, all in some ways home for me.
Devon’s right. I’ve lived a charmed life. But none of it means jack shit without Ada.
Several women have been eyeing us at the high top we claimed at the edge of the bar, but I couldn’t care less about any of them. There’s only one woman I want to look at me like that, and she won’t return my calls or texts.
“I’m sure you do just fine for yourself,” I say, nodding to a pretty blonde eyeing him up next to us.
“She’s not bad,” he says without looking. Clearly he’s already noticed her. “But I’m tied down at the moment.”
Enzo’s jaw drops. “Get the hell out of here! By who?”
The conversation shifts to Devon’s new girlfriend, until he brings it back to me.
