Page 102 of Bad at Love

“It was personalized with my cum.”

“Yep, there it is.” I shake my head in disbelief.

“I haven’t done it in weeks, though.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. We aren’t dating.”

I don’t mean for the words to come out harsh, but they do. I feel bad for it the moment I see Storm’s face fall. He turns onto his back and looks up at the sky.

“Right.” His word is soft, sad.

Maybe I should apologize for what I said, but I don’t. Maybe my tone was off, but I’m not wrong. I asked him what was going on between us and got nothing in response. Though we’ve falleninto this sort of routine where we act like we’re dating, nothing is official and every time I bring it up, he shuts down. So now I’m ignoring it. This will come back to bite me in the ass, but if I speak my mind, and he leaves…

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Huh?” I say, thrown off by his question.

“We don’t know a lot about each other. Not simple things. So tell me what your favorite color is.”

“Blue.”

“That’s so basic.”

“Okay, sapphire blue,” I amend. “It’s the perfect mix of light and dark. It’s exactly what I imagine blue to look like when someone says blue. What’s yours?”

“Shamrock green. It reminds me of good luck, which I always felt like I didn’t have. It gives me hope.”

That’s a perfect reason to choose a favorite color, and I love that he’s digging deep.

“Okay, how old are you?” Storm questions.

“Thirty.”

“I’m—”

“Twenty-six. I remember from your application.”

“Right, yeah.”

“What is your favorite number?” I ask.

“You would ask that.” He huffs a laugh. “I don’t know. Sixty-nine?”

“That’s sobasic,” I repeat his words from earlier and he laughs again. When he doesn’t say anything, I continue, “Mine is 1729. It’s the first taxi-cab number.”

“What the hell is a taxi-cab number?”

I turn to face him, frowning. “Did you go to school?”

“Of course I went to school. But I learned normal things like how to read and add numbers. I didn’t do number history.”

“Number theory,” I correct. “And a taxi-cab number is a number that can be expressed as the sum of two positive cubes in more than one distinct way.”

He blinks a few times before saying, “Part of me wants to ask why that’s interesting to you, but the other part knows I won’t understand it.”

Now I laugh.

We stay outside for a few hours, enjoying the night and going back and forth with random questions. I learn so much about Storm that night, and it feels like we’re moving in the direction. A direction that I want. But I’m still not sure he’s ready to take that leap yet—and maybe he never will be.

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