Page 112 of Puck Me Secretly

“There’s nothing between Lolita and me, nothing more than a friendship, but I can’t tell you more than that. I can’t talk about her and what’s going on with her.”

In a very nice way, he was telling me it wasn’t any of my business. “Okay.”

“This has nothing to do with us.”

“What is us?”

“What do you mean?”

I tried to formulate my answer. “I don’t know what is happening between us.”

“Do you want to have this conversation on the phone?”

No, I wanted to talk to him in person. This was an intimate conversation and it would benefit me to look into his eyes and watch his body language while we talked. On the other hand, it killed me to not know what was going on between us. I vacillated between wildly fantasizing about dating him and reminding myself that he was off limits. Somehow, it felt like if I knew where he was coming from and what he wanted, it would help prevent me from going off course.

“We probably should.”

“I suck at this.”

“What?”

“This.”

“Max, I have no hold over you, or what you do.”

“First of all, you have a huge hold over me. And secondly, I should have told you.”

My stomach was zooming all over the place. “You didn’t need to.”

“I wanted to. I still want to. But I can’t. And I’m trying to protect Lolita’s privacy and it was easier to not even bring it up.”

“Oh.” I took an uneven breath. “Max?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel better.”

“Yeah?”

“Totally.”

“What did I say? Tell me so the next time I fuck up, I can say it again.”

My laugh was breathless. “You said all the right things.”

“You’re not going to enlighten me?”

“Nope.”

“I hate that you’re alone.”

“I’m good.”

“I don’t get back until late Friday night. Saturday morning we head out of town for our next game.”

“I know.”

“Promise me we’ll find time to talk.”

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