Page 88 of Sounds Like Love

“It’s about us, isn’t it? Yeah …” He answered his own question, and it was easier to just let him. He trailed off, straightening his fork again, even though it was already perfect. “I guess I just sort of realized that I had a different experience of that night than you did. I moved on and you—you stayed there. Metaphorically, you know.”

For a long time after he walked away from me on the beach.

Our dinner came, and I looked down at the crab cake and risotto. It hadn’t changed since we last ordered it on senior prom night, butIhad. Whatever bitterness I once felt when he’d left, whatever wishfulness I’d hung on to, was nothing more than the ghost of a memory.

And I knew with absolute clarity, the song had not been about Van.

Just as I knew I didn’t want to be here.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “But I got over you a long time ago. I’ve just been too afraid to try something new.”

I studied his face, honest and open, and that was how I knew hewasdifferent. We both were. So I reached out my hand across the table, and he took it, and squeezed it tightly.

“I accept your apology for the girl I was nine years ago,” I said. “We both deserve something different now. I don’t think this is going to work out.”

His eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “You don’t want to try?”

“No.”

He took his hand out of mine. “But—why?”

I debated whether or not to tell him. “Does it matter?”

“No,” he replied truthfully. We sat there for a moment longer, though neither of us made a move to touch our food, and then I asked, “Can we … ?”

“Please.” And he raised his hand and signaled the waiter. “Can we take this to go?”

Flustered, the waiter looked between the two of us, wondering if it was the service, but I explained that we had places to be. He took the plates away to get them boxed up. Van made a move to pull his wallet out of his back pocket (he always kept it in the right one—that never changed), and I said, “Oh, no, let me get this.”

“But I invited you to dinner …”

“For old times’ sake,” I replied, taking out my card from my purse.

He snorted a laugh and sat back. “I won’t say no to that.”

So I took the check, and once we got our food back in cute little boxes, we left together. He was parked nearby and asked if I wanted a ride home. I told him I’d rather walk, though I stressed it was not because of him. The night was warm and windy—my favorite kind—carrying with it that same telltale scent of storms on the horizon. It was a good one for a stroll.

Besides, I wasn’t going back to my house, but he didn’t have to know that.

I spun, walking backward down the sidewalk toward the center of town. “I guess I’ll see you around?”

He shook his head. “I’m heading back to Boston in the morning. Getting out before the hurricane comes in.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know it’s not going to hit.”

“I won’t take my chances,” he called back to me. “Good luck out there, Joni.”

“You, too, Van.” I waved goodbye, and he waved, too. Perhaps the Jo that he knew would’ve kept walking backward until he turned away, because she wanted to find herself in his gaze as long as she could. But tonight, I turned around first.

My heart pulled me somewhere else, faster and faster, and before I knew it, I was running toward something new.

Chapter33Wild Horses (Couldn’t Drag Me Away)

SASHA ANSWERED THEdoor in that same awful Hawaiian shirt from yesterday, and yellow swim trunks. His hair was down, curling around his face in half-moon twists. It was shaggier than I realized, and a lot wilder, too, which must have been why he’d kept it so short while in Renegade. Bad boys with springy dark curls? He’d been misjudged since the beginning.

“Bird?” he murmured, blinking, as he glanced back at the clock in the foyer, and then at me. It was well past nine, and way too late to be making house calls. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes—I mean, I think,” I replied, nervous. Why was I so nervous? I twirled a lock of hair around my finger anxiously. I hadn’t braided it back yet, though I’d walked so long in the wind it was probably a wild, knotted mess by now.

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