Page 11 of Love Me Boldly

Dinner wasa strange mix of awkward silences, smooth conversation, and the most incredible food I’d ever tasted. My steak was so delicious I would have dreams about it, and Graham gave me another surprise by adding lobster tails to our entrées, something I’d never consideredeverordering. I’d never been in a restaurant where it was on the menu. My salad had almost forty topping options to choose from, and the entire dinner was an experience. If I were the kind of girl who journaled every major experience in her life, I’d record this one in detail.

It was Graham who kept the conversation flowing, and while he shared bits and pieces of himself, I got the sense he was keeping it pretty surface level, which helped me do the same.

I told him why I was a finance major—because of the stability. He told me he’d played hockey his entire life, had loved his high school coach, and wanted to inspire others the way he’d been inspired. Science came easy for him, so that’s why he majored in it. It was hard not to feel a twinge of something warm when he talked about coaching. Most of the guys I met either had no direction in their lives, had no desire to make a better life for themselves than where they came from, or had dreams of playing professional sports, and that was all they talked about.

The comfort I felt through it all slithered beneath my walls. Somehow, slowly, his easy manner and mildly flirtatious smiles and teasing disarmed me. I blamed him for why I found myself asking the one question Ineverasked simply because I never wanted to have to answer it.

“What about your parents? What’s your family like?”

The words were out before I could suck them in faster than I’d eaten my ribeye.

“They’re parents.” He shrugged, but the softness in his eyes told the truth.

“Good ones?”

Why was I continuing this? At some point, these questions would come right back around to me, and then the ease of the night would drop like a weighted balloon.

“They’re old, overprotective, and also, I guess, kind of great.”

Kind of great. I got the sense he was minimizing how much he liked them in the same way Tracey tended to do when she was around me. Like because I had such crappy ones, she was loath to talk about how much she liked hers. This was the same hesitancy, but the guy had seen me kicked out of a bar and berated by a grown man, so he had to know mine weren’t the best.

I wasn’t even quite sure I cared. I never had before. I’d spent my entire life being judged by my parents’ actions, but that was Deer Creek, and the judgment typically stayed there.

I didn’t need more gossip or news about me spreading. I was still putting last year’s local headlines behind me, and thankfully I’d been able to go mostly unnoticed on campus.

“Can I ask you something?” Graham asked.

“You can ask anything you want.”

“But you might not answer?”

“It’s always a risk.” I grabbed my water with lemon and took a sip. Ice cubes clinked against my teeth, making me shiver from the sudden cold sensation.

“You knew that guy at the bar that night.”

Of course he’d bring up Mick. The chill from the ice spread further through my veins. I should have remembered this was coming, yet I’d been so focused on dodging questions about my family, I’d forgotten how we’d met.

“That’s not a question,” I teased and tried to keep it light, but inside, my heart was racing.

This was it. The last of my free meals.

Graham chuckled and shoved his floppy hair out of his face. “He didn’t seem to like you very much. I’m just wondering how that’s possible.”

It still wasn’t quite a question, but at least there was an easy answer to this. At least a rumor of it. And if he didn’tknowwhy I was hated, then he hadn’t looked into me any further than my school and work schedule. “There’s a rumor in town that way back when, Mick wanted my mom, and she chose my dad instead. He’s carried a grudge ever since.”

Considering Mom took off, and Dad became a drunk and refused to let me talk about her, I was never able to get his perspective on that rumor, but since Mick had seemingly hated me since the day I was born, it made sense.

“Wow. That seems like a long time to hold that kind of grudge.”

The fact that Mom disappeared made it stranger, but my guess was that Mick was arrogant and delusional enough to believe that if Mom had chosen him, she would have stuck around.

“Mick’s that kind of guy.” I gave a halfhearted shrug. He’d seen the man.

“And you’re from Deer Creek, then.”

“Born and raised. Still live there.”

“You commute?”

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