Page 86 of Reckless
“It’s in your DNA.You notice one thing.All men do it.It’s the pattern.You bring a girl a gift, wrapped up nicely and then I’m the bitch if I don’t melt.I’m ungrateful and difficult because I don’t give points for trying because the real reason all this is done is to find an underhanded way to get into my heart.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You don’t get to say that.”
His eyes sharpened.“I think I do.”
“No.”I stepped closer to the table, closer to him without exactly meaning to.“You don’t get to tell me how a gift lands when I’m the one receiving it.”
He stopped in a different way then, like I was breaking him.I was breaking me as my entire body pinged with warning signs.
“And how,” he asked quietly, “does it land.”
I could say I loved them and show tears.I was probably going to cry when this was over and part of me wanted to be grateful about it all.
But if we were doing this, doing it, all I’d have was glasses.So if I was going to spend another forty-eight hours beside this man pretending things we were dating, then at least one of us had to start saying the uncomfortable parts cleanly.
“It lands like pressure,” I said.“It lands like you care about me and it’s not all some big lie.And when it ends it gives you the option to say you were nice to me.”
His whole face shifted.He looked at the box.Then back at me.
“That,” he said after a beat, “wasn’t my intention.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that like it helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
For one second neither of us moved.Then, very softly, he said, “I don’t know what to do with that.”
That sentence hit me harder than the gift itself.
A man standing in a salt-warm garden telling me he’d wanted to do something nice and now had no idea what to do with that nice had not landed cleanly.
I looked away first.
“I don’t either,” I admitted.
The confession made the whole moment worse and better.At least the truth was out where both of us could see it.
He rested one hand on the stone table but made no move toward the box.I wasn’t sure what I would have done if he’d tried to take it back.Or leave it with me.
“I didn’t buy it to control you,” he said with a sigh like he wasn’t sure what else to say.
His voice had gone lower.
“I bought it because I crossed a line and thought you might accept something small as an apology.”
That sentence slid straight into my soul and made everything worse.
“You cannot say things like that to me after giving me a gift and expecting me to stay balanced.”
“I’m not expecting balance.”
I stared and maybe I should have stepped back.Instead I stayed where I was and said, “I don’t know what to do with you when you’re sincere.”
Something almost like amusement flashed through his face and was gone.
