Page 38 of The Girl with No Name

He googlesRyan Dawkins fiancéeand shows me the news clip. “Not sure if that’s good or bad for me.” He laughs. “Guess I’m not the marrying type.”

“So you wanted to marry her?”

“Eh, not really. Sometimes I think I’m too damaged for a relationship.”

“How so?”

“That’s pretty personal.”

“I can deal with personal. Tell me.”

He takes another pull of his beer. “When I was in college, my best friend committed suicide. It was a whole thing. Fucked me up pretty good. I found him in his room. He’d hung himself after a bad breakup.”

My chest tightens. “For real?”

“Yeah.” He pulls up another news story:Forrest Jenkins, 22, found dead. Loved by his family and friends.

“That’s awful!”

He stares at the phone for a second and then nods. “It was rough for a while. I don’t know why people do that, you know? They leave their friends and family behind to pick up the pieces. That’s the worst part.” He shrugs, shakes his head, and smiles. “I try to keep a positive attitude about things, though. How about you? Have you ever been through anything like that?”

“I have, yes.” It’s something I don’t normally share, but since Gatsby just shared his trauma with me, it feels like we’re on an even playing field if I go deep, too. So I tell him a little about what happened to me a few years back at that house music festival. How I barely made it out alive, yet now I’m mostly unscathed.

He shakes his head. “Someone drugged you? What the fuck?”

“Yeah.” I choose not to get into the weeds about the healing I did to work myself out of the mental hole I was in. I was teetering on the verge of a serious breakdown when I moved in with my aunt.

He shakes his head. “I’d fucking kill someone if they did something like that to me or my family.”

I laugh awkwardly. He doesn’t look like a killer. Not really.

“You think I’m joking? I’m not.”

That makes it even more awkward. “That’s…sweet? I guess.”

“Not really. Just a reality.” He laughs, easing my tension. “Just kidding… Not really, though.”

We drink a few more rounds and have dinner with the group. As we’re waiting for a Lyft at the end of the evening, he turns to me.

“Hey,” he says. “I was thinking… I’d love to take you out some time, if you’re okay with that.”

“Smooth,” I say, smiling. I give him my number.

A few nights later,Gatsby and I go out for drinks. I tell him about my hesitance to jump into a relationship with someone.

“I feel that,” he says, followed by a steady stream of compliments about how pretty I am.

I haven’t dated anyone in some time, and I have to admit, I like the attention. And I like him.

That night, we end up bonding over our mutual trauma and love of animals. After I tell him how much I love dolphins in particular, he takes me to the Shedd Aquarium for our second date.

On our third date, he makes me dinner back at his place, and we make out on the couch.

But as he slides his hand lower, I stop him. “Hey. I think we’re moving kind of fast. I don’t like sharing my body with just anyone.”

“Understood,” he says.

We sleep in his bed that night, but we don’t do a thing. When I wake up the next day, he brushes my hair out of my face and kisses me.

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