Page 86 of The Wedding Situation Romance

“You were married?” she asks.

“No. Not exactly. I was…about to pop the question. Our relationship was…she was everything I wanted. Or so I thought. But I guess it wasn’t what she wanted,” I say, taking another sip.

“You had a ring?”

“A ring. A proposal plan. It was big, too. Rooftop big. I hired a band and set up a party for after she said yes. Catered. Rented out. Practically broadcasted. And then, right before I went into my speech, she broke up with me. Casually. Like she was telling me she didn’t like the iced coffee in her hand and wanted to get something else.”

“Oh my gah…” Quinn says, sitting up straight.

“And that was that,” I tell her, finishing off my wine and reaching for the bottle.

“That’s awful,” she shakes her head. “No wonder you…you’re…” she trails off.

“Yeah, well,” shrug. “It wasn’t just that, though. It was my failed relationship. It was Drew’s. It was seeing divorce cases time and time again, showing just how blindsided people are. How love, or chemistry, or whatever it gets labeled, can totally fog people’s perception of what’s real. And then, when they least expect it, there’s a left hook. I’ve watched it so many times…enough times to kind of just…strip me of hope.”

“I’m so sorry, Reid,” she says. “And here I was accusing you of just being pessimistic. You had reason. You still do.”

“I do,” I agree, leaning forward and placing a hand on her leg under the water. “But I also have reason to believe it can be good. Real. Worth something…”

She bites her lip. And while I would love for this conversation to take a different turn, one that leads to my hand traveling further up her thigh and beyond, I also want to keep talking. To know what’s going on in her head and heart.

“What about you?” I nod, keeping my hand firmly on her knee.

“What about me?”

“Why are you such a romantic?” I ask.

“My mom died.” She answers and I flinch.

“Jesus. Wait…what?”

“When I was ten.”

I open my mouth to ask the questions that come naturally at this point (when, how, are you okay?) then realize all of them sound extremely insensitive. So instead I reply with a simple, “Damn.”

“Yeah,” she smiles wistfully. “It was rough. But my dad was a good dad. He did an incredible job raising me, actually. My mom’s sisters helped out a bit with the girl parts, but mostly it was him. He worked hard, but made time for me. And he’s always had a very strict no work talk rule. He never let anything about his job or his clients or his cases, or his day pour into our personal life.”

“He didn’t vent at all,” the question comes out more like a statement. An impressive statement. I’m not entirely sure which sector of the law field he works in, but I know that regardless, it’s no small task to switch hats like that.

“We went bowling,” she says, and one of my eyebrows arches up so quickly and so high I’m worried I just shoved the hairline up an inch.

“Bowling?” I echo.

“Bowling,” she laughs. “He loves bowling.”

“I hate it,” I say with a cringe. “It’s always in a janky building with dim lighting and fried food and cheap beer and everything feels dirty. Not to mention the faint scent of cigarette smoke from the 90s that they were never able to scrub out of the walls. It’s almost like…it was the thing to do in the 90s and they never updated anything but the prices.”

But Quinn just laughs again. “That’s what he loves about it. It’s nostalgic and simple. It’s like stepping into a time machine.”

“And your dad is a big-shot lawyer, right?” I ask, and I know how that sounds. Like I’m hinting that a man in my field would never. But Quinn is unbothered.

“He is. The grossness of it all never bothered him. We always brought hand sanitizer so we could eat between turns. Or we just went with the hand for this rule,” she says.

“Hand for this?” I ask.

“Yes. Your right hand is for bowling and your left hand is for eating.”

I shudder. “Okay, I’ve heard enough.”