The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating(29)

He started to respond, his lips parted and his brows knit as if he was about to impart something profound. But then he snapped his mouth shut and pressed both palms to his eyes.

"I'm having a hard time with the fact you're hanging out with the firefighter," he said from behind his hands. "It's really fucking with me right now."

I rolled my eyes and took a swig from my water glass. This would've been the perfect moment for wine to appear. I had to deal with Ben complaining about Rob over the weekend and now I was dealing with Rob complaining about Ben. In all my fantasies about being the object of dual affection, I'd never once accounted for the time and energy I'd put into project managing that affection.

And it wasn't even dual affection, not really. Ben was an epic flirt and nothing more. He talked a big game and he had swagger for days, but much like his home improvement prowess, I didn't think there was anything behind any of it. He was grieving and his periodic displays of possessiveness were likely a strange product of that. He wanted to hold on to anything he could. It broke my heart.

Rob was a different story. He liked challenges, I was sure of it, and he interpreted my refusal to let him blindly fuck away his ex as just that. He wanted me because he couldn't have me—not the way he wanted. He liked it when I called him on his games and pushed back on his bullshit, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it too. There was something about Rob that clicked with me. Andy insisted it was my need to fix him but if there was anyone in need of fixing in this runoff, it was Ben.

"Why is that?" I asked. "Why is it an issue for me to help my neighbor with a project at his house when A, I'm good at that work and I enjoy it and B, it's not about you?"

Rob folded his forearms on the table with a sigh. It was a ragged, broken noise that suggested this conversation—this specific topic—was causing him a measure of agony. "You're going to make me talk about my baggage and my shit. Aren't you?"

Men. They had the nerve to insist women were the fairer sex. The ones who couldn't see through the haze of their hormones. The wildly emotional ones. The ones who couldn't be trusted with parking, credit cards, front-line combat, nuclear codes.

Fucking men.

Not that it was worth my worry in the first place but I wasn't fretting over my t-shirt dress anymore.

I motioned to the table, the restaurant. "Is there something else you'd rather do tonight? Because I don't need any of this. I don't need to name-check the cool new place on my Instagram or with my friends. But I do need my dinner date to put up or shut up when it comes to the issues he flags on the regular. So, Rob"—I peered at him—"what's it going to be?"

He tilted his head. It was only a few degrees but it shifted his entire countenance from sulky to seriously sexy. "Since you asked, there is something else I'd rather do," he said, his gaze fixed on my lips. "I'd do it right here if we had the place to ourselves."

Okay. Yes. That was seriously sexy but it wasn't working on me. I wasn't the kind of lady who could switch from totally annoyed to totally turned on with one well-placed head tilt.

"Since we don't have the place to ourselves and I'm waiting on this water to turn into wine—a Pinot Grigio, if you please—why don't you explain why you're being salty about something that requires no salt whatsoever?"

The waiter chose this moment to stop at our table and babble on about the backstory of each dish and its ingredients. The carrots were cruelty-free, the bacon knew its grandmother, the chef had trekked all the way to the Malabar coast to handpick the peppercorns. It was a whole big thing. Through it all, Rob and I studied each other in another round of Look at all of our issues and the curious ways in which they manifest themselves. There was Rob with his inability to reveal the inner parts of himself without tremendous cost and there was me with my inability to abide any amount of secrets or shadows because I expected the worst was headed my way.

We ordered two bottles—red and white—and I could almost hear my mother asking, "What? You're planning to drink that entire thing by yourself? You better not plan on walking the dog too. Not unless you want your picture on the front page of the newspaper because you've been kidnapped and killed."

I swallowed a hysterical giggle at that, waving away Rob's curious expression. "It's nothing," I said. "Ignore me."

He shook his head. "Can't."

"All right." I gestured toward him. "Where were we?"

"You said something about salt. I have no salt?"

"You have a ton of salt," I replied, holding my arms out wide. "So much salt."

"No," he answered. "Not that much."

"You're saltier than the Great Salt Lake," I replied. "And the Death Valley Salt Flats."

"Combined? Or separately?"

I leaned forward, flattened my hands on the table. "Both."

"Are we talking that cool pink salt or lame-ass table salt?" he asked.

"Oh, as lame as it comes," I replied. "No one is grinding your salt into artisanal flakes or sprinkling you over chocolate or caramel."

"That's disappointing," he murmured.

"It really is," I replied. "You're a slab of salt, my friend. If I licked you, I'd need to chase it with an entire bottle of tequila."