Beautiful Mistake(39)

“Actually, not the last few weeks. Between teaching and student extra-help sessions, faculty meetings, and writing lesson plans, I’ve had to cut down a bit.”

Over dinner, we chatted away like long-lost friends. Davis was good company, and our familiarity gave me a sense of comfort—Davis had always given me a sense of comfort. When our conversation came to a lull, I could see he was thinking. It looked like he was debating saying something.

“Spit it out,” I said.

He chuckled. “You could always tell when something was on my mind.”

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

He stopped eating and put down his fork. “You said you weren’t seeing anyone?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Other than that I barely have time to breathe and most of the men at O’Leary’s are sixty-year-old retired cops, no. Not really.”

“Have you dated anyone since…you know…we were together?”

“Does one guy who was a total jerk and Charlie almost hit with a baseball bat count?”

We laughed, but Davis remained serious. “I went out with a woman for a while—Stacey. We had a lot in common and got along great.”

I felt a pang of jealousy. “Are you still together?”

“No. We broke up.”

“What happened?”

Davis looked away for a few seconds, then returned to meet my gaze. “She wasn’t you.”

I opened my mouth to respond three times, but each time I shut it, realizing I wasn’t sure what to say. Davis caught my bewildered expression and seemed amused.

“You don’t have to say anything. In fact, don’t. Let me just finish, if that’s okay?”

“Okay…” I managed to get a word out—a single one, but it counted.

“First of all, this wasn’t how I planned to talk to you about this. My plan was to have dinner tonight, charm you into remembering how great things were between us, and then take you out a few more times before I laid it all out there.”

“I’d say you went off script.”

“Yeah…sorry about that. I got a little jealous and stepped on the gas.”

“Jealous. About what?”

“Nothing. It was stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“You mentioned that professor a few times at dinner the other night, and then when you mentioned being in his car a little while ago, I visualized you… My mind just started to race a bit. I thought maybe you were seeing him or something.”

I scoffed in denial. “Definitely not.” Although the emphatic tone in my voice made even me not believe it. Obstinate denial is often the loudest confession. But Davis didn’t seem to notice.

“Anyway, my plan was, after I got you to remember how good we were together, I would tell you I’ve never stopped thinking about you.” He paused, looking up at me with a shy and vulnerable expression. “I’ve tried to move on, but every person I start to date—no matter how great they are—has one flaw I can’t seem to move past. They’re not you.”

Wow. Just. Wow. I was caught so off guard by his seriousness. I was also a bit confused.

“I don’t understand, though. When we stopped seeing each other, you said you weren’t ready for a relationship. I completely understood that because of everything you’d just come out of. You needed time and space. Yet you started dating someone not long after that. So you didn’t really need time? You just needed time not with me?”

Davis ran his fingers over his short hair. It was slightly longer than a military cut, but still neat and cropped close to his head. Again I thought of Caine. He’d frequently dragged his fingers through his thick, unruly hair when I’d done my best to frustrate him.

“You’re sort of right. I needed time not with you—because I didn’t know how to do slow. I could see a future with you, and that scared the shit out of me because I was just climbing out of a relationship I’d seen as my future at one time. When I dated Stacey for those few months, I couldn’t see things long-term—didn’t see a future—so I felt comfortable with her.”

“So you stayed with a woman for a few months because you couldn’t see a future with her. But walked away from one after only a few weeks because you could see a future?”

Davis’s laugh was mocking. “Pretty stupid. I know.”

It actually wasn’t. It sounded like a protective mechanism. If you know you can’t stop yourself from eating the whole cake, you don’t buy it at the store.

“It’s not stupid. I get it. Our timing was just off.”

When Davis and I stopped seeing each other, I was upset—even though the logical part of me understood he was right. But I’d always believed he was honest with me, that he needed his freedom. I figured if it was meant to be, it was meant to be, and someday we’d find our way back to each other. And here we were.

That someday had come.

I hadn’t had any relationship to speak of, so it should be easy to pick up where we left off.

Only…

It didn’t feel easy.

But did love always come easy? Look at Umberto and Lydia…

“Say something.”