Page 48 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

“Oh, really?” she says, raising an eyebrow and smirking. “Does that mean I canaskyou anything?”

“I’m an open book.”

“Past girlfriends?” she asks, taking him up on the challenge.

“One. Well, one serious one. Becca.”

“Oh right, Pinky mentioned that.”

“What did she tell you?”

“No details. Just that it ended poorly.”

Evan huffs a sigh and manages a grin. “Did she mention it ended with a champagne bucket full of ice dumped on my head?”

“She did not,” Dalisay says, eyes wide. “What did you do?”

Evan shakes his head, still smiling, and says before taking another bite of ice cream, “We’ll just leave it at that.”

“Okay, Mr. Open Book,” she says with a teasing grin.

“You got me. Becca is in the past. I don’t want to distract from what’s right in front of me.”

Dalisay understands. She’s not entitled to anyone’s history, and when Evan’s ready he’ll tell her. She has to remember that, even with Nicole.

“What about you? Any boyfriends?”

Dalisay groans. “One. It ended pretty quick, though.”

Evan hears the tone in her voice. “What happened? If you don’t mind telling me.”

Dalisay hesitates, then realizes it no longer bothers her to talk about it. Evan will understand. “He just … He was a little pushy and I wasn’t ready. We did go pretty far, but I didn’t want to have sex, even though I thought I loved him. He tried to pressure me into doing it by threatening to lie to everyone that I wasn’t a virgin, so we might as well. He had some pictures … Anyway, Daniel found out and scared him off, and I was kind of relieved he did.”

“Shit,” Evan says. “I’m sorry.”

Dalisay waves her hand. “It’s fine. My parents didn’t know about him. I was too afraid to tell them; dating him was a secret. My mom especially believes that I need to wait for marriage, to be ‘pure,’ and I think it would have broken my dad’s heart.” A lump forms in her throat and she swallows it down. “What about your parents? Are all American parents so chill about their kids dating?”

“Depends. My parents are both academics, so they were too busy with their work to micromanage my love life.”

“What do they do?”

“My dad’s in physics, and my mom’s got a doctorate in engineering.”

“That’s impressive.”

“They’re divorced now, though.”

“Oh,” Dalisay says, frowning. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

Evan shrugs. “It happened when I was seven. No big deal. My mom lives in India now, teaching at an engineering school, so I don’t really see her all that much, but at least I’ve got my dad.”

She can tell by the way he says it that it was a big deal, despite Evan saying otherwise. “Are your parents divorced too?” he asks. “I haven’t seen your dad around.”

She knew this would come up eventually. “Papa died. Two years ago.”

He was about to take a bite of his cone, but he freezes. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I shouldn’t have assumed—”

“It’s okay,” she says. It’s automatic saying that. She’s not sure it’ll ever be okay, really. “Lola is his mom. We look out for each other.”

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