Page 58 of The Problem with Dating

My gut tightened up. How did we get back to that topic? “They did.”

“Did you love her?”

“I did.”

“How long did it take you to get over it?”

I snickered and shrugged my left shoulder. “Pretty quick. She cheated with someone who I knew. It’s easy to get over a person when they do something like that.”

Yara’s eyes glassed over and she looked to be seconds from crying.

“Don’t do that, Goldie.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Cry because you feel bad for me.”

“But…that’s really sad.”

“Sad things happen. That’s life.”

“People suck,” she blurted out before hiccupping and taking a swig from the bottle. She held the bottle out toward me. “Bottoms up.”

I shook my head. “Perhaps one of us should be sober tonight.”

She frowned. “But…if you’re sober, that means I’m just drunk and sad alone. I don’t want to be drunk and sad alone.”

“You can be drunk and sad, but you won’t be alone tonight.”

Tears fell down her cheeks, and I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to wake with her in my arms and—what?!

Shut up, Alex!

She wiped her few tears away. “Promise, Alex?”

“Promise, Goldie.”

She smiled a little and even her drunk, sad smiles were picturesque. “I like that, you know. I like that you call me Goldie. At first, I thought it was mean, but it has a nice ring to it.”

I grinned. “Good. It’s a fitting name.” Before she could reply, I leaned toward her and lifted an eyelash from her cheek. I held it in front of her lips. “My aunt used to say if someone picks an eyelash from one’s face, the person has to make a wish and blow it away. Make a wish, Goldie.”

“Glimmer,” she whispered as her smile deepened, revealing her dimples. My gosh, she was beautiful. Every kind of beautiful. The loud kind and quiet. The soft kind and hard. The silly kind and serious. Every type of beautiful lived within that girl, and I almost missed noticing it because I walked within my own cloud of darkness.

“What’s a glimmer?” I asked.

She sat back and clapped her hands together. “A glimmer is like the opposite of a trigger. It’s the micro moments in life that are just so unexpectedly beautiful and quiet. They fill a person with chills of wonder throughout their body instead of anxiety and fear.”

“You just had a glimmer from me asking you to make a wish on your eyelash?”

She nodded. “One hundred percent. And from you smiling. Your smiles are few and far between, but wow, do I like them.”

Who was this woman, and why was she turning my world upside down with every syllable that fell from her tongue?

She pursed her lips together, closed her eyes, and blew the eyelash away, making a wish.

When her brown eyes reappeared, they smiled more than her lips. My whole body found warmth merely from staring into her eyes.

“Are you going to tell me what you wished for?” I asked.

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