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“Maybe she wants to bare her soul.”
He would think that.
“Maybe that’s the only way she can understand her pain,” he adds.
He would think that, too.
But it’s also what Mom thought, and I hate that I want to hug him for saying it. I hate it as much as I hate how much I loveCasablanca. But it’s different, becauseCasablancais a great movie (gender issues aside) and River is another guy who thinks Lexi will save him. “You sound like Mom.”
“Do I?” He seems pleased by that. “What was she like?”
He moved in about a year after she died. But he was around a few times before that. His mom visited his grandma, and River was with her. “You never met?”
“Once, I think,” he says. “When I was really young.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“Only her smile.”
She did have a great smile. My stomach feels light. I want to talk about it. I’m desperate to talk about her, at any time, in any situation. But with him?
I guess with him.
I need to keep the conversation alive somehow. “She was passionate.” Stormy, sometimes, but there’s no sense in focusing on the bad. “She did everything at a hundred percent. Lexi takes after her that way.”
I glance at him for a moment. His dark eyes study me. There’s no sexual intent in his gaze, but my cheeks flush anyway. There’s something about his stare. An intensity. An honesty. A desire for more honesty.
Right now, he’s not thinking about Lexi.
Right now, he’s listening to my story. I need to say more if I want to keep his attention.
I swallow hard, put my focus back on the road, and push the words from my lips. Honesty, intensity, truth. All that artistic bullshit. That’s what holds his attention.
“She was like you,” I say. “An artist. A musician. That’s how she met my father. He saw her singing and fell in love.”
He laughs. “Really?”
“That’s the story they told us a million times, but it’s hard to imagine Dad at the dive where she used to play.”
“Well. Opposites attract.”
Interesting. “You believe that?”
“To a point. Does your app disagree?”
“How do you know about my app?”Oh—“Are you a member?”
“No.” He laughs. “Grandma told me about it.”
My shoulders drop. “The app isn’t about attraction.”
“Whatisit about?” he asks.
“Compatibility.”
“Right.” I see him nodding in my side vision. “Grandma mentioned that. But your parents were married for a long time, too,” he counters. “Until death.”
“Because they wanted the same things,” I say. “That’s part of being compatible.”
