Page 35 of Art of Love
“I left you for an hour.”
“That didn’t mean you needed to come after me.”
“I did. I want to fill in the blanks. I went to the bar on Monday night. You were sitting there by yourself drinking, and I asked you if you wanted company. You said yes. We ordered some bottles of wine, and you definitely drank more than me. While we drank, we swapped stories. You told me how some asshole called Bane stole your savings and how hard life was for you, and I told you how I walked in on my best friend and girlfriend cheating on me.”
Her head snapped toward me, and she gasped. “What? That happened to you?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t remember, of course.
“You told me?”
“I told you.”
“Hunter, I’m so sorry that happened to you. It must have been awful.”
“It was.”
She tensed, and her mouth twitched. “Was I supposed to be...”
“What?”
“The easiest lay you could find to get back at your girlfriend.”
It was easy to think that, because that was exactly what me hooking up with her looked like.
“No. I don’t need to get back at her.”
“But she cheated on you with your best friend.”
“Emma, that’s her name. She loves money. She loves stability. We’ve been on and off for a good two years. When we met, I was working at Patterson’s as a junior associate. We broke up after eight months because I suspected she was cheating on me with someone who had more money than me. Couldn’t prove it though. We got back together when I started working at Silvermans. Then she started acting weird when I told her my plans to leave and pursue art. I think you’d only want to get back at someone for cheating if you were in love with them in the first place, or if they deeply hurt you.”
I loved that she was listening and looking at me with understanding eyes. “So, you weren’t hurt? Didn’t that drive you to the bar?”
“What drove me to the bar was the betrayal I felt from my best friend.”
“Oh...” She nodded. “I get it. I do.”
“Any love I may have felt for Emma vanished the minute I saw them together, but who hurt me most was my friend.” And I still couldn’t get the image of them out of my mind.
What mattered was the act, not whether or not I loved Emma. My friend did that to me, so he would have done the same thing to me if I’d been in love or not.
“I’m sorry, and I’m sorry I didn’t remember.”
I offered a small smile. “Want to hear the rest of what happened?”
She nodded slowly and bit the inside of her lip.
“We talked, and we drank. Then I took you home, and things got heated.”
That soft rose color filled her cheeks. “So, the whipped cream part was true.”
I bit back a smile. “Yeah, that was true, but that was kind of as hot as things got because you started feeling sick.”
Her brows knitted together, and she looked down at the little patch of grass before us. She blinked, and then I watched something brighten in her eyes.
“I was sick. I ran to the bathroom and, ugh, I threw up everything I’d ever eaten since birth. You came in there and took care of me, and after you cleaned me up, you allowed me to sleep on your chest because I wanted you to hold me.”
“She remembers.” I clapped.
