Trusting Liam(36)
I was laughing so hard that no sound was coming out, and all I could do was hold up three fingers, indicating strike three.
After calling someone to come open the car, we waited for forty-five minutes in the parking lot until Liam sucked in air and whispered harshly, “Fucking son of a bitch.”
“What?” I asked in alarm, and looked around us.
“Don’t,” he warned as he left my side and went to the driver’s-side door. “Don’t say a damn word.” With his frustrated stare fixed on me, he pressed his fingers to the very edge of the driver’s-side door, and his door unlocked.
My brow furrowed before my eyes and mouth widened, and immediately I began laughing all over again. “Fingerprint sensors?”
“I’ve never used it before, I forgot about it.”
As soon as I heard my door unlock, I pulled it open and got inside. I wasn’t laughing anymore, but I couldn’t stop smiling—and that smile got even wider when I saw his face.
“This has been—” He started, but I cut him off by leaning over, grabbing his face, and pressing my lips to his.
“Tonight has been beyond perfect.”
“Perfect,” he said, his voice and face blank.
“I don’t think it could have gone better for us. Two people who don’t date can’t just have a perfect date their first time. It’s like when you buy a new car. As soon as you get it home, you kick it.”
“Kick it,” he stated, once again with no emotion.
“Yes! Because it’s all shiny and new, and if you don’t kick it yourself, you’ll always be worried about the first time anything happens to it—because eventually something will happen to it. So, we just kicked our first date. Now we don’t have to be scared for when something bad will happen on any of our dates after this. Like I said, perfect.”
Grabbing the back of my neck, Liam pulled me in for another kiss. This one was longer, and slower, and like tonight—it was perfect.
“I’m taking you home so nothing else can happen tonight. Three strikes are more than enough.”
“Or instead of that, I vote we go get ice cream. You can never go wrong with ice cream. Unless, wait, are you allergic?”
He huffed, but his mouth curved up into a smile. “I’m never living down this night.”
“Nope,” I agreed. “You’re definitely not.”
June 27
Liam
“SO YOU DON’T date, because you don’t like the ‘title’ of dating?” I asked a little over thirty minutes later.
Kennedy nodded and took another bite of her ice cream. “Pretty much.”
I looked at her with my brow furrowed for a minute. I could understand that to an extent. I didn’t date the girls I was hooking up with, but that’s because I didn’t want relationships with them, and I knew dates would lead them to think something would happen between us. But I also knew that once I found a girl worth pursuing—like Kennedy—that would all change. “But eventually you’ll find a guy you know you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with.”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “There’s no chance of that happening.”
“No chance of what? Marrying someone, or finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with?”
“The whole thing,” she answered, and waved her spoon in the air. “I won’t get married, and the other is just basically the same, without the husband and wife part of it.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with either of those things.”
Kennedy sighed, but paired with her expression, I knew it was because she was trying to figure out how to explain herself. “Both of those things are something people do because they think they’re in love with whoever they’re with. They like the idea of love and being with only one person, and that’s just not practical.”
“Being with only one person for the rest of your life isn’t practical?” I asked blandly.
“No. It’s a lie. It’s saying you want to be with someone so much that they’re the only person you will ever be with again. People only do that because that’s what they think love is—sharing your life with someone. And love doesn’t exist.”
I shook my head. No matter how much I wanted to laugh, I couldn’t figure out how to because Kennedy looked completely serious. “What about your parents? Your grandparents? Eli and Paisley? They’re all still together, aren’t they?”
“They are.”
“So you’re saying none of them are in love?”
“No, I’m not. Okay, let me rephrase. Love doesn’t exist anymore. Not in this day—not for our generation. You see how many divorces there are now? It’s just people who get tired of being with their spouse because they’re no longer in ‘love’ with them, or they ‘love’ someone else. If you actually loved them, that wouldn’t ever go away. You’d always love them. Now? All love is, is a dream. It’s something people want and pretend they find.”