To avoid expectations.
“He had a thing.”
“A thing?” she questioned with narrowed eyes.
I sighed. “Yep. A thing.”
“Sounds important. This thing.”
How many times were we going to say thing? We had nearly reached the point where it didn’t even sound like a word anymore.
“Apparently, it was important,” I responded, and the words filled my chest with an undeniable ache. Reed had made me feel like everything but me was important. I honestly hated how badly it hurt. The pain crawled from the base of my skull into my eyes, and I bit down on my lip to stop it from spilling out onto my cheeks.
Instead of facing it all head on, I chose to use the scapegoat of sarcasm to avoid discussing the real root of my sadness. “He even had to get the president’s approval and everything,” I teased with a smile that felt forced.
“I knew you were lying,” Annie declared, and I rolled my eyes again.
My sister was too fucking perceptive. And nosy. Jesus Christ, she was nosy. Didn’t she have anything better to do than meddle in my life?
“So why didn’t Reed really come along?”
Obviously, meddling was her number one goal of the day.
I sighed heavily and gave up on skirting around the topic of Reed, and slowly, the truth started to seep from my lips. “Because he doesn’t do what people expect of him. Apparently, Reed and expectations don’t jive at all.”
She scoffed. “That sounds like a crock of shit if I’ve ever heard it.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
“He hurt you big-time, didn’t he?” Annie asked, her voice now a soft whisper.
“Yep.”
“Are you okay?” Her eyes turned tender, and my emotions couldn’t handle it. Tears pricked behind my eyes.
“I will be,” I muttered past a clogged throat. The words for myself just as much as they were for her—maybe more. “Just need some more time.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Besides stop asking me questions?” I answered with a soft smile, and she laughed.
“Okay…Okay…I get it. I’ll stop meddling.” She flipped the brim of her hat back down and proceeded to enjoy her lazy nap under the sun.
But my brain was now buzzing with questions again, and after a few minutes’ silence had passed, I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“I don’t think Reed and I want the same things,” I admitted on a quiet whisper.
Goddammit, Annie. Screw you for being so nosy and asking all the right questions and doing exactly what you always do to get me to tell you everything.
“What makes you think that?” she asked, but she didn’t flip her stupid hat back up this time.
“I just don’t think we do,” I answered honestly.
“Like, he doesn’t want marriage and kids kind of thing?”
“God, no,” I responded. “Hell, I don’t even want marriage and kids.”
She sat up in surprise. “You don’t?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I really don’t. I’ve already told you that like a thousand times.”
“But I thought you were just saying that because my kids are the kind of kids that would make any sane adult question parenthood. And Brian’s awful dad jokes don’t exactly make marriage appealing to the majority of women,” she said with an amused grin.
That spurred a laugh from my lungs. “Your crazy kids and Brian’s dad jokes aside, I still don’t see marriage and kids in my future.”
“Then, what do you want?”
“I want to find someone to spend my life with, just not in the traditional sense like marriage. I want someone who wants to be committed to me. Someone who wants to be loyal to me. Not out of obligation, but because they want to be. Because they love me so much that they don’t want to be with anyone else.”
I want Reed, my heart whispered.
But it didn’t really matter what I wanted if he didn’t want a future with me.
And my pride could only take so much before my need for self-preservation kicked in at full force. Even if walking away felt like swallowing hot coals, I wasn’t the type of girl who hung around when all the signs pointed me in the opposite direction.
“Do you think Reed is scared of commitment?”
“I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “I mean, I don’t necessarily think that’s it, but I think he strives so hard to do the opposite of what everyone expects of him, he doesn’t realize there are moments when that shouldn’t matter.”
“That sounds like commitment issues to me.”
“You think everyone has commitment issues,” I retorted. “Hell, you thought Brian had commitment issues when you first started dating him.”