Page 9 of Make Me Love You

Luke was quiet. “Food’s up!” came a voice from the kitchen. Luke disappeared through the swinging door, then reappeared and set the plate down in front of him.

Thank God. Eli was starving. He took a huge bite of the burger and nodded his head appreciatively.

“So.” Luke leaned casually against the counter, his blue eyes deceptively wide and innocent. “What does Claire think about all this? About you working side by side with Emma?”

Eli couldn’t answer with his mouth full of burger, so he settled for a lethal glare. Claire Miller was his girlfriend. She lived in Piedmont, the next town over.

He finished chewing, took a swig of beer, and said, “Claire doesn’t know anything about it. For one, because I never told her about Emma. That’s all ancient history that Claire doesn’t need to know about, seeing as Emma hadn’t said one word to me in eight years until today. And for two, I’m ending things with Claire, so it doesn’t much matter what she thinks about it anyway.”

“Huh. When did you decide that? I thought things were going well with you and her.”

“Been thinking about it for a while,” he said. “She and I are both busy. It was hard to make time to see each other.”

All true. They were busy, and the kicker was he wasn’t sure he cared. But his ambivalence toward Claire had become painfully sharp when he saw Emma soaked by the rain. There was nothing ambivalent about those feelings. And while he didn’t believe love and sex had to go hand-in-hand, it was a completely different thing having those feelings for someone when you didn’t have them for your girlfriend.

Luke cocked his head, looking at him. “What’s it been now? Six months?”

“Four.”

“Right.” Luke grinned. “It’s always four.”

His brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you don’t do casual dating, but you don’t do serious either. You get exclusive with someone immediately, and then four months later, you’re done. No holidays either, I’ve noticed.”

“I was with Claire on Easter.” Eli dipped a fry in ketchup and popped it in his mouth.

Luke snorted. “That doesn’t count. I mean holidays like Thanksgiving. Christmas. Valentine’s Day. You don’t do those.”

“Coincidence.”

“Nah. You just don’t want to get serious, and holidays are serious.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get serious because I haven’t met the girl I want to get serious with. Did you ever think of that?”

“I did think of that, as it so happens, and do you know what I decided?”

Eli eyed him over the rim of his soda. “Any chance you decided it was high time you minded your own damn business?”

“No.”

He sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

“The problem isn’t that you haven’t found the girl you want to get serious with. It’s that you think you have but she wants nothing to do with you.”

Eli wasn’t about to ask who he was talking about. Emma. There was no one else. Luke had been around when everything went down, and he knew how things were now between them. But he also knew how things were before, because he was there for that, too. He knew how Eli had felt about her, before everything went to shit. That didn’t make him right, though. Eli couldn’t deny he felt some kind of way about Emma, but he had never put much stock into the idea of soul mates or one true love. He hadn’t fallen in love since Emma, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He just hadn’t met her yet.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a reply.”

Luke grinned. “I don’t need dignity, man. I’m beneath that.”

“At least you’re self-aware.” Eli raised his burger. “Food is good today.”

“Yeah, Priscilla is amazing.” Luke braced his arms on the counter and leaned forward. “So.”

Eli raised his eyebrows. “So?”

“So you’re really going to do this? Work side by side, every damn day, with a woman you think you’re in love with who happens to hate your guts?”

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