Page 82 of Getting Over You

“I’ve only known him a few years,” she says, “and it’s not like we’re a couple.”

“Inseparable close friends?” I supply.

“Inseparable close friends who screwed each other once and went on about life after as if everything was normal,” she adds. “But inseparable close friends is way easier to say.”

I laugh. “I’m still immensely confused by you two.”

“You and me both,” she says. “But I don’t have the brainpower to figure it all out. I’ve given up. We are what we are, and we don’t know what that is.”

I can’t resist laughing again because, wow, Rory and EJ are just as messy as Cade and me. As I put my dirty rag into a nearby bussing bin, I ask, “What if I do? I’d like to see you happy.”

“Because you’re on top of the world and falling for the one guy who is the epitome of everything you aren’t after, Ms. Lover of Love.”

I offer an eye roll. “I don’t love Cade.”

“Stop lying to me,” Rory says, narrowing her eyes. “And yourself.”

Lunch?

Cade texted.

I know you can’t resist pizza. Or I guess, you can’t resist ice cream. But they’re in the same place, y’know?

Or a hot date with me. You WON’T resist that.

Reading the last text made my heart scorch. I threw my phone to the side and haven’t picked it up yet. It has been two weeks. Two weeks of being together every day. Two weeks of being wrapped up with him in his bed, in his truck. In the bathroom of the diner during a particularly slow closing shift, where Cade would not stop skating his deliciously rough hands over my hips every time he saw me.

I am falling for him. Denying that would be silly, but acting on the feeling is more reckless.

I’m addicted to the parts of Cade Deans I have close to menow: the softness in his eyes when he looks at me and the care he takes when he captures my waist. I’ve caught myself tracing the lines of his tattoos, wracking my brain as to why he’d cover such an immaculate frame with gray and black ink. Loving him, even though he made such an imperfect choice.

I can’t help it.

I’m not willing to sacrifice what I have of him now at the expense of asking for something more.

Not yet.

Gentle fingers outline the tattoo on my collarbone. It’s so small, it could be mistaken for a birthmark. But my tattoo is about much more than what the image is or how much real estate it takes up on my skin. It was about being daring. Telling myselfIcould do something daring.

And to impress Cade.

I’ve been doing well on my self-imposed Cade break today, taking the afternoon to hole up in my room and simply process—process the idea that I am a summer fling girl now. Summer fling girls don’t spend every second with their fellow fling—that’s relationship behavior. I’m not Cade’s girlfriend, as much as I wish I was. He doesn’t want that.

If he really doesn’t want that, he is showing it in the strangest way I’ve ever seen a man not show interest in somebody.

Realizing my Cade break is for naught, I reach for my phone and video chat Mollie.

“We normally call,” she whines as she picks up. I can’t see her face, only the eggshell-white ceiling of her bedroom. “I just got out of the shower. I can talk to you on the phone just fine after a shower, and that doesn’t involve you seeing me naked.”

“Am I going to see you naked?” I ask her ceiling.

She’s back, holding me up so I can see her face. She’s got a plush pink robe wrapped around her. I raise my eyebrows.“This isn’t yours,” she deadpans. “Mom bought me my own, so I wouldn’t steal yours anymore.”

“Fantastic,” I reply, smiling. “But I’m not demanding to see you so I can verify that you aren’t stealing my clothes.”

Mollie smirks. “Good, because if you do decide to verify, you will be sorely disappointed, dear sister.”

I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding me? Have you raided the whole thing?”

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