“I don’t know what the problem is. Like, I know what the problem is, but I just want to date somebody and have nap dates, and have a bunch of snuggling, but also kissing, and good sex. Is that too much to ask for?” I huff out, grabbing my glass of water and chugging.

  It’s sad that I don’t have anyone to talk to about this but Brody—he’s leaving in January.

  Hell, I’m not going to talk with Mom about this—the one person in my life who always emphasized education over boys until I was old enough to get married apparently. I took it to heart and ran with it, focusing on the one thing, like I do, like Max said I did.

  Man, I’m gonna go and kick her door down and beat her up. As soon as Brody gives me an answer that I like.

  Brody swings his head over so he can face me, and he’s looking at me like he used to, like we belong to each other, like he’s the safe haven, the pillars I can lean on when I need to, a shelter from the storm.

  “Who wouldn’t want to go on a date with you?”

  I hold up my hand, wiggle my fingers. “Shall I count the ways?”

  Brody tilts his head to the side, like an inquisitive puppy, and I die a little on the inside. Just a little bit. “You’re perfect in my eyes.”

  I lean back into the booth, ignoring my racing heart. “Jesus,” I snicker. “I didn’t order gouda, but I guess I’m getting slathered in cheese.”

  Brody’s smile is a mile wide, and his laugh is my favorite sound in the world and I’m here and he’s here, and it’s going pretty great? “You bet.”

  I cross my arms over my chest, watching him watch me. “So? Give me your best advice. I’m gonna go on Tinder or whatever app one of my cousins suggests.” I frown when I mention the words cousins but keep on going. “What? Why not?”

  “It’s kinda rude, don’t you think, to speak about other men with your fake boyfriend?”

  I shake my head and roll my eyes again. I swear, my face is going to get stuck that way a lot sooner rather than later. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “So you had a fight with Vick? Or was it with Max?” Brody asks, and it’s another knife to the heart, that he can see right through me when I’ve gotten so good at hiding every little thing.

  I hike my shoulders up to my ears, like I’m preparing to get hit, and forcefully push them down, forcing myself to relax. “They’re both pissed at me.”

  “Both? Shit.”

  I smirk at him and pick up my menu, using it as a shield and hiding behind it like we’re in that scene from Grease.

  “I still know you’re there even if I can’t see you.”

  I bite at my bottom lip. “Yeah, well, mind your own business. I’m trying to make a decision here.”

  “I had the gyro pita last time I was here, nearly died with how good it was, if you wanna try that.”

  It does sound good, but I’m not taking one of his recommendations, not when he doesn’t want to help me out. Objectively, I’m attractive to some guys, so it’s the personality that might be the problem—how closed-off do I seem? Why is that so bad? How hard is it to get someone to open up? What kind of opening up do I want?

  An unlocking of a door or ramming through a wall? Using a crowbar or a pass code that I’ve given out?

  I pick out a random plate (with a salad because rice pudding for dessert) and place my menu down. I find Brody looking at me, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, not sure whether it wants to be a smile or not. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what? What is it? I got something in my teeth?”

  Brody shakes his head, placing his menu down and putting his hands over it. Our waiter comes over and takes our orders and menus and now there’s nothing left to do but stare at each other.

  “Tell me more about your life back home—in Philadelphia, yeah?”

  Brody nods, eyes flaring a little in surprise.

  “Yeah, my parents talk a lot about you, too, apparently. You know how my memory works, details usually stick.” I shrug it off, but I can’t help but notice that he looks pleased. Unfortunately, it looks good on him, and I have this dumb urge to want to make him keep looking at me that way.

  Why, why, why? Why I can’t I leave him behind in the past, where he’s meant to be?

  Because maybe he was always meant to be part of your future…

  I get to hear about his life, about his teammates, some who sound like assholes, others who sound hilarious, and all those other characters in between. I learn about his apartment, complete with complementary pictures off his phone. I learn about his life there, his neighbors, one of a little boy who played catch sometimes with Brody before he got hurt, and I learn that like me, he didn’t have too many friends, other than the guys on the team.

  A lot of the guys on his team are married, have kids, and Brody always talked about being the odd man out, how the wives would get together and try to pin him down with a date, and there’s some hilarious stories about meeting a couple of men before he explicitly told them that he was interested in women only.

  We laugh about his awkward first dates, and the way Brody gets quieter and quieter, his stories finally coming to an end when we finish up our meals and we order our dessert (rice pudding, duh).

  Mr. Petros comes by, making sure everything’s okay, that we’re enjoying everything. The old man beams when we tell him it still tastes just as good as it did almost ten years ago, and he thanks us before going to another table and talking to other customers.

  I always liked that about Mr. Petros—an immigrant from Greece, he taught himself English and he originally used to work in the kitchen, perfecting the dishes before he was able to hire more and more people.

  He’s famous in our corner of town, still being one of the last original owners, and still going strong with how many people are in the joint.

  “I haven’t come here in forever,” I muse, leaning my head onto my hand, my elbow planted onto the table, waiting for my rice pudding. “I missed it. I even forgot how good the food was.”

  “You were always good at cooking, though. Why would you come out here if you didn’t need to?”

  I shrug. “It’s nice having someone else feed me.” I sigh again, thinking about the conversation I’m going to have to have with Vick and Max—separately. If I have to see the both of them at the same time, I’m going to jump out the nearest window and make a run for it.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asks, wincing at the question, since he already did just ask me a question. Heh. I nod. “Why were you so upset before? It’s not because of what we’re doing, right?”

  I shake my head. “Max laid down some harsh truths about yours truly, and it’s a hard pill to swallow without a glass of water.” I shrug again, not wanting to divulge all the rest of my flaws with him. I’m still trying to work it out.

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time. How do you see me?” He blushes again and my heart kicks against my chest at the sight. I could always fluster him whenever I least expected it.

  “Not physically. Just…do I come off as a bitch? Like someone you can’t trust? Like, when you first saw me when you came into the office for the first time all those weeks ago—what did you think?”

  “I was surprised at first, when I realized it was going to be you. Thought it was going to be just my luck to come to your broken and bruised ten years after I left,” Brody says, nodding to himself.

  I tilt my head at him, nodding along for him to continue. I have an odd feeling that he isn’t telling me the entire truth. Not that he owes me that. He owes me nothing.

  “And despite the initial shock…” Brody grins, and I find myself smiling back at him, too. “You looked like yourself, like you always did to me. I don’t really know what you want me to say, Amber.”

  “Would you date me?” I ask, pointing at myself like he doesn’t really know who we’re talking about already.

  Brody nods, cheeks blooming with another blush and it’s really cute, really cute.

  “Okay, thanks. But would you keep dating me?”

  Brody nods again, more adamant this time. “Yeah, obviously.”

  I slump. “What’s so obvious about it? When you leave, my parents are gonna be on my ass about settling down, again. I swear, I hate being an only child, it’s the worst.”

  “It can’t be that bad. Granted, I’m my parents’ sole focus since John moved across the world and stayed there, sure. Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that.”

  I point at him. “Look, you’ve moved out of the old neighborhood, you’re living your life in America,” I say, as if I’m not a six-hour drive away from New Jersey myself. “Doing shit, living,” I flap my arms around for emphasis. “And I’ve been here…stuck. Just…stuck.”

  Where’s the rice pudding? I need it.

  “How are you stuck? You love your job. I know you do, don’t lie.”

  I squint at him. “Are you trying to suggest that I’m a sadist?”

  “Why are you constantly throwing shit like that at me? I understand that I hurt you when we were eighteen, Amber. I get it, and I still regret it, hurting you in that way without even a proper goodbye.”

  “Why didn’t you say goodbye? That text message was all basically ‘I can’t do this anymore’ with zero explanation and then I couldn’t even see you to figure out what the hell went wrong. Didn’t I merit a goodbye, Brody?” I ask, pressing forward, leaning closer, as if I can catch the words right out of his mouth with my proximity. Yeah, right.

  “Why didn’t you call and tell me? I would have waited for you to come back, maybe,” I say, appalled at myself.

  If the past had gone a different way, would I even be the same person I am right now? Would I be this closed off, burying myself in work since I feel like it’s the only thing I know how to do right?

  “Waited? For me? Come on.” Brody looks more and more uncomfortable by the second, and I pounce on it.

  I frown at him. “Yeah, I would have waited for you. You didn’t even give me the chance to decide for myself.” I almost slam my hand down on the table, but as secluded as this booth is, we’re still in a public place and I am a professional.

  So I rein it all in, take a deep breath, shove down that lingering hurt and pain and what ifs down in that dark place that hasn’t seen the light of day in a long, long time.

  Our waiter clears his throat, and conversation stops, pressing hard on the brakes, all squealing the tires until we’re both leaning back, the only indication that we were both leaning closer, almost touching.

  The rice pudding is piled in a high ice cream dish, topped with cinnamon. The smell is mouth-watering, and not even the reopening of old wounds is going to put a dent in my appetite for this spectacular dessert.

  I grab my spoon and stuff some in my mouth, and it’s just as good as I remember, creamy and sweet, and everything in between. The food brings back old memories of the two of us sitting in this very booth, sharing a rice pudding when I didn’t order my own, and Brody giving me all of it by the end.

  “You were always really sweet to me back then. It’s super sad for me, because it basically means I’m going to die alone knowing that you were the nicest and sweetest boyfriend I ever had, but I didn’t even get a phone call.”

  His eyes are stormy now, his mouth set in a grim line. “I did, I called you. I promise I did.”

  “So, what, my parents never told me?”

  Brody shuts down, an invisible wall between us. “It’s not my place to say.”

  “Okay, so my parents never told me, why didn’t you keep on trying?”

  Maybe they wouldn’t have told me. I was heartbroken, and a bit of a ghost for six months. All I knew how to do was work hard in school, take summer classes so I could not think about being left behind, about a future that felt like it was stolen from me.

  What the hell was I thinking back then?

  “I was told that you were dating someone else.”

  I gasp, fisting my hands on my thighs, pressing deeply into the muscle tissue, hard enough to bruise. “Yeah, right. In what universe would you leave me behind and I would start dating someone else?”

  “How can you not see how bright you are, how much you shine?” Brody shakes his head, rubbing at his face, not even touching his rice pudding, while I continue to eat my feelings at this given moment in time. “Why wouldn’t you date someone else, someone better?”

  “This is stupid,” I grumble, eating some more so my words come out garbled. “You’re ruining my dessert.” He’s ruining my heart, but the dessert is the least of my worries. “I don’t know why we’re hashing out the past right now. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It all matters. Why did you even agree to do this with me anyway?”

  I sigh, swallowing down my pudding. “I hate looking at my parents and knowing I’m not enough on my own, okay? It’s hard to deal with that, especially around the holidays when they expect marriage proposals and shit—they have socials, yeah? You know how parents do that shit, compare the fruit of their loins with those of other people’s. I’m a spinster career-woman, and they are not okay with that.”

  “I’m sure they don’t think that way, Amber.”

  I shrug, sighing around my spoon. “I don’t know. I think they do, but I haven’t outright asked them, and they’ve been hinting at it in a passive-aggressive manner ever since I graduated. Even if they got a phone call from you and it never got through to me, I wouldn’t have dated someone else right away.”

  I don’t know why it’s important he knows that. I loved him, as much as I was able to at the time, and I’m not going to gloss over it, even if I wish I didn’t remember it so clearly.

  “You were my first love, that doesn’t just go away after a week, a month. And, what the hell? Are you saying I’m too good for you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Brody huffs out a smile. “After all that, that’s what you take away? All right, Amber Prewitt, you’re better than me, in every single way imaginable.”

  I nod at him, turning the snark up to an eleven. “Sounds about right.”

  Brody huffs out another laugh again, picking up his spoon finally and digging in. He eyes me eyeing his rice pudding, and he just ends up pulling it closer to himself. I laugh, pretend to go at it with my spoon before Brody lets me grab some for my own, just like I used to.

  It feels better now that we’ve cleared the air somewhat, as much as we’re going to clear the air, ’cause right here, right now, I’ve decided that I’m going to change my life.

  I’ve been smacked upside the head with the harsh reality of my shortcomings and I’m going to make a change. I’m going to keep moving forward, I’m going to be a better person, fake-date Brody, and have him by my side until January hits.

  There is loads of time until then, oodles and oodles of time until the New Year comes to kick my ass and remind me of all the new goals I want to set out and accomplish for the next three hundred and sixty-five days.

  So he did try to contact me, and that’s good, I guess. It gives me a reason for the pain I felt all those years ago, having taken it too hard. Maybe I worried my parents, maybe they thought something was off with my mental health, that I wrapped up so much of my identity around a boy I loved, back before I knew what love really, really was.

  It’s a shame, I think, that I haven’t loved since then, really loved in the way I read in books and have seen in movies.

  Almost as if I’ve been waiting for Brody to show back up in my life again, for the threads of our lives to cross once more, knot us and our futures back together.

  Maybe I’m grasping at straws, maybe I’m trying too hard to find a sliver of happiness after being shown the ugly side of my reflection by Max.

  I don’t know.

  I just know that being here with Brody? It’s not so bad as I thought I was going to be, not at all.

  Not even a little bit.

  ELEVEN

  “You want to go for a drive?” Brody asks, right before we head out of the restaurant.

  “You ended up buying me food, and now you want to take me for a drive? Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask, zipping up my coat, stuffing my hands in my pockets, looking for the gloves I know I stashed in there this morning, but I’m coming up empty.

  “Amber, I know, I know I was a dick back then, but I don’t have any ulterior motive when it comes to you.”

  “He says as we fake date each other so we can get our parents off each other’s backs. Sure, sure,” I say. I watch him hang his head low, pinch the bridge of his nose as if I’m the one who’s being exasperating here.

  “I forgot how very stubborn you are.”

  “Yup, looks like that hasn’t changed. You were saying?” I prompt, already burning up from the heat blasting in the lobby of the restaurant, and too full and sleepy to really argue.

  “Let’s go for a drive down Lakeshore,” he offers. “We can judge everybody’s Christmas lights.”

  “Why do you want to do that with me? Are we going to take a picture or something? Is that it?”

  Brody sighs, shoulders slumping. “I just want to spend time with you.”

  I squint at him. “Because you need to get out of the house?”

  “Jesus Christ, Amber, do you want to go on a drive or not?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why we should go for a drive. And I want to look my best if we’re going to be taking a picture.” I don’t even know what I’m saying, only that going on a drive with Brody is making me feel all squirmy and excited and nervous at the same time.

  “Because it’s fun, because yeah, it’ll get me out of the house, sure. Whatever you say, Amber, whatever you say.” He starts to turn to head out of the restaurant, towards the squeaky doors that lead us to the outside.

  “Wait for me!” I yell, stumbling after him. “I’ll willingly go in your car with you for an indeterminate amount of time, sure. But I get to pick the music.”

  Brody snorts, opening the door for me and waiting for me to pass him by. “As if that’s a chore. I know you’re not going to blast Christmas music.”