“I would never hurt your feelings, honey,” Clint said with a wide smile.
She forced a smile back. “Okay, you ready for this?”
He set down his coffee cup and leaned back in Camille’s living room chair. “Bring it.”
Emma took a deep breath. Even though it was just Clint, even though she’d thought she could be fully emotionally removed from this, it was harder than she thought to get the first question out.
She hadn’t expected to feel so…vulnerable.
But not going through with this article would be letting Cassidy win.
And as civil as their shared glasses of wine had been the other night, there was no way in hell she’d let him have any impact on her present and future.
He’d already done enough damage on her past. And she on his.
“Okay, first question,” Emma said. “What was your first reaction when you got that email from me? Like we’re talking gut reaction. Lay it on me.”
“Happiness,” Clint said.
Emma all but rolled her eyes. From what she remembered, the guy was always happy. Again, it was a good trait—a great trait. But after a couple months with Clint, she’d begun to miss the nuances of, well, moods.
For Clint it had never been about the cup being half-full or half-empty. In his book, the cup was always overflowing, all the time.
“Surprise, of course,” Clint added to his initial statement. “It’s been what…four years? But I was happy to hear from you. I’m happy to hear from anyone who’s had a significant impact on my life.”
Emma wrote this down. His response was a little cheesy, but who knows? Maybe it would be a nice balm for her ego when she got to the guys who’d be a little less happy to hear from her.
“Okay, second question,” she said. “When you think of our time together, what do you most remember? It can either be a specific moment, or a general vibe, or just…whatever comes to mind.”
“I remember how much you made me smile,” Clint said.
She bit her lip to keep from asking if he was ever not smiling.
“But mostly,” he continued, “I remember how much I wanted to make you smile.”
That caught her off guard. Emma paused in her note taking and glanced up.
Clint’s grin had turned just a little bit sad, and suddenly Emma was struck by the realization that maybe Clint wasn’t happy all the time after all. Maybe he was just really good at faking it.
“What do you mean?” Emma asked. She smiled. Didn’t she?
“Don’t get me wrong; you weren’t mopey or anything,” Clint rushed to explain. “There was just…your smiles had to be earned. And it was damn hard work.”
He grinned to soften the blow, but Emma felt strangely off-kilter.
She knew she could be…reserved. But she liked to laugh as much as the next girl. She could be happy and funny and all that. Right? Right?!
“Okay, last question,” she said, suddenly anxious for this first interview to be over. “From your perspective, why did we break up?”
Clint leaned forward, his smile mischievous. “Ah, I wish I knew. See, Emma, darling, you dumped me. And I seem to remember the classic ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ at work.”
Emma tapped her pen on the notebook. She’d been planning for this. In her past relationships, Emma had done a lot of the dumping, so she’d known this was coming.
But the script she’d rehearsed in her head didn’t feel adequate when she was looking at someone she’d once cared about. Who’d once cared about her, even if it had been only for a couple months.
“Don’t worry,” Clint said with a wink. “I’m not holding a grudge about it.”
Emma smiled back. “Like that’d even be possible for you. Have you ever held a grudge?”
He laughed. “Good point. And no. I guess I try pretty hard to let things roll off me. Life is easier that way.”
Emma sat back a little and considered this. Maybe she and Clint weren’t as different as she’d once thought. They both did whatever they could to cope with the not-so-great parts of life. He added a deliberate happy spin to everything.
Emma’s approach was to keep her distance.
“Do you remember anything else about our breakup?” she asked. “Anything juicy for my story?”
He shrugged. “You were sweet about it. I appreciated that. Said you just weren’t in a place for a relationship, and I deserved someone who could give one hundred percent.”
Emma wrote this down, even though she didn’t have to. It was more or less the line she’d given every guy who’d been kicked to the curb.
“Okay, Clint, that’s it for my questions. Like I said, I promised this meeting wouldn’t take up much of your time, right? But if you want to go off book—add something you haven’t yet—this is your chance. Remember, no names, so it won’t trace back to you.”