Page 54 of Bending The Rules

“Um, hi…” I looked up to see a young woman standing at the table with a friend, looking nervously back and forth between us. “I just wanted to say that y’all are such a cute couple!”

“Oh thank you,” Toni said, before I could open my mouth. “But we’re not a couple, just friends.”

“But you’re so cute together!” the woman said. “All that crazy chemistry on stage, you can’t be serious?”

Toni shrugged. “The man wants what he wants.”

At that, the humor drained from the young woman’s face, and she tossed a scowl in my direction. “Oh. Well… you sounded great,” she said to Toni. “You have a good night.”

“Thank you.”

As soon as the woman and her friend were gone, I turned to Toni, who was sipping on her drink again. “What the hell was that about?”

“What the hell was what about?”

“That,” I persisted, nodding my head in the direction the woman and her friend had taken. “Telling her “the man wants what he wants.” What was that supposed to mean?”

“It wasn’tsupposedto mean anything Justin. It means what it means.”

“Which iswhat, exactly? Because it sounded to me like you told those women I didn’t want you.”

Toni’s expression was perfectly blank as she looked me right in the face. “I’m sorry, was that a misrepresentation of the truth? Because that was definitely the impression I got from you screwing me in my parent’s attic and then telling me you “didn’t think a thing between us could work”. Or does that mean something else in your head, Justin?”

“We were on the same page,” I countered, eyes wide. “You said yourself that it was something we were just getting out of our systems!”

“Afterwhat you said.Afteryou referred to what happened as “a bell we couldn’t un-ring”. I was following your lead!” By this point, her chest was heaving, and there were obvious tears in her eyes. She angrily swiped them away, then turned her back to me as she finished off her drink in one swig.

“Toni,” I said, grabbing her hand, but she immediately pulled it away. “I don’t understand what I did to upset you.”

She let out a dry chuckle. “Of course you don’t,” she said, sliding her chair back to stand up. “I don’t understand it myself. I need another drink.”

Before I could say anything else, she’d walked away. A few seconds later, while I was still sitting there confused as hell, EJ, Nikita, and Rich came back to the table, laughing about the fun they’d had – the fun I’d completely missed – on the stage.

And I didn’t even know what the hell had just happened.

I answered Kita’s question about where Toni was, and then the next act came on stage. The rest of my group got hyped up with laughing and cheering them on, but I couldn’t focus on that. All I could think about was how upset Toni was about me supposedly not wanting her.

Should I follow that down the logical path that… she wantedme?

You’re thinking about this shit too hard, bruh.

I shook my head.

This was yet another “new” thing. When it came to my interactions with women – girlfriends through high school and college, my marriage to Cat, and the women I’d dated after my divorce – I wasn’t the type of guy to overthink shit. Before, in my friendship with Toni, I never had to wonder what she was thinking – she was probably thinking the same thingIwas thinking. And even if she wasn’t, we were usually within a few pages of each other.

Thisshit was a whole new genre.

I was seeing her differently already, but now that we’d slept together, it was even harder to figure out. This type of confusion between me and Toni was dangerous, uncharted territory.

After several long minutes had passed without her coming back to the table, I got up to go find her. I spotted her sitting at the far end of a bar, stirring an almost-empty drink with a straw.

I slid into the open seat beside her, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t look up, but after a few moments, I heard her say, just above the noise of the crowd, “I’m sorry for losing it on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

No shit.

“Don’t sweat it. Just don’t stop talking to me another seven years because of it.”

“Too soon,” she said, through clenched teeth.

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