Page 71 of Relationship Goals

My head jerks as I look up at him. His cool blue gaze, the color of the sky on a clear spring day, holds me captive. Warm fingers stroke slowly down my arm, then back up, toying with the sleeve of the black-and-gold jersey.

Hisjersey.

“What if I don’t want to have sex?” I ask him suddenly, surprising myself with the question.

I swallow, and it’s alarmingly audible.

He pauses his ministrations for a moment before his gentle caresses start again. “With me? Ever? Then we could be friends,” he says. “I like having you around.”

A laugh huffs out of me, and I relax slightly. “No, I mean tonight. I thought I did, and then…honestly, and don’t take this the wrong way”—I pause, licking my lips—“I’m freaking exhausted, and I feel bloated from cheese fries and beer.”

He tilts back his head and laughs, the kitten opening one reproaching eye at the disturbance.

I shift, not sure how to feel. “My last boyfriend would be pissed. That’s why I’m asking. He…” I stop myself, because talking shit about an ex is not the move. I may have been out of the dating pool for a while, but I’m still pretty sure that’s the norm.

“He was a fucking asshole, then, Abigail,” Luke says, no trace of humor left on his face. “It was that actor, right? The one who—”

“Yeah.” I don’t really want to talk about him. Shame curls through me, insidious and smoky. Whenever I’ve tried to grasp at why I feelashamed about my ex, it slips through my fingers. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry. Forget it.” The cat treat tube is still in my hands, and I twist the empty half around, tying it in a neat little knot.

“You used to do that on the show you were on. Knots,” he says easily.

“You watchedBlood Sirens?” I ask, surprised, but I immediately know exactly what he’s talking about.

That too-familiar mix of anxiety and gratitude that someone liked my work rears its head, a pendulum that swings farther toward gratitude as I remind myself that I’m with Luke.

Luke, who has chosen to date me, to like me, despite the utter fuckup I made of everything.

“A few times. That’s the show that bas—your ex was on with you, right? You were the best part of it.”

The pendulum deep inside me pauses its dizzying swing at his words, and I bask in that compliment for a second before picking the thread of the conversation back up.

“Yeah. That’s the show.” I brace the kitten with one hand—she’s tiny enough she fits into my palm—as I sit up and put the treat tube on the coffee table.

I don’t know what to say. I know I should explain, start to unravel this bundle of awfulness I keep shoving deep inside, but—

Easier said than done.

“You don’t have to talk about him if it makes you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean to pry.” The words are gruff but kind.

I rub the kitten’s fuzzy head, trying to sort out the tangled snarl of feelings I can’t sort out about the way everything ended after that one fateful red carpet interview.

“Maybe I should talk about it.” The therapist I went to a couple of times before giving up sure did want me to talk about it. Annoying to admit, but she probably had a point.

“We don’t need—”

“No, it might make me feel better…and I want to tell you.”

His fingers curl around my wrist, the touch tender.

I inhale, trying to sort out what I want to say. Where to begin.

“He…liked me as arm candy. He cared a lot about what people thought, and he used who I knew to make connections. He usedme. Period. It made me feel—” I clear my throat. “It made me feel shitty. Then when it all blew up in my face after that horrible interview, and everyone on the internet decided I was ungrateful, and my friend Olivia—you know, the star of the show?—she didn’t want to be friends anymore. I got written offBlood Sirens, an actual final final death, not one of the many ones where I came back to life the next episode…anyway, that’s when my ex decided I wasn’t a good look for him. That’s what he said, too.” I laugh, and there’s no humor in the sound. It’s bitter and jagged, and it scrapes against my throat. “That I wasn’t a good look for him anymore. Said I’d committed career suicide and I’d drag him down, too. So yeah, when he said things like I was selfish for not…for not feeling well enough to—” my voice cracks. “It was just normal for us.”

It wasn’t normal. I know that now. The way he made me feel was not okay.

Knowing that doesn’t make it better, though, not really.

It just makes me feel ashamed that I let it go on for so long.

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