Page 33 of Dating Goals
I look down, realizing I’m still death-gripping both bunches. “Oh! No. I mean, yes. Let’s go somewhere…not here.”
We both hurriedly buy our groceries—Griffin somehow making the purchase of milk and eggs look like a GQ photoshoot—and exit the market together.
“The fountain?” he suggests, nodding toward the town square.
I nod, suddenly aware that I’ve forgotten how to form actual words. The fountain isn’t running now that it’s November, andthere’s a light dusting of snow on the ground, but we sit on the edge anyway, our grocery bags between us like some kind of barricade.
“You go first,” Griffin says after a painful silence.
“No, you,” I counter, because apparently, I’ve regressed to playground communication skills.
“I insist,” he says with a small smile that does funny things to my insides.
I take a deep breath. “Fine. I’m sorry I punched you in the jaw. It was a reflex. Not that I go around punching people regularly. It’s not like some weird hobby of mine or anything.”
Griffin touches his jaw, grinning. “I deserved it. I wasn’t thinking straight. It’s all but forgotten.”
“Oh.” I feel a strange disappointment settle in my stomach. Forgotten? Just like that? Of course it meant nothing to him. He probably goes around almost-kissing girls in every country he visits. I guess when you’re a famous hockey player, you have girls throwing themselves at you all the time. “Right. Good. Glad we cleared that up.”
“Your right hook is impressive though,” he adds. “You should have been a hockey player.”
“Well, the Alpine Wrestling Club had to be good for something,” I joke, then immediately regret it, because I’ve never been in any wrestling club. Why am I like this?
Griffin shifts, adjusting his beanie. “Look, it was a weird night for me. Earlier at the game, some fan went totally berserk and sucker punched me outside the arena.”
“Oh my, I’m so sorry.”
He waves it off. “No, no. That’s not why I brought it up. I just…I was looking for somewhere quiet to unwind after all that. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”
Here it comes. The awkward letdown.
Of course. He wasn’t trying to kiss me at all. He was just emotional and probably drunk, despite what he said about being sober. I clutch my grocery bag tighter, the brie probably turning to mush under my death grip.
“And then everything happened so fast with those guys at the bar, and you were amazing with your kung fu moves, and I was already kind of…” He trails off, gesturing vaguely. “And then, when you walked me to my car, I wasn’t…I mean…Not that I…unless you…But if not, that’s totally…”
I want to crawl into the frozen fountain and die. He’s trying so hard to let me down gently without actually saying he doesn’t want to kiss me. Just like every other man who’s ever met me.
He stutters, shaking his head. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable position.” He squints at me like he wants me to finish his sentence for him.
“Right,” I say, my voice unnaturally high. “That’s…that makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Absolutely,” I agree too quickly.
Maybe he wasn’t about to kiss me at all. Maybe he was actually just checking my face for lint.
“You probably just want to be f…f-f-f…
“Friends?” I say slowly.
“Yeah. Okay. Sure. I completely respect that.”
Is that what he thinks I want? That I didn’t want him to kiss me last night? The irony that I’ve replayed our almost-kiss approximately 473 times in my head isn’t lost on me.
A comfortable silence falls between us, which I promptly destroy by blurting, “Well, good thing really, since I am practically spoken for.”
Griffin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Practically spoken for?”
