Page 54 of Meet Hate Love
Click.
“We look good together,” he said.
And even my cynical ass had to admit we did.
He took my hand in his before we crossed the dimly lit street. “Want me to send it to you?”
“Yeah.” And then, just as quickly as the feeling of how right this all felt had settled in, so did the panic. It was like we were hurtling down a Pacific Coast highway overlooking the ocean at one hundred and seventy-five miles per hour without brakes. And while the joyride was exhilarating, the pessimistic, bad-luck-tainted side of my soul knew that at any second, we were launching through the guardrails. There was no way this would not end in a fiery explosion.Boom. Ka-pow.Heart and pussy blown to smithereens.
I needed brakes. “If you had to choose between kale and chocolate, which would you choose?” I blurted.
Most guys would have stopped and stared down at me, brow raised at the randomness of that question. But Vance didn’t. His steps didn’t even falter. “For dinner or—”
“Don’t think too hard. Just at any point, some random person comes up to you and says, ‘Kale or chocolate.’ Which one would you choose?”
“Chocolate.”
Shit. Swallowing, I reminded myself the kale or chocolate question wasn’t the end all be all. I had at least one hundred other questions he could royally screw up on and reveal he was a rotten person at his core. “Okay. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? In your life?” I’d added that last bit to get down to the nitty, gritty bad stuff.
“Are we playing twenty questions or something?”
“Something…” Like, find a reason to stop myself from launching over lover’s cliff with him. “Come on. Worst thing.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Don’t tell me.” I dropped his hand. “I’ll just assume you murder elderly women and dump their bodies in the Hudson River.”
He snatched my hand back up. “The fact that that is where you went is really fucked up; you realize that?”
“This is not about me, Vance. It’s about you.”
A string of small cars and Vespas sputtered by in the dark. “Fine. The worst thing I’ve ever done was run over Mr. Snuffleupagus.”
“TheSesame Streetpuppet?”
He stared down at me with judgmental eyes. “He was not a puppet.”
“He was.”
“He was half puppet, half costume. Two men had to get in that suit.”
I stared at him, confused and a little amused.
“Look, you enjoy random words,” he said. “I enjoy random information.”
That would be a point in favor of compatibility. Just what I didnotneed. “If you didn’t mow down the puppet-costume thing, then which Mr. Snuffleupagus did you run over?”
“My neighbor’s cat.”
It wasn’t great, I’d give him that, but unfortunately, sometimes very unlucky people run over animals. It didn’t make him a criminal.
“My dad hit a deer once. Accidents happen, Vance.”
“Accidentally running over him isn’t what makes it the worst thing I’ve ever done. I reversed out of the drive, felt the… bump. Freaked out, put the car back into drive, and went forward again.”
I covered my mouth with my hand, imagining that second bump. “Why would you do that?”
“I panicked. Then I got out and saw him.” Vance shook his head as we rounded the corner of afromagerie, the stout stench of aged cheese drifting from the shuttered windows. “It was awful. I knew he was dead, which made me panic more. I got a shovel from my granddad’s shed, scooped him up, and put him in the trunk.”
