“What? It’s true.” She shrugs, blond hair falling over her shoulders and a bottle of beer in her hand.
“It is not!” But I can’t keep from laughing because she knows me too well.
“That’s such crap. I’ve seen you do it. The minute a woman tells you she loves you, you get that knee-jerk reaction and say it right back.”
“I do not.” I feign ignorance when I know she’s one hundred percent spot-on.
“Dude, she’s right,” Pauly interjects with the tip of his bottle before meeting Stella’s hand in a high five. “You get *whipped and cave in to saying it back.”
“It just comes out. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just ignore that the chick’s said it and hurt her feelings because I don’t respond?”
“Jesus,” both of them say in unison as Stella slumps back in her seat and slides me a sidelong glance. “It’s gonna hurt her feelings a helluva lot more when you say it and don’t mean it, Romeo.”
I blow out a long breath and swallow the smart-ass comment on my tongue with a sip of beer.
“You guys are too funny,” Pauly says as he rises. “’Nother round?”
We nod and watch him walk off, and now that he’s gone, I look over to Stella who’s eyeing me once again. “What?”
“Nothing.” Silence falls between us for a moment before she continues. “I think it’s cute, you know. Most guys are scared of saying those three words.”
“Well, according to you and Pauly, I say them too much.”
“I’m just giving you shit,” she muses, head on the back of the chair, eyes tilted up to the ceiling. “I like that it’s easy for you.”
“I guess the real question, though, is if I can say it so easily, how will I know when it’s really real?” It’s amazing the things you’ll think to talk about when you’re bored out of your mind.
“You’ll know it’s real when you hesitate.”
I angle my head and meet her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“If the words are so easy for you to say when it’s in reflex, then the first time you ever hesitate, when you don’t say ‘I love you’ back immediately because you’ll be so overwhelmed that she said it to you… well, I guess then you’ll know it’s real.”
I stare at her, not sure if I believe her or not, but since I have nothing else to think about, the notion settles in as I lift the beer to my lips and rest my head on the back of the chair. “Food for thought,” I murmur.
A noise in the hallway pulls me from my dream and the moment I’d completely forgotten. My dreamlike state lasts momentarily, and I hold on to the recollection of Stella since the memories are coming less and less frequently now.
Rolling onto my side to avoid the bright light that floods the room, I’m struck by how perfectly it frames Beaux’s body in a halo as she sleeps. I visually trace the lines of her face and the sheet covering her body and take her all in. She’s so feisty when she’s awake that it’s interesting to have a moment to watch her in sleep. And it’s not like we haven’t woken up beside each other before, but this time just seems so very different.
Good different.