Page 43 of Getting Over You

Shane and I are celebrating one month of seeing each other today. I didn’t expect him to know the date, to be privy to the anniversary at all. But when he picked me up from Belinda’s to bring me to the carnival, he had flowers and chocolate waiting.

“What’s all this?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“It has been one month since I used a horrible pick up line on you at a coffee shop!” he exclaimed. “Worth celebrating, I think.”

My first thought was that Cade would never.

Now, as we sit on a bench and eat the last of our ice cream, I consider that maybe I don’t care what Cade would do in this situation after all.

“Paris,” Shane says.

“London,” I decide.

“Middle ground,” he tells me. “We stay domestic to start.”

“How,” I start, pointing my spoon at him, “is domestic middle ground?”

“I’m being realistic.”

I guffaw. “There’s nothing wrong with not being realistic sometimes. That’s why there’s abstract art.”

Shane laughs. “Oh, now you’re going to tell me about abstract art?”

“No. I’m going to give you a speech about how no dream is too big.”

“Even better,” he says. “I love a girl who is encouraging.”

“I’m the best at it, truly,” I tell him. “If you keep me around, I’ll have you so inspired you might end up in the Louvre.”

I like Shane. A lot. Talking to him is easy and gives me butterflies and doesn’t make me feel like I’m catching on fire, burning my heart from the inside out.

But I’ve developed a pyromania fixation since meeting Cade Deans.

An addiction, really.

And I haven’t stoked a fire in a long time. I don’t think visions of Cade while I’m with Shane counts. Shane’s the guy you plan a fictitious life in Europe with, where he practices art and you attempt to keep a garden alive and read fancy books. The kind of guy you dream about finding if you want stability, peace, happiness.

But I am a stretch of spilled gasoline leading up to everything I’ve ever desired in this life. Shane is the perfect man, the doting husband waving at his wife from the porch of the perfect home, through the picket fence. And Cade Deans is a match, determined to destroy it all.

“What about that?” Shane asks, pulling me from my thoughts.

“What?” I twist to look at him.

“I asked if you’d want to travel so I could try landscape painting. Maybe out west.”

“That sounds great,” I say. Still itching from thinking of Cade, I run soft fingers on Shane’s pant leg.

He smirks at me. “Ready to leave already? I wanted to win you something from one of the carnival games.”

I think it over. I can’t believe I have to. “Why not? No one has before.”

“Allow me to be the first,” he says as he stands up. He discards his empty Styrofoam cup that once held ice cream, reaching a hand out to take mine. As I stand up from the bench we were occupying, a familiar voice calls my name.

“Gigiiii! I have something to tell you!”

It’s Cade, walking toward me with determination. My heart squeezes.What is he doing here? What does he have to tell me that is so important that—

“I got my shop!” he screeches, so loud that people walking on the boardwalk turn to look at him.

---