Page 47 of Tulips and Lost Time

“Not my sister?”

“No! Fuck.” I release a pent-up breath of frustration. “This has nothing to do with Abby. But yes, I’m having a moral dilemma surrounding someone’s sister. She’s…” I consider for a beat. Wrack my brain for the appropriate description without giving myself away. This town is small, and sisters aren’t in massive supply. “She’s protected. By someone I’m very close with.”

“You’re messing around with your friend’s sister.” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Makes you an asshole.”

“Makes this conversation over.” I push up to stand but remain hunched under the low roof. “Forget it. I’ll go somewhere else and?—”

“Wait.” He grabs the pocket on the side of my pants before I can pass, yanking me to a hard stop so I almost overbalance and pitch straight onto the concrete bay outside the double doors. I grab the walls of the bus before I fall and glance down with a snarl when he chuckles. “That was my bad. Automatic reaction.” He releases me, but he looks up, burning me with a stare that has me pausing. “Sit down. Talk it out.”

“You’re not an unbiased audience.”

“I’m shedding a lifetime of hard training here, Lenaghan. It’s like discussing racism or genocide, and you’re Hitler. You’re asking me to set my own emotions aside for a second to remain unbiased. And, by the way, you’re still an asshole.”

“This is gonna be a fuckin’ disaster.” I bring a hand up and scrub it over my face. A long, pained grunt rolls along my throat and out to echo within our limited space. But I back up, tugging my pants from his grasp and sitting so the seat bolted to the wall groans. “I’m gonna regret this.”

“Perhaps.” He sits back, lazy as a lizard in the sun, and grins. “So you’re scamming on someone’s sister?”

“That’s such a lovely, impartial question to ask.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he chuckles. “You have wonderful, beautiful, completely honorable thoughts and feelings about a woman. And this woman just so happens to have a brother. This brother is someone you’re fond of.”

“Yes.”

“Dick,” he sniggers. “So what’s your problem? She doesn’t want you back?”

“She does. She’s quite eager, actually, for the idea of something happening between us.”

“And the friend?”

“Has no clue. If he did, I’d expect to have my face rearranged, and my brains smeared on the wall.”

“Sounds like the kind of guy I could be friends with,” he teases. “You’re sneaking around with her behind his back?”

“Sorta.” I shrug. “Not completely. We’ve made out a couple times, and it seems she wants more. But my friend matters to me. And her age and life experience matters.”

“She’s young?” His brow slowly comes up. I’m not sure he even realizes. “Too young?”

“She’s a legal adult. But yes, she’s young. And similarly to Abby, she’s spent a lifetime inside a bubble her brother guards. She has no clue what dating other people would be like. She hasn’t kissed anyone else. She hasn’t had sex with me or anyone else. She doesn’t know the things the world is offering, but she thinks being with me is what she wants.”

“And you don’t feel the same?”

“Of course I do! She’s my end game. But not yet. Not now when she doesn’t know what the other options are. If a starving man walks into the room and there’s a can of beans on the table, he’s gonna eat the beans and be thankful for them. But if he walks into a room filled to the brim with a selection of steak, dessert, pasta, and pizza. All the good things. Then he gets to pick and choose. Maybe there are beans at the buffet too. But who the fuck wants beans where there’s a steak sitting right there?”

“So… you’re the beans?”

“No! I’m the steak, I hope. But she can’t know what I am if she’s not out experiencing the rest.”

He draws a long, noisy breath until his lungs fill and his chest expands, then releases it again with a quick nod. “Alright. So… we’re working with food analogies. You have this woman who you consider end game, which implies this shit is serious. Perhaps, even love.”

He peers across and waits for my nod of acknowledgement.

“And in honor of this love, you want her to… sample other plates? Are you fucking crazy?”

“I want her to know there are other plates out there. I want the other plates to tempt her. I want her to know these other plates want her, too. And then when she’s seen it all and she knows her options, then I want her to choose me.”

“An ego boost?” he challenges. “You want to know you’re the best?”

“No.” I drop my head and jam my thumbs against my eyelids. “I just don’t want to be the beans she’s forced to appreciate. She’s worth so much more, Mitch.” I peel my thumbs away and wait for the stars to clear from my vision. “She’s everyone’s end game. And I want her to be confident knowing that. I want her to know I want her, too. She’s not my beans. She’s my steak. But if she doesn’t leave this town and experience men outside of me, how can she know what she is?”

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