“This from the girl that pinned over her guy in silence for almost a full decade?” Her sarcasm was biting but well deserved.
“Yes and look how miserable and lonely it made me. All I’m saying is that if a guy can’t appreciate you for how wonderful you are then he isn’t worth it and if he doesn’t want to sully your good image, whether it is real or not then I hate to say it but that just sounds like maybe he wasn’t interested. You are pretty country and he is pretty rock I mean I know I’ve been drowning in opposites attract and all that stupid nonsense for my whole life with Rule but maybe they really don’t and you just weren’t his type. I’ve seen the girls that gravitate to these guys when they go out, heck I’ve walked in on Rule with them over and over again and trust me big brains, self-confidence and ambition are not things these women bring to the table.”
She exhaled loudly. “Maybe. It just made me wonder about what I’m doing. I date, I have a pretty good time, I love living with you and I’m awesome at school but I feel like something is missing and when I see your super-hot, half-dressed boyfriend covered in tattoos looking all sleepy and satisfied I get a little burn near my heart that hurts. I think I’m lonely and not for something casual and simple. Trust me I had plenty of that when I was younger.”
I laughed a little and scraped off some of the foam of my drink with my finger and popped it in my mouth. I think the table of geeks gasped but I wasn’t sure because when I looked back up at them they were all frantically typing away on their laptops.
“So you pick a heavy metal singer to get all mushy and sentimental over? Man we’ve got marvelous taste in men.”
She laughed with me and leaned back to cross her long legs at the ankle. “I think it’ll probably fade away but in the mean time I need to get my head around moving forward without totally forgetting who I am, I mean look at you. You’re not suddenly covered head to toe in ink and sporting a face full of extreme piercings. You took all the parts of Rule’s make your own rules philosophy and used it mellow out and take control of your own destiny not turn into a new you.”
She was partly right. I figured it was probably too much information to tell her I had been seriously considering getting my ni**les pierced. Rule was always telling me how sensitive they were, how easy it was to get me turned on and all worked up and ready to blow by just playing with them and after having intimate contact on a repeated basis with someone that had piercings through strategic parts of their anatomy I knew exactly how the little pieces of jewelry could enhance the experience. It had always been Rule for me so I didn’t know what it was like to be with anyone that didn’t have barbells in their c**k and through their tongue, but as good as it was with him I had no desire to find out how it was with someone unadorned. I didn’t want them for him, I wanted them for me but I wasn’t sure I was ready to commit to something that big yet.
“He influences me, he always has but I don’t want to be with someone that only wants to be with me just to change me.”
“I know and neither would I. I think when I left home I had the idea that if I didn’t change I was just going to be stuck in that endless rut forever and somehow I lost everything, even the good stuff about the pre-Denver Ayden.”
I reached out and squeezed the hand she had resting on the table. “Maybe you’re just entering a new phase, maybe this isn’t new Ayden or old Ayden but a excellent new incantation of both. You’re fine, whoever and whatever you want to be is just fine.”
“I sure hope so. So have you seen or heard anything from Gabe?”
I shook my head and kicked back in the seat. “No. I’ve seen him on campus coming and going but he keeps his distance. Rule’s retired cop friend says he heard that Judge Davenport wasn’t happy to have his son’s name come up in open court so maybe he put a leash on him. The guys have been really good about keeping me close so I don’t think he has the nerve to go up against Rule or Rome and I’m purposely avoiding all contact with my parents so if he’s trying to enlist them it isn’t doing him any good.”
“So what’s your long term plan? Rome has to go back to playing solider soon and as much as I’m sure Rule likes keeping you close eventually it’s gotta get old. The honeymoon phase won’t last forever.”
I was worried about that myself. Right now he seemed to like hanging out at the bar and didn’t seem to mind juggling our hectic schedules back and forth to see each other and to keep his eye on me, but I agreed with her that it couldn’t last much longer.
“I just don’t know what to do. If the legal system can’t help and my own parents are working against me to keep him off my back I just don’t know. I wish he would just find another girl that is socially acceptable and forget about me.”
“I don’t know either but I’m glad you aren’t trying to handle this all on your own.”
“He’s good for me. I feel like my life is finally my own with him in it.”
“Have you told him that you’re in love with him and have been for eternity yet?”
I gulped down some of my drink and it went down the wrong tube. I hacked for a second until tears filled my eyes. “No! Are you nuts? Why would I do that? He already knows that I’ve had a crush on him since forever and I think just that weirds him out. I don’t want to put all kinds of pressure on him to feel the same about me. He wants to be together and he’s making a true and honest effort to be in this relationship with me and for now that’s good enough.”
She clicked her tongue at me and waved a finger back and forth. “If you think you hide the way you feel about him at all you’re so wrong. The feelings you have for that boy radiate out of you like a bright light. He has to see it every time he looks at you.”
I fiddled nervously with the ends of my hair. “Well he’s never said anything about it and that’s just fine by me.”
“You are so silly. You’ve been in love with this guy since you were a teenager and now you have him and you’re still worried about being open and honest with him? It just seems to me like you wouldn’t want to waste any more time.”
“This is Rule we’re talking about. He’s unpredictable and doesn’t deal with emotions in a typical way. I don’t want to scare him off by getting too intense too quickly. I’ve seen what he does to people that push him and it isn’t pretty.”