A large group walks in then, more guys than girls, and I secretly hope they don’t sit next to us. They’re in good spirits but seem a little rowdy. Thankfully, they grab Operation and Trivial Pursuit and push a bunch of tables together in the corner, near one of the TVs. They end up making good background noise as I look back at Ryan.
“Mark and I went out for three years.”
“Must have been serious,” he says. “Why did you guys break up?”
“In the end, I think we both wanted more, but we were having problems for a long time before that. I felt like he was cold at times and he thought I had trust issues.”
“Why would he think that?”
“Why do you think?” I ask poignantly.
A silence spreads between us, hidden and sticky, like one of those mousetraps you slide behind the fridge. Neither of us moves for fear of getting caught.
Ryan takes another swig of his drink. “Do you wish you guys could have made it work?” he asks a few seconds later.
“Sometimes. If I’m having a bad day, then I think, yeah, maybe I should have tried harder. Mark was nice and we could have had a happy life.”
“And if you’re having a good day?”
“On good days, I remind myself that there were major reasons why we were both willing to walk away.”
Ryan nods and takes a slow sip of his beer.
“It’s all right, though. What I learned from Mark is that when it comes to forever, you should end up with someone you’re psyched to be with.”
“Because if you’re not psyched, then what are you?”
“Heading for breakup city, apparently.”
Ryan smiles and it warms me up from head to toe. I wish it didn’t.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think there’s something to be said for ending up with someone you’re content with instead of someone you’re obsessed with.” His tone is friendly and easy, juxtaposing the weight of his words.
“But you can be in love with someone and not be obsessed with them,” I counter.
“You think so?”
His gaze dares me to tell him he’s wrong. I know he’s thinking about us. How we were too consumed for our own good. How we turned everything up to a boil when we should have let it simmer.
“What about you?” I quickly ask. “Did you ever get close to settling down?”
Ryan watches me for a couple of seconds and is about to answer when my eyes are drawn to the patio doorway.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, sucking in a violent breath.
My gut feels like it’s nose-diving into the floor. I drop my torso down and scrunch over the table, trying my best to hide behind our Jenga wall and the frame of Ryan’s shoulders.
Mark is standing in the entrance of the patio. Mark, as in not-psyched-to-be-with-me, we-broke-up-three-months-ago Mark.
“What are you doing?” Ryan sounds confused and slightly concerned as he gazes down at me, unaware that he is now my human shield.
“My ex is here.”
“The one you just broke up with? Where?” He cranes his neck to search the room.
“Stop! Don’t look,” I seethe, digging my fingers into his knee under the table.
“Ouch! You don’t have to stab me over it.” He pivots a bit, pulling his leg free from my death claw. “What are you scared of? It didn’t sound like you two ended on horrible terms.”
“We didn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see him right now.”
“Okay, and when would you want to see him?”
“I don’t know, but ideally I’d be holding a Pulitzer Prize certificate and wearing an evening gown.”
A tired kind of smile appears on Ryan’s face and after a moment of hesitation, his hand moves. I think he’s reaching for his drink, but he’s not. His hand slides down and pushes back the hair that’s falling across my forehead. I don’t move as his fingers graze my neck and linger near my ear.
“You know, Sullivan, no girl ever made me laugh as much as you do. That always bothered me.”
His words shock me out of my somewhat panicked state. “Is that laughing at me or with me?”
“With you.”
“Thanks. My agent always says I have a way with dialogue.”
Now Ryan does move his hand to reach for his drink. “Are you done hiding? Are you going to go say hello?”
I peek around his shoulder to watch Mark and some woman sit down at a table across the room. They didn’t even take a board game. The sacrilegious pair. “I can’t go over. He’s with someone.”
“So what?” Ryan asks easily. “You’re with someone. Tell him I’m your boyfriend.”
I give him a flat glare. “I don’t need you to be my pity date.”
“I wouldn’t be your pity date. We’d just be pretending. What’s the harm in making him a little jealous?”
“I don’t want to make Mark jealous and he’s not like that anyways.”
It’s true. In all our years together, Mark was never jealous where I was concerned. But then, maybe I was suspicious enough for the both of us. Mark said it wasn’t in his nature to act that way, but part of me always assumed that he just didn’t care about me enough to get territorial.
I start to sit up and try to adjust to the very real possibility that I’m moments away from facing Mark and his new girlfriend. “Okay. I’ll just go over there very briefly and say hi.”
“If you don’t want to say that I’m your boyfriend, you should at least tell him we’re on a date. I dare you.”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m no good at it and there’s no point.”
“I guess times really have changed. Quiet as you were, the Kara Sullivan I remember never backed down from a dare.” Ryan finishes off his beer and places it softly onto the table, so as not to disrupt our game.
The college girl in me smiles at his cockiness while the woman in me gives
