I mean to stop there, but then I hear myself repeating Paul’s words: You might as well have bought me a puppy or a hooker, for all the use she’s been.
And then, because I really don’t know when to shut up, I mention the fact that he threw Ethan in my face.
Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “Who’s Ethan?”
“My ex.”
“Ah,” she says, her tone full of something I can’t identify.
“You seem to have gotten an awful lot of information from those two words,” I say.
“I was married, twice, and divorced, twice. I know my way around exes. I take it things didn’t end well?”
“Eh, let’s just say I’m still getting over it.”
Lindy surprises me by laughing.
“What?” My tone is a little testy.
“That bothers him.”
“What bothers who?”
Lindy pauses in dropping balls of dough on the cookie sheet. “It bothers Paul that you don’t feel good about your breakup. It bothers him that you’re still hung up on this Ethan guy.”
“I didn’t say I was hung up on Ethan. But even if I were, that wouldn’t bother Paul.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, licking dough from her finger. “Don’t you dare be that girl who plays dumb. You know what I’m talking about.”
Oh gawd. She knows. “So you, um, know that things haven’t been entirely professional?”
“You mean, have I been alive long enough to know when two attractive twentysomethings are setting off enough sexual sparks to burn down the house? I do, yes.”
“Awesome,” I mutter. “Do you think Mick knows?”
“Definitely.”
Shit.
“Mr. Langdon?”
“Probably.”
Double shit.
“Well,” I say, pushing back from the counter, “good talk. I’m going to go drown myself now.”
She wiggles her fingers in a sassy little wave, looking way too pleased with herself. “Cookies will be ready to eat in fifteen. Oh, and Olivia?”
“Yah?”
“I’d tell you, you know. About Paul. If I knew.”
It takes my brain a second to catch up. “About Afghanistan, you mean?”
She nods. “I know about the effects, of course. The leg. The scars. The nightmares. But I don’t know what actually happened. I don’t know that anyone does.”
Huh.
“What does he say when people ask?”
She gives me a funny look. “They don’t.”
I come to a halt in the doorway as the implications of that roll over me. “Nobody? Nobody’s asked?”
“Well, I’m sure plenty of people asked him right after it happened, but he was too messed up to talk about it. For the last year or so, I think we’ve all just given him his space.”
I chew the inside of my cheek as I think about this. Maybe there’s such a thing as too much space. Maybe getting real crowded is exactly what he needs to heal from the inside out.
I’ve been avoiding him lately because I need the distance. But it’s time to remember what I’m doing here. I’m here to fix Paul, first and foremost.
And despite what he thinks, distance isn’t what he needs.
The prospect makes me almost giddy. Brace yourself, Paul Langdon. Shit’s about to get real messy for you.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Paul
It’s official: I don’t get women.
Olivia should be pissed at me. Just a few hours ago, I would have sworn that she was. But now she’s changing it up, and I don’t like it at all. I don’t trust forgiveness I didn’t earn.
The weird thing is, I never used to be so clueless with girls. I won’t pretend that I’m a mind reader or anything, but of course I know that fine never means fine, and if you ask a girl if you can skip a date to go to a Red Sox game with your friends, she will probably say, “Go ahead,” which means you’re a dead man.
I’ve had a few girlfriends. Only one was serious. Serious enough that we did the long-distance thing when I went to Afghanistan. When I got back, a well-meaning nurse told me that Ashley had come by to see me.
Once.