Page 69 of The Problem with Perfect

Connor laughs. “Oh come on, I was just teasing.”

“Bullshit.” I glare at him. “You expect us to believe that?”

His smile grows forced, and his eyes narrow in my direction. “Some people will believe anything you tell them.”

A ripple of pain slithers through my body, and I can’t hide it on my face. I stand up, pushing my chair back with my knees and moving to shove it back into the table.

“Sorry, Stace. I’m going to need to cut this coffee short.”

Her face reflects her distress at my leaving, but I don’t change my mind.

“I hope you two have a nice day. Feel free to give me a call next time you want to do a girls’ morning.”

I walk away, feeling emotionally beaten down by just a few words, but then suddenly, I feel a warm hand in mine, and when I turn, I see Rusty at my side. He gives me a gentle squeeze, and we walk down the street together.

* * *

We’re sitting on the back deck of my parents’ house, sucking on popsicles, when Rusty finally asks, “Do you wanna tell me what that was about?”

I shake my head, letting my hair fall like a curtain separating us. “Not really.”

Rusty scoops up my hair and pushes it behind my shoulder, tucking some of it behind my ear. Then he uses one finger against my chin to raise my head back up and meet his eyes.

“Will you tell me anyway?”

I sigh, nodding and taking a bite out of my popsicle to stall.

“You probably remember me mentioning that last summer, I tutored Connor in math. He’d failed a class and needed to take it over summer so he didn’t fall behind and not graduate on time. It was the first time we ever spent any real, solid time together. Before that, it had always just been a kind of crush from afar. He used to flirt with me a lot when he’d come home from school during the summers, and I guess I just always thought we were building toward…something.”

I bite into my popsicle, the sweet strawberry flavor in such contrast to how sour I feel inside.

“He told me he thought I was beautiful and he wished he’d paid more attention to me when we were younger, started saying these things about…” I pause, feeling even more embarrassed. “…about what it would be like when he came home from college. All these bullshit things about us, together, like he saw some kind of future. And I was stupid enough to believe him.”

Rusty wraps his arm around my shoulder. “You weren’t stupid,” he says, his tone warm and kind.

“It feels stupid, especially because I slept with him before he left to go back to school, as if it was some kind of grand thing for us to share, something special. It was awkward and uncomfortable and he was only focused on himself, which I thought was maybe a thing that I didn’t know about sex. I thought maybeIwas bad at it.”

He snorts. “You’re not. Trust me.”

My cheeks flush at his proclamation. “Well it felt that way, and when I tried to talk to him about dating, he kind of brushed it off, like he was going back to school and needed to focus on his classes and graduating. It sure seems like he found the time to date, though, so his comment earlier was a dig at me being stupid and naïve, giving him my virginity because of a bunch of bullshit I thought meant something.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe I waseverattracted to him.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes, finishing off the last of our popsicles. It feels good to tell someone about Connor and the emotional struggle I’ve been facing since last summer, but there’s also this sense of failure I’m dealing with. It’s embarrassing, because as reassuring as Rusty is trying to be, it’s hard not to feel like I was incredibly dumb to believe anything Connor said to me.

“I feel like I just had this idea of what it could be like, this perfect kind of love story, you know? We’re both from small-town families, and I was thinking maybe we could work together a bit. My parents love his parents, and how cute would it be to have had this crush on him for forever and to have him finally notice me.”

I glance at Rusty, finding him watching me with an unreadable expression.

“You don’t have to tell me how stupid it sounds,” I continue, shaking my head. “I can hear it now. I thought I was in love with him, but it turns out I never even really knew him.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he says again. “I think you just focus too much on things being perfect.”

At that, I chuckle just a little bit. “Doesn’t everyone want something perfect?”

“No, actually. They don’t,” he says, surprising me. “Besides, life rarely gives us anything perfect anyway. I mean, look at my life.”

I wince inside, realizing how insensitive it was to say that. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s just a simple truth, you know?” He lets out a sigh. “I had a perfect vision for my life once, and it did not include moving back to Cedar Point.”

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