Page 12 of The Wife
“Hey Ellie, just hear me out.”
“Okay.”
“Look… I know was kind of an ass to you last year…”
“Kind of?”
“Okay, I was a major ass. I’m not making any excuses or anything but I was going through a lot of shit with my dad… and I was angry. A lot. I don’t know why I took that out on you. But I wanted to say… sorry.”
Wow. Bobby MacPherson was apologizing. That was something I never thought would happen. Which meant I had to be classy.
“Apology accepted.”
“We’re cool?”
“We’re cool.”
He smiled and nodded his head. “Then maybe I can buy you a beer?”
“She prefers wine,” Jake said, coming up behind him. He moved around Bobby and put the glass in my hand. Then he stood next to me and basically glared at Bobby until Bobby got the message.
The message I read wasback the hell off. Bobby must have gotten the same message because he eventually did.
“Right. See you, Jake. Ellie.”
“See you, Bobby.”
Jake waited until he’d left to growl in my ear.
“What the hell did he want?”
“He actually came to apologize,” I told him. “You know, all that stuff happened a year ago. He could have grown up.”
“Maybe, but I’m not buying it. Watch yourself with him. He’s got a thing for you.”
“A thing for me? Hardly.”
Jake looked at me then with a hard expression. “Ellie, why wouldn’t he have a thing for you? You’re beautiful, smart, funny… and he looks at you… Well, let’s just say I know the look. He’s got a thing for you.”
OH. MY.GOD.
Jake thought I was beautiful and funny and smart. But beautiful came first on the list. Which as a feminist I should be affronted by, but as a woman I knew how important that was to guys.
It made me think maybe I had this all wrong. For the last few months, since the storm… the kiss, I thought he wanted to go back to the way things were before. Because of that I had been trying really hard to not make any moves.
Seriously, just because Ithoughtabout sex with him all the time, didn’t mean I wanted him to know I thought about sex with him all the time. If he did want things to go back to the way they were, then it would make him uncomfortable to know I was super attracted to him.
Mostly I pretended that I was cool with our situation. But what if that was the wrong approach? What if he was waiting for me to let him know what I wanted? That I was okay changing our relationship?
Today felt special. For the first time, we were acting like a legitimate couple. Doing things like a couple. We had the nice romantic dinner, now we were hanging at Pete’s.
He made Bobby go away in a quick second, and now he seemed…
Jealous?
“I still think you’re crazy,” I told Jake. “But since I don’t want to talk about Bobby anymore I’ll let it go.”
“Good idea,” he grumbled.
