“If I knew you were taking me to such an uptight place, I would’ve dressed nicer.”
“You look amazing, Hailey,” he says, making me blush.
I rub my earlobes, only to be reminded of those earrings I put in. I love them, but wearing them to something this fancy is really awkward. “Well, I just feel so out of place here with my ice-cream cone earrings.”
“Hmm …” He licks his lips. “They only make you more beautiful.”
I try to hide my smile behind my fork, but it doesn’t work. Luckily, he smiles back. Compliments … why do I fall so damn hard for them every goddamn time?
“You’re uncomfortable,” he says.
“No, not at all,” I say, clearing my throat, but he knows as well as I do that I’m lying.
“I won’t hide my opinion of you, Hailey. I’ll tell you whatever’s on my mind. Bad or good. You okay with that?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugs. “Some people can’t take the heat.”
“I think I’ve already proven I can.” A self-satisfied smile perks up on my face.
“All right … then let’s continue our game. Ask three questions and I’ll answer them, then you do the same.”
“You wanna play a game again? I thought we were already over this,” I say.
“There’s plenty more I can learn about you. We’re only just about to get to know each other,” he says, taking a sip of his wine.
I purse my lips. “So you do want to get to know me beyond the bedroom?”
It takes him a while to put down his wine glass and think of an answer. “I want to know who I’m fucking … literally.” He leans forward. “So what’s it going to be, Hailey? Will you allow me to get to know your mind as well as I know your body?”
“Assuming you know my body so well … maybe I will,” I say, taking a sip of my drink. “All right, you start.”
He sits back in his chair, mulling it over a bit. “Would you have come to class and done better if I wasn’t teaching?”
I make a face. “What kind of question is that?”
He shakes his finger. “Ah-ah. Answer first. Question later.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. I don’t know. Maybe I would have. But I’m not skipping any of your classes now, am I?”
“But you did,” he taunts, tracing an invisible line on the table.
“My turn. Would you ever have remotely thought of fucking me if you’d never met me before our first class?”
“Absolutely.” He smirks. “Attraction would’ve happened, whether I met you before or later. Would I have acted on it? Probably not. But that’s not the way it went with us, now did it? We can take so many paths in life, but there’s no use thinking about them because we chose only one. That’s the one we should believe in. It’s all we can do. Believe we made the right choice.”
I nod. There’s actually a lot of wisdom behind that statement. “True. As long as you stand behind the choice.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t even want to know what would’ve happened if we didn’t meet.”
Everything he says makes me feel like I should be trying my best more. He seems so much more interested and actually okay with the choice he made when he fucked me. It’s almost like he’s finally coming to terms with our ‘relationship.’ Or whatever the fuck this is we’re doing.
“So … second question … Where did you get those earrings?”
My eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
“Where’d you get those?” He points at them, and my instinct is to immediately grab them and hold on tight.
“What does it matter?”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t if they wouldn’t matter to you, but they do.”
My words stick in my throat. “H-how do you know?”
He smiles. “C’mon now, Hailey … this isn’t the first time we met, and I’m starting to recognize your little quirks. It’s not a shame that they mean a lot to you. I’m just curious.”
I sigh and turn my head toward the table so I can think about it for a second. It’s none of his business. Or is it? Does he mean something to me? Enough to tell him more about me? Do I mean enough to him that he’d want to know? Apparently.
Taking a deep breath, I say, “I got them from my father for my seventh birthday. I know they’re stupid, and I’m too old to wear them, but I love them.”
He lowers his head and nods, then looks up with a cocked head and a smile. “I get it. Your dad means a lot to you, and that’s truly admirable. I hope he loves you just as much.”