An Ex for Christmas(53)

The statement is so sweet, so unlike him, that I think I’ve imagined it. The fact that he won’t meet my eyes tells me that I haven’t.

I launch myself across the cab of the truck, planting kisses all over his face and neck. He laughs and tries to push me off, though the effort is halfhearted.

“Can we please eat?”

“Fine, fine,” I say, pulling back and plopping back into my own seat. “But remind me why we’re eating out in your truck when there’s an, oh, what’s it called . . . a restaurant a few feet away?”

“That place sucks,” he says, accepting the paper plate I hand him.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. The owner and head chef’s a real dick.”

“Mmm.” He wrestles with the wine bottle and corkscrew I hand him, pouring us each some wine in a plastic cup.

“For real,” I say around a mouthful of pasta once I’ve loaded both our plates. “Why are we car-picnicking?”

“You’re supposed to think it’s romantic.”

I swear as I drop a piece of pasta on the passenger seat and pick it up with my napkin. “Very.”

“I don’t like eating in front of my employees,” he says after a moment.

He sounds a little embarrassed by the admission, and I glance over. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Most of the recipes are mine, half the time what I cook is mine. It feels . . . weird eating it with an audience.”

Vulnerable. That’s what he means by “weird.” It feels vulnerable.

“You’re eating in front of me.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He gestures with his fork toward my boobs, and I glance down to see a glob of cheese.

I sigh and get out yet another napkin and clean up the mess, although mostly I just smear oil around. “I’m usually very elegant on dates.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him go still, then give me a half smile. “That what this is? A date?”

“Well, not a very good one,” I say, gesturing around us. “There’s no candles and music.”

He reaches out, punches the radio. Nancy Wilson’s iconic “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” starts playing.

“Better?” he asks.

I smile and dig back into my pasta. “Much.”

We eat in companionable, easy silence. The food’s delicious, the wine’s amazing. The only thing that keeps this moment from being perfect . . .

I set my plate aside and turn to Mark. “Erika talked to me.”

He shrugs and spears a tomato with his fork. “She’s a bartender. That’s her job.”

“No, I mean, like . . . cornered me in the bathroom and talked to me.”

Mark’s fork stalls halfway to his mouth. Then he drops his fork and sets the plate up on the dash with an annoyed groan. “I don’t suppose she just wanted to borrow lipstick?”

“I think she still has feelings for you,” I say quietly.

“Yeah.”

I feel a little pang at the easy, matter-of-fact way he says it. “Has she said anything about wanting to get back together?”

“Yeah.”

Another pang, stronger this time. “Have you thought about it?”

He doesn’t say anything, and it feels like a knife in the stomach, even though I know I should be happy for him if that’s what he wants.

“She cheated on you,” I say, because the thought of my friend going back to that sort of relationship . . .

He takes a drink of the wine. “It’s more complicated.”

“Um, you told me you caught her and Doug in your bed. That’s brutally simple.”

“Yeah, and it sucked, but she and I were . . . I’d broken up with her a couple days earlier.”

“What?” I turn in my seat to face him more fully. “Why didn’t you mention that the other day when you were bashing Doug’s face in?”

“I already told you I didn’t punch Doug because of what he did to me.”

No. He did it because of what Doug did to me.

“So you and Erika weren’t even together.”

He exhales and rests his head on the headrest. “It’s complicated. I’d told her I wasn’t sure things were working out. She was pissed, asked that I take some time to think about it. I reluctantly agreed, but then the thing with Doug happened, and, well . . . that made it easy.”

I wince at Erika’s misstep. “She begged you to reconsider and then slept with someone else?”

“She was hurting,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t love it, but I get it.”

My eyebrows lift. “That’s very . . . big of you.”

He turns and gives a slight smile. “You seem surprised.”

“Just trying to put the pieces together.”

He reaches over and picks up the plastic container holding the brownies. “Want?”

I do, and yet I’m pretty sure he’s trying to distract me, and I’m not having it.

“Did your breaking up with Erika have anything to do with me?” I ask.

His arm goes still, his head snapping up. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” I say in a rush. “Just something Erika said, but she was probably just weird because she figured out we were sleeping together—”