Page 42 of The Relationship Clause

I find him standing at my coat closet, door ajar, smoldering eyes dead set on the contents.

“What are these?” he demands.

I peer inside, hoping he can’t see how red my face is. Maybe if I play it off, he’ll think it’s no big deal. “Um, a family of mice rooming with my resident dust bunnies?”

“No.” He runs a hand across the clothes draped on hangers. “There are different men’s hoodies and sweatshirts in here of different shapes and sizes with no apparent theme.”

“Oh… It’s nothing, they’re from, um, you know, different boyfriends.”

“Different boyfriends?”

“Ex-boyfriends.”

“Ex-boyfriends? How many have you had? There’ve got to be at least fifteen different hoodies in here.”

“Well, that means there were probably at least fifteen different exes.” Give or take a few. He’s looking like he might grab each sweater and set fire to them one by one.

“Never mind,” he grumbles as he shuts the closet. “I’m not cold enough to use one of those.”

“Oh. Okay…” A strange new thought occurs to me. Maybe I should keep it to myself, but I can’t. “Does it bother you that I have so many exes?”

“No.” He starts ripping into the last remaining cabinet with a vengeance. Like the thing insulted his mother or something. Well, maybe not his mother. Kiera, I guess?

“Does it bother you that I’ve kept all those sweaters?”

“No.”

“What then? Why are you suddenly so upset?”

“I’m not suddenly upset.”

“You’re more upset than usual,” I insist. Well, he is. And I wish he wasn’t. His sudden bad mood is playing funny games with my heart.

When he found the sweaters, I expected some judgy comments and curious questions, that was a given, but this? My boss, Mr. Ferguson, Mr. TDC, Mr. Grumpy Grumpypants, isn’t supposed to care about how many boyfriends I’ve had in the past. I mean, yes, we’ve had some moments, like when I sat on his desk, but I kind of chalked them up to physical attraction. I’m not one of those girls who doesn’t think she’s pretty. I know some men find me attractive.

But this reaction? From Mr. Ferguson?

That implies that maybe he could…

No. I need to forget it. Nothing good can come from this line of thinking. I’m not looking for a new boyfriend. A boyfriend whom I would inevitably break up with after two to four months. I can’t do that to Mr. Ferguson, even if I weren’t trying to keep this job after the contract ends. I won’t do that to him.

We work in silence for a few minutes.

“Why do you date so much?” he suddenly asks.

“What?”

“You seem to date a lot.”

I shrug, suddenly uncomfortable. “No more than the average person.” At least, I think it’s no more than average. Kiera’s had her fair share of boyfriends. Though I don’t think she dates in exactly the same way that I do, and that’s probably the point…

“How long was your longest relationship?” he says.

Great. We’re stuck on this now.

“Um, I don’t know… Maybe four months…” Four months is stretching it, but it makes me feel better.

“Do you keep in touch with any of the guys you used to date?”

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