Page 70 of Love, Luck & Clusterf*ck

“Don’t you want to talk about you for a while?”

“I’d rather hear about you.”

“At least tell me something basic first. How old are you? You’ve never told me before.”

“You’ve never asked.”

“I’m asking now.”

“Twenty-seven.”

“And I suppose you already know my age.” He nodded. Of course, it was in my damn file.

“I believe I answered your question,” he said. “Now you can answer mine.”

I glanced around for either Christa or Adam, but I couldn’t see them. In fact, I couldn’t find anyone I knew. It was like Stephen and I were the only ones in the place. I finished off the rest of my drink.All right, here we go.

“Dre and I have always seen other people. We’d be together for a while, then split up to explore other options, I guess you could say. Then we’d come back together again and start all over. There was never any jealousy and it just worked for us. I wouldn’t even call it an open relationship because what we had was never even that. I don’t know how to explain it other than unconventional. Or complicated, depending on how you look at it.”

“And these other people you’d see in between, they didn’t care either?”

I shrugged. “It’s not like we were dating them or anything.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. I think I’d made it clear enough thatit was just fucking. I didn’t think I took advantage of the times apart quite as often as Dre had, but I’d still participated.

“So, you’ve never been serious with anyone before?” he asked.

“Have you?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

I sighed. Okay, we’d get back to him another time. “The serious thing? Never until now. Dre wanted to try it out. In fact, he brought it up for the first time on Saint Patrick’s Day. The same day I met you at Lucky’s.”

He rubbed his jaw and my eyes were drawn there, then up to his lips. Then up to his eyes. I was wildly attracted to him; I’d never once lied to myself about that. I’d thought him arrogant at first, but now I didn’t know what to think. But I did know that I’d never had a friend quite like this before.

“That makes sense for what I overheard that night.”

“What did you overhear?” I tried to think back, but other than Christa not being too supportive of Dre and me, I couldn’t remember what all was said.

“Enough to make me question if you’re truly serious about him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You said that he wanted to try out being in a relationship, but what did you want?”

“I agreed, didn’t I? I accepted his offer to be exclusive. So what does that tell you?”

I wrapped my fingers around the empty glass. I wasn’t in the mood for another one, but I wish I had something for my mouth to do besides talk. Thinking about what I really wanted to do with my mouth pissed me off. Why couldn’t I have met Stephen even one day earlier? Not sure if that would’ve mattered, but it would have been nice having the option. There was still the whole temporary boss thing, but he wasn’t going to be in charge of my department forever.

Not that anything would’ve happened between Stephen and meeven under the best of circumstances, but again, options were good things to have. Argh. I squeezed my glass harder. I felt like I was backtracking. I’d always had options, too many options pulling me in every which direction. I wanted to be different now. I wanted to lock in on one thing for a change. I didn’t want to continue doing things the same way, and that was why I’d said yes to Dre.

“Would you like to hear what that tells me?”

He leaned in closer, his hands nearly touching mine.

Hands, Perry. They’re freaking hands.

“If I say no, would that really stop you?”

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