“What happened in college between you and Michele?” She crossed her arms.
“What?” he said, blinking his eyes.
“Were you involved with her?”
“No.”
“Did anything happen with her?” she asked once more, and this time she felt like the lawyer, turning over the question again and again until the witness answered.
“What do you mean?”
“Do I need to spell it out?”
“Yeah. You do,” he said firmly.
She pretended to mime sign language as she spoke. “Were you involved with her? Because I’m getting a serious vibe from her that she’s tripping down memory lane from the days of old,” she said, now holding her hands out wide. “College this. College that. Clay in college. It’s like she’s holding on to something in college with you.”
“We kissed once. We weren’t involved.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, but it slammed into her, and she nearly stumbled backwards. He reached for her, but she held him off. She was fine. She didn’t need him.
“Ohhhhh,” she said, long and exaggerated. “Right. Of course. A kiss. That’s not involved what-so-fucking-ever.”
“What the hell, Julia? I was never involved with her. She’s a friend. Not an ex-girlfriend.”
“You kissed her,” she said, jutting her chin out at him. “That makes her kind of an ex, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t think that constitutes an ex.” The low-key way he answered her pissed her off, because he truly seemed to believe his own line of bullshit.
“Okay, let’s get technical and legal about it then, if you’re going to be like that. So I’ll walk you through what constitutes being involved. When you’ve kissed someone, and I ask ‘Were you involved with her?’ that’s the moment when you say ‘Yes, I kissed her once, Julia, and it meant nothing to me, and we’ve been great friends ever since then, and I have drinks with her every Thursday night and talk about you, but don’t worry that I had my tongue down her throat because we’re just friends.’ It’s not at the f**king poker game I’m losing that you tell me,” she said, practically spitting out the words through her anger.
“Are you pissed because you’re losing, or are you pissed that I kissed her?” he asked her through narrowed eyes.
Anger flared deep inside her. Anger over that woman. Over Charlie. Over the three thousand miles between her and Clay. Anger, annoyance and frustration all fused into a cocktail of heat and rage as she grabbed his shirt collar. “Thanks for pointing that out, because it’s kind of both. I have a shitstorm of trouble waiting for me back home if I don’t win,” she said.
“That’s not true. I told you I’d help you,” he said, and his hand moved briefly towards his pocket, but then he stopped.
“Why do you keep reaching for your phone? That’s not your style.”
“Flynn is out with the Pinkertons. Just wanted to make sure it’s all going well,” he said, then shifted quickly back to the matter at hand. “But I wish you’d stop worrying about the game. You’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t want you to help me, though. I want to win on my own,” she said, and she was damn near close to digging her heels into the sidewalk. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he understand how important this was to her? But everything had collided right now. The game; Michele; the possibility of truth and lies.
“And you will.”
She pushed her hands through her hair. “I just wish you’d told me when I asked you in San Francisco if you’d been involved with her. I asked you if Michele was your ex and you said she was just a friend, and always had been. But now it turns out you kissed her,” Julia said, but she knew deep down it wasn’t the kiss that bothered her. That wasn’t why she was upset about Michele.
“It just wasn’t important, but it’s not as if you’ve been totally honest with me.”
“I didn’t lie, though. I told you there were things I couldn’t tell you.”
“I feel like we’re parsing words here. I don’t understand why it matters that I kissed her. Hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but I’ve kissed other women before.”
“I know,” she hissed.
“So why does it matter so much that I kissed Michele once? I don’t even think about her like that.”
“Because. Because she is here, all the time. Because she sees you. Because I don’t get to.”
“We can change that,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, all the harshness banished from his tone.
“How? I live far away and she lives a block away,” she said, dropping her face in her hands, hating the sound of her own voice. “Ugh. Look what you’ve done to me. I’ve become this whiny woman pining away, and she’s lovely and smart and funny, and it pisses me off that she can see you any time she wants.”
He gently peeled her hands away from her face, tucking his finger under her chin and lifting her gaze to his. “I don’t feel a thing for her. I didn’t tell you when you asked if she was an ex because I don’t even think about her like that. I don’t think of her as an ex. It was one kiss, one time, one drunken night. Nothing more. I don’t think about her because you’re all I think about. To the point that I’m sure no man has ever felt this way for a woman. You shouldn’t be jealous of her. She should be jealous of you.”
She stared at him, narrowing her eyes. “Seriously, Clay? Cocky much?”
“It has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with how I feel for you,” he said, moving his hands down to her arms, holding her tight. “Every woman should be jealous of you because of how I feel for you. Because no man has ever wanted a woman like I want you. No man has ever craved a woman as deeply as I crave you. And no man has ever fallen this hard and this fast for a woman.”
Her heart stopped, then thundered furiously against her chest, wanting to leap into his hands. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, all her anger draining away. “I’m a jealous witch. It’s just hard for me to see her and know you’re so friendly, and that she’s so in love with you.”
He froze like a statue. Then seconds later, though it felt like a minute, he looked at her as if she’d just spoken Russian. “What are you talking about?”