Romance Impossible(52)

"It often feels that way, the first time." Maxwell looked a little distant. Try as I might, I couldn't imagine him ever having been young and fragile, feeling lost in the world without his soulmate. I wasn't sure whether the thought made me want to giggle, or tear up a little.

"Oh, yeah?" I said, picking up the peel and heading to the oven. "You been dumped a lot?"

He let out a bark of laughter. "What do you think?"

"I dunno," I said. "Guys like you, sometimes they have a surprisingly easy time of it."

"Hm." He tossed another circle of dough in the air. "Well, there's the people you think you want to be with, and then there's the people you can actually live with." Laying the stretched dough down in front of me, he glanced at my face, smiling a little. "Which one do you think I am?"

"Well," I said. "I thought Eric was the guy I wanted to live with, so maybe my judgment's a little off."

"I was a serial monogamist, at least," he said. "I never did have the stomach for betrayal. But I could never keep anything going for longer than five months, let alone five years."

"Always the past tense," I pointed out.

He just smiled, pressing another ball of dough flat onto the counter.

"I never even met the girl," I said. "Don't even know if they're still together."

"Doubt it." Chef pounded down his dough. "They always trade down. You were too strong for him, so he picked off someone else who was limping behind the rest of the herd. I'm sure the charm wore off right quick."

I laughed. "Thanks," I said. "But who knows, really?"

"Trust me," he said, seriously. "When people are unhappy with themselves, they want to feel needed in a way that only another deeply unhappy person can make them feel."

As I spread the mozzarella, I thought about the genesis of my relationship with Eric. How he'd "rescued" me from an unhappy home. A knight in shining white armor. I always knew this dynamic had gratified something in him, but I never suspected he'd need it over and over again, for the rest of his life.

I thought back to the months leading up to our not-wedding. I was happier than I'd ever been, my career was flourishing...

"Shit," I said, loudly. Max stared at me, like he was expecting to find that I'd cut off a finger or something.#p#分页标题#e#

"Sorry," I said, looking back down at the pizza. "It's just - you're right."

"I know," he said, grinning. "Was there ever really any doubt?"

"Oh, my God." I rolled my eyes, reaching for the pizza peel. "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

"Indeed," he said. "But at least I'm not Eric."

"No," I agreed, smiling at him. There was a sparkle in his eyes. "No, you most certainly are not."





***



"Let me guess," said Max, after the dinner rush had started to die down. "This Eric person - really nice guy, yes? Never an unkind word for anyone."

"Of course," I said. "Not to their face, anyway."

I didn't know why he was bringing up my ex, out of the blue, hours after our initial conversation. But I didn't mind. Honestly, it was somewhat of a relief to talk about him again, which I hadn't expected. My friends had long ago grown tired of the discussion, and I couldn't speak to my family about it. My mom persisted in her belief that we should have "worked things out" - as if I had a choice - and my stepdad voiced what they were both thinking: it was, somehow, my fault.

"It's what I've always believed," Max said, wiping down one of his frighteningly large knives. "You can't trust nice people. They're always hiding something."

I snickered. "Not always," I said. "I like to think I'm pretty nice."

"Yes, but you're an oddity," he said. "And I mean that as a compliment."

"Of course you do."

"In my experience, most 'nice' people are just afraid of confrontation. They have the same cruel, uncharitable thoughts as anyone else - they just don't voice them."

"But that's not a bad thing," I cut in. "I mean, if you have negative thoughts about somebody and never tell them, then they never know. Their feelings never get hurt."

"Things need to be aired out," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "Everybody walking around, never saying what's on their mind - what kind of world is that?"

"Well, thankfully we have people like you to balance the scales," I said. He was smiling. Any other time, this might have spiraled into a fight. Any other time, I would have been worried. But today, something was different. There was definitely a kind of tension between us, but it wasn't the same as before.