Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 103102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
He would think that, too.
But it’s also what Mom thought, and I hate that I want to hug him for saying it. I hate it as much as I hate how much I love Casablanca. But it’s different, because Casablanca is a great movie (gender issues aside) and River is another guy who thinks Lexi will save him. “You sound like Mom.”
“Do I?” He seems pleased by that. “What was she like?”
He moved in about a year after she died. But he was around a few times before that. His mom visited his grandma, and River was with her. “You never met?”
“Once, I think,” he says. “When I was really young.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“Only her smile.”
She did have a great smile. My stomach feels light. I want to talk about it. I’m desperate to talk about her, at any time, in any situation. But with him?
I guess with him.
I need to keep the conversation alive somehow. “She was passionate.” Stormy, sometimes, but there’s no sense in focusing on the bad. “She did everything at a hundred percent. Lexi takes after her that way.”
I glance at him for a moment. His dark eyes study me. There’s no sexual intent in his gaze, but my cheeks flush anyway. There’s something about his stare. An intensity. An honesty. A desire for more honesty.
Right now, he’s not thinking about Lexi.
Right now, he’s listening to my story. I need to say more if I want to keep his attention.
I swallow hard, put my focus back on the road, and push the words from my lips. Honesty, intensity, truth. All that artistic bullshit. That’s what holds his attention.
“She was like you,” I say. “An artist. A musician. That’s how she met my father. He saw her singing and fell in love.”
He laughs. “Really?”
“That’s the story they told us a million times, but it’s hard to imagine Dad at the dive where she used to play.”
“Well. Opposites attract.”
Interesting. “You believe that?”
“To a point. Does your app disagree?”
“How do you know about my app?” Oh— “Are you a member?”
“No.” He laughs. “Grandma told me about it.”
My shoulders drop. “The app isn’t about attraction.”
“What is it about?” he asks.
“Compatibility.”
“Right.” I see him nodding in my side vision. “Grandma mentioned that. But your parents were married for a long time, too,” he counters. “Until death.”
“Because they wanted the same things,” I say. “That’s part of being compatible.”
“Even as opposites?”
He makes a fair point. I understand what he’s saying, and it’s true. My parents didn’t always get along perfectly well—they had disagreements like any other couple. So yes, there had to be attraction in the equation that kept them together during the times when compatibility wasn’t quite enough. But that doesn’t mean attraction trumps everything, which is the side of his point I do not agree with.
“Yes,” I say instead, because it’s not a lie. “Even as opposites.”
He’s silent for a moment, a moment that stretches too long, and just as I’m sure he’s about to hit me with another good point—one I might not be able to shrug off so easily—he alters course.
“What happened at the bar, when they met?” he asks. “Did your dad show up in his three-piece suit and ask the bartender to list their scotch selection?”
“Probably,” I say. “Probably lectured the poor guy on the differences between scotch, whiskey, bourbon, and rye.” I drop my voice to the tone Lexi and I used to use to imitate Dad. “A bartender should know liquor. Scotch and bourbon are types of whiskey. Scotch is made from barley and aged. Bourbon is a mix of grains, mostly corn.”
I catch him smiling.
“Oh,” I say. “You didn’t actually want to know.”
“You couldn’t stop yourself from telling me,” he accuses with a laugh.
Maybe. Probably. “Did you know?”
He doesn’t answer. “Would you throw the drink in the bartender’s face if he used the wrong type of whiskey?”
“If I asked for a perfect Manhattan and he didn’t use rye?”
He laughs again. “Can you imagine the horror?”
Damn. That was a trap and I fell for it. “I’ve never thrown a drink.”
He smiles big now, amused, playing me like a fiddle.
Why is everyone so much better at charming people than I am? I’m supposed to be charming him here, not the other way around.
“What’s the rest of the story?” he asks. “With your parents?”
“Why? Do you want to see how I compare to my father?”
“I know how you compare to your father,” he says. “I’m curious about your mother.”
Huh. No one suggests I’m anything like my mother. The lightness fills me in other places. All the places. “He was there, at the dive bar,” I continue, “drinking inferior scotch. And, to add insult to injury, the bartender served the drink on the rocks. Scotch, on the rocks! The incompetent fool!”
River laughs, and it warms me inside. Because my distraction is working, of course. That’s all it is.