“Because you’ve said, ‘I hate you.’”
I blinked. “That doesn’t mean I really hate you. I didn’t know you were that sensitive. I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you-hate you.”
His snicker was annoying. “I don’t really care if you hate me.”
That had me rolling my eyes. “Let’s be friends, but I don’t care if we are or not, okay,”
I mocked him, shaking my head because that didn’t make any fucking sense at all.
“So?”
He was still going with this? “So what?”
“So, yes or no?”
Yes or no? To us being friends when I didn’t understand why he would bother to try? When he made it seem like he didn’t care whether we were or not? The fuck? Was this how people became friends in real life? I didn’t know. How the hell would I? Every friend I had I’d made back when I didn’t distrust every person I met.
And Ivan?
“I mean….”
“If you don’t think you can do it….” He trailed off with a shrug of those shoulders I’d put my hands on five thousand times in just a couple of months.
If I didn’t think I could do it….
Shit.
I watched his face, but nothing about it changed; he just kept looking forward. I felt… off, and weird. “What does it mean if we are? Do we have to do something or…?”
“I don’t know,” was his brilliant-ass and unexpected response. Because how did he not know? I’d seen him hundreds of times surrounded by people, smiling, hugging, acting like he loved attention and had been born to be the center of it every minute of his life.
But had I seen him actually talk to people before for longer than a few minutes?
Huh.
I wasn’t sure I had.
“I’ll think about it,” I said before I could stop myself.
That had him glancing at me, and if his voice was huskier than normal, I didn’t notice it. “Okay,” was his response.
What the hell did this all mean? What was I supposed to do? I wasn’t the type to hug for no reason, and I didn’t have time to hang out or whatever it was that “friends” did. I hadn’t lied. I didn’t hate him. I hated my ex and a few other people, but I just didn’t like Ivan. He was argumentative, arrogant, blunt….
I’d just described myself, hadn’t I? Shit.
This was never going to work. This was why I didn’t have friends, or more than a couple because—
Then I remembered this was Ivan. Ivan who had the same schedule I did. Ivan who didn’t have time either. Or did he? I didn’t know what he did when we weren’t together.
Could we… be friends? Or at least try to bicker less?
What I really wanted to know was would he even want to?
“This is only for a year,” I said, reminding him about something he already damn well knew. They were the same words he’d used on me every time he wanted. The same words he’d literally used on me hours ago just this morning, before practice and ballet.
“I know that,” he muttered.
“So what’s the point?”
“Fine, forget it,” he mumbled, turning the car down onto the street leading to my mom’s neighborhood.
“You’re the one who brought it up,” I muttered in return.
“Well, I changed my mind.”
“Well, I don’t think you really get to change your mind after you said it.”
“I did.”
I blinked, not liking how insulted I felt all of a sudden now that he’d “changed” his mind. I didn’t even want to be his friend. It would have been the last thing I wanted or expected, but now….
I didn’t like him telling me what to do. That had to be it. That’s what I was going to tell myself. He didn’t get to choose what I did with my life and time more than he already had. “Too bad, shitface. I guess we can try.” I might have broken into a sweat just saying that.
He made a noise as he turned the wheel. “You guess?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He made a face but said, “I’ll think about it.”
I scoffed, forcing myself to look forward. “You’ll think—” I cut myself off as I saw the two-story house coming up on the right. There were three cars I recognized parked in the driveway. Fuck me. “We’re here,” I said, pointing at the house.
Ivan steered the car to the open spot in front of the house, and the second he did, I rushed to say, “Okay, thanks for bringing me,” hand already on the door, my other hand going to the straps of my bag.
I watched him turn off the car more than I actually heard him turn it off.
What the hell was he…?
Ivan raised his eyebrows after turning to me. “Can I use the bathroom?”
Chapter 9
I blinked.
I blinked, and every single word I had learned over the course of my life stopped existing. Because in that moment, as I sat there on top of butter-smooth leather seats with my hand on the door handle to a car that cost more than most people’s homes, I wasn’t sure what the hell to say. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Say what?” I basically croaked for what I was pretty sure was the first time in my life.
The man sitting behind the steering wheel didn’t even bother answering my question. What he did was reach to the side… and open his door. Then he said, “Can I use the bathroom?”
He…?
He wanted me to invite him in? Was that what he was seriously fucking asking me? Was he not so subtly telling me he wanted to go inside my house? Where my family was? To pee?
I blinked again, the “no” on the tip of my tongue, filling the back of my throat and so large it went down my esophagus too. It was a stupid-ass response, one I knew I was more than likely going to regret, but I gave it anyway. Because: be better. “If… you want to.”
Ivan’s reply was to get out of the car and slam the door closed, all while I still sat there, wondering what the hell had just happened. Then, just as quickly as Ivan had gotten out, I did the same, grabbing all of my things and closing the door as gently as possible. He was already waiting for me halfway up the paved pathway leading to the front door, hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants, his black fleece pullover matching his low-profile black tennis shoes perfectly. Mostly though, it annoyed me that he hadn’t taken a shower either, and I looked like I needed one while he… didn’t.
“Who’s here?” the nosey bastard asked.
I slid him a side-look as I walked around him onto the grass to head to the front door, shoving my arm into the opened zipper of my bag to look for my keys. I’d already taken in the cars parked in the long driveway. The Cadillac was James’s, my brother’s husband. The 4Runner was Tali’s, and the Yukon was Squirt’s husband’s. “My mom, her husband, Ben, my brother and his husband, both my sisters, Aaron, my sister’s husband, and their kids.”
“Which sister?” he asked.
I eyeballed him again as I slid the key into the lock, wondering on a scale of one to ten how shitty of an idea this was going to be. With my luck, probably a thirty. Because today would be the day that he invited himself inside to use the bathroom.
God help me.
“The redhead or the sweet, quiet one?” he asked, like I didn’t know the difference in my sisters.
“Aaron is Ruby’s husband; she’s the nice one,” I replied, my words coming out choppy and stilted because I didn’t get when the hell he’d paid enough attention to know my two sisters. It had been years since Ruby, the younger of the two, had gone with me to the rink. Not since she’d been pregnant with their first baby. Tali still tagged along every once in a while to sit there and judge me, but not as often as she used to. And I couldn’t remember either one of them ever going to his parents’ house to pick me up after I’d hung out with Karina.
“You have another brother, don’t you?” he asked, just as I pulled the key out of the lock and went to turn the doorknob.
How the fuck did he know I had another brother? Maybe Karina had mentioned it before. She did used to claim she had a crush on Seb. “My oldest one. Sebastian.”