Page 106 of Story of My Life
She poked me in the ribs. “Excuse me. Are insults always part of the Cam Special?”
“Only when my date is obviously lying to herself and me. What was he like?”
“Smart. Cultured. Charming. A great dresser.”
“Did he make you pay on the first date?” I prompted.
She glanced down at her lap before looking back up at the sky. “I asked him out, and he let me pay.”
I cleared my throat pointedly as I balled up my wrapper and threw it in the bag.
“In his defense and as you already know, I am very persuasive.”
“You’re not that persuasive, Trouble.”
She shifted her gaze to me. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.” I slid my arm around the back of the seat so it rested just above her shoulders.
She stiffened, and those big brown eyes focused in on me, two pools of emotion that put me out of my depth. Acting on autopilot, my fingers slipped under her curtain of hair and tucked it behind her ear.
“Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re playing Date Night Cam. Nice,” she said. She didn’t draw back, but she did bat her lashes at me.
I didn’t know if I was playing or just going with the moment. “Zoey said he screwed you over.”
She wet her lips. “Listen. You know how you opened up about feeling like you abandoned your family when really it’s clear that you’re willing to give up everything for them at the drop of a hat? So your haunting confession just kind of cements what a good guy you are underneath that prickly exterior?”
I stared quietly at her.
“What I’m trying to say is my story isn’t as…heroic.”
“You try to hold the pillow over his face until he stopped snoring?”
Hazel blinked at me and then snort-laughed. “No!”
“Then I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“I think it’s better if we just keep this focused on you since this is your favor to me,” she said quickly.
“You don’t have to open up if you don’t want to. It’s just this conversation thing is a two-way street, and I feel like you’re just putting up traffic cones and detour signs. Which guarantees your date isn’t going to open up.”
“Damn. You’re really good.”
“No one lays a better guilt trip than Pep Bishop. I learned from the best.”
“You’re not even interested in this,” she said, waving her hand between us.
“Listen, Trouble. You’re the one who asked for the date experience. You don’t get to pick and choose what parts you experience. I shared. Now it’s your turn. And for the record, I’m very much interested in your story.”
That took the breath right out of her lungs for a beat.
“Ugh. Fine. I spent most of our marriage being so impressed with him that by the time I realized he was nothing but a classy dirtbag, I was too embarrassed to put up a fight. I let him walk all over me, even in the end. And then I was so ashamed of not being able to hold my own happily ever after together, I basically hid the divorce from everyone.”
“What kind of a classy dirtbag?”
“I don’t want to get into the details because it just makes me feel like an idiot all over again. Jim was a literary agent, like Zoey. They worked for the same agency. That’s how we met. He represented literary fiction. You know, the serious stuff.”
“Is that what he called it?”
