Page 43 of Second Tide's the Charm
It’s complicated, that’s why I reached out. “I was, when I was kissing him. It was good, like an unbelievably good kiss, Zuri.”
“Why unbelievable?”
“Because we haven’t kissed for three years. Because I can’t stand him.”
“You can’t stand him,” she deadpans.
“Okay, I can’t stand the fact that I can still stand him after everything.”
“Better.” The crinkle of crumpled plastic comes across the line. “Is there a reason you can’t explore it instead of shutting it down?”
“At the end of the summer, I’ll be starting work elsewhere and next year, maybe a PhD. We’d be at the same point we were three years ago, needing to merge our lives, and I’m not willing to base my career options around a person who I haven’t even spoken to for years.”
“Fair.”
I lean over the railing, watching the water churn against the piers below. “But tomorrow I have to work with him again, and we’ll have an audience. Like, a live one.” I explain about the group from Charleston. “How do I work with someone I just kissed against my better judgment?”
“By questioning your judgment,” she says.
“I thought I just established I did that.”
“You said yet you keep finding yourself drawn to him,despiteyour better judgment. What if your judgment is skewed in this case? What if, instead of trying to stay away from him, you should try being his friend?”
“Adrian? The man who I dated for five years?”
“It happens.”
“Pretty sure the people who make that work aren’t fighting this physical attraction.”
“Maybe not, but you’ve already tried keeping him at arm’s length and it didn’t work. If you like him enough to kiss him, maybe there’s something there and the best thing to do is explore it.”
The thought is tantalizing. To be able to talk to Adrian again, like we used to, without worrying I’ve crossed a line. But it’s also scary how much I want that.
I must hesitate for too long, because Zuri speaks up again. “Or get what you came for and be done with him. It’s your choice. But if your heart wants to be open to him, I say don’t deny yourself.”
She’s got it backward. It would be denying myself to go back on my commitment to get over him, wouldn’t it? “How would being his friend solve anything?”
“Let me ask you this. Have you missed him the past three years?”
“Yes. But—”
“Maybe the kiss was you trying to get closer. But intimacy isn’t always physical. I get that you weren’t sure of building a life with him, but what about a life with him in it?”
Put that way, I begin to see her point. But I’m still afraid that I won’t be able to accept anything less than everything with Adrian. Regardless, it’s not a decision I could make alone, and not one that I can make today.
“That sounds terrifying and also risky, so I’m going to go with my original plan of ignoring him.”
“Ignoring the person you’re doing a highly collaborative job with?” Zuri sounds skeptical in the extreme.
“Ignoring my attraction, my feelings.”
“Ignoring left you two kissing,” she fires back.
Did it? Am I really going about this the wrong way? I can’t fathom being Adrian’s friend, not after everything, so I dig in my heels. “Admitting we were both interested in kissing each other led to the kiss. From here on out, it’s denial until that becomes our reality.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I don’t need a warning,” I assure her. “We got the urge out of our system. Now we just have to figure out how to work together like it never happened.”
