Page 50 of The Boyfriend Goal

A beginning. A truce.

I sit back down. “Yeah?”

She sits too, taking her hair down and sliding the scrunchie onto her wrist. It’s like she’s unlocked. “My aunt gave it to me before she died. She’d been sick for a year. A really hard year.” She takes a beat, to collect her thoughts I suspect. “But she wanted me to have fond memories of her. Of us. She wanted to leave me with something. So she wrote me this list so I’d have…” She stops again, her voice breaking. “This piece of her when she was gone.”

My heart lurches toward her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she says, then meets my gaze, her blue eyes pools of emotions. “That’s why I was so happy when you had the scarf. It’s hers, and she gave it to me.”

“I’m glad I found it,” I say, and not only for the reason I’d originally wanted it. But because it means something to her. Something important. “And I apologize again for looking at your list.”

She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I would have done the same. I didn’t want you to think I wrote it myself, and it always takes me a minute to say she’s gone. You know?”

No one I’m that close to has died, so I don’t truly know. “I understand,” I say since that feels true enough.

Fiddling with the scrunchie, she says, “It’s taken me a while to start it because…” She stops, eyes welling. “I’m not that good at getting out of my comfort zone. I’m…a creature of habit.” She meets my face, shrugs a little hopelessly. “I’m not the daring girl. I’m not the bold one. I’m the girl who escapes into books.”

My heart clenches for her. For the way she sees herself. For how she believes she’s not adventurous. “I don’t buy that. You’re the girl who walked half-naked through the city to get back into her apartment rather than waiting till her friend came home,” I remind her.

She gives a small shake of her head. “But it’s taken me two years because…I research everything. I’ve researched all these items on the list. I’ve never had a one-night stand. I’d only been with one guy. Before you,” she quickly adds, and this intel should not delight me as much as it does. Yet it’s so fucking delightful. “I mean, I even looked up how to have a safe one-night stand.”

Yep, called it with her being adorably old-fashioned. “And everything about you makes perfect sense now.”

That earns me a small laugh. “I did! I read articles on what to talk about, how to discuss STDs, and consent. Where to have one.”

“Well, you nailed it—your first one-night stand.”

“And you nailed me,” she says, and now I’m picturing bending her over the bed, sliding home, feeling her tighten around me. Hearing her ask for what she wanted.

“And that is on my list of things I don’t regret,” I say, since we’re being honest.

“Me too,” she says, then pauses before she turns more serious. “With the list though, I put it off so long, and then it was easier to start it when I moved here.”

“Why now?”

She sighs. Swallows. Inhales. “I missed her so much when she died. It was hard to…” She purses her lips, fighting off tears. “Move on.”

My heart aches for her. I want to wrap her in my arms and kiss her hair. “Maybe it’s not true that you’re not the bold one. Maybe you were just holding on to someone you loved.”

With a small smile of admission, she rubs her palms on her thighs, blowing out a breath. “I felt like she understood me better than anyone else. I guess that’s why I didn’t do it. Maybe also because I was getting my master’s degree and school and all that.”

“Maybe you weren’t ready. Not being ready doesn’t mean you’re not bold,” I say.

“But some of the list terrifies me. Well, not the item My O Supplier checked off.”

It takes me a few seconds before I realize what she’s done. Given me a nickname. “That’s what you call me?”

“It’s true,” she says.

“It’s seriously fucking true,” I say, wishing, wishing so damn much that I could make it true again. Even though that’d be a big mistake. I force myself to think about the rest of the list.

Then, about walking into my home a half hour ago, pouring a scotch, sitting down to chill on the couch and play a video game, and seeing it there.

Too tantalizing to look away from.

The promise of new horizons, new potential, new possibilities.

The list is like a blueprint for becoming…your happiest self. It’s a list that cries out—do me now.

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