"I never hated you," I protest.
Gaige groans. "Are you kidding?" he asks. "Hate isn't even nearly accurate. Loathe my very presence would be far more accurate."
I laugh. "When did I loathe your presence?"
"Well, definitely not last night," he says, grinning. "But remember the first summer after our parents got married?"
"I was seventeen," I say. "I hated everything."
"Especially me."
"You were a jerk, with your stupid friends who thought they were better than everyone. And the stupid girls you dated and brought home all the time –"
"You just hated to see me with anyone else," Gaige says. He crosses his hands over his chest and looks so damn smug, so sure of himself as he sits there staring at me, that I want to throw my drink at him. Instead, I kick him under the table and he just laughs. "You're mad because you know it's true."
"I'm mad because you were a complete tool and you know it," I say. But I can still remember the pang of irritation I'd get when Gaige would parade his floozies through the house like he owned the place. I hated him.
I might have also loved him.
Maybe this whole thing is just one long continuation of how I felt when I was seventeen. I thought that being with him would get him out of my system, but it seems to be having the opposite effect. It's made me want him more of him – more time with him, more everything. And wanting someone like Gaige – someone who doesn't stay with one girl -- is dangerous.
I watch as he dips his gyoza into sauce and then pops the dumpling in his mouth, and I try to remind myself that this thing with us is just sex. Sure, it's good sex. Amazing sex. Curl-my-toes and call-my-girlfriends sex. But that's all it can be. Even if my father had some kind of personality transplant that made him suddenly approve of this train wreck of a relationship, it's Gaige. Gaige with women constantly throwing themselves at him. Gaige, the consummate flirt.
"Hey," he says. "Where are you?"
"Huh? Oh, I was just thinking."
"About what?"
"Where I should take you," I lie.
"Come on," he says, taking my hand. "Let's get out of here."
We walk along the streets, looking in the windows of the shops and people-watching as couples and friends gather around the entrances to bars and restaurants that line the sidewalks, smoking and drinking while they wait. And we talk, non-stop, for a while, about life and our families. I tell Gaige about my absentee mother, and how she wants me to return to Manhattan.
"Does she hate that you came to live with your father?" he asks.
"Totally. She can't stand him."
I ask Gaige about his father. "You never talk about him."
Gaige shrugs. "He never wanted anything to do with us," he says. "Anja raised me. Or, well, a nanny raised me. And then boarding school. I don't know how your father ended up with her, you know?"
"He definitely has a type. My mother isn't so different from Anja, I don't think." I pause as we stop at a little shop, looking in the window but not actually looking. "I don't want to end up like them."
Gaige stares into the window, but he takes my hand in his. "I'm not my father's only child," he says. "According to Anja, he's a total philanderer – woman after woman, you know? I always swore I'd never end up like him."
"Well, unless you've got a bunch of little Gaiges running around, I don't think you're in danger of that," I say, my voice light, trying to force a casualness I definitely don't feel. Why is it that I do that?
Why do I feel so vulnerable when I'm with him?
Gaige tugs at my hand and pulls me close to him, runs his hand through my hair. "There are no mini-Gaiges running around," he says. "I don't want to end up like him. Honestly."
"Then don't," I say, my voice casual. He looks at me intently for a second, and it's too much. I turn and clear my throat. "You don't have to, you know. It's not like, written in your DNA or something."
He's walking beside me and I have no idea where we're going. "You've seen our parents," he says. "You still believe in happy ever after? They're not happy."
"I think you make your own happiness," I say, sounding surer of it than I feel. "God, since when did you get so freaking philosophical?"
Gaige laughs. "It's the beer and the weather and shit," he says. "Warm summer night, the city, I don't know. I'm a little buzzed, but I'm a total buzzkill, yeah?"
I punch him on the arm, and he gropes my ass over my dress, but I squeal and jump away. "I just didn't know you were so damn sappy," I say. "One minute you're telling me to drop my panties and the next you're talking about fairy tales and shit."