My heart sinks, and I decide right then that I’m just going to go for it; I’m just going to blurt it out and ask. I just need to man up and get it over with, otherwise I’ll spend my entire vacation wondering “What if?” I just need him to tell me straight up. I think hearing him admit it will kill me inside, but hopefully it’ll help me to get over him too. I have to.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and take a deep breath, trying my best to keep calm, but Tyler still notices how panicked I must suddenly appear, because his smile slowly fades away.
“Are you okay?”
I force my eyes to find his, and when I finally do, I part my lips to speak. My voice is nothing more than a quavering whisper when I dare myself to ask, “Does it bother you?”
Tyler’s eyebrows immediately furrow. “What?”
“Dean,” I say. The group of people on the table next to us erupts with laughter, and both my and Tyler’s attention is grasped for a split second before Tyler’s eyes return to study me. I press a hand to my temple and lower my voice even more. “Does it bother you that I’m still with him?”
“Eden.” There’s no trace of a smile left. Now his lips are a bold line, his eyes sharply narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m just wondering,” I splutter quickly, and I’m so nervous that I can’t even look at him, so I press my hand over my eyes and tilt my head down toward the table. “It still bothered you a year ago, before you left. I just want to know if it still does now.”
“Eden,” he says again, his voice coarse, firm. He pauses for a long moment. I’m too scared to move my hand away. Eventually I hear him slowly exhale, and his words are even slower. “Are you asking me if I still . . . you know?”
“I’m trying to,” I whisper.
“We’re not talking about this here,” he says abruptly, loudly. Loud enough for me to lift my head and remove my hand from over my eyes. His jaw is clenched, the muscle twitching.
My voice rises to match his, and I keep on pushing. “Are you over me?”
“Eden.”
“Have you met anyone else? Are you single?” I’m so frustrated and terrified all at the same time that it ends up fueling some sort of adrenaline, and within a matter of seconds I’m brave enough to look him straight in the eye, and he must be even braver to stare back. “When did you get over me? I just need to know, so please just tell me.”
“Eden,” he says, more forcefully this time. “Please stop talking.”
“So that’s it?” I shake my head in disbelief, my temper quickly rising. All of this has been going on for far too long. I need to know whether I’m wasting my time. I need to know whether he and I are a lost cause. “You’re not going to give me an answer? You’re just going to leave me to go insane over this?”
“No,” he says, and his voice is much calmer than mine, despite how hard his features have grown. He has definitely grown up. Two years ago, he would have lost his temper by now and he would have been muttering and cursing and glaring at me. Instead, I’m the one who’s losing it. “I’m just not going to answer you here.”
“Then where?”
“When we get back to the apartment,” he answers, and he narrows his eyes into smaller slits as he fixes me with a firm look, as though to tell me to give up for now, which I do, but only because our waitress is arriving with our food.
She must think I’m rude, for I’m too busy glaring across the table at Tyler to even thank her when she places the dish in front of me, and I barely even blink. Once she disappears again, Tyler leans forward to grab his cutlery, and within a matter of seconds his smile has returned.
“There’s something I still need to show you,” he murmurs, swiftly twirling pasta around his fork, his eyes on his plate.
“What?”
He pauses and tilts his head up, a small smirk on the corner of his lips. “It’s a surprise,” he says. “But here’s a hint: It has an amazing view, and we’ll talk about all of this there.”
6
Tyler remains nonchalant for the rest of the evening, acting so casual that it’s almost as though he doesn’t care that I desperately need an answer to where we stand with each other. He muses on irrelevant things during dinner, tells some jokes on the walk back through Times Square, and even attempts to cheer me up while we’re on the subway by relentlessly wiggling his eyebrows at me until I eventually crack a smile. It’s fake, of course, and the second I turn away from him I wipe it from my face.
“So where’s this place with the amazing view? Empire State Building? Statue of Liberty?” I fold my arms across my chest and watch him, awaiting an answer.