Page 47 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

He chokes out a laugh. “The Dr. Pepper Thief? Really?”

“I don’t hear you denying it.”

His eyes dance across my face with playful intrigue. “What is it that you want to know, PBG?”

My heart dips. Everything. It is a response that seems to simmer in my veins. I drag my gaze out into the city lights, considering.

“Why do you want this partnership, Quentin? Why are you really here?”

I can feel more than see him tense. There’s a shift in the air between us.

“Have you ever done the wrong thing for the right reasons?” he asks vaguely.

“Objection, your honor: non-responsive,” I say. “I hate when you answer my questions with questions.”

He gives me a look that points out that I am in fact also avoiding answering his questions. I roll my eyes.

“Yeah, I mean, of course I have,” I offer. Not that I’m willing to broach any of those topics with him. “Do you think it was the wrong choice, coming back here?”

“No,” he says. “If I hadn’t come back, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, wearing… what are you wearing?”

He eyes my midriff in a smirky way that makes my skin come alive beneath the cut off concert tee.

“Fuck off,” I murmur with a laugh. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, okay?”

“I’m glad you did. It’s been the highlight of my whole day. You look like you came here to kick my ass, but, ya know, sexy.”

I smile demurely. “Watch it, Maxwell. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“Almost? Damn, I’m losing my touch.”

I catch sight of those dimples as he smiles. The honesty in his voice runs its invisible fingers down my arm. That coiled feeling twists itself more tightly through my center.

“Why’d you steal a car?” I say.

Somehow, he doesn’t look surprised to hear this. He accepts this non-sequitur as if he’d been expecting it much sooner than today.

“There are many theories,” he offers.

“Such as?”

He sucks in a breath. “Such as I was at a party and got rejected by a girl, so I stole her car to get back at her. I guess you’d call that angle ‘vengeful’.

“Others speculated that I was drunk and entitled and joy-riding – one might say ‘classically rebellious’.

“Or maybe I was trying to ruin my family’s reputation – so, you know, ‘spoiled’. Take your pick.”

“That’s quite the list,” I say. I have to admit at various times, I’ve been ready to assume all of those things about him. “What’s the truth?”

“The truth is my friend was drunk at a party, and she was trying to drive. I took her keys, drove her to my house so she could sleep it off on my couch without her parents knowing. She woke up before me, and I guess her boyfriend was blowing up her phone, so she panicked. She didn’t want to admit to him that she’d been hanging out with me, and she didn’t want to admit to her parents she’d been drunk. So she made her way home and claimed her car must’ve been stolen from her friend’s house. The police located it in my driveway a few hours later.”

His nonchalant expression sums it up. He’s not trying to convince me, but somehow, he does.

“Did you tell them what happened?”

“I tried,” he shrugs. “I realized pretty quickly the truth doesn’t always matter. There’s the truth, and then there’s what people believe. That second thing is usually more important.”

I blink at him, wondering if he’s plucked this from my very soul.

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