Page 43 of Now That It's You
She laughed and Kyle realized he sounded like a fucking inspirational poster. He could think of a million adjectives to describe Meg—funny, warm, clever, beautiful, creative—but worthy had never crossed his mind.
“What the hell does worthy even mean?” he muttered. “Like it’s someone else’s job to validate your worth?”
“It’s not, I know. But I’m female. I’m human. Deep down, don’t most of us want someone to lay claim to us? To have someone love you so much they grab on tightly and say ‘Mine!’ and never let go?”
“That sounds like a motive for a restraining order.”
Meg reached out and squeezed his hand. “I can always count on you to make me smile, Kyle.”
A dull pang of longing rattled through him. His fingers were still linked with hers, so he squeezed her hand back in lieu of any other gesture he might want to make. “He did love you, Meg. In his own way. How could he not?”
“Thanks. I don’t know if that matters now, but it’s nice to hear.”
Kyle cleared his throat. “So are things still going well with your book?” It was an abrupt subject change, but he wasn’t ready to end the conversation yet and he worried she might leave if the silence stretched out. Her hand felt warm in his, and he wondered if she’d notice he hadn’t let go.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “It’s the number one book on The New York Times Bestsellers list. Well, number one on the Advice and Miscellaneous list. But can you imagine?”
“That’s great,” he said, meaning it, even if he didn’t have much of a notion what any of that meant. “I tried to make one of the recipes the other night.”
“Really? Which one?”
“The risotto. Only I didn’t have risotto, so I tried to use Rice-A-Roni. I also didn’t have white wine, so I used beer instead, and I had to use romaine lettuce instead of basil and butter instead of sesame oil and?—
Meg laughed. “So basically, you made a totally different recipe?”
“Pretty much. It was just as well. I was home alone with Bindi, so revving my libido with an aphrodisiac dinner probably wasn’t the best idea.”
“Bindi?”
“My dog. Australian kelpie. I got her at the pound a few months after Karma died.”
“What’s an Australian kelpie?”
“Picture a normal herding dog like a border collie or a heeler.”
“High energy, you mean?”
“Now picture it on crack. That’s a kelpie.”
Meg smiled. “I’d love to meet her.”
“She’d love to meet you. She loves women. Doesn’t see enough of them, so she goes bananas when anyone with boobs and no Y chromosome comes to visit.”
“My double-X chromosomes and double-D boobs will have to drop by sometime. Maybe we’ll bring you a few groceries, while we’re at it.”
“I’d like that.” And he didn’t like how his brain perked up at the boob comment. God, he was an asshole.
He remembered her telling him once how she’d learned to make fun of her own breasts as a self-conscious teen who got tired of being teased and decided to beat her tormentors to the punch. “During my scrawny high school years, I looked like two olives on a toothpick,” she’d said, and he and Matt had both laughed.
The quiet between them stretched out in the darkness, and Kyle cleared his throat again. He could hear her breathing in and out, could smell the lilacs in her hair and feel the warmth of her flesh where her fingers joined with his. She hadn’t let go yet, and he wasn’t sure if he should be the one to break the contact between them. Had anyone noticed they were both missing? He should probably get back out there, lose himself in sea of aunts and uncles and co-workers and?—
“Kyle?”
“Yes?”
“You know the other night when we said kissing would be a dumb idea?”
His brain started to spin, and Kyle held on to her hand, keeping himself rooted in place. “Yes.”
